Ellen Call Long (September 9, 1825 – 1905) was the daughter of Florida territorial governor Richard Keith Call and a member of the influential Call-Walker political family of Florida. She acquired The Grove from her father in 1851 and held it until 1903. She received distinction after the Civil War for her efforts in historic preservation, history, memorialization, forestry, silkworm cultivation, and the promotion of Florida. She was the author of Florida Breezes, a semi-fictional account of antebellum life primarily set in Middle Florida, which is widely regarded as one of the best primary source accounts of the planter class lifestyle in Florida. She was the founder of the Florida chapters of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and the Ladies Hermitage Association. She was also named a Florida delegate to several important expositions, including the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia (1876), the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, France (1889). She founded the Ladies Memorial Association of Tallahassee, a group now known as the Anna Jackson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Her published report, which was written before the American Forestry Congress in 1888 and titled "Notes of Some of the Forest Features of Florida," is considered a seminal work in the field of fire ecology. She was also a tireless promoter of silk culture in Florida, representing the Ladies Silk Culture Association of Philadelphia and emerging as a local expert in cultivation.
Early life Ellen Call Long was born on The Grove property in Tallahassee, Florida on September 9, 1825, the first child of Richard Keith Call and Mary Letitia Kirkman. Of the 8 children born to the Calls, only their oldest and youngest daughters lived to adulthood. According to popular legend, Ellen was the first white child born in the city, a story she openly advertised later in her life.
After spending early life in Tallahassee, her parents sent her north to boarding schools in Baltimore and later Philadelphia. She was especially close to her mother, and her mother's death in 1836 had a profound impact on the rest of Ellen Call Long's life. Concerned over his family's precarious situation, Richard Keith Call sent his two surviving daughters to Nashville, Tennessee, to live with his mother-in-law. Ellen spent the rest of her childhood between Nashville and several northern boarding schools. Despite this separation, she and her father grew to be especially close, and she remained fiercely loyal to her father for the rest of her life.Jane Aurell Menton, The Grove: A Florida Home Through Seven Generations (Tallahassee, FL: Sentry Press, 1998), 21-24.
Return to Tallahassee In 1843, Ellen Call Long returned to Tallahassee to live permanently. By this time, her father was in his second term as governor. Ellen quickly established herself within the elite social circles of the city, acting as a hostess for her father. In 1844, she married Medicus A. Long, a promising young lawyer from Tennessee who later served multiple terms in the Florida State Legislature. Like her parents before her, only Ellen's oldest and youngest children, Richard Call Long and Eleanora Long Hollinger, survived to adulthood.
After a failed run for governor in 1845, her father began committing himself more to his plantation at Orchard Pond. In 1851, he formally deeded The Grove to Ellen, who had already established her family there. Ellen later inherited Orchard Pond and the people her father enslaved, which served as her main means of support through the end of the Civil War.Menton, 29-32.
During the 1850s, her father emerged as one of the state's leading voices of Southern Unionism. After the demise of the Whig Party, Call was active in several pro-unionist parties, including the American Party and the Constitutional Union Party. Ever loyal to her father, she was a staunch Unionist, which put her at odds with her husband, an outspoken secessionist. Medicus Long even openly debated in public with his father-in-law on the subject of secession. Long eventually relocated to Texas shortly before the Civil War, ostensibly for health reasons, but they remained separated for the rest of their lives, although they remained officially married.Menton, 32-33.
Although she vehemently opposed secession, Ellen Call Long still supported the Confederate cause, opening her home to wounded soldiers and hosting Confederate officers. Her son Richard Long enlisted in the 2nd Florida Cavalry. Her enthusiasm for the cause was guarded, however, as she refused to invest in Confederate bonds and remained bitterly opposed to secessionists, which became more pronounced as the war progressed. Tallahassee remained the only southern capital not to fall into Union hands during the war. As a result, the city's people were spared much of the destruction that befell cities such as Richmond, Atlanta, and Charleston. With the surrender of General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate forces in Florida were ordered to disband. Ellen Call Long witnessed the entry of General McCook into Tallahassee in May 1865. Despite her strong Unionism, she was embittered by the humiliation faced by the Confederacy's at defeat.Ellen Call Long diary, May 10, , https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/180853?id=36; Ellen Call Long diary, May 21, , https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/180853?id=40.
Reconstruction era
Although the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction brought significant economic hardships to the Southern United States, this period marked a remarkable political turnaround for Ellen Call Long's family. In 1865, her cousin David S. Walker was elected governor of Florida and another cousin Wilkinson Call was elected as senator. Ellen continued to rely on income from her Orchard Pond property, which now utilized sharecropper labor, many formerly enslaved by the Call family. After a brief period in Texas, her son and his wife joined her at The Grove, where they resided with their two children. Her widowed daughter and her two sons also moved into the residence later.
Historic preservation Ellen Call Long represented Florida in founding two of the most prominent national historic preservation organizations of the era, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA) and the Ladies Hermitage Association (LHA). Founded by Ann Pamela Cunningham in 1853 to salvage George Washington's residence Mount Vernon, the MVLA was the first major national historic preservation organization in the United States. Although Catherine Murat was the first Vice Regent for the state of Florida, Ellen Long was the principal organizer and cofounder of the Florida chapter of the MVLA and remained actively involved with the group for several years afterward. Despite the difficulties faced in communication and travel at the time, Long and Catherine Murat established a local presence for the MVLA in every town and county in the state and raised several thousand dollars for the cause.Ann Pamela Cunningham letter to RK Call, [undated], in Ellen Call Long, Florida Breezes, or, Florida, New and Old (Jacksonville, FL: Douglas Printing Company, Inc., 1883) [reprint] (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1962), 259-260. The success of the MVLA inspired the establishment of similar organizations around the country. In 1889, a group of Tennessee women concerned with the condition of Andrew Jackson's The Hermitage, established the LHA to aid in its restoration. The group named Ellen Call Long as the first vice regent for the state of Florida. For Ellen, whose father was a protégé of Jackson, the Hermitage held personal and national significance. As vice-regent, she had a significant role in early fundraising and organizing efforts for the LHA. She also donated several items from The Grove to The Hermitage and actively solicited donations on behalf of the LHA. Due in part to the pioneering efforts of women such as Ellen Call Long, both Mount Vernon and The Hermitage remain open today as public museums.Mary C. Dorris, Preservation of the Hermitage, 1889-1915 (Nashville, TN: The Ladies Hermitage Association, 1915), 62-64.
Memorialization After the Civil War, drawing inspiration from other southern cities, the Ladies Memorial Association of Tallahassee was founded in 1866.Semi-Weekly Floridian, July 9, 1866, p. 2 column 4.Florida Breezes, p. 385 According to a history she wrote several years later, Long was offered the leadership to the organization when it formed but declined, citing a planned extended absence and her past as a unionist possibly interfering with the goals of the organization. Initially listed as a "foreign agent" of the organization, she would eventually take over as its president.Semi-Weekly Floridian, July 9, 1866, p. 2 column 5. It was the first group founded in Florida and one of the earliest in the Southern United States. Initially formed to reclaim Confederate burials and commemorate the Confederate dead, the women's memorial associations that formed in the Southern United States often held elaborate annual graveside ceremonies. These ceremonies usually involved laying flowers and wreaths on the headstones of Confederate veterans and served as the direct inspiration for what became Decoration Day in the north, now known as Memorial Day. The Ladies Memorial Association of Tallahassee primarily focused on erecting a monument memorializing Florida's Confederate casualties. Still, it soon expanded its mission to raise money for veterans, engage in public outreach, and petition for state recognition of Confederate Memorial Day. Beginning in 1867,Publications of the Florida Historical Society a year after most other cities in the Southern United States established April 26 as memorial day, the women of the Tallahassee Association also adopted April 26 as an annual day of observance for the Confederate veterans in what was later called Confederate Memorial Day, which the state of Florida later recognized.Esther H. Berumen, "Competing Memories: Tallahassee's Civil War Commemorations, Exhibits, and Celebrations" FSU thesis, 2009, 21-22; Ellen Call Long, A History of the Memorial Association Formed in Tallahassee After the Late Civil War [unpublished] , 1-4; Florida Legislature Legislative Journal, 254-255; Bellware & Gardiner, The Genesis of Memorial Day in America (Columbus State University, 2014).
As Ellen Call Long later wrote of the Ladies Memorial Association: "Our purpose is purely religious – a labor of love – the sacred care of the dead, to reclaim from oblivion and defamation the memory and graves of those who, 'right or wrong,' stood by their country's cause... In no invidious spirit do we come; the political storm that shook our country to its foundation... is passed; war with its carnage is over; and we are done with the cause; and though we scarce discover the silver lining of the dark clouds which have so long hung like a pall above us, we believe that it will yet show itself, and are willing to do all that women can do to stem the tide of bitterness, and assuage the angry feelings that naturally, at present, exist between the two sections of the country."Long, Florida Breezes, 386.
World's Fair delegate