The Blennerhassett Sisters: Uncompromising Rebel Sympathizers

   
   When Therese Blennerhassett was banished to the South in the fall of 1863, her sister Annie B. Martin was granted permission to accompany her under the same terms that governed Therese’s banishment order. In reporting the banishments, the St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican called Miss Blennerhassett “an inveterate and uncompromising rebel sympathizer,” but, before the Civil War was over, Mrs. Martin would eventually end up in the more serious trouble.
   Born in New York, Annie and Therese were collateral descendants of Harman Blennerhassett, implicated in Aaron Burr’s treasonous scheme against the United States in the early 1800s. The sisters came to St. Louis in 1842 with their parents, Richard and Therese Blennerhassett. A noted criminal lawyer, Blennerhassett died sometime before 1860. By then, twenty-four-year-old Annie, the oldest daughter, had been married and widowed and was back home, while nineteen-year-old Therese was single and also living with her mother.
   Annie and Therese’s brother Edward joined the Confederate army, and they exchanged letters with him and other Rebel soldiers even after such correspondence was banned. In late March 1863, Therese went south at her own request, and very shortly afterwards, at least three of her and Annie’s letters fell into the hands of Union authorities.       Annie was questioned about them at the provost marshal general’s office on April 1. She said she had one brother in the Confederate Army, and she was delighted to add that she would “rather have him a teamster in the Rebel army than a major general in the Union Army.” Annie admitted writing to her brother many times but declined to answer questions about how the letters were mailed or received. Shown three letters, she declined to identify them, despite the fact that Therese’s signature was on two of them and she herself had likely written the other one. Despite the evidence against Annie, apparently little or no action was taken against her at this time.
   In September 1863, Therese was arrested when she returned to St. Louis without a pass. She was again sent South, not of her own choosing this time, and Annie chose to accompany her, under the same obligations that governed her sister’s banishment.
   But that didn’t stop Annie from coming back to St. Louis less than a year later. In mid-September 1864, she started from Mississippi, where she and Therese had been staying, and she arrived in St. Louis on September 27. Her return might have gone unnoticed except that she had brought along a letter from a Confederate soldier that she promptly mailed to the soldier’s wife. She also wrote a letter to some of her Confederate-sympathizing friends passing along news from the South and inviting them to write to her with any news they wanted her to take back to Dixie, as she planned to return to the South and re-unite with Therese. She never got a chance, because her letters were intercepted and she was re-arrested.
   Charged with violating her order of banishment, she was tried by military commission in October, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war. In February 1865, the sentence was remitted, and she was banished to the South.
   After the war, both Annie and Therese returned to St. Louis and moved back in with their mother. Therese became a schoolteacher, and both she and Annie were active in St. Louis social circles. Annie died in 1887 and was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery. In the early 1890s, Therese was active in organizing and promoting the St. Louis Exposition. She died in 1913 and, like Annie, was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery.
   This post is a greatly condensed from a chapter in my book Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.