Free Lecture, Women's Attitudes, Civil War, June 24

Women’s Attitudes Toward Secession and the Civil War Lecture Mary Wayne Watson Sunday, June 24, 2012 First Baptist Church 200 E. New York Avenue and May Street, Southern Pines 2:00 pm, No Admission Charge
The Moore County Historical Association invites you to a free lecture by Mary Wayne Watson on “Women’s Attitudes Toward Secession and the Civil War.” The lecture is Sunday, June 24 starting at 2 p.m. and is at the First Baptist Church of Southern Pines. Visitors should use the May Street Entrance. Watson is no stranger to Moore County audiences. This noted English professor is sponsored by the N.C. Humanities Council as part of the Roads Scholar program. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her doctorate from the University of Virginia. Her lecture focuses on unpublished manuscripts and correspondence by gifted North Carolina women whose perspectives of the Civil War period show the impact of Sherman’s scorched earth policy on the area, following the first period of idealism, followed by sadness and loss during the four years from 1861-1865, as North Carolina and the rest of the South continued to suffer loss and misery into the post-war period. Watson actually used as her basis letters her own great-grandmother in Scotland County wrote during that period to a family in Moore County, in the process revealing that North Carolina had a surprisingly literary heritage in years of hardship and loss. Watson also has done presentations on her own great uncle, a North Carolina Poet Laureate named John Charles McNeill, and a cousin, Gerald White Johnson, a journalist and historian. The lecturer has taught English at both middle and high school levels in public schools. She also taught at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., and is currently a professor of English and literature at Nash Community College in Rocky Mount. For more information call (910) 692-2051 or email info@moorehistory.com