Amelia Gayle Gorgas
librarian, nurse, teacher, university counselor, postmaster
Amelia Gayle Gorgas (June 1, 1826 – January 3, 1913) was librarian and postmaster of the University of Alabama for 25 years until her retirement at the age of eighty in 1907. She expanded the library from 6,000 to 20,000 volumes. The primary library at the university is named after her. A native of Greensboro, Alabama, Amelia was the daughter of Alabama governor John Gayle, the wife of Pennsylvania-born Confederate general Josiah Gorgas and the mother of Surgeon General William C. Gorgas. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1977.
Early life and education
Amelia Gayle was born June 1, 1826, at Greensboro, Alabama. Her parents were Gov. John and Sarah Ann Haynsworth Gayle.
She was educated by governesses and at Columbia female institute, Columbia, Tennessee, graduating in 1842, with highest honors. She spent four years of her girlhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, while her father was governor of the State, afterwards removed to Mobile, Alabama where she grew to adulthood and spent the years of her father's term in congress in Washington, D.C.
Career
While in Washington, she enjoyed the unusual privilege of association with the celebrities of the time.
“Amelia Gayle Gorgas” enters the record as librarian, nurse, teacher, university counselor, postmaster. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Amelia, Gayle and Gorgas can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3613948. VIAF identifies the subject as 72642375. The Library of Congress control number is n77017053. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1826, 1913, 1907 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amelia Gayle Gorgas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.