A Woman Rice Planter

Southern Classics

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle, Charles Joyner (Introduction), Alice R. Huger Smith (Illustrator)

A Woman Rice Planter offers insights into a broad spectrum of Southern life after the Civil War. As an account of a woman's struggle for survival and dignity in a distinctly male-dominated society, it contributes significantly to women's history. For observers of the black experience, it affords opinionated, but nonetheless revealing, views about African American folklife. It presents a rich portrait of a distinctive place—the South Carolina Low Country—in a troubled and generally undocumented time, a portrait made all the more vivid by the fine pen-and-ink sketches of Charleston artist Alice R. Huger Smith.

Elizabeth Allston Pringle grew up on the antebellum rice plantation of her father, a former South Carolina governor. Once the owner of seven plantations and 15,000 acres, her father, at the time of his death, was bankrupt. Left to struggle for income to regain the property and position the family held prior to the war, Pringle turned to writing and eventually published a column on Southern culture in the New York Sun under the pseudonym Patience Pennington. In 1913 she collected and reshaped these newspaper columns and compiled them into one volume, A Woman Rice Planter. Her descriptions of the vagaries of rice planting, of her relationships with former slaves and the first generation of free-born African Americans, and of her life in the early Reconstruction period are important to our understanding of the prevailing attitudes and persistence of the Old South in the New.

Genres: History, Memoir, Nonfiction, Southern

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Elizabeth "Bessie" Waties Allston Pringle
Pen name: Patience Pennington

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fascinating & I’m so glad I read it! The extensive introduction by Joyner, a professor of Southern Culture, does a great job of setting the stage, covering the challenges faced by white former slave owners who needed a workforce & black former slaves who needed an income of some sort after the Civil War. I appreciated the detail he provided related specifically to the Alston & Pringle families.
The period this book covers is around 40 years after the war’s end, consolidating the author’s experiences from 1900-1911 into a book with dates from 1904-1906. It’s fairly amazing that a widow operated as a planter after the war, doing her best to maintain the two family plantations she managed to buy as relatives died when rice growing was still profitable. The book covers the period after profitability & explores her experiments growing other crops as rice growing ended.
I found it very enlightening to read about her experiences with her workforce. Her relationships with the free black people who lived on her property were incredibly diverse & seemed quite fragile, as she held no real power to “make” them do anything she needed them to do as an employer & landlord, aside from putting them off the property, which didn’t seem to happen very often. It was a fraught time period & I can’t imagine trying to operate in an agricultural capacity as a single woman during that time.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much the author wrote about, & appeared to rely on, her Christian faith. Her appreciation of God’s providence & provision is peppered throughout the book & felt relatable to me more than 100 years later. Super glad I read this one!

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diary of Patience Pennington in the early 1900s. She is the heir to 1000 acres of lowlands in South Carolina. The 600 slaves that her father had owned are scattered. Some own and farm 25 acres or more successfully, some rent homes and land from her and pay in produce, and some work for hourly wages or portions of the goods cultivated when asked and when they have the time. She has no sense that this land is not ethically hers, but at the same time she has a deep sense that she is responsible for the former slaves and their descendants. She records the many kindnesses she does, laments the change in attitudes as the slaves resist her requests for labor and 'steal' of her crops and livestock. Interesting to me, as the rice crop becomes uneconomical, she tries a succession of other crops to make money to pay the taxes. She records the mix-ups and mistakes made by the blacks and less often their wise, clever, or helpful actions. The character changes with each generations and maturity is a mystery to her and distressful. This book gives some insight into gradual and diverse changes of the black inhabitants in the neighborhood of this plantation at this time.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was offensive in the author's depictions of Black people, because she wrote in her own words and had the perspective of a Southern white plantation owner whose father owned slaves. The history was fascinating, learning about the hardships of life on a large farm in South Carolina in the early 1900s. I am always interested in people's perspectives from different historical periods, and this was well written and informative.

[Christina Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

stories from home

SC is my adopted home, and I have been enthralled by the stories of the low country and rice plantations. So many people I know in my small town are related directly to this woman. It’s a very small world indeed.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just okay.

[Wileyoneone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book -In my library

[Kim Armstrong Silcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written at the turn of the 20th century, this is certainly a book that needs to be understood in the context of the time period of the Civil reconstruction era. The author was the daughter of former South Carolina governor Robert Allston, who at the time of the Civil War owned 4 massive rice plantations but when he died, nearly all of the estate had to be sold to pay debts. His daughter Bessie inherited some of the plantations and made a go of trying to keep the businesses going despite the price of rice plummeting and inconsistent work from the now paid formerly enslaved people. She wrote a column for a northern newspaper and then edited the columns into this book. It shows how difficult it was for white owned plantations to keep the businesses going and for the black former slaves to earn a living. Her depiction of the black workers is disturbing at times.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the end of the plantation era here in the lowcountry of SC. It's my backyard - and therefore it's especially fascinating to know how life was "here" - and for a woman. The book is Elizabeth Allston Pringle's journal. She wrote in a very descriptive way, and I learned much about the planting process, the slow & scary travel between town and the plantations, and the joys and difficulties having slaves.