Mrs. Sarah McGavock Lindsley
Tennessee Heroine
Submitted by Ted Urbanski

 

Newspaper:  Confederate Veteran
Date:  1903
Volume:  XI
Number: 
Page:  368

Rev. James H. McNeilly pays a worthy Tribute:

On Sunday July 5, at her home in Nashville, Tennessee there passed from the earth to her heavenly home one of the sweetest, purest, noblest of those women who were the glory of the South in the days before the Civil War.

Mrs. Sarah McGavock Lindsley was born in Nashville, and for seventy three years her life was identified with the history of the city. She came in touch not only with the stirring of events of last century, but also with some of the greatest actors in those events. Her life was passed in a circle where not merely wealth and social position but great intellectual and moral force influenced the course of events. Her character was thus formed and developed in an atmosphere of culture, refinement, and high ideals. And she was a true reprehensive of the true-hearted, sincere, pure, gentle womanhood of the old days. She was a prominent factor in all that was highest and best in social life of her time.

Her father, Jacob McGavock, was one of the original builders of the city prosperity a man of integrity of public spirit, of wealth, and of large influence. Her mother was a daughter of Felix Grundy one of the most eminent of the lawyers, orators, and statesman of his day whose fame is in the pride of Tennessee.

As a young lady, Miss Sarah McGavock won friends by her lovely disposition, her gracious manners, her attractive person, her unfailing kindness, and her unaffected Christian character. She was an early and lifelong friend of Rachel Jackson, the granddaughter of General Andrew Jackson, and so was thrown into intimate relations with the Hermitage neighborhood, long noted for its wealth, culture and refinement.

In 1857 she was married to Dr. J. Berrien Lindsley a son of the great president of the University of Nashville, Dr. Philip Lindsley. Her husband was a man of profound scholarship, and in her he found a companion to make a happy home, also to sympathize with him in his favorite study of Tennessee History. By her birth and family traditions she was identified with the grand history of the State; and she was a worthily representative of the heroic race who won the land from the savages and the wilderness; and who won fame in politics and war. She was a earnest helper of her husband’s in preparing his great work “The Military Annals [Confederate] of Tennessee”, and made whatever sacrifice was necessary to make the money to publish the volume.

When the Civil War came her deepest sympathies were with her native South. Four of her brothers took up arms for their country. Her brother Colonel Randall McGavock, of the Tenth Tennessee Regiment fell in the forefront of battle on the bloody field of Raymond, Mississippi, in 1863. She could never mention his name without tears for her unreturning brave.

During the war she remained in Nashville, a constant and faithful nurse and helper of the Confederate prisoners in the hospitals where her husband was employed as a surgeon, and after the war she was of the earnest and efficient workers for the benefit of Confederate soldiers: and in 1891 she was chosen as president of the Ladies Auxiliary to the Confederate Soldiers Home. Her tender and sympatric heart was deeply moved by the sight of these scarred and broken veterans of the Confederacy that a visits to the home was always followed by days of sorrowful depression, as she recalled the memories of their grand and fruitless struggle.

Mrs. Lindsley was one of the originators of the Ladies Hermitage Association; and she was very active in securing the interest not only of all her own family, but also in bringing many others to help her in the noble enterprise of preserving the home of “Old Hickory” as a shrine of patriotism. For twelve years she was an active member of the board of directors of the Association, and was regent for the last four years of life.

 

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