Georgia's Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony

Notes

NOTES Introduction 1. Spalding and Wilson, Women on the Colonial Frontier, iv. 2. For a succinct explanation and deconstruction of the myth of the golden age, see Norton, "Evolution ofWhiteWomen's Experience," 593-619. SeealsoUlrich, Good Wives, 35-50; Salmon, Women and the Law of Property, 185-93. 3. Col.Rec.,20:208. Prologue. The Georgia Plan 1. For a useful broad discussion of the interplay between gender and colonization in the British Atlantic world, seePearsall, "Gender," 113-32. For an examination of the major English theorists whose ideas were played out in early colonial societies(especially Robert Filmer and John Locke), see Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers. For a detailed analysis of the construction of gender among the Cherokees, seePerdue, Cherokee Women, 13-40. 2. Specific understandings about sexuality and femininity were evolving, but Robert Shoemaker's survey of English society between 1650and 1850(Gender in English Society) suggests that little changed over time in the extent to which men's and women's lives were segregated according to their gender, refutingthe notion of a separation of spheres. 3. Campbell, "'When Men Women Turn,'"83. 4. Laurence, Women in England, 84. 5. Oglethorpe, Some Account, 9, 22, 29. Oglethorpe celebrated in his preface that in successful empires, husbands could always find wives, stating of ancient Rome that "no Woman who was not deformed (the Vestal Virgins only excepted) ever lived to the age of 25years unmarried." He felt that more recently Louis XIVhad missed a trick by overlooking women when he built a magnificent hospital that consigned his invalid soldiers to celibacy in the 16705; instead, the Sun Kingshould havepaired them off with wivesand sent them off to New France to populate and stabilize the French colonies. Oglethorpe is aware that inappropriate gendered behavior is liable to compromise colonization— suggesting that white "Violencys committed upon their [Indian] Wives" explained in part the eruption of the Yamassee War in 1715,when several Native American tribes unusually combined their assault and threatened to eradicate white settlement in South Carolina. Equally, he warnsthat the presenceof "effeminate fellow[s]" could causeproblems (Oglethorpe, Some Account, 6). 6. VerSteeg, Origins of a Southern Mosaic, xii. For more detailed histories of the background to the colonization of Georgia, see H. Davis, Fledgling Province, 1-32; Coleman, Colonial Georgia; Coleman, History of Georgia, 9-71; B.Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia , 1-24; Reese, Colonial Georgia; Taylor, Georgia Plan. 197 198 • Notes to Prologue 7. SeeTailfer, True and Historical Narrative, B.Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, esp. chaps. 2, 3, and 5. 8. Quoted in Boorstin, Americans, 71. 9. For the trustees' most important promotional literature, seeMost Delightful Country , and Spalding, "Some Sermons." For a discussion of disputes about authorship of these early promotional tracts, seeBaine, "James Oglethorpe." 10.Oglethorpe, Some Account, xiv, 44. 11. Ver Steeg, Origins of a Southern Mosaic, 102. 12. Oglethorpe, Some Account, xx. 13. The pamphlet added: "Andin Sicknes the havingtheir Wivesto nurse them may recover many who would inevitably perish were they to have no succour but from careless or unskilful Comrades" (Oglethorpe, Some Account,26). 14.Oglethorpe, Some Account, 29. 15.Ibid., 32. 16.Ibid., 4. See also Most Delightful Country, 133, 159. For a discussion of imagery relating to bees and colonization in the seventeenth century, seeKupperman, "Beehive," 272-92. 17.His account is reprinted in Most Delightful Country. 18.Most Delightful Country, 142.Oglethorpe went on to argue that "most of the Poor in Great Britain, who are maintain'd by Charity, are capable of this, tho' not of harder labour" (144). 19. Most Delightful Country, 159. For Martyn's estimate see p. 165; for Oglethorpe's quote about family earnings, see p. 137. 20. Indeed, Benjamin Martyn boldly began his Reasonsfor Establishing the Colony of Georgia by asserting that "it is undoubtedly a self-evident Maxim, that the Wealth of a Nation consists in the Number of her People." 21.Oglethorpe, Some Account, 40-41. 22. Ibid., 43. 23. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police', the listed charities are the Foundling Hospital , Marine Society, Lambeth Asylum, Lying-inCharity, Magdalen Hospital, and British Lying-in Hospital. Those that constituted "major donors" (listed in her appendix) contributed to at least three of the charities named. 24. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, 67. 25. For the subscription numbers for London charities, seeAndrew,Philanthropy and Police, 72. Figures for Georgia donors are derived from analysis of the trustees' benefaction lists in Col.Rec., vol. 4. For the support extended to poor London women in...