Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/537

498 with which her husband is connected. She enters with interest and enthusiasm into the literary and social life of her home town and is greatly admired for her intelligence and her many amiable and womanly qualities. Mrs. Ross has been prominently associated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy work since the organization of the Admiral Semmes Chapter, of Auburn, and was for several terms its president. She has also held the positions of recording secretary and first vice-president in the state division and frequently has been a delegate to the general convention, United Daughters of the Confederacy. Mrs. Ross is also an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Mrs. Gardner was born near Bingen in Germany. She emigrated to Georgia in 1849 and removed to Florida in 1853. At the commencement of the war she lived at Fernandina and shortly before its occupation by the Federals removed to Waldo, Florida. While residing at Waldo she did all she could to feed the hungry and relieve the sick and furloughed boys passing her door. In the summer of 1864 the family removed to Savannah, Georgia, where she is still living and is in her ninetieth year.

The daughter of Mrs. Adaline Gardner aided and assisted her mother during the war, from i860 to 1865, to the best of her ability, although but a young girl at the time, by feeding the hungry and nursing the sick.

In the later years of the war a great many of the wounded soldiers were brought from east and west to Augusta, Georgia. Immediately the people from the country on both sides of the Savannah River came in and took hundreds of the poor fellows to their homes and nursed them with every possible kindness. Ten miles up the river, on the Carolina side, was the happy little village of Curryton, named for Mr. Joel Curry and his father, the venerable Lewis Curry. Here many a poor fellow from distant states was taken in most cordially and every home was a temporary hospital. Among those nursed at Mr. Curry's, whose house was always a home for the preacher, the poor man and the soldier, was Major Crowder, who suffered long from a painful and fatal wound, and a stripling boy soldier from Kentucky, Elijah Ballard, whose hip wound made him a cripple for life.

Miss Sadie Curry nursed both, night and day, as she did others, when necessary, like a sister. Her zeal never flagged, and her strength never gave way. After young Ballard, who was totally without education, became strong enough, she taught him to read and write, and when the war ended he went home prepared to be a bookkeeper. Others received like kindnesses.

But this noble girl' had from the beginning of the war made it her daily business to look after the families of the poorer soldiers in the neighborhood. She mounted her horse daily and made her round of angel visits. If she found any-