These notes are a work in progress. I am publishing them before they are finished because when I save the post as a draft to WP from my laptop, the changes are not picked up. I’ve lost hours of work.

Disclaimer: I’m not a historian or an academic and my research was idiosyncratic (going down lots of rabbit holes, in other words). If you find errors or wish to suggest additions, please feel free to email me.

Selections of Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s published letters from The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739 – 1762, edited by Elise Pinckney (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). Based on original documents from the South Carolina Historical Society. Courtesy of the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston. Hereafter, “ELP Letters.” I preserve the spellings and grammatical inconsistencies in the letters.

There are occasional references in these notes to deleted sections of the manuscript. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll share them here on the blog or save them for a newsletter. If you’d be interested in reading such material (like, for instances, seven of the first eight chapters that were cut), sign up for my newsletter. Use the Newsletter tab above (and not the Subscribe button on the sidebar, which is for notification of blog posts).

PART I

Stamped Spine / Sally (aka Melody), pg. 1

The novel opens in Barbados.

Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s History of Slavery and Empire by Andrea Stuart provided many of the historic details and trends used to craft this chapter. From her, for example, I learned how abbreviated the life spans of the sugar-working enslaved were, how women working the brakes tended to go barren in short order, and how many enslaved cane cutters wore a “a white ladder of scars” on their legs from slipping machetes.

Naming slaves after the ship that transported them was common. See my blog post about Phillis Wheatley, who was kidnapped, then shipped across the Atlantic aboard The Phillis. The character Melody was originally named “Sally” after the slaver she was conceived on.

“Colony of a colony.” As cane growers in the West Indies responded to the exploding sugar market, they realized that large operations were best suited to exploiting demand. Hence, there was an exodus of small plantation owners from the West Indies. Many of them landed in South Carolina, which is why historian Peter Wood referred to South Carolina as a “colony of a colony” in his seminal book Black Majority.

These shifts of property and economic demands are why slave prices were depressed at the time. It’s why I have Eliza’s father sailing to Barbados to buy two “hale men” (he hasn’t quite given up on his sugar plantation on Antigua). However, after he hears Sally (aka Melody) singing in the fields, he buys her instead. Renames her “Melody.” This was so out of character that the household is thrown into disarray upon his return. It doesn’t help that Melody is very pretty. As Sadeqa Johnson wrote in Yellow Wife: A Novel: “Beauty was a curse for a slave girl.”

A two-year-old male would not likely be thrown in to “sweeten the pot” (especially a quadroon), but with the depressed market, it struck me as a possibility. Recall that even if a toddler was many years from productive labor, his very presence on an inventory would increase the amount of property a white colonizer could memorialize and own (since the permissible acreage was based on head count, including a reduced count for slaves).

NOTE: The Barbadian British colonialists also brought with them the Barbadian Slave Code which was draconian. After the Stono Slave Rebellion of 1739, the Code was revised to become even more strict and punitive. I understand that every slave uprising resulted in more punitive versions of their slave codes.

The slip system (which you’ll read about) was designed to control bondpeople’s movements and to be found ‘abroad’ without one resulted in punishment. Notably, “following a Barbadian legal grammar, in 1690 the colony [of South Carolina] began to regulate slave activity, implementing laws modeled on the Barbardian ‘ticket’ prototype.” Closer to Freedom, Enslaved Women & Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, by Stephanie M.H. Camp, pg. 14.

SIDE NOTE: Another result of consolidated and expanded West Indian plantations was the loss of grazing and agricultural land, forcing the importation of beef and produce from other areas, notably the North. Making money from this food trade is one of many ways that northern economies profited from slavery, in this case specifically from the sugar industry in the West Indies. Other means of profiting from slavery included financial institutions brokering loans to slave owners using the enslaved as collateral and, of course, the weaving and selling cotton.

White blood in a slave was viewed as improving. You’ll find this notion throughout the novel.

“Put me in his pocket” is a colloquialism referring to being sold

Pearls and a Song / Eliza, pg. 5

The political tensions in the West Indies during the late 1730’s were worrisome and obvious. When Eliza’s father says, “We’re one intercepted shipment of molasses away from war” [with Spain] he’s using a shorthand that refers to political treaties that favored Spanish trade and irritated the British. Many terms were largely ignored and British black markets thrived, but the peace was not sustainable.

Spain did had the naval advantage, as well as access to the only deep water harbor in the West Indies where ships could be built (Havana, Cuba).

Wappoo Plantation in South Carolina was the only property owned by Eliza’s grandfather that was offered to her father. Eliza’s father, George, would go on to buy two more plantations (Garden Hill on the Combahee River, 1500 acres, overseer Wm Murry, produced pitch and tar and 3,000 acres on the Waccamaw River, 3000 acres, overseer Starrat, produced rice) and then mortgage all three of them. It’s reasonable to assume that those transactions were in service of buying a more prestigious rank in the British Army. The financial pressures made Eliza’s pursuit of a profitable indigo crop more than dilettantish.

The terms mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, mustee were commonly employed to specify ancestry. Mulatto is someone who is half Black. A quadroon was one-quarter Black, octoroon, one-eighth Black. Mustee refers to a person who is half-Native American and half-Black. Since white blood was considered improving, these designations were an integral part of assigning value while trading in flesh.

Mrs. Boddicott, Eliza’s guardian while she was at school in England, was the wife of George Lucas’s factor. Factors were agents for the selling of goods. Mrs. Boddicott will later act as guardian to Eliza’s two brothers as well. I made up every single thing about her.

There is mention in the record of Eliza’s mother having malaria.

 Our Oak  / Saffron, pg. 13

Quashee is a historic figure. He’s mentioned briefly in Eliza’s published letters and more extensively in the book by Andrea Feeser, Red, White, and Black Make Blue, Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life. 

He’ll come up again as the story unspools, but for now it’s enough to know that he probably had a white father and was a very talented carpenter.

In Marcus Rediker’s book, The Slave Ship: A Human History, he devotes a chapter to the writings of an Irish sailor named James Field Stanfield. Stanfield was “the first to write about the slave trade from the perspective of the common sailor.” Stanfield was not quite an average sailor since he first studied for the priesthood and then pursued an acting career and of course, he was educated enough to keep a journal. Stanfield outlined all manner of torture that was routinely inflicted by both sailors and officers on Black people during the Middle Passage. One incident so disturbed him that he refused to describe it, saying only that it “must have been the rape of a small girl by the captain.” The victim was eight or nine.

ALSO: Thumbscrews are instruments of torture that consist of two metal bars and a screw that closes the gap between the bars. The vice was clamped on a person’s toes or thumbs and then screwed tight, causing intense pain. Sometimes one bar was fanged with metal teeth. These devices were preferred on slave ships because the big welts left by whips could lessen a slave’s price at auction.  

I swear I also read that thing about the captain tying one woman to the bedpost while raping the other, but I can’t find that at the moment.

A quick google search will produce information about the Yoruban beliefs about twins, that they share a soul, for instance. Also, that they were either destined to be very good or very mischievous. The ritual of carving a “substitute twin” or ibeji after the death of one of the siblings was an effort to keep a surviving twin alive.

My first acquaintance with the topic came from a children’s book on Nigeria called Nigeria, Enchantment of the World by Ettagale Blauer and Jason Laure.

Babalawos are priests of Ifa and among other things, masters of divination. Titus’s training and the death of his brother were developed in an early chapter that I deleted (maybe to be published here down the road). There’s a ton available about Ifa and their divination methods (and I suspect a ton that is not available due to secrecy). I started with Ron Eglash’s book, African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. I talk about that book here, in a post called Ferns, Fractals, and African Textiles.

The method of divination that will be shown in the novel consists of the tossing of the opele, a knotted strand of string with eight objects affixed. In Africa, the objects would have been cowries. Here, Titus makes do with walnut shells. Each toss results in a strike mark depending on how the nuts land. The strike marks are then read and important information about the querent’s fate revealed (see Chapter Walnut Shells and Skunk Bones).

Collections / Saffron, pg. 21

Hell Hole Swamp is a real place. It’s too far from Wappoo to be reached in a night. I’m not sure when it got its name.

More on the history of the swamp can be found here.

Patrollers and their dogs were a constant concern for any enslaved person walking about, particularly (but not exclusively as two later chapters will show) if walking off-plantation. Using turpentine on the skin to confuse the dogs was one trick, the rope-across-the-road to slow horses, another, and of course when possible, walking in and out of water. One bondman routinely carried a bridle with him when abroad without a slip so that if he should be found in the woods he could assert that he was looking for a horse. See Stephanie M.H. Camp, Closer to Freedom, Enslaved Women & Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, pg. 38.

Camp describes the practice of deterring patrollers with vines and ropes: “Revelers also protected their space by constructing borders of their own: they stretched ropes and vines across paths approaching their location to trip patrolmen and their horses, they posted lookouts at key locations along the periphery, and they stationed people ‘on the roads’ to ‘create a disturbance to attract the patrollers’ attention. Watching a patroller fall off of his tripping horse added to the night’s entertainment and was ‘a favorite sport of slaves.'” Pg. 72

Arrival / Eliza, pg. 24

Pirate Stede Bonnet’s life and execution is explored in this South Carolina Historical Society article. The article concludes with: “Bonnet pleaded for mercy and his supporters asked South Carolina Governor Johnson to commute his sentence. But the governor refused. Bonnet went to the gallows clutching a bouquet of flowers. His body hung for several days at White Point (now the Battery) until it was cut down and buried below the low water mark.”

A pettiauger was a flat-bottomed bottom made using two or three hollowed out trees. It was motored by both paddles and poles and occasionally equipped with sails. A single vessel could transport up to one hundred barrels of rice. See Black Majority, Peter Wood, pg. 124.

The Weekend / Melody, pg. 33

Running away was discouraged by all kinds of foul tortures, most of which were meant to leave visible marks on the body. Nell’s loss of an ear and an “R” brand on the forehead were typical responses. Hobbling and castration were two others.

The Weekend / Eliza, pg. 33

Many of the ornate iron railings that you find in Charleston were made by enslaved blacksmiths.

In my attempt just now to find a source for the game paw paw, I came up empty-handed. Does anyone know if there was such a game? Unfortunately, there’s now a video game called “PawPaw” which floods a search with irrelevancies.

Quashee being “worth his weight in sterling” is a reference to the practice by slave owners to hire out those they enslaved who had skills. There were different practices as to who got to keep the money. Some owners kept it all and some gave a percentage to the bondman.

Hext / Rutledge — Sarah Hext the Elder gave birth to her daughter (also Sarah) on September 8, 1724. Elder’s first husband, Hugh, died in 1732. The terms of Hugh’s will did in fact dictate that his daughter would inherit a portion of her wealth at the age of 21 or upon marriage, whichever came earlier.

Andrew Rutledge was a lawyer from Ireland who married the widowed Sarah. After hearing about Andrew’s improved circumstances (i.e. his vast wealth), his brother, John, a doctor, came to Charles Town. The Rutledges were Irishmen, but “Ulster Irish,” meaning Protestant and “well-born.” (Catholicism was outlawed in Carolina at the time and among the British there would have been pervasive disdain for the Irish).

Dr. John Rutledge was believed to have arrived in Charles Town in 1735. He was popular and convivial. Created a drink called “Officer’s Punch” (referenced in a deleted passage which I may offer here eventually). He married his step-niece, Sarah the Younger, on Christmas Day 1738, one month after her 14th birthday. (Fourteen was not particularly young for a bride at the time). She gave birth to her first son nine months later. You can read more at the SC Historical Society’s website.

Map in the Dust / Eliza, pg. 35

The catalpa tree was originally named the “Catawba” after the Native tribe. It’s also known as the “Cigar Tree” (the brown pods it sheds in fall can be dried and smoked for a mildly hallucinogenic effect) and the “Bait Worm Tree.” There will be an entire scene later about the caterpillars (aka ‘bait worms’) that made the tree desirable to have on one’s property (think: fishing).

The fictional enslaved teen Caesar depicted here has been hobbled due to his attempts to run away. The look passed between Eliza’s parents upon arrival at the dock has to do with a slave that they really owned on Antigua, also named Caesar, who was executed for his part in a supposed plot to take over the island in 1736. The plot (not conclusively proven in some historians’ minds) involved threading gunpowder under the seats where the island elite were set to gather for a gala to celebrate King George. The residue of fear from that series of events is why, in a later chapter (King George’s Birthday), Eliza’s parents refuse to let her attend a gala for the king in Charles Town. You can read more about the 1736 Antigua plot in the Smithsonian article here.

The house where Eliza lived on the north bank of Wappoo Creek no longer exists. However, you can find a marker on Betsy Road in West Ashley where it was once sited. I’ve been there. Expansive views of the marsh and creek would not have been dramatically different back then. ELP Letters, pg. xvi.

I didn’t make up the bit about water moccasins sunning in riverbank shrubs and falling into boats, but I can’t find the reference now and any attempt to find a new reference online told me that it’s a myth. The best I can find right now is that it can and does happen, but is rare.

Campaign for a Mirror / Eliza, pg. 43

In Archibald Rutledge’s memoir, Home By The River (the home being Hampton Plantation), he mentions a beautiful mirror frame carved by an enslaved man. I read this book very early on before I even knew that at the end of her life Eliza lived at Hampton Plantation with her daughter. I made notes about the Hampton Plantation mirror frame and then promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t until years later and well after I’d written several scenes in which a mirror frame carved by Quashee figures prominently that I saw a posting on Facebook about the object and connected the dots.

ELP Letters, pg. xxiii:  “Her daughter Harriott was nineteen when she married Daniel Horry, a rice planter who lived at Hampton Plantation on the Santee River.”

Fifteen Hands / Eliza, pg. 46

Eliza was friends with two Marys. The one featured in this chapter, Mary Bartlett, was the niece of Charles and Elizabeth Pinckney. Born and educated in London, her widowed mother sent her to her sister’s in America for reasons that are not known to me. The other Mary, Mary Chardon, lived on Wappoo Creek but closer to the Stono River. She was a young widow.

Japanning was a thing. ELP Letters, pg. 25.

Devotion Stronger than Hunger / Saffron, pg 48

Indian Pete is in the record as being owned by ELP. Andrea Feeser mentions him in Chapter 7 of her book, Red, White, & Black Make Blue, Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina. It’s reasonable, given his name, to assume he was a mustee. For more on this character, see “Indian Pete and the Carolina Dog,” pg. 60.

Very Well Met / Eliza, pg. 54

“Tuesdays my friend Mrs. Chardon (about 3 miles distant) and I are constantly engaged to each other, she at our house one Tuesday — I at hers the next and this is one of the happiest days I spend at Woppoe [sic].” ELP Letters, pg. 34.

George Whitefield was one of the founders of Methodism (though he later argued with John Wesley). He was an evangelist famous for his moving oration. He first came to America in 1738, landing in Savannah, GA where he committed himself to easing the plight of orphans. Slavery was outlawed in Georgia at the time, which bothered Whitefield because it meant he had to pay for labor to get his orphanages built. He made many trips back and forth between America and England.

At the same time that he owned a plantation and slaves, Whitefield preached to the enslaved. He told them that they had souls and could be born again in Christ. Not surprisingly, this was considered dangerous by Charles Town residents, especially because at the time Blacks outnumbered whites by three to one.

The powers that be were so alarmed, in fact, that Reverend Alexander Garden petitioned the Bishops in London on the pretext that Whitefield was not following The Book of Common Prayer. Andrew Rutledge represented Whitefield.

Notes on George Whitefield’s preaching style. From that site:

Indian Pete and the Carolina Dog / Eliza, pg. 60

Some believe that Carolina dogs are the only breed indigenous to North America. It’s a mid-sized fawn-colored animal.

As mentioned above Indian Pete was in the record as belonging to ELP.

I based Indian Pete on a man named Alston Prince as described in Archibald Rutledge’s memoir, Home By the River. I really recommend this memoir. Here are a few things the author said about Prince. He had a “level penetrant voice.” He could handle a cart pulled by four vicious mules. He was spied plowing the fields with a bull so viscous, the animal was called dubbed “the terror of plantation Negroes.” His “kinship with nature was as unfeigned as it was intimate,” and he was “untouched by any human school of philosophy, [but] deeply read in the oracles of God.”

This comes later, but I also relied on Rutledge’s descriptions of bobolinks and bird-minding. In May, a flock could easily “devour a whole planting.” It took, he wrote, “an army of Negroes to keep the birds off.”

Cloud with Wings / Mo, pg. 62

From a Smithsonian article about passenger pigeons: “In the winter the birds established “roosting” sites in the forests of the southern states. Each “roost” often had such tremendous numbers of birds so crowded and massed together that they frequently broke the limbs of the trees by their weight.”

The planting practice of using the heel to make holes and the toes to slide the dirt back was a traditional West African technique. Black Majority, pg. 61. In Judith Carney’s book, Black Rice / The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, the connections of African rice varieties, planting methods, and processing techniques are explored in depth. On page 113, for example, she describes how the use and design of fanner baskets (to separate the chaff out) were African in origin.

Earlier, on page 97, Carney wrote: “Long before millions were transported across the Middle Passage, West Africans had refined an elaborate food production system that displayed acute knowledge of landscape gradient, soil principles, moisture regimes, farming by submersion, hydrology, and tidal dynamics, and the mechanisms to impound water and to control the flow.”

The importance of wetting and draining the rice fields is why, by the way, the so-called trunk minder was a key plantation figure. Sluices made out of trees were used to control water flow both onto and out of the fields and the trunk minder would have been in charge of managing them.

Lastly, the critical and valuable rice knowledge that the Windward Coast Africans had was well-known to slave holders and traders, which is why these ‘imports’ commanded higher prices.

Figs, Oranges, and Seeds / Eliza, pg. 70

Charles Pinckney really did grow seeds and sell them to growers in England. I thought I read about his gift of seeds to Eliza but I can’t find it at the moment.

Charles Pinckney was born in the Lowcountry (August 13, 1699 — making him 23 years older than Eliza) and was “Carolina’s first native attorney.” He was the middle of three boys, with parents from County Durham, England. He met Elizabeth Lamb while studying law in London and the two were married in St. Paul’s Cathedral on September 15, 1726. In Charles Town, he held many important posts: “advocate general of the Court of Vice-Admiralty, justice of the peace for Berkeley country, attorney general, member of the Commons House of Assembly and Speaker of that body intermittently from 1736 to 1740, and member of the Royal Council.” ELP Letters, pg xx and my notes.

News of a Neighbor / Eliza, pg. 73

John Drayton’s father, Thomas, was one of those Barbadians mentioned above who made his way to South Carolina as the economy in the West Indies changed to favor sugar. He’d made a fortune in beef in the West Indies and continued to do so in Carolina. He built his home in the Caribbean manner and though it was burned by U.S. Troops during the Civil War (like so many other structures), a building stands in its place today: Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. You can tour the site and there’s a separate and very informative tour of the slave cabins. Joseph McGill, historian, tour guide, educator, author, and founder of The Slave Dwelling Project, has been associated with Magnolia Plantation for many years.

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
The Slave Dwelling Project
Sleeping with the Ancestors, by Joseph McGill and Herb Frazier

In 1738 at the age of 23,  John Drayton purchased 350 acres just south of his father’s estate. Being a third son, he didn’t stand a chance at inheriting his father’s plantation, though he would later buy the property. According to Wikipedia, Drayton Hall is the only plantation house to survive both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, perhaps because it was used as a local command post.

Everything about the character of John Drayton is made up, except a couple of facts relative to his first two wives. He married four times. His first wife was Sarah Cattell (I call her “Suzanne” because I already have Sarah Rutledge). She died in 1740 along with their two young children. John married Charlotta (Charlotte) Bull in 1741. Charlotte was the daughter of Lieutenant Governor William Bull.

The house is inspired by Palladium architecture, but I may have gotten the wrong book. Years back, I came across a reference to The Four Books of Architecture but the reference I saw this morning was to A Book of Architecture by James Gibbs. 

Drayton Hall is a fine example of preservation care (as opposed to restoration). When I visited it recently, a descendant of John Drayton led the informative tour, using a silver spoon as a pointer without any apparent irony.

Letter to Mary Bartlett re: Pox / Eliza, pg. 77

Eliza received her small pox variolation in England, not at Wappoo as I have it.

In this chapter, it becomes clear why the catalpa is a boon to anglers — for the caterpillars that inhabit it. 

References to miasma suggest that the early settlers understood that fevers were related to boggy, swampy, damp landscapes. That’s why many elite retired during “sick season” up into the pine woods further inland or onto one of the barrier islands where breezes kept the air clearer. They did not know, however, that mosquitos were vectors of disease.

Tongue Clucking / Cudjoe, pg. 78

Using wooden slats to measure feet for shoe sizes came from Charles Joyner’s book, Down by the Riverside (page 115).

Smokehouse Quarantine / Eliza, pg. 80

Eliza quotes Milton in a letter in 1742.

The idea that Africans had immunity to disease, and in particular, to yellow fever and malaria, is one that’s a little complicated. For one thing, folks in Charles Town had difficulty distinguishing between yellow fever and malaria. For another, record keeping was sketchy. Peter Wood devotes an entire chapter to exploring the theories prevalent at the time and what was known scientifically. Black Majority, pgs. 63-85. Whatever was true physically, it’s clear that attributing immunity to slaves who were expected to work through every season, including the so-called ‘sick season,’ was a convenient notion.

An Uneasy Pact / Eliza, pg. 84

Mrs. Boddicott, as mentioned, was the name of Eliza’s guardian while she studied in England. The italicized quotes come from Eliza’s letters to her, but the stuff about her mother’s untraveled journey is purely made up.

Some of the language and sentiments in Eliza’s letter to Mrs. Boddicott can be found in her actual letter dated May 2, 1740. ELP Letters, pg 6.

Mr. Dutarque / Eliza, pg. 88

Mr. Dutarque, a Huguenot, is a made-up character. I make him a deer skin merchant so as to be able to get in a little history about the Native Americans. 

Deer skins were a big business in the early years of the colony and wealthy traders did indeed often own real property in town as well as along the rivers. The interests of merchants and planters were often divergent (especially over issues of debt and currency), but both enjoyed wealth and status.

There were several waves of Huguenot immigrants from France who came to the Lowcountry seeking religious freedom. Many settled along the Santee River, north of Charles Town. The Lord Proprietors sought to entice French immigrants for their skill in producing silk and olive oil with pamphlets full of exaggerations about the ease of living in the Lowcountry (the pamplets are mentioned both in this chapter and another). Notably left out of these propagandist leaflets: any mention of the debilitating heat and the recurring crushing waves of disease.

Another motivation for trying to entice white immigrants? There weren’t enough white settlers to do all the jobs associated with bringing the slave holders’ goods to market. Jobs like: rope makers, coopers, wainwrights, black smiths, harbor pilots. Elite planters well-understood that affording Black men the amount of physical autonomy and expertise that working in the trades entailed was inherently destabilizing. Think about it. Even an enslaved apprentice could learn the landscape, hear political news, and might learn to read. Even if they didn’t earn money from their trade (and some did), these bondmen had considerably more agency than the average field worker who was confined to plantation. 

One could argue that the greed that underpinned the speed of African imports is very much responsible for the Stono Slave Rebellion, which occurred at a time when the ratio of Blacks to white was close to or in excess of three to one.

Side note: unlike the colonies of the North (say, Massachusetts), there was a great deal of religious and ethnic diversity in the Lowcountry in these early years. There were Dutch, Irish, and Scottish settlers, Swiss and German, and of course many British, both from England and from colonies in the West Indies. There was a synagogue, founded in 1749. Diversity did not translate to tolerance, mind. For instance, as mentioned above, Catholicism was outlawed during this time.

The Cherokee did sometimes commit suicide after being scarred by the pox because the shame of a ruined face was so great.

The Yamasee War of twenty years prior was devastating to settlers (and to the natives). It’s a reminder of how fluid populations were and how much violence the colonizers inflicted (or tried to inflict) on anyone getting in their way. The fact that ten percent of white settlers were killed during that war is something later folks would not want to dwell on.

I found the names of runaways that Dutarque mentions in this chapter in the record. Bellfast, the branded eight-year-old boy atop the branded horse, will show up many years later in the epilogue. CITE?

Supper Under the Oak / July, pg. 92

The torture inflicted upon the made-up character Eubeline was found in a book by Thavolia Glymph called Out of the House of Bondage, The Transformation of the Plantation Household. The reference to gouging out an eye by a Mistress who also read her slaves Bible verses is on page 29.

Glymph’s dismantling of the “kind Mistress” mythology is powerful and eye-opening. “In general,” she wrote, “a silence surrounds white women’s contributions to the basic nature of slavery, its maintenance, and especially, one of its central tendencies, the maiming and destruction of black life.” pg. 28 “Not only was violence from the hands of mistresses often brutal and even sadistic, it was often disproportionate to the offense and, sometimes, manufactured in the absence of an offense.”  pg. 44

She argues that characterizing mistress-violence as ‘spontaneous’ or as a function of a foul temper badly misses white women’s actual historic participation in the brutal subjugation of their slaves.

“Mistresses crossed and re-crossed the South’s formally designated gender boundaries. They regularly contravened notions of white female gentility that under gird ideologies of race and class and southern domesticity, slipping in and out of the costume of the soft, gentle ‘southern lady.’ In doing so, they acted on their power … and their powerless … at one and the same time. And their slaves were (intolerable) witnesses to the moral nakedness in between.” pg. 46

Not Dead Enough / Saffron, pg. 94

One of my favorite research rabbit holes was the one about how to butcher an alligator. I also learned the rule that for every inch between an alligator’s snout tip and eyes, one could infer a foot of body length.

The Prophet and Migraines / Eliza, pg. 103

Eliza mentions her need for a doctor on February 6, 1741. ELP Letters, pg. 12 and again on pg. 14, this time referencing headaches.

Mr. Tilton Calling / Eliza, pg. 106

Eliza talks about teaching “two black girls” to read and how if she were to receive her father’s blessing, she would expand her efforts to  “a parcel of little Negroes.” ELP Letters, pg. 34. Contrary to my telling, her mother approved of her efforts according to this letter.

The letter goes on to reveal Eliza’s priorities and self-discipline.

She writes, “In general then I rise at five o’Clock… read till Seven, then take a walk in the garden or field, see that the servants are at their respective business, then to breakfast. The first hour after breakfast is spent at my musick, the next is constantly employed in recolecting something I have learned least for want of practice it should be quite lost … such as French and short hand. After that I devote the rest of my time till I dress for dinner to our little Polly and two black girls who I teach to read…” ELP Letters, pg 34.

After dinner she tended to needlework until the light failed and then sometimes read and wrote. She had music lessons on Mondays.

The Full Moon / Saffron, pg. 118

I didn’t know this, but some mixed race infants’ skin darkens after birth.

The Weight of Cloth / Melody, pg. 121

Concerning cow peas, this is a nice reference from nativeseeds.org

The cowpea, Vigna unguiculata, was domesticated in Africa and is an introduced species in North America that thrives in the similarly hot climate. They were domesticated around 5,000-6,000 years ago, and are still important for food and fodder across Africa. They came to the Americas with the slave trade, and eventually moved across this continent with African slaves. They were often planted along the edges of fields to enrich the soil due to their high nitrogen fixing ability, and cattle would graze on the leaves and vines (hence the name cowpea). Many settlers of European descent were unfamiliar with the crop and regarded it merely as cattle fodder, not fit for human consumption; it was this misunderstanding of its culinary significance that might just have saved this food resource. During the Civil War, Union soldiers didn’t bother to torch the cowpeas when they burned Confederate fields as they marched through the south. This oversight may have saved both black and white families from starvation during this period, and it might be one reason for the association of cowpeas with good luck in the south.

For excellent discussion on African influences on Southern cuisine, please see Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene.

Love’s Quarry / Saffron, pg. 124

The Slave Code of 1740 would tighten the rules governing the enslaved and weapons. It won’t be an outright ban, as one might expect. As with so many aspects of chattel slavery, the desire to control and discipline ‘their property’ was at odds with economy: it very much served slaveholders’ bottom line for the enslaved to provide some of their own food.

In the Ground / Eliza, pg. 127

I found a reference to “broken doses of calomel” in the collected letters, A North Woman in the Plantation South: Typhena Blanch Holder Fox, (1856 – 1876).

You’ll note that these letters come more than 100 years after my novel’s time period and from Louisiana. This stretching forward in time and across geography was often necessary when hunting for original sources because of the nature of slave history. I also relied on the written works of Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Solomon Northrup.

King George’s Birthday / Eliza, pg. 130

Here is where we learn about the supposed slave plot to overtake the island of Antigua in the year 1736. This Smithsonian article is a good source. One of Lucas’s slave was executed for his purported participation. His name was Caesar. As mentioned above, that’s why I have Eliza’s parents exchanging concerned looks on the dock the day of their arrival at Wappoo when they meet their ‘new Caesar.’

Part of what was so unnerving to the British about the events of 1736 was the purported participation of ‘well-seasoned,’ ‘loyal’ slaves, some of whom were even Catholic converts. The idea that a docile, obedient enslaved person’s needs and aspirations aligned with his owners’ reveals one aspect of the racist mythologies underpinning chattel slavery.

Other ideas included: the notion that Black people couldn’t survive without their white owners; that they were in fact better off as slaves; that they lacked intelligence (but also were devious beyond measure).

The Theatre / Eliza, pg. 136

The comedic play referenced, The Recruiting Officer, was in fact popular at this time. More descriptions of food, theatre, inns, and society can be found in George C. Rogers’s book Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys and also at the end of this post.

As mentioned above, John Drayton’s first wife was actually named Sarah, not Suzanne.

Imagining the heightened concern of contagion was easily done here, as I wrote this during the early COVID years.

Mary Chardon will go on to remarry, and to the man mentioned here, Pastor Huston.

Here is a reference to The Poinsett Inn : historic marker database.

The Dance / July, pg. 139

Just to mention the obvious: the enslaved gathered at great risk to their lives and the fact that they did speaks to a resilience that is difficult for me to imagine. When July says, “Joy is the best rebellion of all,” she speaks a phrase still heard in Black liberation circles today.

In Closer to Freedom, Enslaved Women & Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, scholar Stephanie M.H. Camp underscores this point: “By dressing up to go to outlaw parties, bondwomen heightened the risk they undertook, because their conspicuousness exposed all of them (particularly household bondwomen) to detection. The degree of danger involved in dressing up and running away for an evening and women’s willingness to take it suggests how urgently they needed to extricate themselves from their proper places.” pg. 86.

I base Saffron’s act of borrowing Eliza’s dress on an enslaved woman named Mary Wyatt from Virginia as described in Camp’s book. Camp quotes Mary Wyatt on pg. 85: “‘Lawdy, I used to take dat dress when she warn’t nowhere roun’ an’ hole it up against me an’ ‘magine myself wearin’ it.'” Camp continues, “One Christmas season Wyatt decided to wear the dress to a plantation frolic … Donning the fancy dress of her mistress, Wyatt shed the most outward markers of her slave status and adopted instead a symbol of freedom.” pg. 85

Camp’s book outlines some of the ways that bondwomen’s acts of resistance differed from enslaved men’s, tending to be more personal, spontaneous, and short-term.

The Dance / Eliza, pg. 140

In 1712, South Carolina enacted a law criminalizing homosexuality.

From the History of Sodomy Laws, linked above [footnote links removed]
The Colonial Period, 1607-1776

A charter granted by King Charles II in 1667 to the Carolina colonies permitted local officials to enact criminal laws so long as they did not conflict with laws of England. Despite this authority, it went unexercised as far as sodomy was concerned for nearly a half-century.

In 1712, redundant laws were enacted that criminalized buggery. One provided for a compulsory death sentence and forfeiture of property only for males who engaged in “the detestable and abominable vice of buggery.” Offenders could be convicted by “verdict, confession, or outlawry.” The second statute adopted the Henrican law verbatim, and apparently this law was what was considered in force since it was what appeared in the various codified versions of South Carolina law in later years. A third statute adopted the common law of England.

Calico Burning / Melody, pg. 144

Cite where a field hand is made to wear a dress?

Labor / Melody, pg. 146

I’ve long known about the practice of white women having a slave nurse their infants, but I just recently learned that breasts might be segregated, one breast for white babies, one for Black.

Bloody Cloth / Saffron, pg. 147

Placenta as ritual offering ? Part of the point of describing the various offerings for Titus is to show how religious practices had to adapt to life on this side of the Atlantic.

Maroon communities are groups of escaped slaves living off-plantation. The word ‘maroon’ does not, as one might assume, refer to skin color. It comes from the Spanish word meaning ‘fierce’ or ‘unruly.’ This distinction will matter a great deal to Saffron, the poet of the novel.

In some areas (Jamaica), maroon communities were tolerated for decades and there was even trade between Blacks and whites. Notably, the maroons of Jamaica occupied elevated lands unsuitable to agriculture. Eventually, the peace didn’t hold.

Here’s a little history about Jamaica’s maroon population from a Harvard site:

In 1663, another Maroon faction, led by Juan de Serras, ambushed and killed Lubolo, initiating eight decades of escalating tension with the British, who could not dislodge the Maroons from their mountain fortresses. By 1720, the Maroons took the offensive, mounting raids against British plantations along the base of the mountains. From 1729 to 1739, a state of open warfare existed between the British and the Maroons. The first British governor, Robert Hunter, was frustrated by Jamaica’s mountainous terrain, which the Maroon leaders used to their advantage. The Windward Maroons were lead by Captain Quao, while the Leeward Maroons followed Cudjoe, a skilled and ruthless guerilla warrior. Hunter died in 1734, and within five years the British decided that the conflict would have to be resolved through negotiation.

The Leeward and Windward Treaties of 1739 ended the Maroon-British wars.

Madagascar Rice / Eliza, pg. 151

Carolina Gold Rice has a long history. I’ll leave it to you to google.

Wedding / Eliza, pg. 151

Sarah marries John Rutledge, Christmas Day 1738. Much of the complexities of Eliza’s feelings about Sarah got cut from the final draft. Eliza found it distasteful, for example, that Sarah was marrying her step-uncle, even though there were no blood ties. Obviously, her speculations about the choice of wedding date are not very charitable.

Day After Christmas / Saffron, pg. 153

Having enslaved children eat out of troughs was a thing. Doc Jackson’s cruelty was renowned. CITE

PART III

The Source of Her Distress / Eliza, pg. 155

Here we meet the father of Moses. Whittaker is very much a secondary character, but I had a whole chapter about him in an earlier draft. Again, if you’re interested, consider signing up for my newsletter on the tab above (not the Blog subscribe button on the sidebar).

I made up the Whittakers, but Andrew Deveaux was a neighbor of Eliza’s.

“Deveaux was an elderly neighbor of Eliza’s and an experienced planter, whom she mentions as giving her advice in her early agricultural experiments.” ELP Letters, pg. xix.

Portraits / Eliza, pg. 159

It was common for upper crust Brits to send their sons back to England for schooling, though somewhat less common for them to send daughters. As this chapter makes clear, the young age of Tommy makes it seem a questionable choice to me. Unlike my telling, Eliza’s brothers sailed to England from Antigua.

Eliza went to Mrs. Pearson’s Boarding School for Girls  from the age of 11 to 14. Notably, a childless neighbor willed his greenhouse to the school — a fortuitous circumstance which may have played a role in Eliza developing a lifelong love of horticulture.

The Mirror / July, pg. 160

See pg. 43 above.

Four Chapters: The Summons / Eliza, pg. 174 ; Basket of Cottonmouths / Eliza, pg. 178; Rope Hopes / Mo, pg. 179; The Depot Steps /Omniscient Narrator, pg. 182

 Stono Slave Rebellion / September 9, 1739

Early Sunday morning on September 9^th, a dozen or so enslaved men ran from their posts (digging ditches along the Ashley?) and rebelled. They went first to Hutchenson’s Depot and killed the two men there (Robert Bathhurst and Thomas Gibbs). After stealing arms, gunpowder, and food, they headed South, presumably toward Florida, since in a divisive, anti-British maneuver, the Spanish Governor of Florida had issued a proclamation granting any runaway slave their freedom should they make it to St. Augustine. The Stono rebels burnt houses and murdered whites as they went, including Colonel Hext’s wife and daughter and Godfrey and his son and daughter (mentioned in my telling). Notably, they spared one innkeeper (Mr. Wallace) for his well-known kindnesses to slaves. (Of course, “kindness” as applied to white men might have meant as little as ‘he did not whip them’ or of an innkeeper, that he was willing to do business with them).

Over the course of the morning, the rebels’ numbers swelled to as many as a hundred, others called in by the drumming on hogsheads. They killed between twenty and twenty-five whites. Pausing in a field late in the day, many drunk from stolen rum, they either (depending on the account you read) danced around in wild disarray or took part in coordinated military exercises.

Lt. Governor William Bull and a small retinue happed upon the crowd on their way back from Beaufort. They sounded the alarm and returned with a militia (between twenty and 100 armed white men). To almost no resistance, the militia killed thirty to forty slaves immediately. Another thirty escaped. Most of the escapees were found and killed over the course of September.

For a PBS outline of events, see Africans in America, The Stono Rebellion. From there you can travel to other links with more info.

How many insurrectionists took part is a wildly varying number. Also, It was reported that during the violent encounter at the end of the day, some slaves were determined to have been unwilling participants and allowed to return to their plantations (how these non-willing participants were selected has remained a mystery to me).

The names Jemma (or Jemmy) and Cato come up repeatedly as the leaders of the uprising. I decided to use both. Speaking of Cato, a 1930’s interview with a person claiming to be the great-great-grandson of Cato can be found here: A Family Account of the Stono Uprising. This is where I learned that Cato was literate and wrote passes for others.

Question: Was the rebellion a spontaneous, opportunistic event or a carefully planned uprising? Short answer: I think it was planned.

Spontaneous View of the Rebellion

In Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739, Peter Charles Hoffer outlines his version of a spontaneous rebellion. He posits that the rebellion was sparked initially by thirst and hunger. A “passel of slaves” who were digging canals (per the Riverways Act) and left unsupervised might very well, at the end of a long, hot day, go in search of refreshment. And if they had encountered two white men in Hutchenson’s Depot, surprised and then killed them, well, then they had nothing to lose. A Black man killing a white man was after all, a death sentence. These men would have heard about the offer of freedom from the Spanish and headed south.

Hoffer takes into account the recently passed Riverways Act. The law was designed to make the rivers more navigable by creating a series of run-off canals that would handle the high waters of spring (the ‘freshet’) as well as the volume of rain dropped by big storms. It required slave owners to assign one or more slaves to the project depending on the slave owners’ assets. Unlike the general slave population, this group was expected to work seven days a week and was often unsupervised. If ‘expendable’ slaves were assigned (given a slave holder’s desire to keep labor on his property uninterrupted), these might have been troublemakers or slaves so recently arrived as to not be ‘seasoned.’

Since the majority of ‘imports’ at that time were from the Congo and Angola, it’s reasonable to think that many Angolans might’ve been assigned to the ditch digging crews. They were as yet trained to work the fields and had reputations for being runners. Angola had been colonized by the Portuguese and hence some of the new Angolan slaves likely had adopted some Catholic beliefs.

Planned Version of Stono Rebellion

(see The River Flows on: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America by Walter C. Rucker and Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt by Mark M. Smith).

Three factors point to planning. One, it was strategically timed to take advantage of the city being shut down due to disease for at least another six weeks. Two, September 9 was one of the last Sundays that the white men of the parish would not be required to carry guns to church (the Security Act was due to become effective later in September). And three, September 9 is sacred to the Virgin Mary and would have held meaning to practitioners of a faith that blended elements of their indigenous beliefs and Catholicism. Historically, Catholics appeal to Mary for succor and aid in times of trouble.

As mentioned above, at least one account makes a rebellion leader literate (Cato), and so it’s entirely possible he would have read about the upcoming Security Law and felt some urgency to stage the uprising before then.

PART III

The News / Eliza, pg. 187

The practice of spiking heads of executed slaves on poles along the rivers was a gruesome form of deterrence. It was doubly cruel because some African religions held that a body must be intact for it to travel to meet the Ancestors. Many slaveholders were aware of these beliefs.

Covering the Tallow / July, pg. 216

In a letter dated April 23, 1741, Eliza records that she wrote to her father, “informing him of the loss of a Negroe man — also the boat being overset in Santilina Sound and 20 barrels of Rice lost.” ELP Letters, pg. 13

A footnote tells us that ‘Santilina Sound’ refers to Saint Helena Sound, located 40 miles south of Charles Town and that the boat was likely carrying produce from the Lucas plantation Garden Hill, located on the Combahee River (which flows into the sound).

Indigo Seeds / Eliza, pg. 209

Charles’s referencing Eliza as the “little Visionary” is found in a letter to Mary Bartlett: “‘Tell the little Visionary,’ says your Uncle, ‘come to town and partake of some of the amusements suitable to her time of life.'” ELP Letters, pg. 38.

Part IV

The Nature of My Affection / Eliza, pg. 209

The Great Fire of Charles Town was in November 1742, not 1740 as I have it. Peter Woods, in his book Black Majority, wrote: the fire “whipped by a northwest wind, burned out of control for six hours, consuming some three hundred houses, destroying crucial new fortifications, and causing property losses estimated at 250,000 pounds sterling.” pg. 294-95.

I found references to a fire sale at Hill & Guerard  and the mention of various accommodations affected citizens had to make on the website Preservation Society of Charleston here.

PART V

Athena and the Owl / Eliza, pg. 220

The actual name of the Captain mentioned here was Frankland. He is mentioned in a letter Eliza wrote to her father. ELP Letters, pg. 55.

In an article called, Audience Awareness in the Early Letters of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Judith C. Burges argues that Eliza was in love with Charles fully four years before his first wife’s death. I had come to this conclusion before reading Burges’s article, since there are clues in Eliza’s letters, including sly directives in letters to his niece Mary Bartlett not to tell her uncle such and such, when clearly she wanted Charles to know such and such. Example: letter to Mary Bartlett quoted in the note for Inward Flowers, pg. 245.

In this chapter, Eliza says, “Two offers of marriage had come my way in the last year. I’d written to Father, ‘The riches of Peru and Chile put together could not purchase a sufficient esteem for either to become my husband.'” She actually wrote this to her father in 1740.

Eliza’s grandmother actually died in 1741. ELP Letters, pg. 15. Also, Eliza’s letters express worry about her brother, Tommy, while he was away in England. She describes his “languishing condition” and her mother’s “excess of grief.” ELP Letters, pg. 68. In an earlier letter to Tommy, Eliza calls his illness “dangerous” and addresses the separation that comes with death. ELP Letters, pg. 63.

Crowfield Plantation no longer exists, making Eliza’s epistolary descriptions particularly important. 

“The house stands a mile from, but in sight of the road, and makes a very hansoume appearance; as you draw nearer new beauties discover themselves, first the fruitful Vine mantleing up the wall loading with delicious Clusters; next a spacious bason in the midst of a large green presents itself as you enter the gate that leads to the house, which is neatly finished; the rooms well contrived and elegantly furnished. From the back door is a spacious walk a thousand foot long; each side of which nearest the house it a grass plat enamiled in a Serpertine manner with flowers. Next to that … a thicket of young tall live oaks where a variety of Airry Chorristers pour forth their melody … Opposite on the left hand is a large square boleing green sunk a little below the level of the rest of the garden with a walk quite round composed on a double row of fine large flowering Laurel and Catulpas which form both shade and beauty.” She then describes a “large fish pond.”

In this chapter, Eliza again describes the loss of her dear friend Mary Chardon (Huston) to madness. 

“When I consider the many hours [of] agreeable conversation I have had with her; the many happy times we have read, worked, walked together in friendly Converse with her whose mind I know to be incapable of any disguise; I am greatly affected. When I see her worthy Parent lamenting this only, this darling child, the joy of her life, thus lost before she arrived at the prime of her age, what do I not feel; but when I reflect on her cheerful temper, good sence, natural and pleasing vivacity now changed to consistant laughing, sighing, singing and incoherent discourses, I am shocked beyound what I am able to express.” ELP Letters, pg. 46.

Flip / Melody, pg. 224

The ingenuity of slave escapes through various charades is truly impressive. Having a light-skinned slave pose as an owner and using the excuse of a poultice for the jaw to avoid having to speak came from the harrowing story of William and Ellen Craft. Their account can be found here: The Great Escapes, Four Slave Narratives, pgs. 240-244.

Indigo Expert / Eliza, pg. 232

I learned about the controversy of wood vs. brick indigo vats in Andrea Feeser’s book, Red, White, & Black Make Blue, pgs. 104-105. In a letter to Charles Pinckney, Feeser quotes Eliza’s father: “‘I have since recollected upon my wife telling me the indigo Nicholas Cromwell made gave linen a red cast, that it may possibly continue some time, if not always, as the work is made of bricks.'”

On that same page, Feeser wrote: “Charles Pinckney’s accounts show that by 1746, the Lucas-Pinckney clan preferred wood to brick in their indigo operations, and at one point in the later 1740’s, Quash spent thirty-three days making wooden indigo vats at Garden Hill [another Lucas plantation] and elsewhere.

Tansy and Pennyroyal / Melody, pg. 234

I didn’t keep track of the sites I referred to about abortifacients when writing this section, but a quick search just now turned up a site called Nurse Clio, where she states, “Pennyroyal … has been used since antiquity to induce abortions.”

The Trial / Eliza, pg. 236

Eliza barely mentions any of her father’s slaves in her letters, but there is a brief reference to Quash in a letter dated January 1742 (which the editors think was meant to be 1743). She wrote: “Inform him [her father] of some Negroes detected going to Augustine. They accused Mol[att]o Quash. I was at his tryal when he proved him self quite Innocent. The ring leader is to be hanged and one Whyped.” ELP Letters, pgs. 57-58.

Witness to the Dumping / Saffron, pg. 241.

There were two Cromwells that attended the Lucas indigo vats. I have chosen to include only the scurrilous one, Nicholas. In the opening notes to ELP Letters: “Meanwhile her father had sent from Montserrat an experience dye-maker, Nicholas Cromwell, to make the vats and assist her in the process. … The 1741 output was … marked also by difficulties with Cromwell. ‘He made a great misery of the process,’ recalled Eliza many years later; ‘said he repented coming as he should ruin his own Country by it … and threw in so large a quantity of Lime water as to spoil the colour.'” ELP Letters, pg. xvii.

As I might’ve mentioned, at a plantation re-enactment day in the early 20-teens, the indigo dye actor asserted that a slave had ruined Eliza’s batch. When I challenged him on that fact and said that it was instead a white man from Montserrat, he said, “Well, if you do enough research, I suppose you could find that out.” I retorted that the information was in her published letters.

Inward Flowers / Eliza, pg. 245

Eliza refers to her fig orchard in this letter to Mary Bartlett: “I have planted a large figg orchard with design to dry and export them. I have reckoned my expence and the prophets to arise from these figgs, but was I to tell you how great an Estate I am to make this way, and how ’tis to be laid out you would think me far gone in romance. Your good Uncle I know has long thought I have a fertile brain at scheming. I only confirm him in his opinion; but I own I love the vegitable world extremly. I think it an innocent and useful amusement. Pray tell him, if he laughs much at my project, I never intend to have my hand in a silver mine and he will understand as well as you what I mean.” ELP, pg. 35

This is one of the letters, by the way, where the way Eliza refers to Charles reveals her growing affection for the man. See note for pg. 220 above.

Ambrose / Eliza, pg. 257

I was told that the actual name of the Black man who aided Eliza in finally bringing indigo to market is in the record, but I did not come across it.

Planning a New Life / Eliza, pg. 266

Eliza’s receipt of the mortgaged Wappoo Plantation and its slaves as dowry is mentioned in Feeser’s book, Red, White, & Black Make Blue, on page 104.

Eliza’s father and Charles really did fight over Quashee. Again, drawing from Feeser’s book: “Pinckney and George Lucas quietly battled for the use of Quash’s services. Sometime between late 1744 and the spring of 1745, Lucas instructed Pinckney to insure Quash and send him by ‘prime sailer’ to Antigua. Pinckney demurred, arguing that he had great use for the slave, and on May 22, 1745, Lucas relented, nevertheless maintaining that he could ‘make considerably more of [Quash’s] labor.’ Later that year, Pinckney began purchasing materials for a city residence in Charles Town, and in 1746, he put Quash in charge of the entire construction project … ” The “instructions not only describe a stately home with a great deal of woodwork but also demonstrate that the save read, wrote, and kept accounts.”

Pinckney eventually, on May 12, 1750, manumitted Quash, who by then had been baptized as ‘John Williams.’ With the help of Reverend Alexander Garden (who had baptized Williams), Williams bought several parcels of land. In October of 1751, Williams bought his son and two out of three of his daughters “out of slavery for two hundred pounds.” He was unable to purchase his wife, Molly, and youngest daughter, Amy, because their owner would not sell them. Molly and Amy will be transferred eventually through the probate process to their owner’s wife. In the meantime, Williams acquired slaves and also about 400 acres of land up near the mouth of the Santee River. Feeser notes that at some point, Williams “needed to sell that property and leave South Carolina.” Williams then disappears from the record and it’s hard not to think that white fury at his success had something to do with his disappearance. 

Please see Dr. Tiffany Momon’s article about John Quashee Williams — one that includes lots of details about the home he built for Eliza and Charles here.

Under the Catalpa / Eliza, pg. 230

You can find a discussion about the relative quality of indigo (colonial vs. Spanish of French) in Feeser’s book, Red, White, & Black Make Blue, pg. 18. One controversy was that while the quality of the color from Carolinian indigo was sufficient, it required much more dye to achieve it. This debate went on for decades.

Conspiratorial Glee / Eliza, pg. 250

Eliza mentions Charles’s riding accident: “If [the accident] only prevents him riding that dancing beauty Chickasaw for the future, I think ’tis not much to be lamented, for he has as many tricks and airs as a dancing bear.” ELP Letters, pg. 38.

A Chance Meeting / Eliza, pg. 252

The letter that Eliza erroneously signed “Eliza Pinckney” came earlier – it was dated February 1741.

Cane Creek / Saffron, pg. 272

For a recent exploration of maroon communities in the American South, see Smithsonian article Deep in the Swamps: Archeologists are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom (exploring the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina and Virginia).

“By downplaying American marronage, and valorizing white involvement in the Underground Railroad, historians have shown a racial bias, in Sayers’ opinion, a reluctance to acknowledge the strength of black resistance and initiative. They’ve also revealed the shortcomings of their methods: ‘Historians are limited to source documents. When it comes to maroons, there isn’t that much on paper. But that doesn’t mean their story should be ignored or overlooked. As archaeologists, we can read it in the ground.’”

Here’s a blog post with a good link embedded in it.

Tickets and Abscess / Melody, pg. 276

The strategy of using poultices to avoid having to make conversation while escaping slavery came directly from the narrative of William and Ellen Craft in The Great Escapes, Four Slave Narratives. Also, like Moses in my telling, Ellen Craft was lighter-skinned and posed as the owner of her travel companion, in her case, her husband.

EPILOGUE

Return / Eliza, pg. 296

The whole reason the Lucases went to England was that Charles did not receive a coveted chief justice appointment from Governor James Glen, even after serving as interim. The appointment went instead to a former high bailiff of Westminster who’d been accused of corruption. The “distant post [was] a way both to do him [the former bailiff] justice and to remove him as a political irritant. Smarting under the affront, Charles Pinckney took his wife and children for a long-promised visit to England, where he felt he would be able to give his sons the advantage of a proper education. In England he served briefly as commissioner of the colony — the agent who represented the governor and Council in Carolina before the Board of Lords of Trade and Plantations in London.” ELP Letters, pg xxii.

I have echoed some of the words Eliza used to describe her late husband’s virtues: “With what pleasure I reflect on the clearness of his head, the goodness of his heart, the piety of his mind, the sweetness of his temper, the good Sence and vivacity of his conversation, his fine address, the amiableness of his whole deportment, for I did not know a Virtue he did not posess.” ELP Letters, pg 101.

The language: “To think that for fourteen years I was the happiest mortal on Earth!” can be found in a letter. ELP Letters, pg. 100.

Proclamation / Moses, pg. 300

You have to drill down a bit in this blog post, but there’s info about Anthony Benezet. He was a French-born Huguenot who fled from religious persecution and became a Quaker, abolitionist, and educator in Philadelphia. The Proclamation awaited in this chapter was drafted and passed by the Quakers in 1758.

Her Lips / Maggie, pg. 303

I think I mentioned above that Bellfast, an enslaved boy who ran away atop his owner’s horse at the age of eight, is in the record.

GENERAL

Clothing. You can see an example of a “sacque dress” here. As it happens the garment depicted used silk threads produced by Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Another interesting post about gowns comes from the Charleston History Museum here: A Legacy in Silk: Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s Robe a la Francaise.

This YouTube video from the Charleston Museum highlights a gown that Eliza Lucas Pinckney actually wore. It’s a Robe a la Francais believed to have been made in 1753.

This Met Museum post features a detailed description of the Robe a la Francais and has some photos.

Women did wear two petticoats for some reason. Many gowns were open at the front revealing what was called a “stomacher,” often quilted or otherwise embellished. Was this a third layer under the gown or one of the petticoats? I don’t know but I think so.

A tucker was a piece of decorative cloth, often with lace. One use for a tucker was to drape it around the neck and tuck it into the bosom of the dress.

One thing I’ve often considered is how much people must have stunk in the hot months, or generally, really. Cloth wasn’t laundered all that frequently. Bathing wasn’t that frequent either. And it was tropically steamy hot many months of the year.

Food

Jumble: spiced butter cookie

Hominy: whole corn kernels stripped off cob and soaked in a lye or lime solution (which removes hulls and softens kernels). More at Southern Living.

Indigo

An eight minute video about Eliza’s role in promoting the growth of the commodity indigo can be found here.

The video says ELP was born in 1723. No, her birth year was 1722. It also says that her mother died soon after their arrival to which also isn’t accurate. Millie Lucas lived long enough to see Eliza marry Charles (1744) and to re-unite with her husband in the West Indies. In a footnote to a letter penned by Eliza dated October 3, 1758, it is stated: “The register of St. John’s Parish, Antigua, records the burial of Eliza’s younger brother, Thomas Lucas, on August 11, 1756, of Ann Lucas (probably Eliza’s mother) on October 25, 1759, and of her brother Captain George Lucas … on October 25, 1759.” ELP Letters, pg. 103.

Video narrator also says Britain was eager to source indigo in SC because they were at war with France and many of the West Indian producers were French. England was not at war with France at this time. Of course England historically wanted as little to do with the French as possible. I also read that importers were sick of the demands and squabbling of the East Indian producers. The British were so happy to get an American colonial source that they subsidized the commodity. This is part of why the value of indigo dropped at the end of the War of Independence — no more subsidies.

Also, and this is a little more pernicious, the script attributes the sabotage of an indigo dye batch to one of ELP’s enslaved indigo workers. This is false. It’s a fallacy I heard repeated, BTW, a plantation re-enactment week.

More Eliza biography here on website from Walking Charleston. Here, Eliza’s birth year is correctly stated as 1722.