Andrews, Eliza Frances

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ANDREWS, Eliza Frances

Born 10 August 1840, Washington, Georgia; died 21 January 1931, Rome, Georgia

Wrote under: Elzey Hay

Daughter of Garnett and Annulet Ball Andrews

Eliza Frances Andrews was born at Haywood, the plantation home of her parents. The family was moderately wealthy by Southern standards, owning about 200 slaves. Andrews attended the Washington Seminary for Girls and graduated in the first class from the LaGrange Female College in 1857.

When Georgia seceded from the Union in January 1861, Andrews' father achieved notoriety for his uncompromising opposition to secession and his subsequent refusal to support the new Confederacy. Although he permitted three of his sons to join the Confederate army, he did not tolerate the secessionist views of his daughters, which led to many family arguments.

In December 1864, Andrews began her diary, published as The War-time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908), with an account of a trip to visit her sister near Albany, Georgia. Andrews and a younger sister had to travel over rough, partially destroyed roads, with the ever-present fear of ambush by Sherman's men. Once at their sister's, however, the two girls enjoyed a round of visits and parties, strangely gay for a time of political and military disintegration. Andrews' fine eye for detail gives the reader a fascinating portrait of social life in the rural Confederacy. Occasionally she lapses into girlish concerns, reporting all the compliments she received on her appearance, but her natural skepticism always rescues her and the diary from silliness. In March 1865 Andrews returned to Washington, Georgia, to witness the fall of the Confederacy. There she met Jefferson Davis on his flight from his pursuers.

After her father's death in 1873, Andrews began teaching school. She served as principal of the Girl's High School in Yazoo City, Mississippi, later became principal of a girl's seminary in Washington, Georgia, and from 1885 to 1896 taught French and literature at the Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia. Andrews then returned home to Washington to teach botany in the public high school. After her retirement from teaching, she published two textbooks on botany.

Andrews' literary career began in 1865 with an article on Reconstruction in Georgia published in the New York World. A second article on women's life and fashions appeared in Godey's Lady's Book the following year. Her first novel, A Family Secret (1876), quickly became a bestseller. This mystery, set in the immediate postwar south, revolves around the romance between Audley Malvern and Ruth Harfleur and their attempts to discover the secret of Ruth's parents and the unusual ring she wears. It is filled with such typical 19th-century literary conventions as a ghost in a graveyard, mistaken identities, and a last chapter entitled "Everybody Gets Married and Lives Happy Forever After."

A Family Secret is of interest to the modern reader for its strong statements on the position of women. Audley's sister, Julia Malvern, an unsuccessful teacher, writer, and clerk, concludes that marriage for money is the only way out of her financial dilemma. She is not happy about this, however: "Marrying for money never makes people better, but it leaves us so poor in our own estimation, so mean in spirit, so hollow, so empty, and, after all, so unsatisfied, that sometimes I almost doubt whether it pays." A few pages later she exclaims, "Oh, the slavery it is to be a woman and not a fool!"

Two other novels, A Mere Adventurer (1879) and Prince Hal; or, the Romance of a Rich Young Man (1882), were equally successful with readers.

Other Works:

Botany All the Year Round; a Practical Textbook for Schools (1893). Seven Great Battles of the Army of Northern Virginia: A Program of Study and Entertainment (1906). A Practical Course in Botany, With Especial Reference to Its Bearings on Agriculture, Economics, and Sanitation (1911). The War-time Journals of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 (reissued, 1997).

The papers of Eliza Frances Andrews are in the Garnett Andrews Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Bibliography:

Coulter, E. M., Travels in the Confederate States (1948). Hart, B. S., Introduction to Georgia Writers (1929). King, S. B., Jr., ed., Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl (1960 ed.). Tardy, M. T., ed., The Living Female Writers of the South (1872).