Anne “Annie” Eliza Johns, a volunteer nurse, poet, teacher, and author of Cooleemee, A Tale of Southern Life, was born in Pittsylvania Co., Va., on July 16, 1831, and moved with her family to Leaksville in 1835 when her father, Dr. Anthony Benning Johns, settled there. She attended the Edgeworth Female Seminary in Greensboro, N.C., in 1846 and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church by the Right Rev. John Johns on November 3, 1851. During the Civil War, she became widely known for her nursing in Danville, Va., where in April 1862 Dr. James Cabell, surgeon in charge of the newly established Confederate hospital complex, offered her the position of chief matron, which she declined in favor of serving as assistant matron overseeing clothing and bedding. She also cared directly for sick and wounded patients, read to them, wrote letters for them, and sought to make them comfortable, while she and other nurses pressed authorities for better transportation for the wounded and furloughs for recovering soldiers. When a hospital for Union prisoners was built in the winter of 1863-64, she volunteered there as well and remained after Confederate patients were moved to Richmond, leaving Danville on March 1, 1865, after the Union prisoners had been transported to the Confederate capital. She spent the rest of her life in Leaksville as a devoted member of the Church of the Epiphany and died on October 22, 1889.