128
575

 

J
MICHIGAN sure us

11111 1

ensmr LIBRARlES "

I! 1

 

 

 

 

 

i 1 I {1’1 Ill/I ”If!!!Hill/MINI}!!!

'1
H
31 93 014110690

 

 

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

Death and Culture
in Colonial South Carolina

presented by

Bradford J. Wood

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. degree in History

/%@%

Major professor

 

 

 

 

 

elk/ff

O~7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

_~_ i____ *V_¢E_‘_.__~qrfi__"_a_———h-

fififl_nfi_

____.,,.—_-

 

.‘p—F._' fi——h.,—_—

 

LIBRARY ‘
tetichigan State I
University

 

 

 

PLACE N RETURN BOXto monthl- chockout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES mum on or baton data duo.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

     

 

 

 

 

 

f

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3C] 7 5
HaaEr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU In An Affirmative WOMEN Opportunity lnstlttflonm

 

DEATH AND CULTURE
IN COLONIAL SOUTH CAROLINA

By

Bradford James Wood

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1995

ABSTRACT

DEATH AND CULTURE
IN COLONIAL SOUTH CAROLINA

By

Bradford J. Wood

The constant presence of death played an important role
in the cultural development of the colonial South Carolina
low country. This thesis explores that role and argues that
early South Carolinians used cultural adaptations to cope
with the colony's frequent mortality. Historians have
acknowledged that colonial South Carolina had the highest
death rates in British North America, due to malaria, yellow
fever, and other dangerous diseases. The first chapter looks
at how these health conditions influenced the religious
practices described in the letters of Anglican missionaries.
The second chapter uses private writings, information on
inheritance practices, and secondary sources to examine the
ways in which death altered family relations. The third
chapter investigates how contemporaries perceived, and

reacted to, the unhealthy environment of the low country.

Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Conclusion

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ifi

24
48

6O

INTRODUCTION

In 1623 the English poet John Donne penned the famous
lines "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved
in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the
bell tolls; it tolls for thee."1 Like many seventeenth century
Englishman, Donne was familiar with death. He lived through
some of the worst epidemics in London's history, he grieved
for the death of his young wife, and, when he wrote these
lines, he had just recovered from a serious illness that
almost proved fatal. It should not be surprising that his
writing described the pervasive presence of death.

The premodern world was constantly aware of human
mortality and the fragility of life. People had little
understanding of their physical environment and disease could
suddenly and mysteriously end an individual's existence.
Historians have long been aware that, before the twentieth
century, people could not take their health for granted.

Donne's quote illustrates the role that death played in
premodern society and culture. Not only did an individual

have to come to terms with his own death, he also had to deal

 

1 John Donne, “Meditation l7," Devotions Upon Emergent Occassions, in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors (New York:
1987), 622. -

2

close to him might die. The interaction of the community and
the formation of institutions were often attenuated because
many individuals were deceased, seriously ill, or reluctant
to jeopardize their health further. Because cultures are
largely environmentally determined, premodern societies had
to adapt to high mortality rates.

Few areas of historical study provide more telling or
more horrifying examples of the problems and consequences of
premodern death rates than the study of the colonial South
Carolina low country. In an age of high morbidity, South
Carolina was notorious for being unhealthy. One historian
has aptly summed up the prominent role of death in the
culture of the low country: "Though it is true that the past
is never dead there, it is rather death than time that
lingers, a vague but oppressive gloom, timeless, encompassing
all to come, all that has passed."2

Through modern medical research, scholars now understand
why the environment of colonial South Carolina so often
proved fatal to its inhabitants. During the centuries of
European exploration and expansion, many disease-causing
organisms were transported to different regions of the world,
where the inhabitants had not yet developed any kind of
immunity to them. Consequently, Europeans and their African
slaves brought a host of diseases to the South Carolina low

country. In some cases, members of the three relatively

 

2 Peter Coclanis, ow f
o ' w 7 - (New York: 1989), 27.

3

distinct genetic populations in the low country, Europeans,
Africans, and Native Americans, had little or no immunity to
the new diseases and died en masse.3

Malaria and yellow fever proved particularly deadly to
those of European and, to a lesser degree, African descent in
the low country. Malaria and yellow fever are both
infectious diseases spread by mosquitoes. They generally
occur in tropical and subtropical climates. Malaria is not
necessarily fatal but it is dangerous because it lowers
immunity to other deadly diseases, particularly in small
children and pregnant women. Yellow fever, on the other
hand, is more frequently the direct cause of death for
populations that have not been previously exposed to it. For
that reason, yellow fever was believed to be the more lethal
of the two diseases in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Malaria thrives in the swampy conditions of the
rural low country. Yellow fever, on the other hand, is
carried by other strains of mosquitoes that prefer more urban
environments. Because of similar symptoms, colonists often
confused the two diseases. But the low country disease
environment was not limited to malaria and yellow fever. It
also included smallpox, typhoid, typhus, scarlet fever, and

dysentary.4

 

3 Coclanis, ha w a ream, 38-47; See also Alfred W. Crosby,
0,00. .7 «9‘ a u? 98 370,00: 1 .051 '90 o A 09‘ "'- "0

‘

(Cambridge, England. 1986).
4 Joyce E Chaplin An_Anzi2_s_Rur_ui_i_Agrisultural_lnne_atien_and

Mo dgznigy 1h §he nge e; So ggh, 1730-1815 (Chapel Hill, 1993), 93- 109,
Peter H, Wood, Bla ack Majog1t y; Negro1h 991031;; 50 gth ggzo ol1hg fzgm

1§7Q thgghgh ghg Stoho Be ehel 11gh (NewS York: 1974), 63- ~91; John Duffy,

4

The limited demographic information available to low
country historians of colonial South Carolina strongly
confirms the region's reputation for dangerous illness.S
Evidence indicates that the Euroamerican population of
colonial South Carolina had difficulty sustaining itself
through natural increase until the 1760's and 1770's.6
Between 1703 and 1708 the total Euroamerican population of
the colony declined by nearly six percent, despite
immigation, and the crude death rate in Charleston from 1722
to 1732 was between 52 and 60 per thousand.7 Information
about mortality rates outside the city provides little
reassurance. In Christ Church parish, a rural parish in the
low country during the early eighteenth century, 85 percent
of the adult males died before they reached fifty years of
age. In St. Johns parish, where conditions were better,over

40 percent died before their fiftieth birthday.8 The seasonal

 

Epidemi§s_in_§212nial_Amerisa (Baton Rouge: 1953). 69, 103-4; and
Coclanis, Ihe Shadow 91 A Qreem, 38-47. For more information on malaria

in colonial America, also see Darret and Anita Rutman, “Of Agues and
Fevers: Malaria in the Early Chesapeake,“ W1111am ahd Mezy Quezgezly
XXXIII (1976), 31-60; and Jon Kukla, 'Kentish Agues and American
Distempers,“ Southern Stug1es XXV (1986), 135-47.

5 For demographic information on colonial South Carolina see Coclanis,
The Shegow of A Dream, 161-174; Wood, Bleeh Majeg1gy, 131-165; George D.
Terry, "Champaign Country': A Social History of an Eighteenth Century
Lowcountry Parish in South Carolina, St. Johns Berkeley County”
(unpublished dissertation: University of South Carolina, 1981), 90-142;
H. Roy Merrens and George D. Terry, “Dying in Paradise: Malaria,
Mortality, and the Perceptual Environment in Colonial South Carolina,"
l9urna1_9f_§euthern_fli§t2rx L (1984), 533-550; and Philip D. Morgan,
Ed., 'A Profile of a Mid-Eighteenth Century South Carolina Parish: The
Tax Return of Saint James,‘ Goose Creek,” EQELh.§QI211flQ.Hi§L2Ii£§l
Megezine LXXXI (1980), 51-65.

6 Coclanis, Ihe Shedow ef A Qzeam, 42; and Terry, 'Champaign Country,“
90-142.

7 Wood. MW 143-144.
8 Merrens and Terry, “Dying in Paradise,“ 543-545.

5

distribution of mortality rates confirms the prominance of
malaria, since many more people died during the malarial
season of the late summer and fall.9 These rates were
extremely high, even for eighteenth century societies.10
Information on Euroamerican mortality rates cannot be
generalized to the colony as a whole since immunological
reistance varied with different genetic populations. During
the early eighteenth century for example, as the Euroamerican
population struggled to hold its own even with immigration.
the African-American population grew considerably faster.
both through slave importation and natural growth. After
1720, however, rice cultivation intensified and the rapid
importation of slaves led to crowding. Probably as a result
of these different living conditions, slave mortality rose
and the population no longer maintained its natural increase.
As with the Euroamerican population, conditions did not
improve until just before the American Revolution.11
Conditions were far worse for Native Americans. Most of
the major diseases of the low country were not indigenous to
North America and, consequently, the Native Americans had
acquired no immunities to them. The details remain unclear,
but after smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid,
scarlet fever, and dysentary, as well as wars and pressures

of cultural contact had done their damage, Native Americans

 

9 Coclanis, Ihe Shadow of A Dream, 161—164; and Merrens and Terry,
“Dying in Paradise,“ 541.

10 Coclanis, e S dow 0 re , 166-171. Coclanis gives a detailed
description of how these rates were calculated.
11 Wood, B1aeh Majority, 150-155; and Coclanis, e a w e ,

43-44.

6

ceased to be an influential presence in the low country. In
fact, by the end of the colonial period all of the nineteen
indigenous tribes and chiefdoms had virtually ceased to
exist.12

It is, therefore, obvious that startling mortality rates
were realities for people in eighteenth century South
Carolina. This does not mean, however, that the inhabitants
of the low country resigned themselves and remained passive
during this demographic catastrophe. On the contrary, they
adapted to the presence of death with the development of a

vital and distinctive culture.

 

13 Coclanis, The Shadow of A Dream. 45-47-

CHAPTER ONE

Death is the most important source of religion. Not
only is it the ultimate and concluding crisis of life it
fills survivors with confusion and ambivalence. They are
simultaneously filled with affection for the person they have
lost and filled with revulsion toward the corpse whose fate
they eventually must share. Death rituals help people cope
by ensuring that the will to live remains stronger than the
despair created by this paradox and, therefore, preserve the
continuity of human life.13 In other words, religion enables
members of a society to contend with bereavement, to enable
them to live when others are dying. If a religion cannot
fulfill their needs then people will adapt it, or it will
fall into disuse.

Organized religious practices can therefore be changed
dramatically by high mortality conditions. During the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century colonial South
Carolina Euro- and African-American settlers endured the
highest non-Native American mortality rates on the North
American mainland. While some of the demographic details are

still vague, scholars have demonstrated that mortality rates

 

13Clifford Geertz, The_1nreferstatien_ef_§ultures (New York: 1973). 162-

163. Geertz refers to B. Malinowski, WW
(Boston: 1948), 29, 33-35.

8

in early South Carolina were significantly worse than in the
Chesapeake and far worse than in the Middle Atlantic colonies
or New England.-14 Anglicanism was the predominant organized
religion in the South Carolina during these dangerous years.

One substantial source provides historians with a
unique window into early South Carolina Anglicanism.“5 The
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
sent missionaries to South Carolina from 1702 until the
American Revolution. Those missionaries diligently reported
their activities to the Society in London, and the extensive
letters of two of those priests, Gideon Johnston and Francis
LeJau, have been published.k‘

The letters of the missionaries describe a society
struggling against constant affliction. Their descriptions
of death in the low country illuminate the ghastly mortality
rates historians have derived from parish registers, scarce
tax lists, and family records. Death or illness permeated
nearly every subject the missionaries broached in their

letters. Both Johnston and LeJau suffered almost constantly

 

14 For demographic comparisons of early South Carolina mortality data
with those of other regions see Coclanis, The_$hedgw_ej_e_nzeem, 161—
174; and Merrens and Terry, “Dying in Paradise," 533-550.
15 Historians do not have as much information on religious practices in
early South Carolina as they do about religious practices in New England
and even the Chesapeake. Private pre-Revolutionary writings are
relatively scarce and court depositions are not nearly so plentiful.
What's more the sources that are available have not been as carefully
analyzed.
16 There are additional relevant letters of S.P.G. missionaries extant,
in the Library of Congress and the Lambeth Palace Library in England,
but I have not been able to incorporate these sources into this study.
The letters used have been published in Frank J. Klingberg, ed.,

' a ' e: e Comm' 5 'deo o s 7 7- 7 6

(Los Angeles: 1946) and The QQEQliDQ Chzehiele 9f Dz, Ezehgie Leggy.
llQ§;1111 (Los Angeles: 1956).

9
from illness and frequently remarked on other S.P.G.

missionaries as well as parishioners who sickened or died.

As a result, Johnston and LeJau found themselves with an
entirely different array of responsibilities than they would
have in a healthier locale. Not only did they perform
different duties, they interpreted religious doctrines in
ways that would help them cope with their own and their
parishioners' plight. Death also influenced the
missionaries' perceptions of African- and Native Americans.

The possibility of death is omnipresent in the
missionaries' letters. Three years after arriving, for
example, Johnston speculated that "Perhaps I am now in the
last Scene of life."17 In 1716, after a particularly severe
illness, LeJau rejoiced: "I really thought for some time that
this would prove my last sickness, but God is willing to
allow me a little more time that I may prepare myself for
Eternity. his holy name be Bless'd for ever for this and all'
his other mercyes to me."18 In the same letter, however, he
was pessimistic about the future: "I perceive by the loss of
my strength that I have but a Short time to Live."19 At one
point during his service, Johnston's condition became so
precarious that the Society made an exception to its usual
policy and allowed him to return to London, in order to

recover his health.20

 

17 Klingberg, ed., Qghhehgh, 36.

18 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 182.

19 Klingberg, ed., LeJem, 188.

20 Klingberg, ed., Jo sto , 115-119.

10
While the missionaries occasionally contended with

severe illness, they constantly suffered from some degree of
infirmity. In a 1708 letter LeJau wrote: “My labours have
been very much interrupted by sickness almost Continual
for these sixteen Months past I have not been well at all."
His letters are filled with references to ailments that last
month after month, while LeJau describes what was probably a
bout with malaria during which he relapsed seven times before
finally recovering.21

The missionaries' afflictions kept them from performing
even the most rudimentary duties. In one case, Johnston
writes of being simultaneously afflicted with blindness and
lameness.22 Sickness confined them to bed, and delayed their
reports. When disease threatened to impair the use of their
limbs, they noted that it was a common occurrence in their
society.23

Ministers also saw those they loved ravaged by malaria
and yellow fever. Johnston, when asking the society for
money, pleaded "for what between poverty, diseases, & debts,
both I and my family (10 in number) are in a most miserable
and languishing Condicon.“24 Similarly, LeJau lamented that

all nine members of his family had simultaneously suffered

 

21 Klingberg, ed., Leggy, 34, 42, 195, 202. See Wood, Bleeh_Meig;iLy,
63-91; Coclanis, Shedem_efi_A_D;eem, 38-47; Rutman and Rutman, 'Of
Agues and Fevers,“ 31—60.

22 Klingberg, ed., thhehgh, 106.

23 Klingberg, ed., gghh§;_h, 34; Klingberg, ed., LeJeg, 195, 202.

24 Klingberg, ed., Jehhstoh, 35.

11

with illness and that some had not yet recovered by the time
he wrote.25

LeJau and Johnston undoubtedly suffered from malaria.26
Their lives in the low country were a fitful fever and their
disease clearly took a toll on their psyches. Gideon
Johnston himself commented in one letter on the "Confusion
and distraction, wch my own Circumstances and the many
Spectacles of Sicknes and Mortality wich I dayley behold,
cause in my thought.“ 37 As many historians have
demonstrated, moreover, their experiences were by no means
atypical of Europeans and Euro—Americans in South Carolina.

LeJau's and Johnston's missives also illustrate that
their fellow missionaries were wracked by illness. Writing
of their compatriots in the summer of 1715, LeJau comments:
"We have been Sick all of us.“28 .After the death of Robert
Maule two years later, LeJau lamented: "This is the fourth
Missionary that dyed within 18 months time."29 Even during
relatively healthy periods, the missionaries constantly
expressed concern for the health of their peers. They
frequently commented that "I don't hear of any of us thats
sick at present" or that "This province thanks be to God is
healthy and quiet at present nor do I hear of any of the

Clergy but they are well."“’

 

25 Klingberg, ed., LeJeu, 42.

26 Wood, Blegk_Meigzihy, 70, note 24.
27 Klingberg, ed., Jehhehgn, 91.

28 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 164.

29 Klingberg, ed., Leg_m, 191.

30 Klingberg, ed., LeJ g, 135, 141.

12
Partly as a result of health conditions, the number of

missionaries in the South Carolina low country fluctuated and
never seemed sufficient. There were never more than twelve
missionaries at any time, and usually many fewer.31 LeJau
frequently remarked on the missionaries small and changing
numbers, from “but six Clergymen remaining“ in 1711, to “we
are now Ten in Number" a year later, and “but 4 missionaryes
left in this place" by 1717.32

The missionaries were concerned about their small
numbers because it meant that each man had more
responsibility. When their numbers were insufficient, they
felt it necessary to “do what they can to attend and serve
the vacant Parishes.“ When they were successful they
considered it "a great blessing that they are able to do
it."33 The scarcity of missionaries was exacerbated by the
distance between parishes and the difficulty of traveling.
In some cases ministers felt compelled to leave their
parishes and spend the more dangerous times in healthier
environs.34

At one point Johnston pleaded with the Society to send
him a curate as he needed "an honest Man that I cou'd depend
upon." He intended to employ the curate "Where ministers
were wanting I wou'd in conjunction with my Brethern, supply

those vacant Parishes till they had gotten Ministers of their

 

31 Wood. W 134.
3 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 85, 125, 193.
33 Klingberg, ed., Legeh, 96.
34 Klingberg, ed., hegem, 17.

h)

13

own." Johnston meant to “baptize their Children visit their
Sick, and bury their dead and do all the other Contingent
dutys that come in my way to keep the Church Men together"3S
Johnston clearly needed a great deal of help from a single
curate but he feared that the absence of Anglican ministers
in some parishes encouraged religious dissent among
parishioners and gave an advantage to dissenting clergy.
Severe illness however, hindered other religious groups as
much as the Anglicans, and Johnston comments on the
inactivity of the dissenters during an outbreak.36

When health conditions were most severe, usually during
the malaria season in late summer and early autumn, the
missionaries were in great demand in their parishes. On one
occasion Johnston was pleased because ”The Great Mortality
here is Lately abated none having died this Fortnight so that
I could not have fallen Sick in a more Lucky Season for my
Parishioners.“37 After Johnston died, LeJau tried to procure
a new minister for Johnston's parish due to “The duty
belonging to that Parish being very great Chieffly in a time
of Sickness very frequent here."38 Whether an outbreak of
disease occurred in the predictable malaria season of late
summer or early autumn or at some other time of year, the

missionaries knew that people could die quickly and in

 

35 Klingberg, ed., Johnston. 74.

36 Klingberg, ed., Jehhehgh,100.
37 Klingberg, ed., Jo sto , 107.

38 Klingberg, ed., heJeu, 196.

l4

droves. Clearly, the missionaries felt that high mortality
involved an expansion of their responsibilities.

Both the missionaries and their parishioners faced the
same diseases. The missionaries' letters do not portray the
illness of individuals so much as a seemingly omnipresent
human affliction. As Johnston described it: “The Town looks
miserably thin, and disconsolate, and there is not one House
in twenty I speak modestly that has not Considerably suffer'd
and still labours under this generall Calamity."39 LeJau
echoed similar sentiments, noting "The Mortality has
continued severly and We hear still of the death of some
Person every Week."“’ During the malaria season, even the
once busy streets of Charleston were empty. Early South
Carolinians feared that travel could lead to fatal illness.
The missionaries sometimes found it hard to run the parishes
after their most influential supporters had died.41 LeJau,
frustrated at the slow progress being made on building a
parish church, speculated that "P[er]haps the present
Afflictions of this Province render all things Languid."42

Sick parishioners demanded a great deal of a
missionary's time; having a minister present for prayer and
advice could provide tremendous consolation. Johnston
referred to "visiting the sick of which there is always a

Number here" as a significant part of his burden as

 

39 Klingberg, ed., Qghhehgh 94.
40 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 85.
41 Klingberg, ed., LeJeu, 123.
42 Klingberg, ed., heJag, 105.

15

minister.43 LeJau similarly commented on the important task
of seeing that “the sick which have been pretty many of late
be visited and Comforted."44 He also wrote that missionaries
"Visit their Scatter's Parishioners, and all Endeavour to do
all the Good they can."45

Priests were often unable to administer sacraments, such
as last confessions, which were arguably the cornerstone of
Anglican liturgy. For example parishioners often didn't
attend mass because of health conditions. Johnston
complained "Never was the Church so full as it was about 4
months age . . . But it now looks thin and naked thro our
present sickness & Mortality; and holds no Comparision to
what it was." He moaned that members of his parish stayed
“under a close confinement in their Chambers, and dare not
stirr abroad for fear of being Infected; and others are so
taken up in attending the sick, that they are not at leizure
to go to Church or elsewhere."“)

Last confessions were also of great concern to the
missionaries. Johnston remarked that on a number of
occasions his parishioners died before he even knew they were
sick. These parishioners might have sought solace from non—
Anglican clergy in the unlikely event that they were

available. More probably, dying South Carolinians confessed

 

43 Klingberg. ed.. Johnston. 37.

44 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 49.
45 Klingberg, ed., LeJeu, 164.
46 Klingberg, ed., Jo s , 100.

16
their sins to God and to each other, without the benefit of

the church elders recommended by James 5.14.47

While Johnston was often unable to give last confessions
to his parishioners, he emphasized their importance to his
flock. He disliked giving last confessions because "It is no
pleasing task to be exposed to all ffilth & Nauseaus Smells &
Ghastly Sights." He was willing to endure it because “I look
upon the Visitation of the Sick to be a duty of the last
Consequence to the Souls of Men, and it is upon the bed of
Sickness if ever that a Minister has the greatest opportunity
of doing good."48

If a minister were too distant or too ill to arrive in
time to perform last confessions he could still preach a
funeral service. Johnston observed "Three Funeralls of a
day, and sometimes four are now very usual, . . . and an
abundance of trouble day & night."49 Burying corpses in the
hot low country sometimes made him nauseous. But the
familiarity of funerals did not render South Carolina
Anglicans contemptuous of their duties. When Johnston
drowned, LeJau‘s letters indicate a considerable expenditure
of time and effort to recover the body for proper burial. In
another tell-tale passage regarding the death of missionary
Robert Maule, LeJau wrote "I must do the Parishioners of St.

Johns the Justice to declare that they buryd at their own

 

47 This is a biblical passage, cited by Johnston in one of his letters,
regarding the need for last rites.
48 Klingberg,ed., Johhsteh, 75—75.

49 Klingberg, ed., Jehneton, 99.

l7

charge the body of their Minister near the south door of
their church with all possible Respect and Decency, and
Intend to Erect a tomb over his Grave."50 The cultural need
for appropriate funeral rituals insured that parishioners and
ministers took funerary practices seriously.

Death not only influenced the duties of Anglican
missionaries and their relationship to their parishioners,
they also influenced the way in which the missionaries
perceived religious doctrine. Doctrines are less immediately
flexible than practices as they are codified by religious
authorities more than molded by actual experience. While the
written basis of the doctrine may remain unchanged, however,
the perception, implementation, and emphasis of religious
doctrines are all flexible and subject to change through
experience. Thus, the Anglican missionaries in the low
country made little impact on the formal doctrines of the
Anglican church but their personal experience profoundly
affected the way those doctrines were passed on within low
country culture.

Predictably enough, the missionaries often pleaded for
divine assistance. Regarding the death of missionary Samuel
Thomas, LeJau writes "having Implored the Divine Assistance
to the last Moment, God in his mercy I hope took him to his
holy Heaven.“51 Similarly, in another letter LeJau cites

God's mercy as the only cure for the sickness of the low

 

50 Klingberg, ed., LeJeh, 192.
51 Klingberg, ed., LeJe , 16-17.

18

country: "But in this uncertain Condicon we are in, We want
the Prayers of all good Christians to Alm: God from Whence
alone we Expect help."5 It seems only natural that, with
people dying all around them, the missionaries would attempt
to reassure their parishioners by emphasizing the merciful.
not the judgemental, qualities of the Christian God.

The God that emerges from the letters of the low country
missionaries, however, did not always appear merciful.
Indeed, he often was at odds with mercy. The missionaries
recognized their God's harsher qualities subtly by expressing
resignation to his will. When fellow missionaries died it
has “pleased God to remove him to a better life" or "pleasd
God to translate [him] to a better world.““ When LeJau's own
death approached, he wrote "God's will be done, I am Resignd
to it by his Grace."“

Less subtly, they expressed God's judgmental
characteristics in the language of a jeremiad. Jeremiads.
more commonly associated with Puritan New England, usually
took the form of a sermon in which the minister blamed the
problems of the community on its sinfulness and implored the
congregation to repent and spare themselves from God's wrath.
A jeremiad, however, did not have to take the form of a
sermon; its principal component was its view of the divine
order. In this sense the Anglican low country missionaries

adopted the language of the jeremiad because they came to see

 

53 Klingberg, ed., Legeh, 104.
53 Klingberg, ed., LeJah, 119, 191.

54 Klingberg, ed., heJem, 202.

19
the physical afflictions of their parishioners as punishment

for spiritual shortcomings. In 1711, for example, Johnston
revealed that "some attribute this mortality to one thing,
and some to another. But I verily think, it is a Sort of
Plague, a kind of judgemt upon the place (ffor they are a
sinfull People)--and such I have represented it in some
discourses and as such I now pray for it."“' In 1712 LeJau
noted "The surgeons are of the opinion that the Aire has been
infected these 14 Yeares." He, however, believed the cause
of the diseases to be the "Irreligion and Lewdness of too
many Persons, but chiefly the Barbarous usage of the poor
Slaves."56 Johnston and LeJau clearly thought God had a
particular quarrel with South Carolina.

When the illness subsided, Johnston and LeJau wrote
appreciatively of God. They attributed their good health to
God's mercy and LeJau noted that "God has mercifully
withdrawn his Punishing hand from us."“ In colonial South
Carolina neither good health nor the mercy of God could be
taken for granted. When either was obtained it was cause for
happiness.

Frequent death in the Carolina low country also
influenced the way Anglican missionaries perceived slaves and
Native Americans. While the missionaries devoted much of
their time to converting Christian dissenters and providing

religion to South Carolina Anglicans, the Society for the

 

55 Klingberg, ed., Jehheheh, 99.
56 Klingberg, ed., LeJau, 108.
57 Klingberg, ed., LeJau, 104, 113, 164, 131.

20

Propagation of the Gospel also encouraged missionaries to
convert slaves and Native Americans to Anglicanism. Once
again, death helped play a role in determining the way in
which the missionaries fulfilled their responsibilities.

For Francis LeJau, it was very important that
parishioners of all races make their peace with God before
dying, and he was deeply troubled when they failed to do so.58
In contrast, he praised "an honest Portugueze slave" who
converted to Anglicanism and "dyed lately in a most Edifying

9

manner and full of Consolation."3 On another occasion he
writes that he “baptized an old Sensible Negroe man upon his
death bed."6O Ample demographic information indicates that
colonial South Carolina's slave population also suffered from
high mortality.61 For LeJau these mortality rates made the
'need to convert slaves more immediate since he believed that
souls who died without Christ would be lost. High death
rates among slaves might have made them more receptive to
Christianity.

These death-bed rituals did not necessarily represent a
total acceptance of Anglicanism on the part of slaves. As
Charles Joyner has pointed out in his study of nineteenth

century low country slaves, African-Americans did not so much

adapt to Christianity as adapt Christianity to their own

 

58 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 104, 189.

59 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 104.

60 Klingberg, ed., Leg_m, 136.

61 Coclanis, The Shedow ef e Dream, 44-45; Wood, Bleeh Majeriry, 63-91.

21

religious traditions and exigencies.“=At the same time, high
mortality rates almost certainly pushed them to incorporate
Christianity into their own belief systems.63 .Africans must
have been mystified by the widespread diseases and their
African religious practices could probably do little to
explain or alleviate their suffering.

If the letters of LeJau and Johnston indicate some
success converting African slaves, however, they also
indicate little enthusiasm for Christianity among Native
Americans. The missionaries occasionally remarked on the
difficulty of converting Native Americans. The most
significant obstacle to their success may have been that the
missionaries lacked the time, and perhaps even the
inclination, to travel into the wilderness and preach to
them. On the other hand, James Merrell argues that the
Catawbas resisted Christianity as a result of the vitality of
their own religion and culture.64 IFor whatever reason, it
seems that even though Native Americans underwent a far more
severe demographic crisis than Europeans or Africans in South
Carolina, few converted to Anglicanism.65

Nonetheless, cultural adaptation was not limited to

total religious conversions. It is possible that Native

 

63 Charles Joyner, Down By The Riverside (Urbana and Chicago: 1984),
141.

63 Joyner, 141-171; Albert Raboteau, Slave Be11gioh (New York: 1978),
66; James Axtell has also detailed a similar dynamic among Native
Americans in The Eureeean ahd the 1nd1en (New York: 1981), 110—128.
52 James H. Merrell, The Ihd1ehs' New World (New York: 1989), 240.

55 For a brief comment on the Native Americans demographic crisis in

South Carolina see Coclanis, The Shegow 9: A Dreem, 45-47.

22

Americans and missionaries each learned something from
observing the way in which other cultures cope with death.
Indeed, the letters of the missionaries sometimes show a
curiosity about Native American death rituals. For example.
in one letter LeJau noted that "Our Indian Neighbors call
their Nation Ittiwan: when any of them dies they anoint him
all over with Oyl."޴ In April of 1724, Anglican missionary
Francis Varnod wrote a letter that included a lengthy
description of the mortuary beliefs and funereal practices of
the Winiaw Indians.“' Varnod states that “all Indians have a
notion of a further state." He further noted that some.
Native Americans believed "the wicked go in a cold country
being very lean and naked, feeding only on men's excrement,
and that the good go in a very pleasant warm country where
nothing is wanting to make them happy.“ Varnod also
described the burial ceremony he attended, and showed
interest in the Winiaw tradition of hunting and praying
before burial. He asked the Winiaws whether they believed
their deceased friend would be happy. He noted the position
of the corpse, and the depth, dimensions, and direction of
the grave. While Varnod discusses other aspects of Native
American culture in this letter, he devotes most of his time
to the funeral. Perhaps because Varnod lived in a death-

;ridden environment, he empathized with the Winiaws and was

 

66 Klingberg, ed., Leigh, 68.

67 Francis Varnod to David Humphreys, South Carolina, April 1, 1724 in

S.P-G. MSS. (L.C. Trans.), B 4, No. 173. Cited in Frank J. Klingberg,
isa of the Ne ro n Colonia Sout Ca 0 i a (Washington, D. C.:

1941 ), 55-57.

23

drawn to understand their attitudes and traditions regarding
death.

Colonial South Carolina Anglicanism was dramatically
affected by the harsh conditions of the low country. The
missionaries and their parishioners constantly struggled with
illness. The clergy were always desperately overworked and
often couldn't manage their duties. Anglican sacraments were
not always available to parishioners. The pews of Anglican
Chapels were emptied by disease. The consoling mercy of the
Christian God seemed distant. But the story of the Anglican
church in the early years of South Carolina was also
characterized by adaptation and perseverance. Anglican
missionaries did not merely lie in their sick-beds and die in
despair. They visited vacant parishes, grew weary of
performing last confessions and burying parishioners,
rethought their religious beliefs, and observed other
cultures in death. They relied on their religion and on one
another to comfort the sick and dying, and to enable other

South Carolinians to adapt and survive.

CHAPTER TWO

Death is an important rite of passage. Relatives seek
consolation for the death of a loved one through a variety of
mourning practices. As one anthropologist has noted, during
mourning, the living mourners and the deceased constitute a
special group, situated between the world of the living and
the world of the dead. The nature and duration of the
mourning depends on the degree of kinship between the living
and the dead.68 Such mourning practices underscore the
profoundly disconcerting effect that mortality can have on a
surviving family member. To a large degree, individuals
define their own identity in relation to their place in their
family. Consequently, when a family member dies and disrupts
_accepted family roles, the living are forced to reconstruct
their view of themselves and of their world.

The disruption of family life shaped the culture of the
colonial American South in significant ways. Over the last
two decades Chesapeake historians have amassed ample evidence
to show that high mortality and other demographic factors
altered the fabric of family life in seventeenth century

Virginia and Maryland.“’ While less attention has been

 

68 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Eassage (Chicago, 1960), 147.

69 See, in particular, Lorena S. Walsh, "Till Death Us Do Part':
Marriage and Family in Seventeenth Century Maryland“ in Thad W. Tate and

24

25

devoted to the families of the Lower South, evidence
indicates that high mortality rates and related demographic
conditions were even more severe in colonial South Carolina
than in the Chesapeake.70

It is difficult for historians to assess the private and
emotional aspects of family life, but much can be learned
about family structures and behavior patterns from public
documents in South Carolina including wills, family
genealogies, tax lists, and other records. Some private
writings, moreover, permit a glimpse of the emotional side of
family life. Most of the private writings available for
colonial South Carolina date from the 1740's or later. While
it is always difficult to apply findings from such records to
earlier periods, South Carolina's mortality rates remained
extremely high until the 17708. We might therefore, expect
these writings to reflect the ways South Carolinians adapted
emotionally to the constant presence of death.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney's and Henry Laurens's writings are
the most extensive remaining from colonial South Carolina.
Pinckney's letters, which she diligently copied into a
letterbook, give a detailed picture of her family life for a
number of years. Laurens' extensive correspondence, on the

other hand, deals mostly with business matters but

 

David L. Ammerman Ed.. Iho_Cnesnoonko_in_tno_Soxontoontn_Contnrx (Chapel
Hill, 1979); and Darret B. and Anita H. Rutman, "'Now-Wives and Sons-in-
Law': Parental Death in a Seventeenth-Century Virginia County“ in Tate
and Ammerman Ed.. Tho_Chesnooako_in_tho_Soxontoontn_Contnrx

70 For demographic comparisons of early South Carolina mortality data
with those from other regions see Coclanis, The_§heggm_gfi_e_Dreem, 161-
174; and Merrens and Terry, "Dying in Paradise.“ Also, for further
discussion of demographic conditions, see Introduction.

26
occasionally it also yields clues about low country family

life. Because both Pinckney and Laurens were members of
wealthy Euroamerican families their writings may be
unrepresentative of South Carolina's population as a whole
and should be treated with caution. But high mortality
affected everyone in the low country regardless of race or
class. African-American slaves who made up a majority of
South Carolina's population lived under very different
conditions. But more research is necessary before anything
concrete can be said about the African-American family in
South Carolina. We can, however, at least acknowledge that
slaves struggled against the same diseases and probably
sought some of the same solutions as elite Euroamericans.71

South Carolinians were constantly concerned for the
lives and well-being of family members from the first years
of settlement. In January of 1701, Edward Hyrne, a newcomer
to South Carolina, wrote with grave concern to his brother in
England about "my wife, child, and maid being all 3 so ill
when we departed that there was little hopes left that any of
them would ever recover.“” Hyrne's family all recovered, but
he was probably one of many who were forced to adopt a more
pessimistic understanding of family relations to accommodate
the unforgiving health conditions of the low country.

The same unforgiving health conditions tested fifteen

year-old Eliza Lucas and her parents when they settled in the

 

71 See Rutman and Rutman, "Of Agues and Fever.“
72 H. Roy Merrens, Ed., “Hyrne Family Letters.“ e o ' out

Cerolihe Scehe (Columbia, S.C., 1977),

27
low country in 1738. Like many South Carolinians, the Lucas

family came from the West Indies, and were accustomed to
mortality conditions comparable to those of the low country.
Yet, if the diseases of South Carolina were less strange to
Eliza, they shaped her life all the same. Almost every
letter she wrote until she stopped in 1762 referred to the
illness of a relative, the death of an acquaintance, or
similar matters.’73 After 1758, almost every letter she wrote
referred to the death of her beloved husband. Pinckney, like
other South Carolinians, drew consolation where she could and
learned to cope with death.

Pinckney exercised an unusual degree of autonomy for a
teenage girl. From ages 17 to 21, she ran Wappoo, her
father's plantation, after her father returned to his
political and military career in Antigua. As she explained
in a letter, her management of the plantation Was
"unavoidable as my Mama's bad state of health prevents her
going through any fatigue.“” She undeniably had a great deal
of responsibility. Rather than complain about her burden,
however, Pinckney expressed happiness over the opportunity to
help her father.“' Eliza probably realized that, under more
conventional eighteenth century family conditions, she would
have had little say in the family business and would be

constrained by parental authority. Because her father was

 

73 Pinckney, Ed., The Detterbook of Elize Lucae E1nehhey (Chapel Hill,
1972).

74 Pinckney, Ed., Eihchhey, 7.
75 Pinckney, Ed., P1hchhey, 7.

28
distant and her mother fell prey to one of the plethora of

illnesses in the low country, Pinckney had a considerable
amount of freedom and she appreciated it.

Health conditions in the low country undoubtedly set
limits on parental authority. To begin with, high mortality
made sure that many parents did not live long enough to
finish raising their children.’76 Those who were present
might, like Eliza's mother, be debilitated by disease. While
inculcating ideas about family honor, requiring moralistic
penmanship exercises, and manipulating inheritance practices
might have kept some children in line, the physical
limitations on the adult population in colonial South
Carolina generally gave license to the young.77

Weakened parental authority also meant that young adults
had more control over the choice of a spouse.78 Again, the
case of Eliza Lucas illustrated a trend when, in 1740, she
wrote her father "As you propose Mr. L to me I am sorry I
can't have Sentiments favorable enough of him to take time to
think on the Subject.“ She assured him that "your Indulgence
to me will ever add weight to the duty that obliges me to
consult what best pleases you, for so much Generosity on your
part claims all my Obedience.“ But, however heavily her
father's advice weighed upon her, Eliza remained firm,

writing, "I know tis my happiness you consult. . . and beg

 

76 Michael Zuckerman, ”Penmanship Exercises for Saucy Sons: Some
Thoughts on the Colonial Southern Family,“ 0 t o ' ' 'c

Megezihe, LXXXIV (1983), 152-166; Walsh, “Till Death Us Do Part,“ 131.
77 Zuckerman, “Penmanship Exercises,“ 152-166; Terry, 'Champaign
Country”, 119-120.

78 Walsh, "Till Death Us Do Part," 131.

29
leave to say to you that the riches of Peru and Chili if he

had them put together could not purchase a sufficient Esteem
for him to make him my husband."'79 She rejected the
suggestion of another potential husband, writing "a single
life is my only Choice and if it were not as I am yet but
Eighteen, hope you will [put] aside the thoughts of my
marrying yet these 2 or 3 years at least.“6C Indeed, evidence
indicates that women in South Carolina continued to marry at
about the same age over time even though the pressure to
marry at younger ages in a population with a large male
majority must have been enormous. For sons, who tended to
marry later and were generally given more freedom in their
choice of a partner, there was even less likelihood of
parental supervision over their marriage choices. At the
same time, if large amounts of property were involved, family
members probably exerted whatever authority they could.81
While some South Carolinians doubtless found parental
permissiveness troubling, caring for a large population of
orphans presented an even greater problem. In many cases,
one parent died and children were raised by the surviving
parent. Single parents probably relied on assistance from
other relatives and acquaintances. For example, after Eliza
Lucas Pinckney's husband died, she wrote her sons'
schoolmaster, entreating him "to give them the utmost

attention [rather] than [to] those that have parental

 

79 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, 6.
8° Pinckney. Ed.. Einoknox. 6.
31 Terry, 'Champaign Country,” 101.

3O
instruction added to your care of them."82 ‘When parents

remarried, children might be raised in complex household
arrangements under the authority of step-parents.83 Orphans
might be left with uncles or other relatives, as in the
Chesapeake, and in some cases orphaned South Carolinians were
adopted and formed kinship networks with their adopted
families.84 In Charleston, the Commons House of the South
Carolina Assembly annually distributed funds to St. Phillip's
church for aiding orphans and other needy people.%' Whatever
accommodations were made, those orphaned by yellow-fever or
malaria and their kin in the low country must have viewed
family life differently as a consequence. Nuclear families
had to become more inclusive to care for children whose
parents had died.86

Most males in colonial South Carolina had a difficult
time finding a wife, as they outnumbered women substantially
until well into the eighteenth century. In 1724 in the
parish of St. Johns, Berkeley County, for example, there were
roughly 149 males for every 100 females, while in St.

George's parish in 1726, the ratio was 128 males to 100

 

82 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, 156.

83 For a discussion of this dynamic in the Chesapeake, see Rutman and
Rutman, I'Now-Wives and Sons-in-Law,“ 167.

84 Rutman and Rutman, “Now—Wives and Sons-in Law,“ 162; Terry,
'Champaign Country,‘ 130.

85 Walter J. Fraser, Jr., "The City Elite, 'Disorder,‘ and the Poor
Children of Pre-Revolutionary Charleston,“ Sehrh_gere11he_flieeQrieel
Wine, XXXIX(1983), 169-170. '

86 Terry, I'Champaign Country," 100-101.

31
females.97‘Phe mean age at marriage for the first generation

of males in St. Johns, Berkeley was twenty-eight.88

The imbalanced sex ratio and delayed marriages, coupled
with the absence of parental authority, probably influenced
sexual mores. In the seventeenth century Chesapeake, similar
demographic conditions led to relative sexual freedom, since
brides were frequently pregnant and there is little evidence
of community objection.89 Of course, unlike in the
seventeenth century Chesapeake, the sexual attitudes of
Euroamericans in the low country were complicated by a large
slave population. Race played a substantial role in colonial
attitudes toward sexual relations.90

Some historians have suggested that high mortality rates
in premodern societies discouraged strong emotional
attachments between family members. According to this
argument, people did not want to take the risk involved in
caring deeply for an individual if there was a strong chance
that they would have to cope with that individual's death.
Parents, for example, rather than develop the close bonds we
now associate with parent-child relationships, would not

recognize the individuality of their children.”v While it is

 

87 Terry, 'Champaign Country,“ 100-101.

88 Terry, 'Champaign Country,“ 101.

89 Walsh, 'Till Death Us Do Part," 132.

90 I am unable to address these issues adequately as my eighteenth
century sources were reluctant to write about sexual attitudes and
practices.

91 Lawrence Stone. Ino_Eomilxl_Sox_ano_Marrioooi_ln_Enolandl_IEQQ;lflflfl
[Abridged Edition] (New York, 1977), 65-66; and Daniel Blake Smith,

eat ous - t ' e ' ' t
Qheeepeehe_§eeiehy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1980), 261—262, 265-266; and Philippe
Aries. Conturies_of_Chilohoooi_A_Sooial_fliotorx_of_2omilx_Lifo (New

York:1962), 38-43.

32

extremely difficult to measure the strength of emotional ties
through historical sources, no evidence indicates that this
interpretation fits family life in the colonial South
Carolina low country.92

On the contrary, there is considerable indication that
low country families formed deep emotional ties to one
another. Twenty-three year old Henry Laurens hardly seemed
distant and unemotional when he returned to South Carolina in
1747 and found that his father had just died "This day I
arrived here & to my great Grief find that my best friend my
dear father died four days ago. As he was a tender and
affectionate Parent I am under great concern for my Loss.“93
In another letter, Laurens explained “Upon my arrival I was
Stun'd with the melancholy account of the Death of my father
some few days before. This overwhelm'd me with Grief."94

The last years of correspondence in The_herrerheeh_gr
Elize_Lheee_£1hehhey demonstrate that, for Pinckney at least,
low country emotional attachments could be profound and
adamant. In July of 1758, Eliza's husband Charles Pinckney
died. About a month later, she worked up the strength to
inform her sons Charles and Thomas, who were studying in
England, of their father's death. The letter she wrote
speaks volumes about their family relationships, "How shall I

write to you! What shall I say to you! My dear, my ever dear

 

92 Of course, emotional attachments and degrees of commitment in the
early South Carolina low country probably varied considerably from
person to person.

93 Homer. Ed.. Ihe_aners_of_flenrx_Lourons (Columbia. s.C.. 1968). Vol.
1: 2. '
94 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 1:8.

33
Children!" She continued, “I have a tale to tell you that

will pierce your tender infant hearts! You have mett with the
greatest loss, my children, you could meet with upon Earth!“
Pinckney further lamented "Your dear, dear father, the best
and most valuable of parents, is no more!"95 ‘Years would pass
before she stopped beginning every letter by grieving over
the absence of her beloved husband Charles. Nor was Pinckney
an emotionally distant parent to her children. She
apologized for not writing to her friend Lady Carew by
informing her that "my little boy was taken with a fever and
ingrossed my whole attention. This I know to so tender a
parent as your Ladyship will be thought a sufficient
excuse."96 Net only did she see her sons as unique
individuals, she doted on them and expressed constant concern
for their well-being.

South Carolina siblings also cared deeply for one
another.97 Eliza Lucas showed concern for and provided advice
to her younger siblings, she preferred, for example, to
educate her sister herself rather than have her sent away to
school.’98 When her brother Thomas became dangerously ill,
discussion of his condition filled her correspondence. She
wrote, "The ill state of health you have so long labored
under gives us inexpressible concern. If there is the least

probability of the recovery of my much loved brother it will

 

95 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehney, 94.

95 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, 86.
97 Terry, 'Champaign Country,“ 120.

98 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehney, 5.

34

be the greatest satisfaction we can enjoy."99 In her letters
she tried persistently to reassure him with philosophic and
religious advice. Henry Laurens, too, demonstrated affection
for his siblings in his writings. After his father's death,
Laurens wrote his sister, Mary Gittens, who had been banished
from the household after a disagreement with her father.
Laurens sent her money, tried to reconcile their differences,
and informed her that “our Family is now reduc'd to three
Vizt. Sister Bremar, Brother Jemmy, & my self.“ Laurens
noted that, “If you can come over here & add to the Number,
you may be assur'd (notwithstanding your present distress) of
a sincere welcome & all the assistance in our power."100
Clearly, to Laurens at least, frequent death made the company
of surviving relatives that much more dear.

Having lost close relatives, South Carolinians sought
consolation in the companionship of the living. After
writing a lengthy commentary on death to her fatally ill
brother Thomas, Eliza Pinckney assured him that she remained
unwilling to leave the world of the living: "No, I have still
some tender engagements to it; and fraternal affection,
sincere and disinterested friendships have claims that bind
me to it.“101 Many South Carolinians must have shared her
sentiments and formed bonds that would help them find the
strength to cope with the harsh low country health

conditions.

 

99 Pinckney, Ed., £1hehhey, 43.
100 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 1:57-58.

101 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehheyfl 64.

35
Before she married, Eliza Lucas depended heavily on Mr.

and Mrs. Charles Pinckney in Charleston for social visits and
personal advice.102 Meanwhile, her mother clearly relied on
her for help. Pinckney would have made more social visits
were “it not on account of my leaving my Mama too much alone
and neglecting some affairs that require my attention at
home."“” During her brother Thomas's illness, the Lucas
family relied on Mr. and Mrs. Boddicott, close friends in
London, to care for him and provide them with information on
his condition. Eliza wrote to Mrs. Boddicott that "We are
much concerned for our Dear Tommy's illness, but so well
satisfied of your care and tenderness of him we have no pain
on that head."104 Later she wrote Thomas that "'Tis a great
comfort to us in the midst of our affliction on your account
to know you have all the care and tenderness from Mrs.
Boddicott which you could possibly have were you with us."105
Pinckney also asked Col. Thomas Talbot, a family friend, to
break the news of her husband's death to her natal family,
noting that his "long friendship and goodness to my brother
and mother will plead my excuse for troubling you with the
inclosed for my mother, . . . I therefore beg the favour of
you, Sir, to breake the melancholy Contents to her."106

The many illnesses of the low country also prompted

South Carolinians to ask each other for medical advice.

 

102 Pinckney, Ed., Mex, xi, xx, 51.
103 Pinckney, Ed., 21m, 51.
104 Pinckney, Ed., W. 14.
105 Pinckney, Ed., W, 43.
105 Pinckney, Ed., W, 103.

36

Writing to Mrs. Boddicott on the subject, Pinckney commented
that “I have had all the advice I could in this part of the
world and generally found reliefe for a time."107 Pinckney
also recieved medical advice from Charles Pinckney and began
one letter by noting, "I received yesterday the favour of
your advice as a phisician."108 She returned the favor in a
later letter to the Pinckney household by recommending one of
her own remedies for Mrs. Pinckney: "I have lately found
benefit for the pain in my head by keeping my feet a little
while every night before I go to bed in hott water. I dare
say it would give her present ease if not cure her.“109 She
also had medical advice and received a prescription from
Richard Mead, one of the most famous British physicians of
the day.

Some South Carolinians also found tremendous solace in
the consolation of others. Amid the despair that followed
her husband's death, Eliza wrote to Mr. Gerrard at her sons'
school about "The justice you do to my dear Mr. Pinckney's
memory in applying these beautiful passages of Job to him."
She thanked him because "the friendly and respectful
tenderness with which you speak of him gives me sincere
pleasure and satisfaction and convinces me that you really
knew him."110 Even in Henry Laurens' business papers, one

gets the impression that matters of sickness and mortality

 

107 Pinckney, Ed., Pinckney, 14.
108 Pinckney, Ed., 211152131111. 12.
109 Pinckney, Ed., 21m, 36-37.
110 Pinckney, Ed. , 21mm, 134.

37

demand sympathy and reassurance. In 1755 Laurens wrote
Thomas Willing, a Philadelphia merchant that he was “mighty
sorry to see by your prints Your Father is dead.“ Laurens
reflected “by his Age & healthful appearance of a few Years
ago [we] might reasonably have hoped for a much longer life
but these misfortunes none are exempt from."111 In another
letter, Laurens mentioned “Poor Capt. Gould who died of a
Yellow fever which I fear will carry off many more." In what
may have been an attempt to reassure himself, Laurens added
"But why fear? We are born to die!"112

Clearly, personal relationships in the colonial South
Carolina low country were affected by mortality and health
conditions. The existing correspondence suggests that South
Carolinians sought assistance from friends, immediate family,
extended kin, and even acquaintances in an attempt to deal
with the problems of death and disease. Yet to assert that
this correspondence only describes networks of emotional and
practical assistance overlooks an important point. The
correspondence in itself constituted a form of assistance.
On an obvious level the letters helped with words of
consolation, but they also enabled those in the low country
to keep in touch with distant kin. High mortality in the low
country eliminated many close family ties and letters
provided a way to maintain ties with other family in friends

who were far away.

 

111 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 1:249.
112 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 1:171.

38
W illustrates these

correspondenCe networks at work. Many of Pinckney's letters
are simply consoling, like ones to her English friend Lady
Carew in which she writes "I am not wholy ingrossed by my own
melancholy concerns but I can still feel for you. Poor Miss
Carew! How I pity you“ and "How much I feel for you is
easier to imagine than to Express."113 Other letterbook
references relate information about those who are ill, such
as “gave him an account of my poor Cousen Fanny Fayweather's
melancholy and her bad state of health" or, more alarmingly,
"1741. Wrote to my Aunt on my Grandmama's death . . . Also
on my Cousin Jacob's and Cousin Lucas's death."114 Some
figures in The_Lerrerheeh, such as the Boddicotts, her
father, her brother Thomas, and Fanny Fayweather,
correspondence extensively with Pinckney. Even those who
played smaller roles, however, often received or wrote

letters containing references to illness and death. The
Lerrerheeh mentioned dozens of relatives and friends who died
or suffered from ill health. Of course, Pinckney was
fortunate to be capable of writing numerous letters. Some
South Carolinians were too physically impaired to write.

Even a relatively healthy merchant like Henry Laurens, whose
business depended on his correspondence, sometimes found poor

health curtailing his writing.“5

 

113 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, 116, 178.
114 Pinckney, Ed., E1hchney, 5, 15.
115 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 1:38.

39

Adult women in South Carolina also commanded more
authority and responsibility than would have been likely
without high death rates. While South Carolinians maintained
the same patriarchal assumptions about gender that
characterized all of Anglo-America during the eighteenth
century, the death of a husband often placed a women in an
unusually influential position. Women were often charged
with the business of running plantations and almost every
widow was made an executor of her husband's estate if her
children were underage.1“'

Again, the experience of Eliza Lucas Pinckney is
instructive. She managed three plantations at the age of
seventeen. The_Lerrerheeh makes it clear that Eliza spent a
considerable amount of time taking care of her father's
business and was heavily involved in plantation management.117
She took the time to acquire the technical legal knowledge
needed to prepare wills.118 After her husband Charles passed
away, Eliza returned once more to the taxing responsibility
of running plantations and looking after property.1319 Thus,
Eliza could write as an authority in 1760 about "how capable

women are both of friendship and business."120

 

116 Terry, 'Champaign Country," 126. For comparsons with the Chesapeake
region see Jack P. Greene. £nrsnito.of_flnooinossi_Ino_Doxoloomont_of

V... C v 9 0 .0 ' 0.0.. 0' 0 NO. .0 0 811‘ 2. "

(Chapel Hill, 1988), 94-95; and Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh,
I'The Planter's Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-

Century Maryland,“ fl11113m_ehd_Mary_Duerrer1y, XXXIV (1977), 542-571.
117 Pinckney, Ed., 211191511934. x, 5, 7, 24, 38.

118 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, 41.

119 Pinckney, Ed., Eihehhey, xxii.

120 Pinckney, Ed., £1hehhey, 152.

40
Henry Laurens described a women named Mary Stokes who

went into business for herself when her husband, Lauren's
friend the Reverend Joseph Stokes, died. Laurens wrote that
Mrs. Stokes was “a sensible & Discreet Woman,“ who had
"wisely turn'd her mind and hands to business for her own &
the support of her only daughter a child of two or three
Years old. She has open'd a boarding School for Young
Ladies."121

Because death shortened many marriages, remarriage was
common in South Carolina. Eliza Pinckney's husband Charles.
for example, was a widower. More frequently, since men
married at a later age, women outlived their husbands and
remarried. In St. Johns, Berkeley County the average
difference in age between couples at marriage was eight
years; when Eliza Lucas married, she was less than half her
husband's age.122

Because of high death rates in the low country, wills
and inheritance practices loomed large. The available
records indicate that about half of the probated decedents in
colonial South Carolina were testates. For obvious reasons of
property succession, the wealthiest decedents were more
likely to leave wills. Equally important, the intestate
cases were left to court appointed administrators who
followed predictable patterns of estate distribution. Thus,

it seems likely that many of those who did not write wills

 

131 Hamer, Ed., Lehrehe, 3:146.

122 George Terry, 'Champaign Country,” 101; Elise Pinckney, Ed.,
Eimdomup.xtL xx.

41
felt no need to do so since they were satisfied with the

administrators' order of preference:123

As John Crowley has suggested, South Carolinians
probably wrote wills as “a function of cultural orientation"
and associated dying intestate with irresponsibility.fim
Eliza Lucas Pinckney showed her concern over intestation in a
letter to Mrs. Bartlett: “We have some in this Neighborhood
who have a little Land and few slaves and Cattle to give
their children that never think of making a will till they
come upon a sick bed and find it too expensive to send to
town for a Lawyer." Characteristically, Pinckney acted on
her concern for her neighbors, as she confided, "If You will
not laugh too immoderately at me I'll trust you with a
secrett. I have made two wills already." While this was
unusual behavior for an aristocratic young lady, Pinckney
remained confident in her ability, "I know I have done no
harm for I coned my lesson very perfect and know how to
convey by will Estates real and personal." She felt that
writing wills was a important responsilibility, commenting
"But after all what can I do if a poor creature lies a dying
and their family takes it to their head that I can serve
them. I can't refuse."125

No matter how careful they were about preparing wills,

many South Carolinians had to face the reality that high

 

123 John E. Crowley, "Family Relations and Inheritance in Early South
Carolina,“ ' t ' Soc a - oc' 's'o , Vol. 17, 1984, 40—41.

124 Crowley, “Family Relations," 41.

125 Pinckney, Ed., Pinckney, 41.

42
death rates often denied cultural preferences for the

succession of property. Most South Carolina testators lacked
the conventional nuclear family presumed by English
inheritance law; only about half were married when they died.
and one sixth had never married.126 The logical solution in
many cases was to make widows executors, or if there were no
children, sole heirs, increasing their economic independence.
Since children were usually still economically dependent
anyway, few restrictions were placed on their freedom with
property.K”

South Carolina widows generally benefitted substantially
at their husband's deaths. Ninety percent of widows received
some property of their own rather than a life interest, over
two-thirds were appointed as executors, and almost two-thirds
shared in the residue of the estate instead of merely
receiving a specific bequest. This constituted a much more
valuable and independent share of estates for widows than in
the other mainland colonies. The widow could make important
decisions on family strategy, even if specific provisions for
children, and male children in particular, continued to be
governed by cultural customs. Of course, the presence of
children usually lessened a widow's benefits somewhat.
Anglo-Amercan cultural norms dictated that, if children were
present, they would share in the estate and widows who were

mothers generally received less than those who were not.128

 

126 Crowley, ”Family Relations,” 42-43.

127 Crowley, ”Family Relations,” 43-44; see also Carr and Walsh,_”The
Planter's Wife.”

128 Crowley, ”Family Relations,”45—46.

43

Colonial marriage settlements also reveal a concern for
married women's possession of property as wives and widows.
Marriage settlements offered a legal means for married women
to retain property rights in spite of legal status as feme
covertes. Marylynn Salmon found that early South Carolina
marriage settlements were careful to include testation
rights. In fact, before 1750, over 70% of women who received
marriage settlements in South Carolina were permitted by
their terms to write wills under some circumstances. As
mortality decreased later in the century, such provisions
became less common.129

Marriage settlements in colonial South Carolina were
most often used by widows who remarried. These settlements
gave widows legal protection in case they did not want to.
give absolute control of their possessions to their new
husbands. Women who had been married before were more likely
to have property and children requiring economic support.
They may also have acquired experience in handling property.
Thus, the evidence from South Carolina marriage settlements
reflects the importance of high mortality in several ways.
Mortality improved women's chances of inheritance, made them
concerned about inheritance practices, and, through
remarriage sometimes led to more property relationships.”O

Soaring death rates also prompted the assembly to make

South Carolina the only royal colony to preclude entails.

 

129 Marylynn Salmon, ”Women and Property in South Carolina: The Evidence

From Marriage Settlements, 1730 to 1830," E1111em_ehg_uery_Dherrerly,
XXXIX(1982). 677.

130 Salmon, ”Women and Property,” 677-683.

44

Entails would have imposed restrictions on the alienability
of property, and in so doing, would have exacerbated “the
demographic uncertainties of succession.“1“ Death provided
enough obstacles to inheritance in South Carolina without
further encumbrances from common law traditions.

Yet, if Euroamerican inheritance practices were
important to the elite culture of South Carolina, their role
in the lives of African-Americans was incalculable.
Euroamericans were dependent upon stable inheritance
practices for economic security, but African-Americans'
entire lives hinged upon inheritance practices, since the
death of a slave owner meant the dispersal of his estate and
the sale of his slaves. While details remain sketchy, high
mortality among slave owners must have exacerbated the
problem of slave movement and made family relationships even
more tenuous. Further, even when well-intentioned owners
attempted to preserve slave family patterns, they often could
not recognize them because they assumed European cultural
norms dictated family relationships.132 Consequently.
Euroamerican clergy demanded strict monogamy and slave owners
recognized only one spouse, whereas some African societies
accepted polygamy.133 Slaves also conceived of families in a

broader sense than Anglo-Americans; they incorporated

 

131 Crowley, ”Family Relations," 36, 49.
132 Wood, Bleeh_Mejer1hy, 140; Cheryll Ann Cody, ”Naming, Kinship, and
Estate Dispersal: Notes on Slave Family Life on a South Carolina

Plantation, 1786 to 1833,” 1111em ehd Mery Duerterly, XXXIX (1982),
192-195.

133 Wood, D1eck Majority, 141; Cody, “Naming, Kinship, and Estate
Dispersal,“ 195.

45

extended kin more fully into their circle of intimates.
Euroamerican slave owners, however, due to their cultural
assumptions about families, such as monogamy, and their
concern with reproductive functions, emphasized the African-
American nuclear family unit.134 Cheryll Ann Cody has found
that, for these reasons, some slave owners in late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century South Carolina avoided
separating couples and seldom sold children away from their
parents.135 But if a slave owner and his family showed such
concern for the emotional lives of his slaves, a slave owner
who died intestate or in debt condemned his estate and his
slaves to sale.

The dynamic of responses to high mortality in slave
families probably mirrored some of those in Euroamerican
households. For example, since immediate family members were
probably absent from many slave households, due not only to
death but also to sale, African-Americans probably found
support among whatever kin and friends were nearby. Itlwas
obviously easier to find consolation in a large community of
plantation slaves than in a isolated groups on small farms.
In St. George's County in 1726 about two-thirds of all slaves
lived on plantations with between 25 and 94 other slaves.136
Male slaves would have had an even harder time finding wives
than their young male owners, because records indicate that

the ratio of enlaved males to enslaved female were similar to

 

134 Cody, ”Naming, Kinship, and Estate Dispersal,” 193.
135 Cody, ”Naming, Kinship, and Estate Dispersal,” 207.

136 Wood. Blaok_noioritx. 159.

46

that of Euroamericans. The distribution of slaves, moreover,
was far more varied and problematic than that of free
people.137 Further evidence on how the slaves responded to
the mortality problem will await further research.

Colonial British family relations in the South Carolina
low country were profoundly altered by the constant presence
of death and illness. Family members frequently expressed
concern over the death or illness of those close to them.
Children were given a great deal of autonomy, because illness
and death could eliminate parental authority. Community
members found ways of looking after orphans and many children
were raised under complex family arrangements. The frequent
absence of parents also gave young adults greater freedom in
choosing a spouse. South Carolinians coped by maintaining
strong emotional ties to living parents, children, and
siblings. They depended on each other for consolation.
assistance, and medical advice. They corresponded with
distant friends and family to find consolation and
companionship when disease took loved ones away. Women were
granted more responsibility and control over property since
traditional patriarchal family authorities were often ill or
dead. South Carolinians often remarried when spouses died
young, and inheritance practices were restructured because
women and young children were commonly the only heirs. Women
who remarried could protect property from their first

marriage in marriage settlements. Entails were precluded by

 

137 The ratio was 129 to 100 in St. George's parish in 1726. Wood.
W.159-

47

the South Carolina assembly to avoid further inheritance
problems in an atmosphere of high mortality. In all these
ways, South Carolinians dealt with the constant specter of
death in their families and maintained the family as a vital
and meaningful cultural institution, enabling them to live on

even when those they cared about died.

 

CHAPTER THREE

People in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
constructed many of their ideas about the world around them
according to their assumptions about health and medicine.
Historical figures did not behave in response to the physical
environment as modern science perceives it today; they
behaved in response to their own, often dramatically
different, perceptual environment. While modern science can
reveal tremendous amounts of information about the
epidemiological and geographical traits of a region, it is
often difficult to ascertain how those traits were perceived
by contemporaries. Consequently, many historians have
neglected the concept of perceptual environment and those who
have tried to recapture historical perceptions about science.
health, and medicine in specific historical places have found
it a formidable task.138

The concept of perceptual environment proves especially
important to the history of the colonial South Carolina low
country. Because mortality and health conditions were so

debilitating in the low country, the colonists' perceptions

 

138For a geographer's perspective of the concept of perceptual
environment, see H. Roy Merrens, "The Physical Environment of Early
America: Images and Image Makers in Colonial South Carolina,“

Soooroohioa1_Boxiou. LIX (October 1969). 530-556.

48

49
about health were more apt to influence their behavior than

in other British mainland colonies. Indeed, conventional
wisdom about the environment of South Carolina during the
colonial period characterized Charleston as a “great charnel
house" and maintained that “Carolina is in the spring a
paradise, in the summer a hell, and in the autumn a
hospital."139

George D. Terry and H. Roy Merrens have recognized the
importance of the perceptual environment in the early history
of South Carolina and have done some preliminary analysis on
it. They found that early writings about South Carolina
demonstrate a strong contemporary concern with health
conditions. Early promotional writers tried to portray the
colony as healthy and Edenic but settlers quickly were
disillusioned by the frequency of disease. Gradually, Terry
and Merrens argue, South Carolinians learned to avoid the
swampy rural areas that provided standing water for malarial
mosquitoes. Terry and Merrens make it clear that South
Carolinians came to perceive their surroundings differently
as a result of morbidity and mortality conditions in the
region.140

Similarly, Joyce Chaplin, in her recent book Ah_Ah319he
'_ ._' ' a. ' - -_ -llOVo it. 410 400-- i to 9' 0.-
Sghrh. 1239-1815 notes that the South Carolinians' outlook

was altered by health conditions. According to Chaplin,

 

139 Quotations from Wood, Bleek Majority. 67; and Merrens and Terry,
”Dying in Paradise,” 549.
14° Merrens and Terry, ”Dying in Paradise,” 533-550.

50
attitudes toward disease were not only central to the ethos

of early Euroamericans in South Carolina, they saw their
response to disease as a positive factor that separated them
from outsiders. The first creole generation acquired
immunities to malaria and yellow fever through a process
contemporaries referred to as “seasoning.“ Further,
medicinal practices, such as the use of chinchona bark for
malaria, increased the South Carolinians' perception that
they could resist deadly diseases.141

Thus, the recent historiography affirms the centrality
of the concept of perceptual environment to the culture of
early South Carolina. While earlier chapters have shown that
mortality conditions altered specific cultural institutions.
such as religious practices and family relations, the
importance of a perceptual environment cannot be limited to a
number of institutions or aspects of behavior. The
development of a culture involved a process of constant
interaction with the environment; the nature of that
interaction was shaped in part by perceptions. On the
macrocosmic level, Terry and Merrens have demonstrated that
the social structures of the low country were changed by the
perceptual environment. On the microcosmic level, Chaplin
asserts that individuals formed their very identities based

on their perceptions of their homes in the low country.

 

141 Joyce Chaplin, ' s ' - ' u ov
' ' e owe o t 7 0- (Chapel Hill, 1993), 94-108.

51
The possibility of health problems aroused concern

before the first settlers arrived in South Carolina in 1670.
The proprietors were aware that health problems had occurred
in similar climates. As a result, they tried to make South
Carolina appear healthy. In fact, the first several years of
settlement seemed encouraging.”3 Yet, by the early 1680's,
malaria had evidently become endemic in the new settlement
and matters were deteriorating.-143 The original location for
Charleston proved so unhealthy that, after the initial
settlement, the Proprietors were forced to move the town to
its present site.144

Even after the Proprietors found a more satisfactory
location for Charleston, settlement patterns continued to be
affected by immigrants' notions about health and environment.
As Carl Bridenbaugh and many historians since have pointed
out, South Carolinians erected their plantation homes, such
as Drayton Hall and Middleton Place, away from malaria
infested swamps.”‘ Unfortunately, many less affluent South

Carolinians had little control over the land they occupied.

 

142 St. Julien Ravenel Childs. Malor1a_and_Co1oninetion_in_the_sorolino
Lew thhrry, 1526-1696, The Johns Hopkins University Studies in

Historical and Political Science, Series 58, No. 1 (Baltimore, 1940),
111-150, 158.

143 Childs, Me1er1a ehd ge1ehizar1eh, 202-205, 228-229; see also Jon

Kukla, ”Kentish Agues and American Distempers: The Transmission of
Malaria from England to Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,” Sehrherh
Shhdiee XXV (Summer, 1986), 135- 147.

144 John W Reps. Ioun_E1annino_in_Eront1or_Amorioa. (Columbia. MO.

1980). 155; Hugh Morrison Earlx_Amor1oan_Arohitootnroi_£rom_tho_£irot
' e s to o e ' d, (New York, 1952), 412;

Childs, Me1er1e end Colohizet 19h, 228- 229.

145 Carl Bridenbaugh, Myrhe ahd Be ee1r1ee; Sooe1et1ee of rhe geleh1e1

Sehhh, (Baton Rouge, 1952), 70- —71; Merrens and Terry, ”Dying in

Paradise,” 547-549.

52

For example many new migrants from various parts of Europe
flooded into sickly conditions in Charleston. Horrified by
their surroundings, many left for other colonies. As a
result, the South Carolina legislature made unlicensed
departure from the low country illegal.-146

Even in its new location, moreover, Charleston remained
a very unhealthy place. South Carolinians were correct in
their belief that swampy rural areas contributed to malaria
and that the urban environs of Charleston and the surrounding
salty water would provide some respite from malaria-carrying
mosquitoes.147 At the same time, because of the constant
human traffic in the seaport, other diseases, which spread by
direct contact (instead of through a host like malaria) ran
rampant in Charleston throughout the colonial and early
national periods. Epidemics were a problem in all major
colonial ports. Charleston, however, became the worst site
for contagious diseases in mainland British North America.148
Further, yellow Fever, a disease of African origin, which
probably arrived in South Carolina in 1699, thrives in urban
environments.149

Charleston, however, continued to be considered a haven

during malaria season. The city burgeoned as a social center

 

146 Wood, Bleck Mejority, 65-66.

147 Childs, Meler1e_ehg_gelehrzer1eh, 191-192, 204-205.

148 This was due, in part, to its standing as South Carolina's only
colonial port and to its climate which supported tropical diseases.

John Duffy. Eoioomioo_in_Co1on1al_Amorioa (Baton Rouge. 1953). 69. 104.
149 Wood, Dleeh Majerity, 80-81.

53

for wealthy low country elites.”0 Between late spring and
autumn many affluent planter families came to Charleston;
they believed it more healthy than their marshy rural
plantations. Charleston's relative freedom from malaria
during these dangerous months may or may not have compensated
for the increased risk of other diseases like yellow fever
and smallpox, but in any case, contemporary South Carolinians
perceived it to be a healthier environment and behaved
accordingly.

Others, who believed Charleston to be unhealthy, left
the low country altogether during malaria season. Many went
to the higher elevations and dryer lands inland.151 Other
wealthy South Carolinians journeyed to other northern Anglo-
American colonies. Newport, Rhode Island became a
particularly fashionable place to spend the summer months.152

For some elite South Carolinians, a trip to England
probably would have constituted the ultimate escape from the
unhealthy environment of the low country. It was impractical
for most South Carolina families to move to England, as Eliza
Lucas Pinckney and her family did for a time. But wealthy

South Carolinians commonly sent their sons to be educated in

 

150 George C. Rogers, Jr., Char sto 1 e e o t e ' 5
(Norman, OK, 1969), 23-24; Bridenbaugh, Myths and Reel1t1es, 69-71.
151 Merrens and Terry, ”Dying in Paradise,” 548; Robert M. Weir,
Coloh1e1 South Cerol1na: A h1story (Millwood, NY, 1983), 40.

152 Wood. Elook_Moioritx. 73; Bridenbaugh. Mrtho.ano_8oalitioo. 95-96;

Merrens and Terry, ”Dying in Paradise,” 549; also see Carl Bridenbaugh,

”Charlestonians at NeWport, 1767-1775,” Sourh Carelihe H1sroriee1
Magazine, XLI (April 1940), 43-47.

54
the British Isles, thus reinforcing the “Anglicization” of

Charleston's elite culture.153

Those who remained in Charleston did their best to
mitigate the effects of unhealthy conditions. Eighteenth
century medical theories attributed diseases to “bad air."
As a consequence, it was considered unhealthy for air to be
confined.154 Historians have made much of the single and
double houses that characterized colonial Charleston's
distinctive vernacular architecture.155 These architectural
designs provided excellent ventilation by standards of the
eighteeth-century; outside balconies, or “piazzas,” provided
further opportunities for fresh air.156 Of course, these
architectural adaptations also provided added comfort during
the sultry low country summers. But while South Carolinians
no doubt appreciated greater comfort, their architectural
adaptations meant more than that to them. Based on their
perceptions of health, these were necessary adaptations to
the environment.

Little evidence indicates, however, that eighteenth-
century perceptions correlated closely with the physical

environment of the South Carolina low country. Merrens and

 

153 Richard Waterhouse, ”The Development of Elite Culture in the
Colonial American South: A Study of Charles Town, 1670-1770,” Aherrelieh

Qehrhe1_ej_£e1iriee_ehg_flierery XXVIII (1982), 391-394; Bridenbaugh,
e 't' s, 103.

154 James C. Riley, ' - t ' 0

(New York, 1987), 16—22.

155 Coclanis, The_§hedem_ef_e_Dreem, 6-11; Waterhouse,”The Development

of Elite Culture,” 397-399.

156 Morrison, Eerly Americen Architecture, 171-175, 416; Rogers,
Cmudoooai 66.

55
Terry argue that, by the middle of the eighteenth century,

South Carolinians had developed a very effective
understanding of their physical environment, and assert that
adaptations based on the perceptual environment constituted
"the major reason" for lower death rates in the 1760's and
1770's.157 This is a problematic and unsubstantiated
assertion, however.

While their work clearly delineates colonial South
Carolina's perceptual environment, they do little to
demonstrate the pervasiveness of various behavioral responses
to the perceptual environment. How many South Carolinians
really moved away from the swamps? Realistically, there are
few good ways to determine the magnitude of such internal
population movements. Land records indicate who owned land
where, but they do not reliably indicate who liyed where.
Historical archaeologists cannot address these issues because
the present extensive development of the low country renders
excavations problematic.158 Further, Merrens and Terry base
their argument almost entirely on responses to malaria in the
environment. While malaria was perhaps the most devastating
disease present, this constitutes a substantial
oversimplification of the low country disease environment.
which also included yellow fever, small pox, dysentery,
typhoid, and scarlet fever. It seems more probable that the

demographic conditions improved by the late eighteenth

 

157 Merrens and Terry, ”Dying in Paradise,” 546.

158 I would like to thank Dr. Kenneth Lewis of the Michigan State
Department of Anthropology for his insightful comments on this matter.

56

century because, after nearly one hundred years of
settlement, the Euroamerican population of South Carolina
finally included a substantial percentage of relatively
immune, native born residents. Creoles born into an
epidemiological region would have some immunities to that
region's diseases. Also, smallpox inoculation may have
played a substantial role in lowering mortality rates.

Any attempt to understand the relationship between
decreasing morbidity and the perceptual environment must
recognize a class difference in the low country response to
disease. Poorer whites could not afford to move to healthier
environs.159 Perhaps more importantly, the economic interests
of the South Carolina elite required that some people
remained in the unhealthy surroundings. The damp soil that
provided standing water for malarial mosquitoes was necessary
for the cultivation of rice, the staple crop which made the
low country the richest part of mainland North America.

Thus, overseers had to stay in unhealthy regions to supervise
rice cultivation. More significantly, the crop insured that
enslaved people of African descent, who constituted a
majority of the colony's population after the first decade of
the eighteenth century, could not escape the deadly malaria-

infested regions of the low country.160

 

159 Chaplin, DD BHKiOH§ BSI§Hi§I 97-98.
160 Bridenbaugh, Myrhs end Bealirie , 62, 69; Ulrich B. Phillips,

Amerieeh_Megre_§1eyery (Baton Rouge, 1966, originally published 1918),
90-91.

57
The adoption of the task system permitted whites to have

even less contact with the malarial environment of rural
South Carolina, because it meant that slaves required less
supervision. In the early twentieth century, Ulrich B.
Phillips attributed the origin of the task system to
Euroamericans' desire to avoid potentially malarial swamp
lands.161 More recently, Philip D. Morgan has challenged this
idea as a sufficient explanation for the change to tasking.
Morgan argues that West Indian planters were also frequently
absent from their plantations and did not adapt the task
system until late in the eighteenth century. He believes
instead that the task system was adopted early in the low
country because rice cultivation required little supervision
and regimentation.162 Morgan's West Indian analogy is a poor
one. Sugar cultivation in the West Indies could be conducted
on relatively dry land and did not require Euroamericans to
supervise labor in malaria—infested swamps, as low country
rice cultivation did.

Ultimately, the task system fulfilled several needs. On
one level, it proved a more efficient labor system for rice
cultivation. On another level, it provided some
Euroamericans with a means of escape.

While malaria increased the morbidity of the disease

environment, South Carolinians certainly perceived that the

 

161 Ulrich B. Phillips, “The Slave Problem in the Charleston District,”
e v o t O Sout : 1e te ss 5 ' co 0 ' d

Sooialjiomrx (Baton Rouge, 1968), 193-194.

162 Philip D. Morgan, ”Work and Culture: The Task System and the World

of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700 to 1880," iliiem ahd Mery Duarter1y Vol. 39,
No.4 (October 1982), 566-568.

58
region's unhealthfulness involved more than malaria. In 1738

a cargo of slaves brought smallpox to the colony and it
proved fatal to many. As a result, the colony set up
stringent quarantine requirements, especially for Africans.
A special facility for newly arrived slaves was established
on Sullivan's Island. Slaves were often quarantined there in
crowded, uncomfortable conditions.163 South Carolinians could
clearly differentiate between a contagious disease like
smallpox and an infectious, environmental one, like
malaria.1th But, if smallpox differed from more constant
health threats like malaria, it too required a response and
quarantining seemed to be the best solution.

Euroamericans in South Carolina also constructed their
conception of racial differences partly in response to their
perceptions of the physical environment. African and
African-American slaves had some significant epidemiological
advantages over Europeans and Euroamericans in the low
country. Many, unlike Europeans, probably possessed sickle-
cell trait, a genetic adaptation common in populations like
those in West Africa which had been previously exposed to
malaria. Further, many could also have acquired some
immunity to yellow fever and malaria, as children in West
Africa, that would not have been available to Europeans.165

Records indicate that slaves did in fact fare remarkably well

 

163 Rogers, gherleereh, 26—27; Duffy, ' ' s 'n C l ' ' ,
103.

164 Chaplin, Ah Aeriohs Ehrsuit, 94-95.

165 See Rutman and Rutman, ”Of Agues and Fevers;" and Kukla, ”Kentish

Agues and American Distempers.”

59

during several severe epidemics. Euroamericans quickly
noticed these health differences and incorporated them into
their conception of racial differences. Relative resistance
to low country diseases reinforced rationales for slavery,
strengthening the argument that people of African descent
were somehow naturally suited to laboring in the rice
fields.166 This apparent immunity to malaria and yellow fever
may have reassured plantation owners that their slaves were
in no danger from the deadly diseases that wreaked havoc on
the Euroamerican population around them. Sadly, while
Africans and African-Americans had some advantages against
these diseases, their immunity was far from absolute. Partly
as a result, slave mortality rates were little better than
those of Euroamericans.

In conclusion, South Carolinians allowed their
perceptions of the low country environment to influence their
behavior dramatically. They based their settlement patterns
on ideas about health. Elite low country society remained
highly mobile in an attempt to escape the deadly malaria
season. South Carolina incorporated architechtural
adaptations that were believed to encourage healthy
conditions. The task system enabled Euroamericans to avoid
the malarial environments associated with rice cultivation,
and stringent quarantine policies limited the spread of
smallpox. Immunological differences strengthened racist

conceptions about slave labor. Thus, seventeenth and

 

'66 Wood. W. 76-91.

6O

eighteenth century perceptions of health and the merciless
disease environment of the South Carolina low country

combined to form a profoundly distinctive culture.

CONCLUSION

Colonial American historians have not yet fully explored
the cultural development of the colonial South Carolina low
country. Until twenty years ago, the study of New England
overwhelmingly dominated colonial American historiography.167
In the last two decades, historians studying the colonial
Chesapeake have begun to redress this imbalance and have
produced an impressive body of work.“m Similarly, since the
publication of Richard Dunn's Sheer_ehd_S1eyee, more
scholarly attention has been devoted to the British West

Indies.169 Yet, in spite of the general broadening of

 

167 The emphasis on New England reached its apex with the town studies
of the late 1960's. See for example, see Kenneth Lockridge, A New

,.7.,. To 1 e i st no ed .ea : .80l-l -ssa sett . -- 7 .
(New York, 1970); and Philip J. Greven, Jr. , e at'
Boonlotion1_Lano1_ano_Eam11x_1n__o1onia1_Anooxot1_Ma_saohnootts (Ithaca.

N.Y., 1970), among others.
168 See for example Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S.

Walsh, Beherr Se1e'eWer1d Agriculthre ehd So oeie ry 1h Ea r1y Merylehd

(Chapel Hill, 1991); Edmund S. Morgan, e i an aver c
Eree gem; The Ordeel of Soiohiel Virginia (New York, 1975); Thad W. Tate
and David L. Ammerman, Ed., h C esa e ke ' t e eve tee Ce t
Essays eh Ahglo-American Society (New York, 1979); and Allan Kulikoff,

a o v s: e eve o m out e ' e
ghesepeekeI 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986).
169 Richard S. Dunn, Shger ehd Slaves: The Biee ef rhe Elehter Clese ih
rhe Bririeh weer Indiee, 1524-1711 (New York: 1972). For recent work on
the West Indies see for example Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, Ed.,

' .°! '9' - t 3" .-90 age 0‘ 149.19 0 _ - c ' ‘ '9 le

Amerieee (Charlottesville, Va., 1993).

60

61

colonial historiography in recent decades, the Lower South
remains a neglected region.

Equally important, because scholars have not investigated it
as they have other colonies, South Carolina does not as fully fit
adequately into any of the “models of colonization" decribed by
colonialists. While South Carolina bears some resemblence to both
the Chesapeake and Barbadian models, it clearly does not conform
perfectly to either. South Carolina does not fit the Chesapeake
model of colonization; it had a much higher concentration of slave
labor, a very different staple crop, and more severe immunological
conditions. On the other hand, it does not fit the Barbadian
model because of the very different exigencies and adaptations of
mainland settlement. In other words, historians have not yet
developed a satisfactory understanding of colonization in the
Lower South; they continue to characterize South Carolina as a
"hybrid" of other colonies.170

Yet scholars who study colonial South Carolina have long
recognized that the colony differs in substantial ways from
other British colonies. First, South Carolina was a colony
of a colony and constituted the only substantial attempt of
West Indian interests to expand to the mainland before
1800.171 Second, South Carolina was clearly the wealthiest

mainland colony. As a result, many historians have focused

 

170 See Jack P. Greene, ”Colonial South Carolina and the Caribbean
Connection." S9uth_Care11na_fl1519112a1_Magaz1ns LXXXVIII (1987), 192-
210.

171 See Greene, “Colonial South Carolina and the Caribbean Connection;'
Richard S. Dunn, “The English Sugar Islands and the Founding of South
Carolina.“Seu1h_Car_l1na.fl1§t_r1gal_uagaz1ne LXXII (1971). 81- 93; and
Richard Waterhouse, I'England, the Caribbean, and the Settlement of
Carolina. J2urnal.ef_Amsr1san_§_us1e§ Ix (1975). 259-281.

62
on the distinctive development of the low country's elite

culture.1'72 Third, the colony's rapid economic growth has
focused scholarly attention on the processes of rice and

7.

indigo cultivation in the low country.V1 Finally, historians
have recognized that South Carolina‘s system of slavery
contributed tremendously to the colony's development. The
most prominent of these works, Peter H. Wood's brilliant
Blagh_Maig;1hy, represents the closest thing available to a
broad interpretation of low country culture and society.

Wood powerfully demonstrates that slavery played a profound
role in early South Carolina history.174 But Wood's book, now
over twenty years old, constitutes only the first step in
obtaining the type of comprehensive understanding of South
Carolina that now exists for mainland colonies to the north.

As this study has demonstrated, the continued presence of
high death rates was another distinctive part of early South
Carolina culture. Historians such as Wood, Terry, and Coclanis
have long acknowledged the deadly conditions in the colonial low
country. They have not, however, fully examined the consequences

of high mortality for the culture of the low country. This

omission does not result from any failing in their skillful

 

172 For examples see, Rogers, Charleston; Bridenbaugh, Myghs and
Beglihigg, 54-118; and Waterhouse, I'The Development of Elite Culture.“
173 Some of the more notable of these works include Coclanis, Ihg_Sthgw
QL_A_D;§am, Chaplin, Ah_Ahxigh§_Eh;§h1;, and Daniel C. Littlefield, 819g
S ves: t 'c' d the 1 ve r de ' Co on’ 1 o a ' a
(Baton Rouge, 1981).
174 Along with Wood, BLQQK Majggigy; see also Morgan, "Work and
Culture;' Littlefield, Rige and S1aves; and Clarence L, Ver Steeg,

' s of a Southern Mosaic: Studies of Ba 1 C ro i a n Geo 1a
(Athens, Ga., 1975), 103—32.

63

scholarship, but is part of a historiographic trend. These
historians have placed their own work on South Carolina in a
discourse dominated by studies of the Chesapeake and the West
Indies. Thus, the inevitable question becomes: How is South
Carolina slavery like Virginia slavery? Or how does rice
cultivation compare to sugar and tobacco cultivation? The Lower
South, like other regions, deserves to be studied in its own
right. Mortality in the low country transcended social
distinctions. Malaria and other diseases did not recognize
differences in labor systems, economic classes, or staple crops.
The prominence of death in the low country contributed
substantially to its development as a distinctive region in

colonial America.