The remarkable life of Susie King Taylor (1848–1912) is honored by a marker at this site. Born enslaved, she was freed with her family when they escaped to the Union Army during the Civil War. She served as a teacher and a nurse with the army while still in her teens. After the war, she opened a school for African American children in Savannah, Georgia. After the death of her husband, she came north as a cook and settled in Boston before remarrying. In 1886, she helped organize Corps 67 of the Women’s Relief Corps, an auxiliary to the GAR that served veterans, and became its president in 1893. In her book A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp published in 1902 in Boston, she protested the current treatment of African Americans in the United States.
Learn more: Susie King Taylor An African American Nurse and Teacher in the Civil War (Library of Congress)
