Eliza McHatton Ripley

Frontispiece of her book with an image of her by Theodore Sydney Moïse

Eliza McHatton Ripley (1832-1912), born Elizabeth Chinn, was an American writer who wrote about her experiences on a Louisiana plantation at the onset of the American Civil War when her family fled to New Orleans, Texas, Mexico, and Cuba[1][2] She also wrote the book Social Life in Old New Orleans.[3]

She married her first husband and became Elizabeth McHatton[4] before being widowed in 1865 and remarrying to Colonel Dwight Ripley in 1873.[5]

Some of the correspondence of her family still exists[6][7] including the description of a rebellion of Chinese laborers on her family's plantation in protest at the inadequacy of their rations.[8]

References

1. From flag to flag : a woman's adventures and experiences in the South during the war, in Mexico, and in Cuba.
2. "Ripley, Eliza Moore Chinn McHatton. "From Flag to Flag; A Woman's Adventures and Experiences in the South during the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba"".
3. Social Life in Old New Orleans: Being Recollections of My Girlhood. Dodo Press. May 2009. ISBN 9781409981916.
4. Guterl, Matthew Pratt (11 March 2013). American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674072282.
5. Sternberg, Mary Ann (15 April 2013). Along the River Road: Past and Present on Louisiana's Historic Byway. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807150634.
6. Wong, Edlie L. (23 October 2015). Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship. NYU Press. ISBN 9781479856572.
7. Nash, Steven E.; Stewart, Bruce E. (2019). Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the American South. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820355115.
8. López, Kathleen M. (10 June 2013). Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9781469607146.