Memoirs of a Poor Relation: Being the Story of a Post-War Southern Girl and Her Battle with Destiny

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Marietta Minnigerode Andrews (1869-1931) was the oldest of ten children in a family prominent in the Confederacy but reduced to poverty by the Civil War. She became an art teacher, stained glass artist, and author. A member of the Arts Club of Washington, her windows adorn the University of Virginia and George Washington University, as well as others. Her husband, Eliphalet Frazer Andrews (1835-1915) helped establish the Corcoran School of Art in Washington and was its director from 1877 to 1902. His portraits of Martha Washington and Thomas Jefferson are in the White House collection. Marietta described her work as "in one way or another, blindly, extravagantly, unwisely, hard-headedly, but loving devoted to the welfare of my kind, which is to the glory of God". Gifted in several arts, she invokes a nostalgia in her books tempered by keen observation.