Rose O’Neal Greenhow

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Rose O’Neal Greenhow : biography

1817 – 1864

Marriage and family

In 1835, Rose married Dr. Robert Greenhow with Dolley’s blessing, and by the 1850s had long been an established socialite in the capital. Robert Greenhow worked at the U.S. Department of State.

The Greenhows had eight children; four daughters: Florence, Gertrude, Leila and Rose, lived past infancy. Their youngest child was named Rose O’Neal Greenhow (her middle name being her mother’s maiden), and was nicknamed "Little Rose".

Due to Robert’s work with the State Department, the family moved with him to Mexico City in 1850 and then to San Francisco, California. In 1852 Rose returned East with her children, a journey of months, giving birth to her last daughter in 1853.Fishel (1998), Secret War, p. 59 Her husband died in a fatal accident in San Francisco in 1854. Being a widow did not disrupt Greenhow’s popularity in the capital. A short time later, their oldest child Florence married Seymour Treadwell Moore, a West Point graduate, career army officer and Mexican War veteran. They moved west to Ohio., ARC, National Archives, accessed 23 May 2013

Early life

She was born in 1813 or 1814 as Maria Rosetta O’Neal on a small plantation in Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, DC., New York: Random House Digital, 2006, p. 58. Note: Blackman notes her parents were married in 1810 and had five children by 1817.Fishel (1998), Secret War, p. 59 (Note: Confirms birth location.) (Note: The biographical note on Greenhow at the National Archives and Record Administration, which holds a collection of her papers, says that O’Neal was born in 1817 in Port Tobacco, Maryland, but it is unclear what the documentation is for this.) She was the third of five daughters of John O’Neal, a planter and slaveholder, and his wife Eliza Henrietta Hamilton, who were Roman Catholic. Called Rose as a child, O’Neal was the third born and close to her next older sister Ellen (Mary Eleanor). Their father died in 1817, murdered by unknown assailant(s). His widow, Eliza O’Neal, had four daughters to support and a cash-poor farm.

After being orphaned as children, Rose and her sister Ellen were invited to live with their aunt in Washington, D.C. about 1830. Their aunt, Mrs. Maria Ann Hill, ran a stylish boarding house at the Old Capitol building, and the girls met many important figures in the Washington area. As a young woman, O’Neal was considered beautiful, educated, loyal, compassionate, and refined. Her olive skin earned her the nickname "Wild Rose."

In the 1830s, she met Robert Greenhow, a prominent doctor from Virginia. Their courtship was well received by Washington society, including famed society matron Dolley Madison. In 1833, Rose’s sister Ellen O’Neal married Dolley’s nephew James Madison Cutts. In 1856 their daughter Adele Cutts married the widower Stephen A. Douglas, the senator from Illinois.Clinton, Anita Watkins. "Stephen Arnold Douglas – His Mississippi Experience," Journal of Mississippi History 1988 50(2): 56-88

Death

In September 1864, Greenhow left Europe to return to the Confederacy, carrying dispatches. She traveled on the Condor, a British blockade runner. On October 1, 1864, the Condor ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina, while being pursued by a Union gunboat, USS Niphon. Fearing capture and reimprisonment, Greenhow fled the grounded ship by rowboat. A wave capsized the rowboat, and Greenhow drowned. She was weighed down by $2,000 worth of gold sewn into her underclothes, returns from her memoir royalties, which she intended to donate to the Confederate treasury.

When Greenhow’s body was recovered from the water near Wilmington, searchers found a copy of her book Imprisonment hidden on her. Inside the book was a note meant for her daughter, Little Rose, which read:

London, Nov 1st 1863 You have shared the hardships and indignity of my prison life, my darling; And suffered all that evil which a vulgar despotism could inflict. Let the memory of that period never pass from your mind; Else you may be inclined to forget how merciful Providence has been in seizing us from such a people. Rose O'Neal Greenhow.She was honored with a military funeral in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

Legacy

  • Since the mid-20th century, two biographies have been published about Greenhow, and her work was included in a 1996 book about the role of military intelligence during the war.
  • Greenhow’s exploits were dramatized in the 1992 television film The Rose and the Jackal, in which she was played by Madolyn Smith Osborne. In 1993 the women’s auxiliary of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, changed its name to the Order of the Confederate Rose in her honor., Order of the Confederate Rose