Caroline Aiken Jenkins Harris (March 27, 1847 – December 28, 1903) was an American writer and magazine editor from

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

Background

Caroline "Carrie" Aiken Jenkins was born on March 27, 1847, possibly on the Jenkins family farm on the outskirts of

Williamsboro, North Carolina Williamsboro or Williamsborough is an unincorporated community in Vance County, North Carolina, United States. It was established in about 1755 as Williamsborough in Granville County in the Province of North Carolina. It became part of Vance C ...

. Her father owned a tobacco factory, and her mother taught school and was a musician. She was the eldest of ten children of her father's second wife. She may have attended the Henderson Female Academy. In 1873, Harris was teaching music, drawing, and other arts, at the Wilson Collegiate Institute (a private, non-denominational school in

Wilson, North Carolina Wilson is a city in and the county seat of Wilson County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, 23rd-most populous city in North Carolina. Located about east of the capital city of Raleigh, North Car ...

, run by Sylvester Hassell and was active on stage and as a painter. She married Cicero Willis Harris on July 1, 1874, who came from a family with a long tradition in North Carolina. His interests were more in politics and economics; in addition, his family was Whig, while hers were Democratic, and they seem to have separated by the end of the century. They did live in Wilmington in 1874, and throughout 1875 Harris wrote poetry and "items of general interest" for '' Our Living and Our Dead'', one of many

little magazine In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...

s dedicated to the

Lost Cause The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, known simply as the Lost Cause, is an American pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not cente ...

. Harris wrote a serialized novel called ''Margaret Rosselyn'', and in November 1877 founded and began editing a magazine, the ''

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for ...

'', which published poetry (including Harris's own), political texts (including by her husband), and various other literary and historical material, such as an account of the formerly enslaved Muslim man,

Omar ibn Said Omar ibn Said ( or ''Omar ben Saeed''; –1864) was a Fula Muslim scholar from Futa Toro in West Africa (present-day Senegal), who was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1807 during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Remaining ens ...

from

Futa Toro Futa Toro (Wolof language, Wolof and , , ; ), often simply the Futa, is a semidesert region around the middle run of the Senegal River. This region, along the border of Senegal and Mauritania, is historically significant as the center of several F ...

in modern-day Senegal, and work by

Paul Hamilton Hayne Paul Hamilton Hayne (January 1, 1830 – July 6, 1886) was a poet, critic, and editor from the American South. Biography Paul Hamilton Hayne was born in Charleston, South Carolina on January 1, 1830. After losing his father as a young child, Hay ...

. Her husband edited the '' Wilmington Star'' and the ''Wilmington Sun'', and in 1881 the ''South Atlantic'' moved to Baltimore, still edited by Jenkins Harris. By 1888, she had moved to Washington, D.C., and wrote as a free-lancer for New York papers, for $8 per column. In the 1890s she was writing books inspired by the

Celtic Revival The Celtic Revival (also referred to as the Celtic Twilight) is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gae ...

. She died on December 28, 1903, in

Rockville, Maryland Rockville is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, and is part of the Washington metropolitan area. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census tabulated Rockville's population at 67,117, making it the fourth ...

, and was buried in Williamsboro.

Bibliography

*''Margaret Rosselyn'' (published serially in ''Our Living and Our Dead'') * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Carrie Jenkins 1847 births 1903 deaths People from Vance County, North Carolina Writers from North Carolina American magazine editors 19th-century American women writers

Background

Bibliography

Further reading

References