Meet Margaret-Ellen Hamilton Copeland

I was born on March 15th, 1842, the 3rd child born to James Tyler McCoy Copeland and his bride, Ellen Janney Hamilton Copeland.  My father is a gentleman farmer in Hillsborough, VA, a humble stone-built town lodged in a gap where the Charlestown Pike cuts through the knuckle of the Catoctin Mountains called Short Hill.  He raises sheep for wool to be sold in the big mill-towns nearby: Harper's Ferry, Winchester and the like, as well as a few acres of apples and corn.

I have 2 older brothers, Fairchild (b. 1838) and Mason (b. 1840), and a younger brother, George (b.1845).  My mother Ellen died of childbed fever after giving birth to George, and we were all split up as youngsters until our father could regain his footing after being so tragically bereft.  My brothers Fairchild and baby George stayed with my father and our spinster aunt, Miss Mariah Copeland.  Mason went to live with my mother's people, the Hamiltons and Janneys of Waterford, VA, who were Quakers and raised him up in that tradition.  I was sent to live in Winchester with my Aunt Nadia White, wife to a wealthy townsman there and my father's sister.  There in Winchester I became acquainted with Adah Ridenour and her brother Timothy, children of a well-connected Alexandria family who spent their summers in the house next-door.  Adah and I became fast friends, and when I eventually moved back to Hillsboro to learn to work the farm (my aunt having utterly failed in her attempts to make a proper lady out of me), and she went away to Athenaeum, we both continued our correspondence with each other.

I pray my humble writings may lift your spirits and enlighten your minds, bringing the shadows of our Late Unpleasantness into the humble light cast by we ordinary folk who experienced it first-hand.

Ever your servant,

M.E.H. Copeland
Hillsbourgh, VA, 1860