Just after the Civil War began, Susie escaped with her uncle's family to St. Catherines Island, which was under Union control. She later moved to St. Simons Island and established a school for black children and adults.
During the Civil War, many escaped male slaves served in the Thirty-third U.S. colored Troops, the first African American regiment officially mustered into the Union army. In 1862, Susie married Sergeant Edward King, one of the members of this regiment. Although she was only fourteen years old, she taught the soldiers in her husband's regiment to read and write and did their laundry. In January 1863, Susie King began to nurse the wounded men who returned to camp from a raid up the St. Marys River, which divides Georgia and Florida. She met Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross at the regimental hospital where they both nursed the wounded soldiers. Susie King nursed the wounded soldiers for four years and three months and never received any money for her work. However, she was proud of her work and took pleasure in assisting the soldiers whom she referred to as her "comrades."
In 1866, she and her husband moved to Savannah. She became pregnant with her first child shortly after she moved there. Tragically her husband died before the child was born. Susie King worked as a cook and laundress to support her child before her marriage to Russell Taylor in 1879.
The soldiers that Susie King Taylor nursed never forgot her and often wrote to her. She published her autobiography in 1902, entitled, "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp: A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs." She died in 1912, ten years after he book was published. In her book, she said of her experience as a Civil War nurse,
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