Elizabeth Clouston

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Clouston was a daughter of a Franklin, Tennessee family and worked as a governess in the McGavock household at Carnton. After the Battle of Franklin on 30 November 1864, the house became a large Confederate field hospital, and Clouston assisted surgeons and wounded soldiers.

Among the patients was Captain Roland Ward Jones, who had suffered a severe leg wound. Their surviving letters record a courtship formed during his recovery. They married on 14 December 1865 and moved to Mississippi. Clouston died only a few years later, leaving the correspondence as an unusually personal record of the battle’s aftermath.

In Tamera Alexander’s With This Pledge, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Clouston is governess at Carnton when the Battle of Franklin turns the house into a Confederate field hospital. Assisting surgeons among hundreds of wounded men, she meets Captain Roland Ward Jones, a Mississippi sharpshooter whose injured leg may be amputated. The promises they exchange amid the hospital’s suffering develop into a courtship complicated by Lizzie’s existing engagement and her opposition to the Confederate cause.