Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington

Born in 1846, Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington is chiefly known for How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties, published in 1907. The book gathers a small set of anecdotal pieces rather than a full autobiography, and it has remained her most clearly documented work.

Her memoir looks back on life in Louisiana during the American Civil War, including encounters with Confederate forces, Union troops, and so-called jayhawkers, along with memories of enslaved people and plantation households. What makes the book interesting for modern listeners is its intimate scale: instead of sweeping history, it offers personal scenes and remembered incidents from wartime childhood and family life.

Very little biographical information about her seems easy to confirm beyond her name, birth year, and authorship of this book, so many details of her later life remain unclear in readily available sources. Even so, her writing survives as a rare firsthand remembrance of the Civil War South from a woman who experienced those years as a girl.