Note: Recounting Mrs. Johnson’s allegiance to the Confederacy is a nod to documenting the lives of past Maryland women and not an endorsement of her views.
Of course, the Civil War was a major event in the mid-1800s. The opinions of Baltimore’s residents’ fell on both sides of the issue.
Jane Claudia Saunders Johnson (1832 – 1899) was an example of one opinion.
Jane Claudia Saunders was born into a politically connected family who lived on a Southern plantation. She later became part of another politically connected family when she married Brig. Gen. Bradley T. Johnson of the First Maryland Regiment, confederate states army.
In May of 1861, about 500 Maryland men went to Point of Rocks, Maryland and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia to be sworn into the Confederate States Army as the First Maryland Regiment. They had few supplies and weapons since Maryland had not left the Union.
Mrs. Johnson volunteered to return to her native North Caroline to raise money for her husband’s regiment and the Confederate cause.
Throughout the war Mrs. Johnson followed her husband to his various army camps throughout Virginia.
Mrs. Johnson provided social activities for the soldiers including dances with the local young ladies, theatricals, and choral productions. She maintained a reading library and worked with traveling pastors and priests to make sure that her husband’s troops worshiped on Sunday.
Jane Claudia Johnson died on December 31, 1899. Her headstone at Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore includes a tribute by Confederate soldiers in Maryland “In Memory of a Noble Woman.”