I haven’t been blogging that long, but already Kate Stone’s name has come up several times. Who was she? She was 22 years old at the time of the battle of Milliken’s Bend. She lived with her mother and siblings at Brokenburn, a plantation not far from the Bend. She was smart, witty, and articulate, and the diary she kept during the war years shows in detail what it was like for the civilians left in the war’s wake. She writes of Confederate patriotism and optimism at the start of the war, the loss of two of her brothers who were in the military, and most riveting, her family’s decision to flee Brokenburn and head westward, as the massive Yankee army slithered down the west bank of the Mississippi River. Initially, the Stones “refugeed” to Monroe, about 70 miles west of Vicksburg. There they met and stayed with the family of Sarah Wadley, a young woman about the same age as Kate, and a diarist as well.

Once at Monroe, Kate’s brother, Jimmy, went back to Brokenburn to evacuate their remaining slaves. Most of them he brought away, though a few had already run off to the Yankees. A few, mostly elderly or infirm, remained at the plantation to care for it in the Stones’s absence. A few others simply refused to leave.

When the Stones first left Brokenburn in April 1863, they hoped it would only be temporary. After staying at Monroe for about a month, they decided to move on to Texas. They would stay there in “exile” until the end of the war, not returning to Brokenburn until November of 1865. When they returned, everything was in shambles, but Kate felt they were better off than most, and the saddest burden was the family members who had died afar, and would never return.

Kate’s diary, edited by John Q. Anderson and published in 1955 under the title, Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone,, is one of the most articulate and detailed accounts of what the war was like for those in the armies’ paths. Kate was an intelligent, observant, and well-educated young lady, and her diary is a true treasure for anyone who wants to learn more about the Confederate civilian experience, particularly in the Trans-Mississippi and on the move, as a refugee.

Source: Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone 1861-1868 edited by John Q. Anderson. Still in print through LSU Press.