Ellen Louise Wilson was the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson and the mother of their three daughters. Like her husband, she was a Southerner, as well as the daughter of a clergyman. She was born in Savannah, Georgia, but raised in Rome, Georgia. Having an artistic bent, she studied at the Art Students League of New York before her marriage, and continued to produce art in later life.
Susie King Taylor is known for being the first Black nurse during the American Civil War. Beyond just her aptitude in nursing the wounded of the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Taylor was the first Black woman to self-publish her memoirs. She was the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers. She was also an educator to formerly bonded Black people in the postbellum South by opening various schools in Georgia. Taylor would also be a part of organizing the 67 Corps of the Women's Relief Corps in 1886.
The Third Order of Saint Francis is a third order in the Franciscan tradition of Christianity, founded by the medieval Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi.
St. Vincent's Academy (SVA) is a private, Catholic, all-female high school located next to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in downtown Savannah, Georgia, United States. The school operates within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah and enrolls about 350 girls in grades 9-12.
The Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary are a historically Black Catholic congregation of nuns co-founded by Mother Mary Theodore Williams and Fr Ignatius Lissner in 1916. They follow the Rule of the Third Order of St. Francis. Their primary mission has always been education, primarily of children of the African-American community.
Mary Elizabeth Lange, OSP was a Black Catholic religious sister who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African-American religious congregation. She was also, via the Oblates, the first-ever African-American Mother Superior.
Lucy Craft Laney was an American educator who in 1883 founded the first school for black children in Augusta, Georgia. She was principal for 50 years of the Haines Institute for Industrial and Normal Education. In 1974 Laney was posthumously selected by Governor Jimmy Carter as one of the first three African Americans honored by having their portraits installed in the Georgia State Capitol. She also was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement.
Delilah Leontium Beasley, was a historian and newspaper columnist for the Oakland Tribune in Oakland, California. Beasley was the first African-American woman to be published regularly in a major metropolitan newspaper. Beasley was also first to present written proof of the existence of California's black pioneers in her book Slavery in California (1918) and her classic, The Negro Trail-Blazers of California (1919). Her career in journalism spanned more than 50 years. She detailed the racial problems in California and the heroic achievements by Blacks to overcome them during the late 19th century and early 20th century.
The Healy family were an Irish- and African-American family notable for the high achievements of its first generation of children, who were born into slavery in Georgia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Benjamin Joseph Keiley was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the bishop of the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia from 1900 to 1922.
Mary Ignatius Hayes, O.S.F., also known as Mother Mary Ignatius of Jesus, was an Anglican religious sister who was later received into the Catholic Church and became a Franciscan sister. Her lifetime of religious service, in the course of which she traveled widely, led to the establishment of three separate religious congregations of Franciscan sisters and the establishment of the Poor Clare nuns in the United States.
Alice Woodby McKane was the first woman to work as a doctor in Savannah, Georgia. She was not only known as a physician but also as a politician and an author. She and her husband Cornelius McKane contributed an important part in medical history. She opened the first school of nurse training for black people in Savannah. She also helped her husband to make his dream which was opening the Hospital in Liberia come true. After returning from Liberia, they established the MCKane Hospital for Women and Children and later was known as Charity Hospital to treat for all people in Savannah, especially for African American people.
Amalia Streitel was a German Roman Catholic nun. Streitel established the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother and assumed the new name of "Maria Franziska of the Cross" after she had become a nun.
Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore were the American members of a Roman Catholic religious congregation of women founded in the London suburb of Mill Hill, England, in 1868. Connected to the Society of Mill Hill Missionaries from the time of their founding, they were committed to serving the needy of the world. Members of the congregation came to the United States in 1881, where they were the first white religious order dedicated to serve the African-American population of Baltimore. The United States Province merged with the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi in 2001 and continue their ministry in Baltimore.
Rebecca Stiles Taylor was a journalist, social worker, and educator from Savannah, Georgia. She was best known for her contributions to the community as the founder of several charitable outlets in the area and as an activist for women's and civil rights.
Teresa Kearney (1875–1957) was a teacher, Franciscan Sister, and missionary, who founded a new Franciscan order. Born in Arklow, Ireland on April 28, 1875, she became a Junior Assistant Mistress at 17 and taught in Essex, England. On December 2, 1902, she left to begin missionary work in Nsambya, Uganda, working as a Franciscan Sister of Saint Mary's Abbey, Mill Hill, London.
Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin was a Black Catholic missionary in the United States, and the first US-born African American to become a religious sister.
Carrie Steele Logan was an American philanthropist, founder of the oldest black orphanage in the United States. The home, The Colored Orphanage of Atlanta, was officially dedicated on June 20, 1892.
Mary Elizabeth Williams, F.H.M. was an American Black Catholic nun who founded the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary in 1916.
Sister Mary Melanie Holliday was an American Catholic nun. As a member of the Sisters of Mercy, she served as Mother Superior at the Convent and Academy of St. Vincent de Paul in Savannah and at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Atlanta. While living in the convent in Savannah, she worked as a schoolteacher in the affiliated academy. When Holliday moved to the convent in Atlanta, she worked as a nurse at St. Joseph's Infirmary. She is believed to be the inspiration behind Melanie Hamilton and Carreen O'Hara in the novel Gone With the Wind, which was written by her second cousin once-removed, Margaret Mitchell.
