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Susan King Taylor, Writer born

Susan King Taylor

*Susan King Taylor was born on this date in 1848. She was a Black writer.

Born a slave on the Grest Farm in Liberty County, Georgia, her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family.  At 7, Susan (Susie) King Baker and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Savannah, GA.  Even with the strict laws against the formal education of blacks, they both attended two secret schools taught by black women.   Young Baker soon became a skilled reader and writer.  By 1860, Baker befriended two white individuals, a girl, and a boy, who also offered to teach her lessons even though they knew it violated Georgia law and customs.

During the American Civil War, on April 1, 1862, at age 14, Baker was sent back to live with her mother when federal forces attacked nearby Fort Pulaski. When the Union Army captured the fort, Baker fled to Union-occupied St. Simons Island with her uncle’s family and other Blacks. Since most Blacks were not educated, word of Baker’s knowledge and intelligence spread among the Army officers on the island. Five days after her arrival, Commodore Louis M. Goldsborough offered Baker books and school supplies if she agreed to organize a school for the children on St. Simon’s Island.  Baker accepted the offer and became the first black teacher to openly instruct black students in Georgia.  By day she taught children, and at night, she instructed adults.

While teaching at St. Simon Island, Baker met and married her first husband, Edward King, a black non-commissioned officer in the Union Army. For the next three years, Susan Baker King traveled with her husband’s regiment, working as a laundress while teaching black Union soldiers how to read and write during their off-duty hours.  She also served as a nurse, helping camp doctors care for injured soldiers. In 1866, the Kings returned to Savannah, where she established a school for freed black children.  That same year, Edward King died in September, only a few months after their first son was born.

By the early 1870s, she moved to Boston, where she met her second husband, Russell Taylor. With nursing being her passion, Baker soon joined and became president of the Women’s Relief Corps, which assisted soldiers and hospitals.

In 1890, after a trip to care for her dying son, Baker wrote her memoirs, which she published in 1902 as "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd US Colored Troops". Susie Baker King Taylor died in 1912 at sixty-four in Boston.

To be a Writer