South Carolina Women

by Spruill, Marjorie Julian; Littlefield, Valinda W.; Johnson, Joan Marie

• ISBN13: 9780820329352
• ISBN10: 0820329355
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-25
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

This volume, which spans the long period from the sixteenth century through the Civil War era, is remarkable for the religious, racial, ethnic, and class diversity of the women it features. Essays on plantation mistresses, overseers' wives, nonslaveholding women from the upcountry, slave women, and free black women in antebellum Charleston are certain to challenge notions about the slave South and about the significance of women to the state's economy. South Carolina's unusual history of religious tolerance is explored through the experiences of women of various faiths, and accounts of women from Europe, the West Indies, and other colonies reflect the diverse origins of the state's immigrants.The volume begins with a profile of the Lady of Cofitachequi, who sat at the head of an Indian chiefdom and led her people in encounters with Spanish explorers. The essays that follow look at well-known women such as Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who managed several indigo plantations; the abolitionist Angelina Grimke; and Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. Also included, however, are essays on the much-less-documented lives of poor white farming women (the Neves family of Mush Creek), free African American women (Margaret Bettingall and her daughters), and slave women, the latter based on interviews and their own letters. The essays in volume 1 demonstrate that many women in this most conservative of states, with its strong emphasis on traditional gender roles, carved out far richer public lives than historians have often attributed to antebellum southern women.Historical figures included: The Lady of Cofitachequi Judith Giton Manigault Mary Fisher Sophia Hume Mary-Anne Schad Mrs. Brown Rebecca Brewton Motte Eliza Lucas Pinckney Harriott Pinckney Horry Enslaved woman known as Dolly Enslaved woman known as Lavinia Enslaved woman known as Maria Enslaved woman known as Susan Women of the Bettingall-Tunno Family Angelina Grimke Elizabeth Allston Pringle Mother Mary Baptista Aloysius Mary Boykin Chesnut Frances Neves Lucy Holcombe Pickens

Author Biography

Marjorie Julian Spruill is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Valinda W. Littlefield is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina. Joan Marie Johnson is a lecturer at Northeastern Illinois University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
The Lady of Cofitachequi: Gender and Political Power among Native Southerners	p. 11
Judith Giton: From Southern France to the Carolina Lowcountry	p. 26
Mary Fisher, Sophia Hume, and the Quakers of Colonial Charleston: "Women Professing Godliness"	p. 40
Mary-Anne Schad and Mrs. Brown: Overseers's Wives in Colonial South Carolina	p. 60
Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry: A South Carolina Revolutionary-Era Mother and Daughter	p. 79
Rebecca Brewton Motte: Revolutionary South Carolinian	p. 109
Dolly, Lavinia, Maria, and Susan: Enslaved Women in Antebellum South Carolina	p. 127
The Bettingall-Tunno Family and the Free Black Women of Antebellum Charleston: A Freedom Both Contingent and Constrained	p. 143
Angelina Grimke: Abolition and Redemption in a Crusade against Slavery	p. 168
Elizabeth Allston Pringle: A Woman Rice Planter	p. 184
Mother Mary Baptista Aloysius (nee Ellen Lynch): A Confederate Nun and Her Southern Identity	p. 214
Mary Boykin Chesnut Civil War Redux	p. 233
Frances Neves and Her Family: Upcountry Women in the Civil War	p. 255
Lucy Holcombe Pickens: Belle, Political Novelist, and Southern Lady	p. 273
Notes on Contributors	p. 299
Index	p. 305
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