Constance Cary Harrison (pen name, Refugitta; April 25, 1843 – November 21, 1920), also referred to as Mrs. Burton Harrison, was an American playwright and novelist. She and two of her cousins were known as the "Cary Invincibles"; the three sewed the first examples of the Confederate Battle Flag.
Harrison belonged to an old Virginia family related to the Fairfaxes and Jeffersons. Her home was destroyed during the American Civil War and consequently she witnessed much of the horrors of that struggle. After the war ended, she accompanied her mother on a trip to Europe. Upon her return to the United States, she married Burton Harrison, a lawyer and American democratic politician, who was at one time the Secretary of President Jefferson Davis. They moved to New York in 1876, and there she began her literary life. Her first magazine article was A Little Centennial Lady, which attracted much attention, and thereafter, she wrote a great deal.[2]
Few literary women in New York were better known at the time, her home a social and literary center. She produced several plays, chiefly adaptations from the French. The work that probably gained her more reputation abroad was The Anglomaniacs, which appeared in The Century without her name. It ranked her at once among the best of the novelists. Some of her other works included, Golden Rod, The Story of Helen Troy, Woman's Handiwork in Modern Houses, Old-Fashioned Fairy Book, Bric-a-Brac Stories, Flower de Hundred, Miy Lord Fairfax of Greenway Court, The Homes and Haunts of Washington, The Russian Honeymoon, Sweet Bells Out of Tune, A Daughter of the South and Other Tales, Bar Harbor Days, and An edelweiss of the Sierras, Golden-rod, and other tales.[2]
Constance Cary lived with her Baltimore cousins, Hetty and Jennie; her mother served as the girls' chaperone. The three young ladies became known as the "Cary Invincibles".[10] In September 1861, they sewed the first examples of the Confederate Battle Flag following a design created by William Porcher Miles and modified by General Joseph E. Johnston.
According to her own account, one flag was given to General Joseph E. Johnston, one to Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard, and hers to Confederate general Earl Van Dorn.[11] Later during the war, she assisted her mother as a nurse at Camp Winder.[12]
She later met her future husband, Burton Harrison (1838–1904), a private secretary for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and helped win his release from Fort Delaware after the war's end.
In 1871, the Harrisons first visited Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine, staying at the cottage of Captain Royal George Higgins.[15] Sometime in the 1880s, they commissioned Arthur Rotch of the architectural firm Rotch & Tilden to build a seaside cottage called "Sea Urchins", with a garden designed by Beatrix Farrand.[16] The property now is owned by the College of the Atlantic, transformed into Deering Common, student center.[17] "Sea Urchins" was the center of hospitality during the Gilded Age in Bar Harbor and she entertained many noted visitors there, including friend and neighbor James G. Blaine, who lived at "Stanwood". The Harrisons' winter home was a mansion on East 29th Street, New York.[13]
^Constance Cary Harrison, "Virginia Scenes in '61," in Johnson, Robert Underwood; Clarence Clough Buel (1887–1888). Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 1. New York: Century. pp. 160–166. 165.
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