Background
She was born to Beverly LaFayette Holcombe and Eugenia Dorothea (Hunt) Holcombe at the family plantation near Louisiana Grange, Tennessee.
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Lucy Pickens
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Education
She attended Louisiana Grange Female Academy before switching to a finishing school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with older sister Anna Eliza, from 1846–1848.
Career
She was described as "beautiful, brilliant, and captivating" by her male contemporaries, and this perception of her helped shape the stereotype of the "Southern belle". In 1848, the Holcombes moved to Marshall, Texas. They lived in the Capitol Hotel while waiting for the construction of their plantation Wyalucing.
In the summer of 1857, Lucy met Colonel Francis Wilkinson Pickens of South Carolina, who proceeded to court her with little success.
In January 1858, after his defeat for a Senate seat, he accepted an appointment as the United States Ambassador to Russia. Lucy became a favorite at the Russian court of Alexander World War II Lucy gave birth while in Russia to a daughter, Francis Eugenia Olga Neva, who was also known as Douschka Pickens in the Winter Palace.
The tsar and tsaritsa became Godparents of the Pickens" daughter and the tsar gave her the nickname of Douschka, meaning Darling in Russian. A longing for South Carolina and worries about its leaning toward secession caused the Pickens family to return home in August 1860.
Francis West. Pickens was elected governor by the General Assembly of South Carolina on December 17, three days before the State seceded from the Union.
In November 1861, a unit of the Confederate Army was formed. lieutenant was called the Holcombe Legion in her honor. She designed and sewed its flag.
lieutenant is claimed that she financed its equipment by the sale of some of the jewels given to her by the tsar.
Pickens wrote a novella entitled The Free Flag of Cuba, a romanticized account of the exploits of Cuban freedom fighter Narciso López. lieutenant was published in 1854 under the name "H. M. Hardimann" and, until recently, was believed lost.
