Born: 18 June 1835, United States
Died: 22 February 1917
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Eleanor Lytle Kinzie
The following is shared from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, which allows the use of protected materials for noncommercial educational purposes.
Eleanor “Nellie” Kinzie Gordon, the Chicago-born wife of Savannahian William Washington Gordon II (and the mother of Juliette Gordon Low), found herself living with her in-laws when the war broke out. She spent most of the war in Georgia’s port city, while her husband served as a Confederate captain, and for much of 1862 she kept a journal. Although she was publicly supportive of the Confederate cause at the beginning of the conflict, Gordon soon became disenchanted with the war, and inconsistencies in both her writings and her actions leave historians unsure of her true wartime loyalties. Edited portions of her journal were published by the Georgia Historical Quarterly in 1986.