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This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Centennial Poem for Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1775-1885
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Margaret Junkin Preston was an American poet and prose writer.
Background
She was born on May 19, 1820 at Milton, Pennsylvania, United States, the eldest child of the Rev. George Junkin and Julia Rush (Miller) Junkin. Her paternal great-grandfather, Joseph Junkin, of Scotch ancestry, had come to America from Ireland. Her grandfather, also named Joseph, a soldier in the American Revolution, married Eleanor Cochran, and the sixth of their fourteen children was Margaret's father. At the time of his marriage, June 1, 1819, George Junkin was a minister of the Associate Reformed Church, and soon thereafter went with his bride, a native of Philadelphia of Scotch parentage, to Milton, where he assumed charge of a parish.
When she was ten years old, the family moved to Germantown, where for two years Junkin was head of a manual labor school. In 1832 he went to Easton, Pennsylvania, to be president of the newly founded Lafayette College. He resigned in 1841 to become president of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio; and in 1844 was recalled to Lafayette. He left Easton in 1848 to accept a call to the presidency of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) at Lexington, Virginia.
Education
Margaret was educated at home, chiefly by her father, who taught her Greek and Latin and encouraged her taste for reading.
Career
Despite poor eyesight she continued her interest in literature, and after removal to Lexington, began to write prose narratives, some of which took prizes. She spent nine happy years in her father's house at Lexington. Her sister Eleanor married Maj. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, professor of mathematics in Virginia Military Institute, later to be famous as "Stonewall" Jackson.
The Civil War divided the family. Margaret's father and a sister sympathized with the North and felt constrained to leave Lexington. Her husband and her brother-in-law became officers in the Confederate army. Major Preston was commissioned lieutenant-colonel and later became adjutant-general on the staff of General Jackson. Margaret maintained the home in his absence and endured many of the hardships of the war.
Her first published book, a prose tale entitled Silverwood, a Book of Memories (1856), had appeared anonymously shortly before the conflict began. As the struggle drew toward its end she wrote a verse narrative of those trying times under the title Beechenbrook, a Rhyme of the War. This was printed, necessarily on poor paper, in Richmond in 1865 and nearly the whole edition was burned when the city was evacuated. It was reprinted in Baltimore in 1866.
In 1870 J. B. Lippincott published her Old Song and New, and in 1875 a volume of verse entitled Cartoons, containing her most successful poetry, was issued in Boston. At the close of hostilities Preston returned to his professorship, which he held until 1882, when, having reached seventy, he retired. From 1892 until her death she lived in Baltimore at the home of her son, Dr. George J. Preston.
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Personality
By the time she was twenty-one, Margaret had so taxed her eyes by reading and sewing that her sight was seriously impaired.
She is described by relatives as short in stature, having dark auburn hair and small refined features. She was noted for an unusually attractive personality and gracious and winning manners.
Connections
In 1857 Margaret became the wife of Maj. John T. L. Preston. Major Preston, a widower with several young children, was professor of Latin in the Institute. Two sons were born of this marriage. Her husband died in 1890.