Pearl Rivers
| Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson | |
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Pearl Rivers
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| Born | Eliza Jane Poitevent March 11, 1843 Gainesville, Mississippi |
| Died | February 15, 1896 (aged 52) New Orleans |
| Resting place | Metairie Cemetery |
| Pen name | Pearl Rivers |
| Occupation | Journalist and poet |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Amite Female Seminary, Liberty, Mississippi |
| Period | 1859-1896 |
Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson (1843–1896), who wrote under the nom de plume Pearl Rivers, was a United States journalist and poet. She took the name from the Pearl River near her home in Mississippi.
Eliza Jane Poitevent was born in Gainesville, Mississippi, on March 11, 1843 (some sources say 1849). She was the third child of a prosperous family of five, with a busy father and a sickly mother. She is listed on the 1850 U.S. Census as living in Beat 2 of Hancock County, Mississippi, with an age of seven and younger siblings in the household.
When she was nine years old, she moved to her aunt Jane's house in the vicinity of today's Picayune (so named by Eliza), in Pearl River County, Mississippi. Her uncle Leonard managed a plantation, a store, and a toll bridge there. She was sent to the Amite Female Seminary in Liberty, Mississippi, graduating in 1859, where she earned (or gave herself) the title of the "wildest girl in school".
Eliza's first romance was with a young man she had met while at the seminary, but this was suppressed by the headmaster and her uncle. During the American Civil War (1861–1865) she may have fallen in love with a soldier, since such a romance was described in a group of poems she wrote in 1866 for the New Orleans Times.
After the war she began submitting her work to newspapers and magazines under the pseudonym "Pearl Rivers", and her poems were published in the New Orleans literary sheet, The South, and in the New York Home Journal and the New York Ledger. On 17 October 1866 the New Orleans daily The Picayune published her poem "A Little Bunch of Roses", the first of her work known to have been published in that paper, and after 1867 all her work was published in this paper.
During one of Eliza's visits to her grandfather in New Orleans she met the co-owner of The Picayune, Alva M. Holbrook. He asked her to become literary editor of the newspaper. She accepted the job and in May 1872 married Holbrook, who was divorced and almost thirty years her senior. The marriage was unhappy. In a letter to her first lover she confided that Holbrook "never did, and never will" love her. A month after their marriage, Holbrook's first wife returned from New York and attacked her with a pistol and a bottle of rum. This was followed by a messy and protracted court battle.
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