A Life in Antebellum Charlotte

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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.