Elizabeth and Emily. Eliza very likely urged action. From personal experience she expected little from the Church concluding probably the only way to bring attention to their goals was to be active. Louisa Jane expected attention from the Church because her father was a planter and Methodist church trustee. Both probably were frustrated in the 1840s when the women gained little attention from the Church no matter what they did. No diaries or journals have been discovered but one imagines each time the women were rebuffed their determination grew. When another Methodist woman, Eliza’s half-sister Caroline Rebecca Mounce, arrived in the village, the four women invited her into their conversations. Then, they probably organized formally. Caroline Rebecca brought yet another aspect of women in need of spiritual support, women who had married very young and had young children. This was something she and Louisa Jane had in common. The women’s group in my estimation had a working premise, Methodist women of all walks of life had unmet spiritual needs. At first, they took it upon themselves to connect traveling preachers with village women most in need of spiritual support. Such was the abundance of needs and the scarcity of Church resources that they changed tactics and pushed instead for a village church, concluding that a structural change and an interested and sympathetic pastor to live in their midst was all they needed. Nevertheless, the group continued to work with traveling preachers and added three more members later in the decade, the youngest of whom sparked their campaign as never before. They were ready when in 1857 the Church decentralized its local structure and brought two pastors to live in the village. In the 1860s, Milton was too old for the Confederate conscription acts of 1862 and 1864. 27 He began his third term as postmaster in the last year of the war. That term lasted three years. 28 The Osborn family status in post-war village society was the same as its pre- war status. Milton continued to operate the harness shop. If Eliza and Milton still lived near the shop, which they probably did, Eliza maintained the shop 27 David Carlson, “Conscription, C.S.A.” in David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, editors, Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), 486-87. 28 Abbeville District, South Carolina, Record of Appointments of Postmasters, 1832-1971, image; U.S., Appointments of Postmasters, 1832-1971 , database, Ancestry.com (access thought participating libraries : 22 February 2019), citing NARA microfilm publication M841, roll 114, Abbeville-Greenwood Counties, vol. 29 ca. 1858-76.
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