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Chapter 4 Ariella and Plantation Family Life great confidence that her husband would succeed. She and the children knew all the details of her husband’s projections for the planting, harvesting, and marketing of his crops. Her own day-to-day responsibilities included the care of her children and managing the household , the servants under her supervision, and the vegetable garden and poultry. She was as busy as her husband with her eight children, her  chickens (her actual count), and a garden that she told her mother provided peas, lettuce, radishes, pumpkins, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, and cabbages “in abundance.” And she hoped that her mother would send her more seed, which she said was hard to get. She also noted she had sewn three suits each for her two little boys, James and John. At first Ariella plainly missed her relatives and felt shut off from the socializing so available to her back in North Carolina. Her reports of this isolation are factual and uncomplaining. “I never have anything to write about except my family,” she said. At Caney she had neighbors, but only one was near enough to visit in a day and return the same night. She explained that the close neighbor was the family of Colonel Jones, who happened to be the “brother of the girl I went to school with in Salem . . . Mrs. Jones has been to see me twice. She is very clever and kind and I like her very much.” From time to time Ariella gave her mother a description of her children ’s activities on the Caney plantation. Sallie, who was ten, was knitting Virginia a pair of gloves “just now.” Sallie also played with a pet deer “that one of the Negroes picked up in the woods.” She named the deer Sallie “after you,” Ariella told her mother. But then the child found out it was a buck, and so she was calling it Jimmy. Virginia (seven), James (five), and John (three) were “building a house at the door out of blocks to keep store ariella and plantation life 33 in. They seem very busy and highly amused.” Little Ella was a toddler one year old and could say a few words. “She is the smartest and sweetest thing you ever saw. She is at this time sitting on the floor eating beef heel and potato. She is so fat that when she is down she can hardly get up.” Ella would not live past her sixth birthday. The Mrs. Kelsey who had come so often to visit Ariella at the time of Frank’s birth in Matagorda had become a great friend of the family. On November , , she was visiting them at Caney. Ariella found her “a most excellent little woman,” helpful in every way in keeping house, sewing, tending the sick, and assisting Ariella with any number of her household chores. Ariella wrote that Mrs. Kelsey and Virginia were just then busy making a cake but that Ella and Frank, her youngest children, were “singing so loud in the passage that I can scarcely write.” Sally is with her pony. Willis, James, and John are off to some sugar house or other. Our little boy Frank is one of the likeliest boys I ever saw. I dress him in short sacks, knee britches, long stockings, and shoes. Tell Sister Mary and Mzury if they could see him they would never brag about their boys again. He has been walking more than a year but can’t speak a word yet, still makes more noise than all the rest put together, laughing and singing. . . . The Negroes are all well and send howdy to their kin folks. Becky and Emily say give their love to all white folks and Negroes too, tell the Black people howdy for me. During leisure times, horseback riding was a special pleasure for the children and the whole family. The children enjoy themselves very much riding horseback. They go first to one sugar house and then to another. They always come back loaded with sugar and molasses: James and John say they love the sugar houses because they are so sweet. They are all first rate riders. Their Papa bought them all a mustang pony apiece the other day. They are not broke yet so they ride double. Sally and Virginia, James and John, Willis and Frank. Mr. Hawkins takes Ella, and I ride by myself on one of the prettiest horses you ever saw. We...

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