On July 16, 1857, Thomas Stonewall Jackson married Mary Anna Morrison at “Cottage Home,” the Lincoln County plantation of the Morrison family.
The couple first met through Morrison’s sister, Isabella, who was married to D. H. Hill, a faculty member at what’s now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Jackson, who had previously attended West Point and fought in the Mexican-American War, was on the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute, also in Lexington.
Married not long after their meeting and the death of Jackson’s first wife, the couple were said to be deeply devoted to one another and to have had a happy home despite the death of their first child. The couple was not married long before they were separated by the advent of the war in 1861. After Jackson’s death at the battle of Chancellorsville, Mary returned to Lincoln County and never remarried.
Though Mary was said to not approve of her husband’s nickname “Stonewall,” since she thought it didn’t accurately reflect his character, she came to accept and be highly regarded as his widow throughout North Carolina and the rest of the former Confederacy. She was often visited by Confederate veterans and received military honors at her death in 1915.
Other related resources:
- Images of the Civil War from the State Archives
- The Civil War on NCpedia
- North Carolina and the Civil War from the N.C. Museum of History
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