Mary Harker was a young Quaker girl from Mt. Holly, New Jersey. John Slaughter was a slaveholder living and working in Lynchburg, VA. In 1861 they had been married eight years and had three sons with a fourth child on the way. So how did these two people, with obviously disparate backgrounds, end up together?

John was teased that “the prettiest girl in New Jersey was marrying the ugliest man in Virginia.” Was it some sort of arranged marriage?

How did Mary reconcile her Quaker upbringing with managing a home with five enslaved servants? And would their relationship survive the war when Mary traveled home to her parents and John stayed to defend Lynchburg against an approaching Union army?

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