Smedes, Susan Dabney, 1840-1913

Epithet: American author

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000001130.0x0003e7

Susan Dabney Smedes (1840-1913) was a Mississippi planter's daughter, author, and teacher and missionary in the West. Smedes was the daughter of Thomas S. G. Dabney and Sophia Hill Dabney of Burleigh Plantation, near Raymond, Miss. She was married in 1860 to Lyell Smedes of Raleigh, N.C., who died soon after their marriage. After her husband's death, Smedes returned to her family's plantation in Mississippi and lived there until her father's death in 1885. In 1887 she published Memorials of a Southern Planter, the story of her father's life and a picture of civilization in the antebellum South. Smedes went as a teacher and missionary to South Dakota, 1886; lived in Helena, Mont., with her sister Mrs. B. H. Greene, circa 1887-1891; travelled to England, 1908; and lived sometime in Washington, D.C., and Sewanee, Tenn.

From the guide to the Susan Dabney Smedes Papers, ., 1860-1930, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)