Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times

Introduction

1 Introduction Ann Short Chirhart with Betty Wood    This is the first of two volumes that together explore the diverse and changing patterns of Georgia women’s lives. Volume 1 focuses on eighteen Georgia women between the founding of the colony in 1733 and the end of World War I. What has it meant for women of different social classes and ethnicities to be a Georgia woman? Does identification with a particular state shape a woman’s identity in any significant way? Do women’s experiences cast a new light on the first two centuries of Georgia’s history, as the colony became one of the United States and part of the South? These are the questions that are at the heart of essays included in these volumes, essays that are devoted to those who for so very long were either marginalized or ignored by the men who compiled their histories of the “Peach State.” As the essays included here make clear, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of the preoccupations of Georgia women, like those in other states, were shaped by men and remained largely unchallenged by women, while others were not. This was true regardless of class, legal status, and ethnicity . From the very beginning, even before the first European colonists landed in 1733, women were instrumental in shaping the multifaceted history of Georgia even as Georgia shaped their lives. Albeit in often very different ways, the women included in this volume also provide a unique lens through which the lives of all Georgia women, whatever their background, may be examined. For contemporary readers, identifying with a state denotes little more than a geographical location. Yet, whether rich or poor, black or white, enslaved or free, women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw themselves as part of a local community. Living in a colony or a state meant far more to them than a physical location. Fanny Kemble and her daughter Frances Butler Leigh, each of whom spent only a little time in Georgia, grasped their claim to the state by choice. Some women implicitly construed themselves as Georgians, donning or 2 ann short chirhart with betty wood putting off its beliefs and values as easily as the garments they wore, while others struggled with Georgia’s history and southern values. During the era of the American Revolution women of European ancestry such as Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston had to determine whether being a Georgian was, or could be, synonymous with being an “American”; a century later, as a bitter civil war broke out, the issue had become the extent to which being a Georgian might or might not also be synonymous with being a “southerner .” From 1751, when slavery was first introduced to Georgia, women and men of color found that over time identities and attachments that had been forged in West and West Central Africa were modified, and sometimes completely transformed, by new cultural possibilities and imperatives. How white and black, male and female, grappled with the many constraints, as well as with the possibilities, involved in forging and articulating their Georgian identity varied, often dramatically so, yet all shared a connection to the state through their imaginations, geographical locations, cultural beliefs, family connections, and historical participation. The biographies that follow attest to the processes by which women of different social ranks and ethnicities constructed their particular Georgian identity as they sifted through the meanings of local, state, national, and even international events. The stories related here evoke each woman’s experiences with interlocking communities, including those of other women, religious denominations , national identities, class, and race. Unsurprisingly, the modes of expression that shaped their notions of place changed over time, contributing to the diverse ways in which women saw themselves as participants in Georgia’s evolving history. Key events, such as the introduction of slavery, the American Revolution, and the dramatic upheaval associated with the Civil War, Reconstruction , and Jim Crow, struck at the core of women’s lives and their understanding of themselves as women.1 As was true of all the British North American colonies, Georgia and its residents experienced historical events unique to the colony while sharing other aspects common to colonial life. James Edward Oglethorpe and the other British-based Trustees envisaged a colony that would provide land and work for Britain’s poor. Chartered in 1732, the Trustees promoted small-scale agriculture , and banned slavery and hard alcohol as well as Roman Catholics and lawyers . These restrictions set Georgia...