A Life in Antebellum Charlotte: The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson, 1837

A Life in Antebellum Charlotte: The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson, 1837

by Ann Williams
A Life in Antebellum Charlotte: The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson, 1837

A Life in Antebellum Charlotte: The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson, 1837

by Ann Williams

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Overview

In 1837 Sarah Frew Davidson began keeping a private journal recording the events of her daily life. Years later, her collection provides an intimate glimpse into antebellum life in North Carolina. Sarah, as mistress of one of North Carolina's largest plantations—The Grove—offers the reader a nineteenth-century perspective on slavery, education and the impact of religion on the lives of Southern women. Begun in the wake of the religious revival that swept the South in the mid-nineteenth century, this journal serves as a candid perspective into life in the changing "village" of Charlotte, capturing the effects of the newly constructed U.S. Mint and the Carolina gold mining rush on this small community. Editors Dyer, McConnell and Williams, along with a team of Rosedale historians, meticulously transcribed the original hand-written journal to be presented here in its entirety. Also included in this edition are supplementary historical annotations, maps and biographical details that provide a comprehensive background for the events and people mentioned in the journal. The day-to-day events of Sarah's life reveal much about the realities of plantation life as well as an understanding of the complexities of religion and slavery in the antebellum period.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781596290884
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date: 01/11/2005
Pages: 160
Product dimensions: 6.25(w) x 9.38(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Dyer, McConnell and Williams are members of the Mecklenburg Historical Association and serve on its Docent Committee. They lead tours at Historic Rosedale and volunteer at a variety of historic sites in the Charlotte area.

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Introduction

Sarah Frew Davidson began her journal in January of 1837. She was an unmarried lady of thirty-three years and lived with her widowed father on his Mecklenburg County plantation called The Grove, some three miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte was a village then, about a square mile in size, and home to about eight hundred inhabitants. According to the tax list of 1840, Charlotte had twelve stores, one bank agent, three taverns, one tannery, one printing office, one weekly newspaper, two academies, one common school, two ministers, six lawyers and six doctors. Personal property lists included thirteen pleasure carriages, eighty-three gold watches, thirty-eight silver watches and twenty-four pianos. Although most of Mecklenburg's people were rural farmers scattered around the countryside, Sarah's closest friends lived within the bounds of the village.

Gold mining was the principle business of the town. In 1799, gold had been discovered in neighboring Cabarrus County. By the 1830s there were a number of gold mines in Mecklenburg and the surrounding counties. The economic depression of 1837 had severe effects on most of the nation, but the Carolina Piedmont prospered because of its gold. That same year a branch of the U.S. Mint was opened in Charlotte to assay ore and mint coins. Mining and the mint flourished until far richer lodes were discovered and developed in California. Most of the male figures encountered in Sarah's journal were involved in the mint or the mining industry as engineers, supervisors and also as investors. It is interesting to note that Sarah mentioned this business casually, as if living in such a heady sphere was perfectlyordinary.

As a young girl Sarah attended the Raleigh Academy, a female boarding school. Her most influential teacher there was Mrs. Susan Nye Hutchison. By 1837 Mrs. Hutchison had been hired by the Salisbury Female Academy about forty miles from Charlotte. She renewed her friendship with several of her former pupils in the Charlotte area, and it was at the urging of Mrs. Hutchison that Sarah began her journal. Its purpose was self-examination and reflection as well as keeping a record of daily life.

A religious revival swept the South in the early 1800s, and many upper-class women experienced spiritual rebirth. The journal served Sarah Davidson as a tool in her personal journey as a typical evangelical Christian lady of her time and class, and served to record her move toward the church and spiritual pursuits. Early in her journal Sarah expressively recalled her "awakening" to Christ's call, and acknowledged the Reverend Robert Hall Morrison, a Presbyterian minister, as the instrument of that awakening. As an evangelical Christian woman she regarded faith as a deep personal commitment requiring a thorough scrutiny of thoughts and emotions. Examination of feelings, desires and motives was encouraged by the church, which deemed man unworthy and subject to salvation only through the grace of God. Her rich spiritual journey, so eloquently explored through her writings, is representative of many wealthy southern women of her time.

The revival was less successful with male members of antebellum society. Many clung to an interpretation of religion focused on reason and avoided the more emotional aspects of the evangelical church. Sarah, while always the submissive daughter, piously tried to win her father and brother away from popular vices and zealously endeavored to convert her "lost" family and friends in order to save them from an eternity of damnation.

During the year of her journal, Sarah worshiped at the Presbyterian Church in the village. Reverend Morrison was its minister 1827-1833. It was probably in 1833 when a highly successful revival was held at the church that she experienced the rebirth described early in her journal. By 1837 when Reverend Morrison took the position of president of the newly opened Davidson College, the young Reverend Abner Leavenworth had occupied the pulpit for several years. He garnered much praise and admiration from the devout Sarah. The church building, which stood where First Presbyterian Church stands today, had been constructed by the community for the use of many denominations during Charlotte's early years. The Presbyterian congregation, the largest and the only one with a full time minister, purchased the building in 1832. Several other denominations continued to use the church for worship services. Sarah attended services of all sects held at the church and some elsewhere in the village, but her opinion of the ministers varied greatly. Later when the Episcopalians built their own sanctuary, she became a member of that congregation.

As a member of the gentry class, Sarah Davidson demonstrated her place in society through her dress, manner of conversation and her physical bearing. In positions of wealth and leisure, slave-holding women of the old South had much time for social occasions and frivolous activities. The church, however, urged their female members to spend their time in more righteous pursuits. Religious writers of the time condemned popular pastimes such as balls, parties and socializing as wasteful and distracting, and encouraged women to tend to domestic duties and spiritual pursuits such as Sunday schools and benevolent societies. Although Sarah greatly enjoyed social occasions, especially with friends and family, she often chastised herself for deriving pleasure from these frivolous encounters. Soon after her spiritual awakening, she and a few of her friends committed to reestablish a Sabbath school in the village of Charlotte. The school not only taught religious principles, but endeavored to provide reading and writing to children of the community's poorer citizens. Sarah also joined the Benevolent Society. These activities helped assuage her guilt and provided her with an acceptable means of socializing with her friends.

Sarah's father, the former Senator William Davidson, owned a plantation called The Grove. It was one of Mecklenburg's largest plantations, and was located off Beatties Ford Road in the present day Hoskins community. The senator raised cotton, operated a gold mine and raised food crops to support his family and slaves. It was The Grove that Sarah called home. The three miles to town was no obstacle for Sarah as she traveled to the village several times a week and always on Sunday. She often rode horseback, which she greatly enjoyed, or walked or traveled in a carriage on these frequent trips. Her sister Margaret and brother-in-law James H. Blake lived in a Davidson family home on the southwest corner of the village square, directly across from the Court House. Sarah resided with them while in the village. Today Thomas Polk Park occupies the site of their former home.

Sarah served her widowed father as mistress of The Grove supervising and instructing his slaves as well as providing for their needs. Her commitment to bringing others to Christ extended to the slaves, which in 1837 numbered around eighty. Sarah felt that reading the Bible was instrumental in directing the spiritual lives of "her people." Her journal recorded her struggle between obedience to God and the law that forbade teaching slaves to read. It was a relatively new law having been enacted in North Carolina in 1831. She concluded that her higher allegiance was to God, and with her father's consent began classes for her young slaves to teach them to read the Bible and instruct them in its meaning. In February she remarked that six weeks before she had commenced teaching the young servants to read. There were probably about twenty-five slave children on the property; she listed the names and accomplishments of sixteen of them.

Her management of the adult slaves is sometimes subtly noted. She often wrote that she had work done, not that she had done it herself. On other occasions she was more explicit when a task was not performed to her liking. She expressed a great deal of compassion for sick or dying slaves, yet no remorse about owning them, typical of her time and class. She accepted matter-of-factly that slaves were biblically ordained inferiors, and it was her responsibility to care and provide for them to the best of her ability. Often she was the only white female on the plantation, a situation that sorely tested her obligation.

Table of Contents

Foreword7
Acknowledgements9
Introduction11
Maps15
The Davidson family19
About the journal21
The Private Journal of Sarah F. Davidson, 183727
Epilogue123
Biographical sketches125
Susan Nye Hutchison125
John J. Blackwood126
The Reverend Abner Johnson Leavenworth127
Catherine Wilson and William Julius Alexander128
William W. and Mary A. Davidson Elms130
Mary McComb and family131
Slaves of William Davidson132
The Sabbath school movement133
Early Holy Communion practices137
Gold mining and the Charlotte Mint139
Selected Bibliography143
Index145
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