McEachern, Mary McNeill, 1847-1933

Mary McNeill McEachern (1847-1933) grew up near Fayetteville, N.C., and moved in 1894 to Red Springs, N.C. While attending school in the antebellum South, McEachern became friends with many transplanted northerners.

Mary McNeill McEachern was born 1 July 1847, the eighth of 15 children of Hector and Mary McNeill of Ardulusa, N.C. She attended the Episcopal Rectory School at Rockfish Factory, N.C., where she met teacher Caroline Benton and close friend Edna Van Amburgh, both of whom were transplanted northerners. With the beginning of the Civil War, the Benton and Van Amburgh families returned to the North. The McNeill family remained in North Carolina and strongly supported the Confederacy. Mary McNeill attended Floral College in 1866-1867 and then became a teacher. Escorted by her brother James, she visited her old friend Edna Van Amburgh in Fishkill-on-Hudson, N.Y., in July 1876.

Mary McNeill married Daniel Purcell McEachern (9 May 1836-19 October 1917), a Confederate veteran and graduate of the University of North Carolina, on 26 August 1880. The couple had three children: Beatrice (1881-1970), Mary (1883-1974), and Archibald (1885-1886), and lived in Red Springs, N.C., south of Fayetteville.

Biographical information provided by Judith B. Nisbet.