Julia Nelson

Title: Article About Julia Nelson
Type: Newspaper
Date: 1873
Source: Minnesota Historical Society

Description: This short note about Nelson appeared in the newspaper to describe her temporary return to Red Wing.
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Activities:

1. Where has Nelson returned from when this article was written?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: She has just completed a trip to Europe, but the article does not tell us why she was there.
2. What relationship has Nelson had with the newspaper up to this point?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: The article suggests that many of Nelson's letters had been printed by the paper as news articles in the past.
3. This article was published fewer than 10 years after the end of the Civil War. What effort related to the Civil War was Nelson involved in?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: The education of the freedmen—slaves who had been freed at the end of the war—was still continuing and Nelson was one of the teachers working toward this goal.
4. Why is Nelson back in Red Wing instead of working in the South at this time?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: Yellow fever was apparently widespread in the South at that time and Nelson wanted to wait until the epidemic was under control before returning to the South and her work with the freedmen. She usually spent her summers in Red Wing visting her mother, but yellow fever in the South might have lengthened her stay that year.