THOMASVILLE- John B. Gordon 383 UDC invited Meme Hand Greitzer to present a program concerning education in Thomasville during the War Between the States era. She is the Assistant Curator of Collections and Programs at the Thomasville History Center. She specializes in genealogical research and the study of material culture. In her spare time, she enjoys working on her historic genealogy alongside her husband. She has one daughter. Greitzer presented her program by showing a Power Point entitled “Education in Civil War Era, Thomasville.”

The chapter presented a book to a library in Greitzer’s honor for her presentation. The name of the book is “A Woman’s Civil War: A Diary, with Reminiscences of the War” from March 1862, by Cornelia Peake McDonald. The book was edited by Minrose C. Gwin.

The book begins by describing the heavy tramping of Southern marching troops in the distance. It was her husband’s regiment, along with others going to war. Her diary is about events taking place in Winchester, Virginia. The book gives a personal understanding of a “southern woman’s lonely struggle in the midst of chaos to provide safety and shelter for herself and her nine children.”

Cornelia Peake McDonald actually made handwritten copies of the diary for her surviving eight children before she died in 1909. It was first published in 1935 in a volume of family history.