Caroline Meriwether Goodlett – Founder
Caroline Douglas Meriwether Goodlett was born on November 3, 1833, just over the Tennessee-Kentucky line at the Meriwether family home “Woodstock” in Todd County, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Charles Nicholas and Caroline Huntley Barker Meriwether.
On December 3, 1853, Caroline married John Sturdevant of Christian County, Kentucky. After her marriage, Caroline’s father gave her three hundred acres of land near “Woodstock” but in Montgomery County, Tennessee. On it was a large comfortable two-story log house in which he had lived before he built Woodstock. The couple had one child, Charles James, but unfortunately the marriage was not a happy one and the couple separated.
Anna Mitchell Davenport – Co-Founder
Unknown to Caroline Meriwether Goodlett in 1894, there was in the ravaged state of Georgia a fine Confederate woman, Anna Mitchell Davenport Raines, who was just as dedicated to the Confederate veterans as she.
Anna Mitchell Davenport was born on April 8, 1853, at Isle of Hope, Savannah, Georgia. Her parents were Major Hugh McCall Davenport and Martha Anne Elizabeth Stone. A mere child when the War began at Ft. Sumter, by the age of ten she was taking food and bandages to the Confederate hospitals and soldiers’ camps in Savannah. In 1864, General Sherman ordered all officers’ families out of the city and Mrs. Davenport with her children refugeed first in Augusta, then Atlanta. The family was in Macon when Lee surrendered. After Major Davenport’s homecoming from Virginia, the family returned to Savannah for a short time, then moved to New York.
Anna married Lucian Hamilton Raines on February 11, 1873. Five children were born to the couple: Martha Stone Raines, Richard Mitchell Raines, Lucian Hamilton Raines, Jr., Mary Judson Raines, and Davenport Raines. Two, Lucian Hamilton, Jr. and Mary Judson, did not live to adulthood.