LOUISBURG, N.C.—Dr. Jane Turner Censer, professor of history at George Mason University, will present a lecture entitled “Heroines and Farm Women in Civil War North Carolina” on Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in The Norris Theatre at Louisburg College. This is the third presentation in the Tar River Center for History and Culture’s 2013-14 lecture series, “The Civil War and Its Aftermath in North Carolina and Franklin County.”
Part of Dr. Censer’s lecture will focus on “Aunt Abby” House of Franklin County, a feisty woman who went to great lengths to take care of her nephews as they fought for the Confederacy. Her efforts to obtain furloughs for her kinfolk led Governor Zebulon B. Vance, in a written introduction given to General Robert E. Lee, to refer to her as “the ubiquitous, indefatigable and inevitable Mrs. House.”
Following the lecture, students in Louisburg College’s History 221 course (North Carolina history) will give a presentation on the life of Abby House, based in part on original research in census records, deeds, and other primary sources.
Dr. Censer, who earned her doctorate at The Johns Hopkins University, is a specialist in nineteenth-century American history. Much of her recent scholarship has focused on southern women. Her book, The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865-1895, published in 2003, explored the social and cultural changes wrought by the Civil War among privileged women in North Carolina and Virginia. Articles from that research also won two prizes, including a prize for “best article in southern women’s history.”
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Maury York, director of the Tar River Center for History and Culture, at (919) 497-3252 or at myork@louisburg.edu.
About Louisburg College
Related by faith to The United Methodist Church, Louisburg College is the oldest two-year residential college in the nation, and the only one in North Carolina. With a student body of 700 students, over 90 percent of Louisburg graduates continue their education at four-year schools. Learn more at www.louisburg.edu.