October 25, 2000|By Dan Fesperman | Dan Fesperman,SUN STAFF
You come upon the members of the Cary family in the shade of a spreading oak, in the Baltimore County church yard where they have reposed for roughly a century. Moving from left to right, the first headstones belong to a brother and sister, Sydney and Jenny Cary. Then come the parents, Wilson Miles Cary and Jane Margaret Cary, followed by their eldest son, Wilson Miles Cary Jr.
But it is the last grave, daughter Hetty's, that catches your eye as well as your imagination. One reason is the small Confederate battle flag poked in the grass. Another is the epitaph, suggesting war, travel, romance, tragedy and, ultimately, reconciliation.
So, you decide to dig beneath the surface, figuratively speaking, and soon unearth a tale that typifies Baltimore during the Civil War, an era of divided loyalties and perilous journeys, populated by smugglers, soldiers and larger-than-life personalities. And you are surprised to find that, 108 years after her death, Hetty's legacy lives on - in museums, on the Internet, through re-enactor portrayals, and with every playing of the Maryland state song.
Rodger D. Cary can tell you all about her. A distant cousin of Hetty, Cary is a part-time historian and genealogist, and president of an electronic research firm. He lives in Suffern, N.Y., which officially makes him a "Yankee," yet he's the fellow who poked that Confederate flag into the ground by Hetty's grave.
That's because she, her younger sister Jenny and their cousin Constance became three of the most celebrated belles of the South during the Civil War, and not just by hanging around the drawing rooms of Richmond society.
They smuggled supplies, sewed flags and uniforms, nursed the wounded and, in their spare time, partied, played charades and courted with the likes of cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
"They were the pin-up girls of the Civil War, selling war bonds and all that kind of stuff," Cary says. And by boldly setting out to visit wounded troops at makeshift hospitals, he says, "they broke ranks with society and brought out a lot of people of stature (to do the same). These girls were hell bent for leather, and damn well did as they pleased."
It is the sort of reputation that attracts re-enactors such as Lisa Davis, a Taneytown woman who portrayed her at the opening of Baltimore's Civil War Museum three years ago.
"The more I find out about her," Davis says, "the more I want to know."
It didn't hurt that they were bluebloods, which counted for plenty in the South. Although Hetty was born at Haystack, the family's farmhouse in northeast Baltimore County (the stuccoed home still stands, in rolling fields near Glen Arm and Williams roads), both parents were gentrified Virginians descended from Thomas Jefferson. Rodger Cary's genealogical work connects the family "to at least five governors and a couple of presidents," as well as to Pocahontas, who married ancestor John Rolfe.
In 1842, when Hetty was 6, the family opened a girls' academy, The Southern Home School, at Haystack. Four years later Hetty's father won election to the Maryland state senate. But then the Carys fell on hard times, selling the farm in 1850 and sending the children to stay with relatives as far away as New York. It was good training in self-reliance for the hardships of the war years to come.
By the spring of 1861 the family was living in a rowhouse on Eutaw Street at the corner of Biddle (now the site of Maryland General Hospital). Hetty was 25, sister Jenny was 23, and their brother, Wilson Miles Cary Jr., was nearly 22. Their mother had re-opened her girls school just down the street.
Their father was a notary public. His fortunes had stabilized, but the nation was falling apart and Baltimore was in turmoil. Abraham Lincoln's election prompted South Carolina to secede. He wasn't exactly loved in Maryland, either, winning only 2 percent of the state vote, and he sneaked through Baltimore in the wee hours on the way to his inauguration, convinced assassins were out to get him.
In April, events veered out of control with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter. Lincoln called for 75,000 new troops, and an answering regiment of volunteers passing through Baltimore clashed with a mob on April 19. Four soldiers and 12 civilians were killed. Martial law followed, clamping down on the city. Secessionist lawmakers, police administrators and newspaper editors were arrested, including Frances Key Howard, editor of the Baltimore Exchange and grandson of Francis Scott Key. For a while, he was jailed at Fort McHenry.
When native Marylander James Ryder Randall read about it all in a Louisiana newspaper, he penned a nine-stanza rant about oppression beneath "the despot's heel," which was published in Baltimore papers. It caught the attention of a secessionist circle of young women known as the Monument Street Girls, and Hetty and Jenny Cary were among them.
