Person:Caroline Kirby Smith (1)

Caroline Crolly

Miss Carrie Kirby Smith.
Daughter of the Late Confederate General.
Chivalrous Veterans of the Blue Join Those of the Gray in Urging Her Appointment to a Modest Office.

Washington, May 28.---Special.---That among a hundred thousand office-seekers a little, laughing, blue-eyed society woman, hidden away in the mountains of Tennessee, should have the strongest backing of all, seems range and improbable, but it is nevertheless the actual fact.

Two months ago, in the most obscure pigeonhole in the Postmaster General's office, the application of Carrie Kirby Smith was filed away. It was not weighty with reasons why she should be appointed, nor did it lay any particular claims to the attention of President Cleveland. It was couched in modest language, written in a tremulous and faltering hand, as if the pen that wrote it felt, too, some of the anxiety that racked the mind of the inexperienced applicant. It bore no indorsements. It was simply an humble petition that the applicant might be given the post office at Sewanee, Tenn. The only sentence which recommend this prayer to Postmaster General Bissell was the closing paragraph: "I am the daughter of the late Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith."

This modest petition, written on linen note paper and bearing the indelible remarks of refinement and culture, held the attention of the big cabinet man for a moment; but in the mad rush for office it was put away among the hundreds of others, destined, apparently, to moulder there until thrown in the waste basket after the office had been given to some one backed by a Senator or a nephew of some politician who carries a Tennessee county in his pocket.

The fair applicant kept what she had done a secret for three weeks, when, having grown accustomed to her disappointment at receiving no reply, she told someone how she had dared to ask to distribute the mail to the "covelte" about the mountain station, and to the students of the University of the South, who depend on this office for their letters.

Thus her secret became known and now two generations are watching for her appointment -- that which made its record along with Kirby Smith, and another which has grown up with his daughter on the Cumberland plateau.

When Gen. Shoup, the Indian sharpshooter, now occupying the chair of applied mathematics at the Sewanee University, heard that Kirby Smith's "war baby" wanted an office, he swore by all the Union and Confederate soldiers at once that she should have the place.

"We'll put her in if we have to call out a regiment of war veterans to do it," he said.

And this has literally come to pass.

From the Confederate Survivors' Association at Nashville, the humble application was made known throughout the South, and finally reached the line of the G.A.R. posts and the North. The fact that a brave soldier and distinguished general had died, leaving his family poor, and that his daughter now came forward seeking to aid in their support, was all that was necessary to elicit the enthusiasm of both sides. letters poured in upon Postmaster General Bissell until that bit of scented paper became the center of a vast pile of documents bearing the most famous names in the country.

With scarcely an exception, every Federal officer now living who had fought against Kirby Smith has made a personal appeal for his daughter. Soldiers of Bull Run and Manassas scrawled out letters of recommendations, while the cove people in the mountains added their testimonials to the worth of Kirby Smith's daughter in characteristic grammatical dialect such as is found in Craddock's stories of the hills. The students of the institution where the general had for so long taught "math" sent their endorsements, couched in elegant diction and in sophomoric phrases.

It is scarcely to be believed that this application, so humble in the beginning, but now so portentous in its influence, will be lightly passed over by this administration.

The alumni associations of Sewanee, scattered throughout the country, have added there [sic] endorsement to help secure the appointment for their fair friend of old college days. The one of the alumni the very name of Sewanee is enshrined in that of Kirby Smith, and hardly separable in any mind are the general and his favorite daughter. She has inherited his energy, his cheerfulness, and his unselfishness.

"I do not mind dying," said the general once, "if Carrie is left. She is a tower of strength."

His estimation of her seems to have been correct. She no sooner found the main prop of the family gone than she began to cast about for other means of support for her mother and younger brothers and sisters. With unusual courage for a young woman , she decided to become the postmaster where she had so long been the undisputed belle.

Miss Kirby Smith is well known in Washington, where she has shone more than once in its gayest set. There is scarcely a large city in the South or West where she has not at one time or the other been the recipient of social honors. What Winnie Davis is to the armies of the Confederacy, Carrie Kirby Smith was to the soldiers of the Trans-Mississippi. To the remains of that army, she is still, even before Winnie Davis, the Daughter of the War.

The appointment she seeks is in the Presidential gift, and it is hardly possible that President Cleveland will turn a deaf ear to so many who have come forward asking this boon at his hands. It will have no political significance, and possibly not gain one Democratic vote in the next four years; but it was gladden more hearts than any other appointment he will make during his whole administration.

Sewanee, Tenn, Jan 24---Mrs. Caroline Kirby-Smith Crolly, 79, daughter of the late General Edmund Kirby-Smith, C.S.A., died today in Sewanee after a brief illness.

She was born in Lynchburg, Va., in 1862, eldest child of General Kirby-Smith and of his wife, Mrs. Cassie Selden Kirby-Smith of Lynchburg.

Mrs. Crolly came to Sewanee in 1874, when her father became Professor of Mathematics in the University of the South. In her young womanhood, she was for many years Postmistress at Sewanee.

She was married to William Crolly of New York in 1905, organist at the University of the South.

In recent years, she made her home with her sister, Mrs. Rowland Hale at Powhatan Hall, the old Kirby-Smith home.

Mrs. Crolly is survived by 4 sisters: Mrs. Rowland Hale, Sewanee; Mrs. Randolph Buck, Winnetka, Ill.; Mrs. Frances Wade of California; Mrs. Roades Fayerweather of Baltimore; 2 brothers: Dr. R. M. Kirby-Smith of Sewanee and William Selden Kirby-Smith of El Paso, Tex.

Interment in the University Cemetery at Sewanee.