Titles @ Twilight To Feature Author Carolyn Curry

SANDY SPRINGS, GA -- The popular Titles @ Twilight series hosted by Heritage Sandy Springs will return next week for another installment.

The March 7 edition will feature Carolyn Curry, who will share her biography of a woman born to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia.

"Suffer & Grow Strong" tells the story of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834. At 14, she began keeping a diary. Her accounts of life before, during, and after the Civil War filled 13 volumes with 450,000 words.

The war and its aftermath changed her life forever. She experienced poverty, illness and devastating family strife. She saw four of her 10 children die. She grew to question the “peculiar institution” upon which the Antebellum South was built. Thomas poured her thoughts into her diary and through it all, she persevered. In her later years, she became a leading voice in the suffrage and temperance movements.

“I have been intrigued by Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas for almost 30 years," Curry said. "Her diary is a treasure, containing Gertrude’s most intimate thoughts from 1848 to 1889. I learned more of her story from court documents and from her 15 meticulously-kept scrapbooks. I ultimately uncovered one woman’s 60-year journey from a childhood of luxury, through the Civil War and Reconstruction in Georgia, and into the 20th century."

Author Carolyn Newton Curry, Ph.D., is the founder and director of Women Alone Together, a nonprofit foundation that addresses the special needs of women. The foundation works to build confidence and community among the growing number of women who are alone in our culture. In addition to writing papers on significant women’s issues, she often speaks to various groups around the country on those issues and about Women Alone Together.

She has served on the Board of Directors of the American Heart Association and Cardinal Hill Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where she was also appointed by the governor to the Kentucky Heritage Council. Curry was also a member of the Board of Trustees of Young Harris College as well as the Advisory Council for Action Ministries of the United Methodist Church.

She has taught at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and at Westminster Schools in Atlanta.

For more than 50 years, she has been married to Bill Curry, who is the former head football coach at Georgia Tech, University of Alabama, University of Kentucky and Georgia State University. He was an ESPN football analyst for 11 years. They have two children and seven grandchildren.

Held on the first Tuesday of each month from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Titles @ Twilight promotes local authors, whose stories of history and the South represent a variety of perspectives.

Titles @ Twilight is free to attend and takes place in the Garden Room at the Williams-Payne House, located at 6075 Sandy Springs Circle in Sandy Springs.

Visit the Heritage Sandy Springs' website to learn more about the series and the authors slated to present this year.

For more information, e-mail mswindell@heritagesandysprings.org or call 404-851-9111 ext. 2.

Image via Heritage Sandy Springs