Living a Big War in a Small Place: Spartanburg, South Carolina, during the Confederacy

Six: Emily Lyles Harris, Reluctant Farmer

6 emily lyles harris, reluctant Farmer Emily Lyles Harris’s husband, David Harris, started a journal in 1855 to keep an accurate record of his farm work so he could eventually learn the very best time and method for undertaking his various tasks. With his wife, children, and ten slaves, he worked one hundred acres of a five hundred acre farm located eight miles southeast of the village of Spartanburg. In addition to recording his daily work, David often used his journal to comment on current affairs, family life, and his own state of mind. His records tell us much about farm life in the county, for he was a diligent and perceptive witness. Any investigation into the state of mind of people in Spartanburg District during the Civil War must also pay particular attention to Emily Harris. When David eventually went off to war, he asked his wife to carry on with his journal. He did us a great favor, for Emily made the journal her confidante. To it she confided her feelings, her opinions, and her fears. Through the entries in her journal we catch a glimpse of what it was like to be the wife of a farmer and of a soldier during much of the Civil War. There is no better contemporary record of life in Spartanburg District and few comparable records for the region. Emily was an introspective and brutally honest commentator who looked at herself and her world unsparingly. Born in 1827, Emily Jane Lyles Harris grew up in Spartanburg village. In 1840 her parents moved to the country. Her father, Amos Lyles, was intent on educating his only daughter, and Emily soon found herself boarding in the village so she might attend Phoebe Paine’s school. Phoebe Paine was a Yankee schoolteacher who believed that women should be educated to use their intellectual gifts. In later years Emily recalled Phoebe Paine admonishing her to remember her “buried talent.”1 Historians of Spartanburg owe Phoebe Paine much, if for Emily Lyles Harris, Reluctant Farmer 73 no other reason than preparing Emily Lyles to write well, with feeling and understanding about herself and her times. Emily Harris had nine children. When war broke out a set of twins had already died and her six remaining children were ages four, six, eight, ten, twelve, and fourteen. She was thirty-three years old. In 1862 she gave birth to her seventh and last child. Since her marriage in 1846, Emily’s life had been filled with giving birth to and raising her children, sometimes teaching them, making their clothes, and tending a garden which provided much of the food for the family. She had at least one house servant to help her. Although she enjoyed church, attended some social functions, and frequently received relatives at home, she did not often go to the village or other destinations. Her elderly mother lived with her for a few years in the late 1850s. With all these responsibilities she mainly stayed at home, and there is evidence that she was not altogether content. Her husband, David, often complained of her temper, which irritated him; they seem to have quarreled often. Emily’s temper affected everyone on the farm, for she was sometimes angry enough to whip her female slaves and she whipped a male slave at least once. Such frequent outbursts may partly have been a response to the isolation of the farm, which did not provide the family much diversion to relieve the monotony of their rural existence. It was ironic that this isolation, of which both Harrises complained, also did not afford them any personal privacy. In 1862 David Harris wrote: Emily Lyles Harris. Courtesy of Wofford College Library Archives. 74 Individuals Solitude sometimes is my most pleasant companion. How nice it is to sit in a quiet room by a glowing fire of shining embers, and to live over the past and to mark out pleasant plans for the future. This is a pleasure almost entirely denied me. So many children, and many cares. Oftentimes I would sit by the fire, and read and wright and dream. But children will be children, and children will make a noise. Then my resort is the bed. To find rest for my wearied limbs, and my diseased boddy. Wife often asks me to remain up with her, but I am compelled to take refuge in the bed, until...