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Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/10/2018
7:15 pm - 9:00 pm

Location
Reinsch Library Auditorium, Marymount University

Categories


A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time: Julia Wilbur’s Struggle for Purpose

With Author, Paula Whitacre

(This presentation immediately follows a brief annual AHS meeting during which AHS members will elect officers and directors of the Society for the coming year. The members’ meeting is at 7:00. The public program is slated to start at about 7:15.)

In the fall of 1862 Julia Wilbur left her family’s farm near Rochester, New York, and boarded a train to Washington. As an ardent abolitionist, the 47-year-old Wilbur left a sad but stable life, headed toward the chaos of the Civil War, and spent most of the next several years in Alexandria devising ways to aid recently escaped slaves and hospitalized Union soldiers. Whitacre shapes Wilbur’s diaries and other primary sources into a historical narrative sending the back in time 150 years to understand a woman who was alternately brave, self-pitying, foresighted, petty—and all too human.

Local author, Paula Whitacre describes Wilbur’s experiences against the backdrop of Alexandria, Virginia, a town held by the Union from 1861 to 1865; and in Washington, DC, where Wilbur became active in the women’s suffrage movement and lived until her death in 1895.

This program is free and open to the public. It is part of a monthly series of public programs sponsored by the Arlington Historical Society and Marymount University’s Department of History and Politics. For more information, please visit www.arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org, Email: info@arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org or call: 703-892-4204. Books will be available for purchase and for the author to sign.

DRIVING DIRECTIONS and FREE PARKING: Attendees should enter the Marymount University campus at the library gate on N. 26th Street. Then turn left and park in the garage at the bottom of the incline. Handicapped parking is available at this 26th Street entrance immediately upon entry at the library.  For complete directions to the Main Campus of Marymount University (2807 N. Glebe Road) go to http://www.marymount.edu/Home/Contact-us/Locate-us

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: A free Marymount Shuttle bus is available from the Ballston-MU Metro Station (Orange and Silver lines). The University is also accessible via Metro bus routes 23A and 23T; exit at the N. Glebe Road and Old Dominion Drive stop.