Emma Mordecai

The youngest daughter of Jacob Mordecai, a prominent Hebraist and founder of the Warrenton Female Academy, a boarding school, and the younger half- sister of Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, Emma Mordecai was born in Warrenton, North Carolina. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Mordecai was living in Richmond, where she taught children at a synagogue’s Sunday school. Due to the intense hostilities, she was forced to leave town to live on her late brother’s plantation in North Carolina, with her Christian sister-in-law Rosina. There Mordecai kept a diary and continued to practice Judaism in private, while she nursed wounded Confederate soldiers in local hospitals. In addition to her diary and correspondence, she published various short works, often under the byline “American Jewess.”