Early History
McCracken was born in Petershagen, Germany, during a time of much civil unrest. Her father, a former soldier at Waterloo, foresaw trouble from citizenry calling for revolution, and so gathered his family in 1846 and fled to St. Louis, Missouri.
In 1864, Josephine met and married Army Lieutenant James A. Clifford in New Mexico. Clifford's sanity began to unravel and he confessed to his wife that he had killed a man in Texas. He threatened her, saying that if she told anyone, he would kill her too. After appealing to his superiors and making sure he was under guard, she fled to her family in San Francisco.
Read more about this topic: Josephine Clifford Mc Cracken
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)