Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 1

by Anastatia Hodgens Sims, Barbara McCaskill, Ben Marsh, Carey Olmstead Shellman, Catherine Clinton

Overview

This first of two volumes extends from the founding of the colony of Georgia in 1733 up to the Progressive era. From the beginning, Georgia women were instrumental in shaping the state, yet most histories minimize their contributions. The essays in this volume include women of many ethnicities and classes who played an important role in Georgia’s history.

Though sources for understanding the lives of women in Georgia during the colonial period are scarce, the early essays profile Mary Musgrove, an important player in the relations between the Creek nation and the British Crown, and the loyalist Elizabeth Johnston, who left Georgia for Nova Scotia in 1806. Another essay examines the near-mythical quality of the American Revolution-era accounts of "Georgia's War Woman," Nancy Hart. The later essays are multifaceted in their examination of the way different women experienced Georgia's antebellum social and political life, the tumult of the Civil War, and the lingering consequences of both the conflict itself and Emancipation. After the war, both necessity and opportunity changed women's lives, as educated white women like Eliza Andrews established or taught in schools and as African American women like Lucy Craft Laney, who later founded the Haines Institute, attended school for the first time. Georgia Women also profiles reform-minded women like Mary Latimer McLendon, Rebecca Latimer Felton, Mildred Rutherford, Nellie Peters Black, and Martha Berry, who worked tirelessly for causes ranging from temperance to suffrage to education. The stories of the women portrayed in this volume provide valuable glimpses into the lives and experiences of all Georgia women during the first century and a half of the state's existence.

Historical figures include:Mary MusgroveNancy HartElizabeth Lichtenstein JohnstonEllen CraftFanny KembleFrances Butler LeighSusie King TaylorEliza Frances AndrewsAmanda America DicksonMary Ann Harris GayRebecca Latimer FeltonMary Latimer McLendonMildred Lewis RutherfordNellie Peters BlackLucy Craft LaneyMartha BerryCorra HarrisJuliette Gordon Low

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820333366
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	08/25/2009
Series:	Southern Women: Their Lives and Times , #5
Edition description:	Volume 1
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

BARBARA McCASKILL is a professor of English at the University of Georgia, coorganizer of the Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters Project, and associate academic director of the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts. She is the coeditor of Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877–1919 and author of Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory (Georgia). McCaskill edited and wrote an introduction to the 1860 memoir Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (also Georgia).

BEN MARSH is a lecturer in history at Stirling University in Scotland.

CATHERINE CLINTON is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has served as president of the Southern Historical Association, is an elected member of the Society of American Historians, and a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She is the author and editor of more than two dozen volumes, including Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom; Mrs. Lincoln: A Life; Stepdaughters of History; and Civil War Stories (Georgia).

JULIE ANNE SWEET is an assistant professor of history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

KENT ANDERSON LESLIE is an assistant professor of women's studies at Oglethorpe University.

LEEANN WHITES is the editor of Ohio Valley History and professor emerita of history at the University of Missouri. She is the author of The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender (Georgia) and Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South and coeditor of Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American Civil War and Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence.

MICHELE GILLESPIE is a professor of history and dean of the undergraduate college at Wake Forest University. She is also author of Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1789–1860 (Georgia) and co-editor of ten books, including North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times (Georgia).

ANN SHORT CHIRHART is an assistant professor of history at Indiana State University.

BETTY WOOD was a Reader in American History, Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her works include Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1775 and Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1830 (Georgia).

Ann Short Chirhart (Editor)
ANN SHORT CHIRHART is an assistant professor of history at Indiana State University.

Betty Wood (Editor)
BETTY WOOD was a Reader in American History, Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her works include Slavery in Colonial America, 1619-1775 and Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1830 (Georgia).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction
Ann Short Chirhart with Betty Wood 1

Mary Musgrove (ca. 1700– 1765)
Maligned Mediator or Mischievous Malefactor? 11
Julie Anne Sweet

Nancy Hart (ca. 1735– ca. 1830)
“Too Good Not to Tell Again” 33
John Thomas Scott

Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston (1764– 1848)
“Shot Round the World but Not Heard” 58
Ben Marsh

Ellen Craft (ca. 1826– 1891)
The Fugitive Who Fled as a Planter 82
Barbara McCaskill

Fanny Kemble (1809– 1893) and Frances Butler Leigh (1838– 1910)
Becoming Georgian 106
Daniel Kilbride

Susie King Taylor (1848– 1912)
“I Gave My Services Willingly” 130
Catherine Clinton

Eliza Frances Andrews (1840– 1931)
“I Will Have to Say ‘Damn!’ Yet, Before I Am Done with Them” 147
Christopher J. Olsen

Amanda America Dickson (1849– 1893)
A Wealthy Lady of Color in Nineteenth- Century Georgia 173
Kent Anderson Leslie

Mary Gay (1829– 1918)
Sin, Self, and Survival in the Post– Civil War South 199
Michele Gillespie

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835– 1930)
The Problem of Protection in the New South 224
LeeAnn Whites

Mary Latimer McLendon (1840– 1921)
“Mother of Suff rage Work in Georgia” 245
Stacey Horstmann Gatti

Mildred Lewis Rutherford (1851– 1928)
The Redefi nition of New South White Womanhood 272
Sarah Case

Nellie Peters Black (1851– 1919)
Georgia’s Pioneer Club Woman 297
Carey Olmstead Shellman

Lucy Craft Laney (1855– 1933) and Martha Berry (1866– 1942)
Lighting Fires of Knowledge 318
Jennifer Lund Smith

Corra Harris (1869– 1935)
The Storyteller as Folk Preacher 341
Donald Mathews

Juliette Gordon Low (1860– 1927)
Late- Blooming Daisy 370
Anastatia Hodgens Sims

Selected Bibliography 391
List of Contributors 399
Index 403

Editorial Reviews

Women have made their mark on all aspects of Georgia's history, from early colonization and revolution, through slavery, war, and defeat, and on through the era of racial repression and reform. Their stories, as told here by accomplished historians all, provide valuable new gendered lenses through which to view that history afresh. Full of new insights and fascinating reading throughout.

editor of The New Georgia Encyclopedia - John C. Inscoe

[T]his exploration of 'Georgia Women' provides a stunning introduction to the study of the role of passionate women in the creation of history and today.

Metro Spirit of Augusta

This important work brings to light the role of significant women in our state's history. Reflecting the latest scholarship in the field, it brings more depth and analysis to women whose stories may be familiar and introduces women whose efforts and contributions deserve a place in Georgia's historical record.

director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History, Augusta State University - Lee Ann Caldwell

While the essays might hold special interest for those who study Georgia, they can also introduce scholars of women's and southern history to new intricacies in the lives of even the most famous of the women

Journal of Southern History

Overall, Volume 2 of Georgia Women is a well-researched and finely written collection that should be a valuable resource for both students and scholars, particularly those interested in women’s, Georgia, and southern history.

The Journal of Southern History - June Melby Benowitz

The diversity of experiences presented here makes components of this volume useful in courses on women’s history, Southern history, political history, or the long civil rights movement. This highly readable volume is commendable in its own right, but it also adds much to the invaluable Southern Women series.

Southern Historian - Daniel Manuel

A comprehensive and interesting collection of essays that reveals both the depth and the breadth of the contributions women have made to the state’s modern history. The volume highlights the many ways race, class, family structure, historical and economic forces, and creativity shaped the lives of these interesting women.

author of Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972 - Susan Youngblood Ashmore

An amazing group of women shines forth in this collection of essays. They represent the best of Georgia in the twentieth century, from the farm to the city; in the classrooms, the arts, and the halls of law; and on the streets, fighting for social justice. Georgia women have brought significant vitality and change to their home state, and their stories come together brilliantly in this volume.

author of Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865–1960 - Rebecca Sharpless

“An amazing group of women shines forth in this collection of essays. They represent the best of Georgia in the twentieth century, from the farm to the city; in the classrooms, the arts, and the halls of law; and on the streets, fighting for social justice. Georgia women have brought significant vitality and change to their home state, and their stories come together brilliantly in this volume.”—Rebecca Sharpless, author of Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865–1960

“A comprehensive and interesting collection of essays that reveals both the depth and the breadth of the contributions women have made to the state’s modern history. The volume highlights the many ways race, class, family structure, historical and economic forces, and creativity shaped the lives of these interesting women.”—Susan Youngblood Ashmore, author of Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972

From the Publisher