Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island
Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island

Author: Mary Ricketson Bullard

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780820317380

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island offers a rare glimpse into the life and times of a nineteenth-century planter on one of Georgia's Sea Islands. Born poor, Robert Stafford (1790-1877) became the leading planter on his native Cumberland Island. Specializing in the highly valued long staple variety of cotton, he claimed among his assets more than 8,000 acres and 350 slaves. Mary R. Bullard recounts Stafford's life in the context of how events from the Federalist period to the Civil War to Reconstruction affected Sea Island planters. As she discusses Stafford's associations with other planters, his business dealings (which included banking and railroad investments), and the day-to-day operation of his plantation, Bullard also imparts a wealth of information about cotton farming methods, plantation life and material culture, and the geography and natural history of Cumberland Island. Stafford's career was fairly typical for his time and place; his personal life was not. He never married, but fathered six children by Elizabeth Bernardey, a mulatto slave nurse. Bullard's discussion of Stafford's decision to move his family to Groton, Connecticut--and freedom--before the Civil War illuminates the complex interplay between southern notions of personal honor, the staunch independent-mindedness of Sea Island planters, and the practice and theory of racial separation. In her afterword to the Brown Thrasher edition, Bullard presents recently uncovered information about a second extralegal family of Robert Stafford as well as additional information about Elizabeth Bernardey's children and the trust funds Stafford provided for them.

Cumberland Island
Cumberland Island

Author: Mary R. Bullard

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780820327419

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cumberland Island is a national treasure. The largest of the Sea Islands along the Georgia coast, it is a history-filled place of astounding natural beauty. With a thoroughness unmatched by any previous account, Cumberland Island: A History chronicles five centuries of change to the landscape and its people from the days of the first Native Americans through the late-twentieth-century struggles between developers and conservationists. Author Mary Bullard, widely regarded as the person most knowledgeable about Cumberland Island, is a descendant of the Carnegie family, Cumberland's last owners before it was acquired by the federal government in 1972 and designated a National Seashore. Bullard's discussion of the Carnegie era on Cumberland is notable for its intimate glimpse into how the family's feelings toward the island bore upon Cumberland's destiny. Bullard draws on more than twenty years of research and travels about the island to describe how water, wind, and the cycles of nature continue to shape it and also how humans have imprinted themselves on the face of Cumberland across time--from the Timuca, Guale, and Mocamo Indians to the subsequent appearances of Spanish, French, African, British, and American inhabitants. The result is an engaging narrative in which discussions about tidal marshes, sea turtles, and wild horses are mixed with accounts of how the island functioned as a center for indigo, rice, cotton, fishing, and timber. Even frequent visitors and former residents will learn something new from Bullard's account of Cumberland Island.

Plum Orchard
Plum Orchard

Author: June Hall McCash

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780984435487

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Zabette is the illegitimate daughter of a planter and a slave but is raised as the planters daughter. Zabette strives to live in the two worlds of the Antebellum South while belonging to neither world.

The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford

Author: Jean Stafford

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1992-01-01

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780292711457

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The appearance of these stories in one volume is an event in our literature. To have built up so distinguished a collection, each story excellent in its own way and each an original departure in relation to the others, is a triumph. --Guy Davenport, New York Times Book Review Miss Stafford's craftsmanship and her mastery of the short story form are by now so well known that it seems superfluous to praise these stories. That they are impeccably done is obvious. --Joyce Carol Oates, Book World She writes about people whom loneliness has driven slightly mad, but also about people who are secure and comforted; she explores childhood and old age, poverty and wealth, tragedy and comedy. The comedy is usually wry... but often moves one to laughter. Above all, Miss Stafford will not be hurried... To me, this book is most solidly achieved. --John Wain, New York Review Of Books Winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this collection of thirty stories includes some of Jean Stafford's best short fiction from the period 1944-1968. Including such favorites as In the Zoo, Children Are Bored on Sunday, and Beatrice Trueblood's Story, the collection offers the work of this popular writer of the 1940s and 1950s to a new generation of readers and critics.

Untamed
Untamed

Author: Will Harlan

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0802192629

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The inspiring biography of the adventuresome naturalist Carol Ruckdeschel and her crusade to save her island home from environmental disaster. In a “moving homage . . . that artfully articulates the ferocities of nature and humanity,” biographer Will Harlan captures the larger-than-life story of biologist, naturalist, and ecological activist Carol Ruckdeschel, known to many as the wildest woman in America. She wrestles alligators, eats roadkill, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built by hand in an island wilderness. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia (Kirkus Reviews). Cumberland, the country’s largest and most biologically diverse barrier island, is celebrated for its windswept dunes and feral horses. Steel magnate Thomas Carnegie once owned much of the island, and in recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island’s future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high school diploma becomes an outspoken advocate on a celebrated but divisive island? Untamed is the story of an American original who fights for what she believes in, no matter the cost, “an environmental classic that belongs on the shelf alongside Carson, Leopold, Muir, and Thoreau” (Thomas Rain Crowe, author of Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods). “Vivid. . . . Ms. Ruckdeschel’s biography, and the way this wandering soul came to settle for so many decades on Cumberland Island, is big enough on its own, but Mr. Harlan hints at bigger questions.” —The Wall Street Journal “Wild country produces wild people, who sometimes are just what’s needed to keep that wild cycle going. This is a memorable portrait.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “Deliciously engrossing. . . . Readers are in for a wild ride.” —The Citizen-Times

Early Days of Coastal Georgia
Early Days of Coastal Georgia

Author: Margaret Davis Cate

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2018-12-05

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1789125650

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Disappearing historic landmarks preserved for posterity... Tabby houses—slave cabins—doorways and cemeteries that recall the history of the early settlers. A story of the living past. Visible evidence of coastal culture. The Military Era and the Plantation Era—its story and heroes... Oglethorpe—the soldiers of Bloody Marsh—faithful Neptune... Along the arc of the Georgia coast there is a chain of sea islands. Of these, Ossabaw, Saint Catherine’s, Sapelo, Saint Simons, Sea Island, Jekyll, and Cumberland are best known as the Golden Isles. Early Days of Coastal Georgia, which was first published in 1955, presents some of their history, illustrated with vintage photos. Beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs by Orrin Sage Wightman.