Ellen Wallace Diaries

Ellen Wallace's diaries are part of the Kentucky Historical Society's archival collection MSS 52 Ellen Wallace and Annie Starling diaries.

Ellen Kenton McGaughey Wallace was a member of a landowning and slaveholding family in southern Christian County, Kentucky. At the beginning of the Civil War, her sentiments were pro-Union. As the war progressed, particularly after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, her sympathies turned toward the Confederates. Mrs. Wallace's diaries describe the impacts of civil war on her home front and provide some history of the enslaved, including an account of an 1856 uprising incident in Hopkinsville, reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation, and genealogical information such as the names, births, deaths, and marriages of the enslaved.