If you have ever read Green Mount After the War also by Betsy Fleet, copyright 1978, then you are familiar with the name Martha Gaines Baylor. Well, fortunately descendants of hers visited Green Mount in April of this year and they had a photo of her, her husband Richard, one of their sons Herman and another relative, a little girl named Dorothy Baylor [Brown]. She was the daughter of Harry Washington Baylor and Gustavia Corbin Baylor. Thanks to Crystal Baylor Satchell and her brother Warner Baylor I have permission to post these pictures. In the beginning of Green Mount After the War Betsy says that Martha always reminded her of a cylindrical Christmas tree when she was dressed in her fancy clothes. Here she is dressed in her Mid-Wife uniform. That's what she was, a mid-wife. Her husband Richard was a brick mason. Thank you Crystal and Warner and the rest of your family for finally putting names to these faces. We believe that Martha was the last of the servants buried in the slave cemetery here at Green Mount and we think we have finally found that too. It is pretty much directly across from the Fleet family cemetery, just on the other side of the dirt road that divides the property.

DO YOU KNOW NAMES TO GO WITH THE FACES OF THESE GIRLS?

IF SO, PLEASE CALL TERE PISTOLE @ 804-241-5193 OR SEND AN EMAIL TO flytiger@bealenet.com AND PUT IN THE SUBJECT LINE “GREEN MOUNT GIRLS.”

THANKS!

This is a photo of Confederate Captain Alexander Frederick Fleet, Sr. (Fred) & son-in-law Leigh Robinson Gignilliat of Culver Military Academy and probably many of the former students of “Green Mount Home School for Young Ladies” in 1907. (Fred died in 1911 and Gignilliat in 1952.) This picture appears to have been taken on the back porch of Green Mount. Fred and Leigh were traveling from Richmond to Jamestown for the tri-centennial Jamestown Exposition (read below) and we think that perhaps they stopped at Green Mount in between the two locations. Knowing of their planned visit, notice may have been sent around for the former students to come to the house for a reunion. If that is what happened they had a good turnout. The school opened in 1873 and closed in 1888, so the students would have been older of course; although some still look fairly young.

“Expanding his horizons in 1907, Gignilliat began a two-week excursion with the entire Naval School and the newly formed Summer Cavalry School (The Woodcraft Camp was not formed until 1912) to the tri-centennial Jamestown Exposition in Virginia. He broadsided the eastern press with news that Culver was coming to the grand celebration, then cashed in with parade stops in downtown Cincinnati and Richmond, Va., on the outbound trip. At Jamestown, the cadets (the term "midshipman" was not used until about 1920) performed cavalry and artillery drills and entertained hundreds of spectators with a military review.”