Ives, Cora Semmes, 1834-1916

Cora Semmes Ives (1834-1916) was an American writer during the mid-1800s. She was well-known for writing the pro-Confederate utopian novel, The Princess of the Moon: A Confederate Fairy Story.

Ives was born in Washington D.C. on June 26, 1834 to Southern aristocrats Mary Matilda Jenkins Semmes and Raphael Semmes. Her older brother, Thomas Jenkins Semmes, was a Confederate State Senator from 1862 to 1865 and the ninth president of the American Bar Association from 1886 to 1887. On June 15, 1855, she married western United States explorer Joseph Christmas Ives, who eventually became a Colonel in the Confederate States Army. Together they had three children: Edward Bernard Ives, Francis Joseph Ives, and Eugene Semmes Ives.

The Ives family moved to Richmond, Virginia during the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Their home soon became the center of social gatherings for well-known confederates, including Confederate States President Jefferson Davis. Davis attracted many foreign dignitaries and journalists to the Ives household, in which Cora Semmes Ives took the opportunity to hold multiple theater productions for audiences as many as three hundred people. At the end of the Civil War, she and Joseph Ives moved to New York City, New York. The following year after her husband’s death in 1968, Ives wrote The Princess of the Moon: A Confederate Fairy Story, using the pen name "A Lady of Warrenton, Va”. The story revolves around a former confederate soldier named Randolph. He was taken to the moon, which was depicted as a beautiful utopian society. There, he endured multiple challenges in order to marry the Princess of the Moon.

In 1874, Ives and her two youngest sons traveled and visited The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, Einsiedeln Abbey, and The Stigmatic Louise Lateau as they were devout Catholics. She spent the rest of her life at Dr. Strong's Sanitarium in Saratoga Springs, New York and passed away on January 27, 1916 at the age of 81.

Sources:

"Cora Semmes Ives." Wikipedia. August 18, 2020. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cora_Semmes_Ives.

"Arizona Historical Society." Arizona Historical Society. August 19, 2020. Accessed August 26, 2020. https://arizonahistoricalsociety.org/.