Mary Amarinthia Snowden

Mary Amarinthia Snowden was born on September 10, 1819, to Joseph Yates and Elizabeth Saylor in Charleston. When she was 18 months old, her father died and her family moved to Philadelphia. They stayed there for five years before returning to South Carolina. She attended a school at Barhamsville run by Elias Marks. Snowden and her brother Dr. William B. Yates worked together on a home where the poor could be educated and train to work as sailors as one of her first philanthropic activities. She married Dr. William Snowden in 1857. They had two children, including future historian Yates Snowden. Dr. William Snowden died in the Civil War. == Philanthropic efforts ==

Snowden was a close acquaintance of John C. Calhoun. In 1854, after John C. Calhoun died, she organized the Ladies' Calhoun Monument Association in Charleston, raising almost $40,000 by 1861. During the Civil War, Snowden sewed the funds into the skirt she was wearing when she fled Columbia in February 1865 in order to protect them. The money was then used to put up a monument of Calhoun in Marion Square in Charleston in April 1887. In July 1861, she founded the Soldiers Relief Association of Charleston to help Confederate soldiers. It provided clothing and hospital stores to them. After the Battle of Second Manassas, she went to Warrenton, Virginia, to help those who were wounded on the battlefield. == Legacy ==

In 1922, the college closed and the Home for the Mothers, Widows, and Daughters of Confederate Soldiers was changed to moderately priced housing in order to make housing affordable for qualified residents. The Confederate Home and College is a source of five college scholarships. == References ==