History Behind the Story: Susie King Taylor

Susie King Taylor, who lived in the Sea Islands during the Civil War and served as a nurse to the black regiments at Camp Saxton in Beaufort, makes a cameo appearance in my novel, Union’s Daughter. She wasn’t a typical nurse, even by Civil War standards. But she was never typical from her youth.

She was born into slavery in the Georgia countryside in 1848 but raised in Savannah, where she received a secret education from a free black teacher and sympathetic white friends. In April of 1862, she began a risky journey toward freedom, meeting the Union troops on St. Catherine’s Island and coming under their protection at St. Simon’s Island shortly after. By 1862, she arrived at Beaufort, South Carolina, a safe harbor for escaped slaves, and joined the Army as a laundress.

Her literacy and her nursing skill led her to a promotion as the regimental nurse for the 1st South Carolina Infantry, and she accompanied them on their first major military mission to Florida in March of 1863.

She was as well-prepared for war as for nursing. She was an excellent shot and she had been vaccinated against smallpox. Both came in handy in the Sea Islands in 1863.

She met Clara Barton at the Beaufort Hospital in 1863; the most famous nurse in the country and the best-known nurse in the Sea Islands liked each other.

Her undated photograph is from her 1902 memoir, which you can read here. I think she looks like an ideal person to take charge in a crisis.