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Columns::February 10, 2003
Weekly Reader
Book details life of a plantation wife
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$49.95
University of Georgia Press |
As the wife of a frequently absent slaveholder and public figure, Anna Matilda Page King (1798-1859) was the de facto head of their Seal Island plantation. Anna collects more than 150 letters to King’s husband, children, parents and others. The volume is edited by Melanie Pavich-Lindsay, a doctoral student in UGA’s department of social foundations of education.
Reared with the expectation that she would marry a planter, have children and tend to her family’s domestic affairs, King also was schooled by her father in all aspects of plantation management, from seed cultivation to building construction. That grounding served her well when her husband’s properties were seized in 1842. King and her family were sustained by the St. Simons Island property left to her in trust by her father. With the labor of 50 bondpeople and “their increase,” she strove, with little aid from her husband, to keep the plantation solvent. A record of King’s many roles, from accountant to mother, from doctor to horticulturist, the letters also reveal much about her relationship with, and attitudes toward, her enslaved workers. Historians have yet to fully understand the lives of plantation mistresses left on their own by husbands pursuing political and other professional careers. King’s letters give readers insight into one such woman.
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