Taylor, Susie King (1848-1912)

Social activist, nurse during the Civil War, teacher, laundress, and domestic worker who organized African American women, including Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to care for sick and wounded black soldiers during the Civil War. Susie King Taylor was born a slave, the first of nine children at Grest Farm Liberty County, Georgia on Aug. 6, 1848.

About 1854, Taylor and her brother were permitted by Mr. Grest, their “owner” to come to Savannah to live with their grandmother Dolly Reed, who appears to have been freed by Grest and who became the children’s guardian. The Grests appear to have virtually freed Taylor and her brother without going through the complexities of Georgia law. Taylor lived in Savannah and gained her freedom at age 14 in April of 1862. In 1862 she married Edward King (died, 1866) and later Russell Taylor in 1879 who preceeded her in death.

Taylor contributed to Civil War efforts by serving as a nurse in the Union Army to the black soldiers and by teaching them to read and write. After the war she helped to organize a branch of the Women’s Relief Corps. Susie King Taylor died at the age of 61 in Boston, Massachusetts on Oct. 6, 1912. She was buried next to her second husband in an unmarked grave in Mount Hope Cemetery in Roslindale, Massachusetts.

From bio in www.findagrave.com by Curtis Jackson