Kentucky Women in the Civil War: The Wallace/Starling Diaries

Ellen Kenton McGaughey Wallace was a member of a landowning and slaveholding family in southern Christian County, Kentucky. At the beginning of the Civil War, her sentiments were pro-Union. However, as the war progressed and certainly after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, her sympathies turned toward the Confederates. Her diaries portray an intelligent and sensitive middle-aged mother who used her journals for expression not allowed women in the 19th century.

Annie Leslie McCarroll Starling, on the other hand, began her journals as a seventeen-year-old at the outset of the Civil War. She was the daughter of Hopkinsville physician, John McCarroll, and was strongly pro-Union. Her diaries, however, show little concern for the politics of the day and mostly provide short commentary about the weather and some family information.

                                         (Courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society, Special Collections & Archives)

  These diary excerpts represent two women, of the same era but of different generations.  They lived in Kentucky during the Civil War, were part of the same family, but the differences in their ages created varied perspectives on their experiences the Civil War in their lives. 

View a page from Ellen Kenton McGaughey Wallace's Diary by clicking on it.

Read the transcription of an excerpt from Annie Starling’s Diary, and Ellen Wallace’s Diary.

Read about Julia Marcum, who lived in Kentucky during the Civil War, and the plight of Margaret Garner, a Northern Kentucky slave who attempted to escape. 

Learn more about women in the Civil War at the
Civil War Women On-line Archival Collection at Duke University

Visit American Slave Narratives:  An Online Anthology.