Person, Alice Morgan, 1840-1913

Alice Morgan was born in 1840 near Petersburg, Va. She received most of her education at home. In 1857, she married Joseph Arrington Person, a wealthy planter from Franklin County, N.C. The couple settled at Person's plantation and had nine children.

In 1863, Joseph Person organized a company of North Carolina volunteers. He soon was discharged from service, however, because of a disability. Shortly after returning home, he suffered a debilitating stroke that prevented him from working for the rest of his life. Her husband's disability, coupled with the economic consequences of the Civil War, led Alice Morgan Person to market a patent medicine, the recipe for which had been given her by a neighbor.

In 1882, she began selling Mrs. Joe Person's Remedy door-to-door in Charlotte, Raleigh, and other major North Carolina towns. The Remedy proved quite popular, and Person was soon known throughout the South for her medicine and for her piano playing. She performed popular tunes at fairs in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, and made a recording of her music at Victor Records in New Jersey.

Alice Person travelled extensively during her lifetime for both business and pleasure. In 1913, during one such trip to the West Coast, she suffered a seizure and died. She left a considerable estate, most of which had been accumulated as a result of her business activities. Also surviving her is an autobiography that offers a detailed account of her public life, including the challenges of starting and sustaining a business as a woman in a man's world.