Mary Telfair

by Johnson, Charles J., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9781929490127
• ISBN10: 1929490127
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: Frederic C Beil

Summary

Charles Johnson's magnificent biography of Mary Telfair is a detailed examination of the life of a most remarkable woman. Born in 1791, Mary Telfair grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant-planter and threeterm governor of Georgia. Although reared in the South, she bore no kinship to the plantation mistress living in isolation--alienated by paternalism and male domination. Rather she belonged to an elite circle of urban Southerners who felt as much at home in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia and New York as in the parlors of Charleston and Savannah. Many of the country's leading figures passed through the lives of the Telfairs, and the Telfairs were related to, or close friends with, most of the prominent families in Savannah and the Georgia upcountry--relationships fully explored in this work. Johnson's legal training played a significant role in enabling him to unravel the climactic event in Mary Telfair's story--the great Telfair will contest, one of the epic legal battles of the nineteenth century. Drawing on a stunni

Author Biography

Raised in Darien, Connecticut, Charles Johnson graduated from Yale University and the Harvard Law School before practicing securities law in New York City for thirty-two years. In 1988 Johnson moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he and his wife collect tribal, Southwestern, and contemporary art

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
The Legacy	1	(15)
Building Minds for the Republic	16	(21)
The Torch Is Passed	37	(19)
A Coastal Aristocracy	56	(17)
Single Blessedness	73	(24)
The Sisterhood	97	(19)
Matters of the Mind	116	(22)
The Wise Aunt	138	(15)
The 1820's	153	(26)
A Season of Sorrow, a Time to Heal	179	(17)
So Many Changes	196	(24)
Financial Panic and Tragedy at Sea	220	(18)
Ordinary Pleasures	238	(20)
Travel and Romance	258	(22)
Middle Age at Mid-Century	280	(29)
Advancing Years and the Approach of War	309	(30)
Clouds Over Georgia	339	(29)
The Telfair Will Contest	368	(25)
Appendix A: Last Will and Testament of Mary Telfair	393	(10)
Appendix B: Rules and Directions for the Operation of the Thorn Island Plantation	403	(3)
Appendix C: Excerpt From Decision as to Heirs of Mary Telfair	406	(3)
Family Trees	409	(6)
Principal Characters	415	(12)
Telfair Chronology	427	(9)
Notes	436	(46)
Selected Bibliography	482	(11)
Index	493