The title
is not meant to give offence. It comes from a album I once had (and intend
to buy again) called "White Mansions" it was a musical about the Civil War
as seen from the South. I thought it appropriate for this page. Although the
lady did not fight in the War her husband did.
The story is related
by Alexia Marlowe regarding her Grandparents Lt Alexander MacQueen and Marjory
MacFarland MacQueen.
Granpa's home was
a beautiful old house about five miles from Cheraw South Carolina on the
Cabin Branch. The house had immense pillars, dormer windows, high ceilings
and a wide hall extending from front to back door. The kitchen was set apart
from the house and meals were cooked in the kitchen and brought into the
house on large silver trays. Grandpa was not yet home from the War, so Grandma
gave the orders. Meat was placed in a lined box and secreted in a hole nearby
with generous cover of pinestraw. Valuables were hidden between the box-lined
hedges and under the high back porch, the children's playhouse, then the
chickens were turned in to leave tracks in the sand. The overseer went with
two horses and a cow to the swamp. And then the yankees came.
Grandma was told
to get out of the house with the children because the house was to be burned.
Grandma was from Scotland, and she replied, "I am still a sovereign subject
of Great Britain and you would have to answer to them." They didn't burn
the house, but for mean-ness one soldier stuck a lighted candle under my
Uncle Johnny's nose, he was just a little boy. Grandpa and Grandma were
good to their servants, Grandma taught all the children to read and most
of the servants stayed loyal. But some just went crazy and told of the hidden
meat. The yankees found the meat and took it all, they also took everything
out of Grandma's pantry, flour and sugar and all. Then they went out in
the yard and poked their sabres in the ground, looking for the other valuables.
On their tour of the house they slashed a large painting of Grandma's father
hanging in the parlour. They cut places in the velvet drapes and slashed
places on the Brussels carpet
While the yankees
were chasing and killing the chickens and turkeys, Mama's nursemaid, dear
old black Aunt Penny, went out and raided the yankee's collection of stolen
things. The family loved Aunt Penny. She had looked after all the children,
and she was so loyal. She always wore a big white apron and she came back
with an apron full of things the yankees had taken from the pantry. It's
a wonder they didn't catch her, but they were busy with the fowls. They
shot all the chickens and turkeys and took them when they left. They took
everything that had not been taken to the swamp. The only livestock saved
were the two horses and the cow that the overseer had taken to the swamp.
Later on a hen which had a nest in the swamp arrived with her little biddies
in the rear. That furnished the family with chicken. The old hen was the
only on the yankees didn't get. Besides that, all that was left was what
Aunt Penny had gotten back from the Yanks.
Marjory Macfarlane was born 1823 in Greenock, Renfrewshire,Scotland, and moved with her mother and sister to the U.S. from Scotland in 1849, after her father (Robert) had died in Scotland in 1841, to join her brother, Allan, who came here in 1838. Marjory met her future husband, Alexander, and married him in Cheraw, S.C. in 1851. The couple built their home, Cabin Branch
Thanks to Jay Huntley great-great grandson of Majory and Alexander MacQueen for the above information
