Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the originaldocument have been preserved.
OLD PLANTATION DAYS
OLD PLANTATION
DAYS
BEING RECOLLECTIONS OF SOUTHERN
LIFE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
BY
Mrs. N. B. De Saussur
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1909
Copyright, 1909, by
N. B. DE SAUSSURE
THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The following reminiscences are publishedat the request of many friends who,after reading the manuscript, have urged thatthe recollections be given more permanentform and a wider circulation.
N. B. DeSaussure.
OLD PLANTATION DAYS
Old Plantation Days
My Dear Granddaughter Dorothy:
Grandmother is growing to be an old lady,and as you are still too young to rememberall she has told you of her own and yourmother's people, she is going to write downher recollections that you may thus gain atrue knowledge of the old plantation days,now forever gone, from one whose life wasspent amid those scenes.
The South as I knew it has disappeared;the New South has risen from its ashes, filledwith the energetic spirit of a new age. Youcan only know the New South, but there is ageneration, now passing away, which holdsin loving memory the South as it used to be.10Those memories are a legacy to the new generationfrom the old, and it behooves the oldto hand them down to the new.
"The days that are no more" comecrowding around me, insistent that I interpretthem as I knew them; there are the happyplantation days, the recollection of whichcauses my heart to throb again with youthfulpleasure, and near them are the days, thedreadful days, of war and fire and famine. Ishrink as the memory of these draws near.
The spirit of those early days is what Ichiefly desire to leave with you; the bare factsare history, but just as the days come back tomy recollection I will write about them, andnecessarily the record will be fitful memorieswoven together but imperfectly.
My father, your great-grandfather, was adirect descendant on his mother's side ofLandgrave Smith, first Colonial Governor of11South Carolina, his mother being LandgraveSmith's granddaughter; his grandfather wasPierre Robert, a Huguenot minister whoemigrated to America, after the revocationof the edict of Nantes, and led the Huguenotcolony to South Carolina.
My father was born in 1791 in the oldhomestead situated forty miles up the riverfrom Savannah. He had twelve children,and I was one of the younger members of hislarge family. His early life was similar tothe life of any present-day boy, with schooldays and holidays. Dur