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Emma Green (1843–1929) was a white southern woman who volunteered as a nurse when the Union seized her family's hotel to serve as a hospital, during the American Civil War.
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Life
Emma Green was born into a wealthy and socially aspiring family of British descent in Alexandria, Virginia. She was raised a devout Episcopalian. Her family initially had pro-Union sympathies, but increasingly sided with the Confederates as the Civil War progressed.
During the war, Green's fiancé Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Stringfellow operated as a Confederate spy. It is possible that Green assisted in the espionage. Green and Stringfellow wed after the war, and had four children together: Ida (b. 1867), Alice Lee (b. 1871), Frank (b. 1881) and John Stanton (b. 1883).
Cultural legacy
In 2016, PBS began broadcasting Mercy Street, a television series based on the hospital in the Green family hotel. A fictionalised version of Emma Green is a key character in the series, and is played by Hannah James.