Mary Boykin Chesnut Biography
Born: March 31, 1823
Statesburg, South Carolina
Died: November 22, 1886
Camden, South Carolina
American diarist and writer
Mary Boykin Chesnut kept a famous diary that captured the struggles people experienced during the American
Civil War (1861–65; a war between the northern and southern states). Her journal of the war years gives readers an in-depth view of what life was like for Southerners, especially women, during the war.
Early years
Mary Boykin Chesnut was born Mary Boykin Miller on March 31, 1823, in Statesburg, South Carolina. She was the oldest child of Mary Boykin Miller, the daughter of wealthy owners of a plantation (a large farm or estate with resident workers or slaves). Her father was Stephen Decatur Miller, a prominent politician who strongly supported states' rights, the idea that individual U.S. states should have supreme powers over the national government to set their own policies, including the power to legalize slavery. He was a South Carolina senator at the time of Chesnut's birth and had previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. During her early years, Chesnut and her family lived on her grandparents' plantation near Camden, South Carolina. When her father was elected governor of South Carolina in 1828, the Millers moved to the capital city of Columbia, returning to Camden when Stephen Miller won a U.S. Senate seat in 1830. By the time her father resigned from the Senate in 1833 due to health problems, Chesnut had begun attending a local school in Camden.
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