Marie Boozer
Marie Boozer was an American socialite and French countess. From provincial antebellum South Carolina, she escaped with the Union army to New York and ascended into high society. After her divorce she became a member of the Paris demimonde before marrying a count/diplomat and traveling the world. In the process she became an early example of a celebrity pursued by gossip and rumors.
Parentage
Marie Boozer was from a very patriotic family. Her mother was born Amelia Sees in Philadelphia on 30 January 1819. Amelia's grandfather emigrated from France with his Huguenot family and fought as a lieutenant in a Philadelphia militia during the American Revolution. Her father, George Sees, was a Philadelphia constable. Amelia's mother, Mary Carr Sees came from Northern Ireland and Amelia's maternal uncle was the renowned Philadelphian Robert Carr, who knew Benjamin Franklin, fought as a lieutenant colonel in the War of 1812, and printed multiple volumes of one of the first English language bibles in America.In 1837, 18-year old Amelia's first marriage was out of pity for a gravely-ill Thomas Harned on his deathbed, who died the next day. She met an older South Carolina businessman Peter Burton, who was visiting Philadelphia, and married him in 1840. They returned to Columbia, where Burton died of a seizure sometime in 1846, leaving Amelia several months pregnant. Mary Amelia Peter Burton was probably born in December 1846. The 1850 census gave her age as three and the 1860 census gave thirteen.
Amelia moved to nearby Newberry and married David Boozer in September 1847. David had the child's name changed to Mary Sarah Amelia Boozer in November 1848. In February 1850, David killed himself while Amelia was at church, leaving a substantial estate of $10,000 to $15,000.
Amelia returned to Columbia with her child. She was the subject of gossip and worked as a seamstress, so for that and other reasons, she could not join in Columbia's highest social circles. She married Jacob Feaster in 1852. They had three children and the third half-sister Ethland was important in Marie Boozer's life. The Feaster family was doing well financially and Jacob Feaster loved young Marie Boozer.
Early life in South Carolina
All agreed that the young Marie Boozer was an exceptional beauty with thick strawberry-blonde hair and deep blue eyes. The popular Southern historian Manly Wade Wellman later wrote that she was the basis for the character of Scarlett O'Hara. The diarist Mary Chesnut gossiped about Boozer's inaccurate illegitimacy but conceded that "She is a beauty—that none can deny." When younger, she was hoydenish or tomboyish as well as adept with firearms. Boozer was a day student at Columbia Female College in 1860, where all grades had access to French language instruction. Boozer still had considerable wealth inherited from David Boozer and during the Civil War she attended the Academy of Sacred Heart for one term in New York, where her mother had relatives. This elite school put heavy emphasis on French conversational skills. Boozer studied in Paris during 1863-1864 and, because she loved the French culture, changed her name to Marie. She then returned to Columbia.Before the Civil War, debate in South Carolina between Accommodationists and Secessionists was acceptable. Once the war started, Unionists like Amelia were increasingly unpopular. Boozer supported the Confederacy in the early years of the war, tending the Confederate wounded at Wayside Hospital and engaging at morale-boosting activities.
There was a jail in town and a prison called Camp Sorghum west of Columbia for Union officers who were prisoners-of-war. Some of these prisoners were moved to the grounds of the Lunatic Asylum. Amelia went to all those places to help the prisoners who lived in wretched conditions and Boozer, as a dutiful daughter, joined her work. While doing so, Boozer fell into a deep but chaste romance with a young prisoner, Naval Lieutenant and hero Samuel W. Preston. An emissary to President Abraham Lincoln, Preston was handsome, well-educated, gentlemanly, and reciprocally in love with Boozer. Before Preston was released in a prisoner exchange, he and Marie made plans to marry. But tragically, Preston was killed in action during the battle of Fort Fisher in January 1865.
Flight north with Union Army
Preston's death precipitated the heartbroken Marie to join her mother completely in supporting the Union cause. The two women saved the lives of numerous officers from Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and New England. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman occupied Columbia from 17 to 20 February during his campaign of the Carolinas. During the occupation, a third of Columbia was destroyed by fires of various origin.As the Union Army approached Columbia, the Confederates started to move the Union Officer POWs away from Camp Sorgham. Some officers escaped, planning to hide until the Union Army arrived; Amelia and Marie hid them in their cellar and provided them with meals until relief arrived for them.
Amelia knew that she would no longer be safe in Columbia when the Union left to continue north. She sent two of her children to stay with her husband's parents in Feasterville and resolved to take Marie, her half-sister Ethland, and Ethland's African American nurse Lizzie north with the Union army. General Howard himself ordered that a better carriage be confiscated for Amelia's use, knowing the rigors of travel on the bad roads. Sherman's army marched about 10 miles each day which was physically demanding for everyone. The Confederates were attacking intermittently on the sides of the column and made a stand at Bentonville. Boozer and her family were fortunate that General Howard allowed them to travel near his general staff, rather than with the camp followers behind the 60,000-man army.
When they reached Fayetteville on 8 March 1865, General Sherman, who acknowledged Amelia and her "beautiful" daughters in his later memoir, directed General Howard to put the four women on a steamship to Wilmington, a port under Union control. By 23 March 1865 Boozer and her family had made their way to Philadelphia, where they reunited with Amelia's relatives and were celebrated by the public, press, and military as Civil War heroines. They soon moved on to Manhattan, where Amelia had investments and more relatives. They were celebrated as Union heroines there as well, with recommendations from important generals, so the Union League Club gave them $10,000 to help them get settled. The senate voted compensation to Amelia for her Columbia losses, but the bill was set aside, along with many similar bills, but they were later compensated. More than thirty Union officers had signed a supporting statement attesting to the women's courage.
Kilpatrick and Marie Boozer
A false story that Major General Kilpatrick and Marie Boozer romanced on the trip north from Columbia has spread to numerous "memoirs, novels, encyclopedias, and many nonfiction historical narratives."A 1899 biography of Confederate Lieutenant General Wade Hampton described how his cavalry planned a dawn raid on the camp of his rival, Union cavalry officer Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. This was part of the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads as Sherman's army marched north from Columbia. A rebel scout saw what he thought was a beautiful young woman fitting the description of Boozer at Kilpatrick's camp. The dawn raid caught the Federals unaware and Kilpatrick barely escaped, wearing only his "shirt and drawers". The rebel attackers spotted the woman, but they discovered the "fair damsel" was an "old, ugly... "school-marm" from Vermont, who had availed herself of the assistance of Sherman's army to return to her home." They politely guided her to safety in a ditch as bullets whizzed by.
The story reappeared in the 1915 spurious pamphlet The Countess Pourtales, in the part by University of South Carolina history professor Yates Snowden, writing under the pseudonym "Felix Old Boy". However, Snowden leaves out the humorous conclusion, giving the impression that it really was Boozer, rather than an older female schoolteacher, at Kilpatrick's camp.
By 1956, a highly respected book on the Carolina campaign transforms the older female schoolteacher into "a lovely young woman in nightdress". It concludes "In all probability, it was the beautiful Mary Boozer..."
Since 2000, some historians have pushed back against the widespread story.
- "A still popular tale alleges that Marie and Major Judson Kilpatrick... had an affair after she left Columbus, but this is nothing more than postwar fiction."
- "Contrary to several recent accounts, Marie Boozer was not at Monroe's Crossroads, nor did she accompany Kilpatrick from Columbia to Fayetteville.... According to Capt. James H. Miller of the 5th Ohio Cavalry, Kilpatrick's traveling companion was named Alice. She was said to be a Northern schoolteacher whom "Little Kil" was escorting."
- "Indisputable documentary evidence exists that Marie Boozer was not present at Monroe's Crossroads.... it is therefore safe to conclude that Marie Boozer was not Kilpatrick's Alice."
- "Marie was absolutely not with Kilpatrick during his embarrassing skedaddle or anywhere else during her trip north from Columbia." In fact, the entire Kilpatrick myth is completely destroyed in Deborah C. Pollack's book, Bad Scarlett: The Extraordinary Life of the Notorious Southern Beauty Marie Boozer, and her actual journey north with Gen. Howard's troops is fully described as well.
Marriage to Beecher
Boozer's mother Amelia died in 1870, leaving Marie without her guidance.