Who Was Elodie Todd?

From the February 2018 Civil War Times "I do not think of peace" by Susannah J. Ural.

Elodie Todd was a native Kentuckian and was stunned when Confederate officer Nathaniel Dawson proposed marriage just before his company left Selma, Alabama, for Virginia.   She was 12 years his junior and wasn't sure her family would accept, especially since she barely knew Nathaniel.  They kept up a steady stream of letters from April 1861 to April 1862.  The last two posts were taken from her letters to him.

The letters offer insights into the war and, especially her family.  Being from a border state, Kentucky, her family was split as well.  Five of her siblings supported the Union while nine, including herself, supported the Confederacy.

One of her siblings was none other than First Lady of the United States, Mary Todd Lincoln, a half sister.

The letters between Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie have been published  in "Practical Strangers:  The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln."

Her father, Robert Smith Todd, remarried after his first wife, and Mary Todd Lincoln's mother, Elizabeth Ann Parker Todd, died in 1825.

--Old Secesh