A Woman Rice Planter

Elizabeth Allston Pringle

Description

A Woman Rice Planter offers insights into a broad spectrum of Southern life after the Civil War. As an account of a woman's struggle for survival and dignity in a distinctly male-dominated society, it contributes significantly to women's history. It presents a rich portrait of a distinctive place—the South Carolina Low Country—in a troubled and generally undocumented time, a portrait made all the more vivid by the fine pen-and-ink sketches of Charleston artist Alice R. Huger Smith.

Elizabeth Alston Pringle was the daughter of Robert Francis Withers Allston, a state legislator and governor, who was at one time owner of seven plantations but bankrupt at the time of his death. Left to struggle for income to regain the property and position the family held prior to the war, Pringle turned to writing and eventually published a column on Southern culture in the New York Sun under the pseudeonym Patience Pennington. In 1913 she collected and reshaped these newspaper columns and compiled them into one volume, A Woman Rice Planter, a best-selling book that reduced her financial worries. Her descriptions of the vagaries of rice planting, of her relationships with former slaves and the first generation of free-born African Americans, and of her life in the early Reconstruciton period are important to our understanding of the prevailing attitudes and persistence of the Old South in the New.

The volume was illustrated by Alice R. Huger Smith (1876–1958), an American painter and printmaker. This edition features an introduction by Charles Joyner (1935–2016), distinguished professor emeritus of southern history and culture at Coastal Carolina University and author of several books, including Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.

Sujets

• GA
• VA
• AR
• NC
• SC
• MS
• Cherokees
• TN
• Rent
• LA
• KY
• Harvest
• FL
• United States
• Négro
• Field
• History of the Americas
• Social sciences
• Slavery
• Cherokee
• Pawleys Island, South Carolina
• Sheaves
• Patriarchy
• Diary
• Peaceville
• Pawleys Island
• HISTORY
• Women's Studies

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781643362809
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

A Woman Rice Planter
Southern Classics Series
John G. Sproat, General Editor
A Woman Rice Planter
by Elizabeth Allston Pringle
(Patience Pennington)
illustrations by Alice R. Huger Smith
with a new introduction by Charles Joyner

University of South Carolina Press
Published in Cooperation with the Institute for Southern Studies and the South Caroliniana Society of the University of South Carolina
Introduction 1992 University of South Carolina
Paperback edition published by the University of South Carolina Press in cooperation with the Institute for Southern Studies and the South Caroliniana Society, 1992 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2022
www.uscpress.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Originally published with an introduction by Owen Wister and illustrations by Alice R. H. Smith by the Macmillan Co., 1913
The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:
Pringle, Elizabeth W. Allston (Elizabeth Waties Allston), 1845-1921.
A woman rice planter / by Elizabeth Allston Pringle (Patience Pennington) ; illustrations by Alice Huger R Smith ; with a new introduction by Charles Joyner.
p. cm. - (Southern classics series)
Originally published : New York : Macmillan, 1913.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-87249-826-3 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Plantation life-South Carolina-Georgetown County-History-19th century. 2. Rice-South Carolina-Georgetown County-History-19th century. 3. Georgetown County (S.C.)-Social life and customs. 4. Georgetown County (S.C.)-Economic condictions. 5. Pringle, Elizabeth W. Allston (Elizabeth Waties Allston), 1845-1921. I. Title. II. Series.
[F277.G35P77 1992]
975.7 89041 092-dc20
ISBN 978-1-64336-280-9 (ebook)
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
GENERAL EDITOR S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
A WOMAN RICE PLANTER
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
ILLUSTRATIONS
The sheaves are beaten with flails
Cherokee - my father s place
Bonaparte
Each field has a small floodgate, called a trunk
Marcus began work on the breaks
The girls shuffled the rice about with their feet until it was clayed
Near the bridge two negro women are fishing
A request from Wishy s mother, Annette, for something to stop bleeding
Green thought it was folly and fussiness
She picked her usual thirty-five pounds alone
Today the hands are toting the rice into the flats
You see a stack of rice approaching, and you perceive a pair of legs, or a skirt, as the case may be, peeping from beneath
Pallas
Front porch - Casa Bianca
Elihu was a splendid boatman
My little brown maid Patty is a new acquisition and a great comfort, for she is very bright
The roughness and plainness of the pineland house
The yearly pow-wow at Casa Bianca
Four young girls who are splendid workers
She promised not to war any more
Myself, ma am, bin most stupid
A rice field flowed
The hoe they consider purely a feminine implement
The back steps to the pineland house
A very large black hat
Her husband brought her in an ox cart
Old Maum Mary came to bring me a present of sweet potatoes
Pa dey een e baid
One or two hands in the barnyard
A corner of Casa Bianca
Chaney
Five children asked me to let them hunt tetta
It is tied into sheaves, which the negroes do very skilfully, with a wisp of the rice itself
The field with its picturesque workers
The Ferry
His wife was very stirring
Day after day I met Judy coming out of her patch
Old Florinda, the plantation nurse
Miss Patience, le me len yer de money
Jus shinin um up wid de knife-brick
Aphrodite spread a quilt and deposited the party upon it
Then he could talk a-plenty
Chloe is devoted to the chicks - feeds them every two hours
Prince Frederick s Pee Dee
Prince George Winyah
Eh, eh, I yere say yu cry bout chicken
The summer kitchen at Cherokee
The winter kitchen at Cherokee
The string of excited children
I got Chloe off to make a visit to her daughter
I really do not miss ice, now that my little brown jug is swung in the well
Patty came in
Plat eye!
Goliah cried and sobbed
Had Eva to sow by hand a little of the inoculated seed
Her little log cottage was as clean as possible
The sacred spot with its heavy live oak shadows
I met Dab on the road
Cherokee steps
The smokehouse at Cherokee for meat curing
Sol s wife, Aphrodite, is a specimen of maternal health and vigor
I saw a raft of very fine poplar logs being made
Cypress trees
She was a simple, faithful soul - always diligent
Winnowing house for preparation of seed rice
Patty en Dab en me all bin a eat
Chloe began: Wen I bin a small gal
I took Chloe to Casa Bianca to serve luncheon
I read tell de kumfut kum to me
Up kum Maum Mary wid de big cake een de wheelbarrer
Gibbie and the oxen
In the field - sowing
How to lay the breakfast table
Joy unspeakable
The church in Peaceville
Chloe was a great success at the North
My old summer home at Pawleys Island
The roof of the house on Pawleys Island - from the sandhills
En de omans mek answer en say: No, ma am; we neber steal none
Dem all stan outside de fence
Fanning and pounding rice for household use
Pounding rice
The rice fields looked like a great lake
Casa Bianca
Rice fields from the highlands
You see I didn t tell no lie
GENERAL EDITOR S PREFACE
The Southern Classics Series returns to general circulation books of importance dealing with the history and culture of the American South. Under the sponsorship of the Institute for Southern Studies and the South Caroliniana Society of the University of South Carolina, the series is advised by a board of distinguished scholars, whose members suggest titles and editors of individual volumes to the general editor and help to establish priorities in publication.
Chronological age alone does not determine a title s designation as a Southern Classic. The criteria include, as well, significance in contributing to a broad understanding of the region, timeliness in relation to events and moments of peculiar interest to the American South, usefulness in the classroom, and suitability for inclusion in personal and institutional collections on the region.
In the manner of Mary Boykin Chesnut s diary of the Civil War years, Elizabeth Allston Pringle s A Woman Rice Planter offers insights into a broad spectrum of southern life after the war. As an account of a woman s struggle for survival and dignity in a distinctly man s world, it contributes significantly to women s history. For observers of the black experience, it affords opinionated, but nonetheless revealing, views about African American folklife and white racism. For all readers, it presents a rich portrait of a distinctive place-the South Carolina lowcountry-in a troubled and generally undocumented time, a portrait made all the more vivid by Alice R. Huger Smith s fine pen-and-ink sketches.
By itself the book is a Southern Classic. With Charles Joyner s sensitive and perceptive introduction, it takes on as well new life and importance as a major document in southern studies.
John G. Sproat
General Editor, Southern Classics Series
INTRODUCTION
The Allston family had been long settled in the Georgetown District of South Carolina. The family was a large one; and the residence of one branch was at Chicora Wood plantation on the Pee Dee River, where for many generations they had engaged in planting thousands of acres of rice. The rice fields lay just along the river. They were originally cypress swamps that were cleared and drained by slave labor. The fields could be flooded or drained, as needed, by a system of canals and small flood gates called trunks and trunk-docks. West of the rice fields was a belt of upland covered with live oaks. Here the provision crops of rye, peas, corn, oats, and potatoes were grown. And here too were the fabled Big Houses of the rice planters, situated at the end of avenues of moss-draped live oaks. The rice planters considered their plantations, for all their profitability, to be unhealthy places during the summers. No white person could remain on the plantation, according to Bessie, without danger of the most virulent fever, always spoken of as country fever. It was commonly believed that to remain here a Summer will be Suicide. So each summer rice plantation households migrated to the sea and did not return until early November, by which time cold weather had come and the danger of malarial fever gone. Bessie described the Allston summer home at Pawleys Island as only four miles to the east of Chicora as the crow flies, but was only to be reached by going seven miles in a rowboat and four miles by land. It was there that Elizabeth Waties Allston-called Bessie-was born, May 29, 1845. To me it has always been intoxicating, she would later write of Pawleys Island, that first view each year of the waves rolling, rolling; and the smell of the sea, and the brilliant blue expanse; but then I was born ther