"Susie King Taylor"[Augusta 4,1848-October 6,1912]

Was an African American army nurse;she worked with African American Union Troops
during the Civil War.As the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd
United States Colored Troops,Late 1st S.C. Volunteers,she was the only African

American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences.She was also the first African American to teach openly in a school for former slaves in Georgia.She was born enslaved on a plantation in Liberty County,Georgia as Susan Ann Baker.When she was about seven,her owner allowed her to go to Savannah to live with her grand mama.Despite's Georgia's harsh laws against the formal education of African Americans,she attended two secret schools taught by African American women.From them Susie gained the rudiments of literacy,then extended her education with the help of two white youths,both of whom knowingly,violated law and custom.In April 1862,Susie and many other African Americans fled to St.Simons Islands,occupied at the time by Union forces.Within days her educational advantages came to the attention of army officers,who offered to obtain books for her if she would organize a school.She thereby became the first African American teacher for freed African American students to work in a freely operating freedmen's school in Georgia.She taught forty children in day school and " a number of adults who came to her at nights,all of them so eager to learn to read,to read above
anything else."Susie taught there until October 1862,when the islands was evacuated.
While at the school on St.Simons Island,Susie married Edward King,an African American officer in the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment.For three years she moved with her husband's and brother's regiment,serving as nurse and laundress,and teaching many of the African American soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours.In 1866 she and Edward returned to Savannah,where she established another school. In 1868 she again relocated to Savannah,where she continued teaching freedmen for another year and support herself through small tuition charges,never receiving aid from the northern freedmen's aid organizations.
In the 1870s Susie traveled to Boston as a domestic servant of a wealthy white family.While there she met Russell L.Taylor,also a native of Georgia.She returned home to Liberty County to marry Russell on April 20,1879.Susie remained in Boston for the rest of her life,returning to the South only occasionally.After a trip to Louisiana in the 1890s to care for a dying son,she wrote her Reminiscences which was privately published in 1902.She died ten years later.Susie is buried next to her second husband at Mount Hope Cemetery in Roslindale,Massachusetts.