Virginia Frazer Boyle

Virginia Frazer Boyle (February 14, 1863 – December 13, 1938) was an American author of prose and poetry. Interested in the Antebellum South, she wrote several novels and more than 100 poems, many of which presented an idealized image of the era of plantation slavery. She served as the poet laureate of the United Confederate Veterans and the Confederated Southern Memorial Association. She had innumerable stories and poems published in magazines. Boyle did extraordinary war work for the U.S. during World War I, receiving citations and medals for her service for Italy, and was made life member of two of the French Academies.

Early life and education

Virginia Frazer was born near Chattanooga, Tennessee, February 14, 1863. She was the daughter of Captain Charles Wesley Frazer, a representative of the Tennessee bar, and organizer of the Confederate Historical Relief Association in 1867, serving as its president during the last thirteen years of his life. Her mother Letitia S. Austin Frazer. Boyle had one brother, Charles Wesley Frazer, and one sister, Phoebe Frazer. Through the father, Boyle is descended from William Heritage, an English barrister. Kinston, North Carolina was built on his grant of land from the crown. His son-in-law was Jesse Cobb, a descendant of that Cobb who came over in the Treasurer in 1613. Boyle's mother was an Austin of Albemarle County, Virginia, and traced her descent to Robert McClenahan, a Scotsman, who came from the North of Ireland to the U.S. in 1623 and settled in Augusta County, Virginia. Robert McClenahan was Sheriff of Augusta County when the county covered several states and his son, Alexander, was a colonel in the Revolutionary Army. Boyle's grandparents Frazer, in 1822 crossed the Allegheny Mountains by wagon train from New Bern, North Carolina, which another ancestor had assisted in forming. Shipping their household goods by sailing vessel to Mobile, Alabama, they helped settle up the frontier of Alabama, then Mississippi, and finally Tennessee. John A. Frazer had what was called "a hot foot" in the vernacular, and took his young wife from a position of luxury to endure the hardships of the pioneer. The family lived in Memphis, Tennessee, for one hundred years.