Garden Design - Fences for Gardens, Yards, & Fields in Early America

1787-1791 Edward Savage (American artist, 1761-1817) George Washington's Mount Vernon Detail A View from The Northeast

1787-1791 Edward Savage (American artist, 1761-1817) The East Front of Mount Vernon

1787 Ludwig Gottfried von Redeken. Farmer working in his field near the Moravian settlement of Salem, North Carolina.

In early America, just as it had been for centuries, a fence was a structural barrier built of wood, or other materials, used to define, separate, & enclose areas like fields, pastures, yards, & gardens.  Fences were mandated by the local & colonial governments in many of the British American colonies in the 17C & 18C.

Some of the earliest legislation in the colonies were directives for fencing in cultivated grounds & other spaces requiring protection from animal & human intruders. Land in early America was often refered to as "well-fenced," "under a good fence," & "within fence."

In 1623, the Virginia General Assembly declared "that every freeman shall fence in a quarter of an acre of ground before Whitsuntide next to make a garden."

Jonathan Welch Edes (American artist, 1750-c 1793-1803) Overmantle Captain David Thacher’s home in Yarmouth on Cape Cod. Showing men drying cod on racks with the entire operation surrounded by fences.

An act of the Virginia General Assembly of 1705, intended to protect the gardens from stray pigs, horses & cattle, required the owners of every lot on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, to "inclose the said lots, or half acres, with a wall, pales, or post and rails, within six months after the building, which the law requires to be erected thereupon, shall be finished."  The minimum height of the fence was set at 4 & one-half feet & but many were built higher. 

1796 Ralph Earl (American artist, 1751-1801) Houses on New Milford Green, CT

In 1706, the act of the Virginia legislature authorizing the building of the Governor's Palace allocated 635 pounds for the construction of the garden with these instructions, "that a Court-Yard, of dimensions proportionable to the said house, be laid out, levelled and encompassed with a brick wall 4 feet high with the balustrades of wood thereupon, on the said land, and that a Garden of the length of 254 foot and the breadth of 144 foot from out to out, adjoining to the said house, to be laid out and levelled and enclosed with a brick wall, 4 feet high, with ballsutrades of wood upon the said wall, and that handsome gates be made to the said court-yard and garden."

1787-1791 Edward Savage (American artist, 1761-1817) The East Front of Mount Vernon

By 1776, the wooden fences portions of the fences & walls around the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg needed attention. The Virginia Council Journal reported "Repairing Fodder Houses & paling round Garden."  The "General appoints 25 men to repair fences of park."

Also receiving attention were the wooden fences around the pasture near the Governor's Palace in 1777, "Repairing the pailing and railing Round the Pasture." In order to complete the fence repair the workmen needed "60 foot of plank, 250 nails."

1787-1791 Edward Savage (American artist, 1761-1817) Mount Vernon Detail A View from The Northeast

Many fences were built by slave & indentured servant laborers. 

Gottlieb Mittelberger traveled to Pennsylvania from Germany in 1750, on a ship primarily filled with poorer immigrants who would become indentured servants upon arriving in Philadelphia.

1800 Francis Guy (English-born American painter, 1760–1820) On the Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland, where fences run down to the water & protect those on the pier from falling into it.

Mittelberger observed the working conditions for German immigrant, indentured servants in Pennsylvania & wrote of them upon his return to his homeland. He noted, "Work mostly consists in cutting wood, felling oak-trees, rooting out, or as they say there, clearing large tracts of forest. Such forests, being cleared, are then laid out for fields and meadows. From the best hewn wood, fences are made around the new fields; for there all meadows, orchards and fruit-fields, are surrounded and fenced in with planks made of thickly-split wood, laid one above the other, as in zigzag lines, and within such enclosures, horses, cattle, and sheep, are permitted to graze."
1803 Charles Fraser (1782-1860). Utility fence depicted in A Bason & Storehouse Belonging to the Santee Canal.

Most gardeners could not afford brick walls & chose traditional paling---a picket fence--to protect their kitchen gardens. Occasionally Virginians denoted property lines with rail fences constructed in a zig-zag form. One traveler wrote in 1777, “the New Englanders have a saying, when a man is in his liquor, he is making Virginia fences.”

1800 Felice Corne (1752–1845) Ezekiel Hersey Derby Farm near Salem, Massachusetts. Here is a combination of wooden fences & stone walls.

In Baltimore, Maryland in 1797, fenced gardens divided into quadrants but not terraced & with few other embellishments appeared at 13 Baltimore homes. At least one of these kitchen gardens had a stone wall surrounding its four beds. 

1800 Francis Guy (1760-1820). Bolton From the South Garden Facade falling toward the harbor.  This view of Bolton shows the rectangular fenced kitchen gardens at the bottom of the more formal green terraces.

1804 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. Garden Facade of Mt Deposit. Baltimore Home of David Harris (1752-1809)

Few paintings of the garden facades of Baltimore's country homes exist, but thanks to some inventive furniture makers, several chairback paintings of a variety of entrance facade fences remain.

1800 Francis Guy (1760-1820). Imporved Entrance Facade of Bolton.

Most of Baltimore's country seats had fences defining the entrance & garden areas of the property. Fences close to the house were usually painted white.

1804 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. Entrance Facade of Grace Hill Home of Hugh McCurdy from 1790-1805 in Baltimore.

1804 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. From the North Entrance Facade of Bolton, Home of George Grundy (1775-1825) Baltimore.

1804 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. Rose Hill. Home of William Gibson (1735-1832) Baltimore Lanvale Street at Eutaw Place.

1804 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. St. Paul's Chairity School. Baltimore.

1805 Chairback by John & Hugh Findley c 1804. View by Francis Guy 1760-1820. Woodville. Baltimore Home of Jeremiah Yellott .

Some of the homes dotting the hills above Baltimore's harbor did not have fences on the entrance facade of the home, exhibiting a more natural grounds approach toward their landscaping. Fenced kitchen gardens usually were tucked away at the rear of the house.

1805 Francis Guy (1760-1820).  Bolton in Baltimore from the extended South Garden Facade.  Here, the garden area at the bottom of the formal falling garden terraces had been fenced with a curved picket fencing.

French traveler Moreau St. Mery wrote of the country seats around New York City, when he was there in 1793.  "I have spoken frequently of "pretty" country houses in this description; but when one hears this expression, he must not think that it has the same sense here as it has in Europe, particularly in France.

"In America, a very pretty country house corresponds only to a place moderately kept up on the outskirts of a large French city, and even then one will find in the former neither the good taste which embellishes the European house nor the comforts which make living in it a pleasure.

In America almost everything is sacrificed to the outside view. To accomplish this the fences of the houses are sometimes varied by these six combinations:

1. Planks are laid vertically and close together.

2. Planks are laid the same way, with a space between them.

3. Little narrow boards are laid across without joining.

4. Vertically placed laths are joined.

5. Vertically placed laths are not joined.

6. Laths are placed vertically, but passing alternately on the outside and the inside of cross members.

"Further elegance is obtained by using different shades of paint on lattices and partitions. Doors are handled in the same way." 

1800 Michele Felice Corne (1752–1845) New England Country Seat with rather intricate entrance fencing.

New Yorker John Nicholson suggested a few practical, utilitarian fence designs in The Farmer's Assistant in 1820, "Log-fences are often made on new-cleared lands...White-pine log-fences are very good, and will last 20 years without any essential repairing. Clear white-pine timber may, however, be split into rails, which are very durable. All kinds of wood will last much longer in rails, when the bark is peeled off.

1780 Unknown Artist. The End of the Hunt.

"What are called worm-fences are made with most ease, but require more timber than some other kinds. If, therefore, timber be scarce, post-and-rail fences...ought to be prefered, where good durable posts can be had.

1796 Ralph Earl (American artist, 1751-1801) Ruggles Homestead

"If the posts are too small to have holes made through them, the rails may be flated at the ends and fastened to the posts with spikes.. or with wooden pins well secured.
1816. Charles Willson Peale. Belfield Farm in Pennsylvania.

Utility fences, when painted, were usually reddish in color. More formal fences were usually painted white.

1800 An Overmantle from the Gardiner Gilman House in Exeter, New Hampshire.  This painting shows a combination of wooden fencing & stone walls.

"Post-and-rail fences...arc very good where the soil is dry, and the same may be observed of board fences; but, where the soil is wet, the posts will be thrown out by the frosts. In all cases, the posts ought to be set at least 2 feet in the ground.

Francis Guy (English-born American painter, 1760–1820) Summer View of Brooklyn, NY.  The most unusual thing about these utilitarian town fences is that the artist painted them in the summer & in the winter with and without folks working around them.

"Red-cedar is best for posts. Locust, chesnut, butternut, and black-walnut are also good. Good oak will also last pretty well. Burning the ends of the posts which go into the ground, so as to make them black, will make them last longer...

1817-20 Francis Guy (English-born American painter, 1760–1820) Winter Scene in Brooklyn, NY

"It is advisable to have a close high fence round your kitchen and fruit-gardens. This, in the first place, renders every thing within it secure from Pillagers; and also serves to keep out fowls. Another, benefit consists in keeping off the strong cold winds of the Spring, which are very injurious to the young plants, and also to the fruit, which is then about puting forth."

1817 Francis Guy (English-born American painter, 1760–1820) Winter Scene in Brooklyn, NY  How the fence was used in the winter.

Garden Design - Wood Fences in 17C & 18C Virginia - The Brush Fence

 The Brush Fence

The quickest and most economical fence to construct had as its components the by-products of land clearing. The fieldstone walls which characterized much of the New England landscape represent one fencing variety of the type. In other areas, including Virginia, stumps, brush, logs, deadwood, or combinations thereof were massed into tangled barriers. While the stone wall of New England remained a useful form for centuries. Its wooden equivalent, however, proved neither as durable nor effective and its use was most likely confined to the early stages of settlement or other temporary situations.

In the 17C & 18C Atlantic British American colonial coast, fences were built for mainly practical reasons. In the southern colonies, livestock of all kinds was accommodated in the woods surrounding the cultivated fields. As the animals could be branded or otherwise marked for owner identification & cleared land was often limited, crops came to be enclosed & livestock was thus fenced out. But, in New England & parts of the middle colonies, livestock was customarily fenced in.  By no means restricted to agricultural use, fences also defined & protected all types of rural & urban spaces, such as churchyards, gardens, & workyards, throughout the colonies.

These fences were common in the Chesapeake & in Tidewater Virginia. Fencing was sometimes achieved by the use of masonry walls, but native stone is a scarce resource in the Tidewater region, though brick was used to build some churchyard walls & to enclose certain buildings there. The majority of Virginia fences were constructed of wood. All fence types co-existed during the colonial period; the historical record offers no indication that one type completely supplanted another.

Text from: Partitioning the Landscape: The Fence in Eighteenth-Century Virginia

Vanessa E. Patrick. December 6, 1983. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series - 0134

Garden Design - Wood Fences in 17C & 18C Virginia - The Wattle Fence

Wattle Fence Landauer Twelve Brother's House manuscript 15C

What might be called a systematized brush fence, that is, the wattle fence, was known in medieval Europe. Wattle construction, also called hurdle-or wickerwork, was well established in 17C England as a method for infilling the walls of timber-framed buildings. 

Wattle Fence From the Theatrum of Casanatense 14C Sage 

Composed of thin, vertical staves about which were woven flexible withes, wattle was finished with mud, clay, & sometimes plaster in its architectural context. Without this earthen covering & with staves or stakes driven into the ground, the wattle fence provided an effective windbreak & more or less defied the invasion or escape of small animals. Availability of materials coupled with familiarity & simplicity of construction suggest the use of wattle-and-daub infill in 17C Virginia. 

The wattle fence also seems to have made an early appearance. Archaeological investigation of Wolstenholmetown, one of the Martin's Hundred sites in James City County, revealed a curving line of small post holes defining what was probably a domestic yard protected by a wattle fence.

At the Clifts Plantation site in Westmoreland County, Virginia, wattle fences appear to have been constructed in conjunction with ditches about 1705. Archaeological findings suggest that such an arrangement enclosed the rectangular gardens, kitchen yard, & possible orchard adjacent to the main house. At the very end of the 18C, just such a combination fence was specified by George Washington in a letter to his farm manager: "When the Angle of Wood, adjoining the present Cornfield at Mansion house is cleared let all the Poles which are of a proper size for a wattled fence, either in whole, or by being split in two, be preserved; as my intention is, when I come home, to have a neat fence of that kind, on a ditch from the White gates along the road to the turn of it, as Allisons stakes will run to the present-fence."

As late as 1850, The American Agriculturist reported that the wattle fence was a common Virginia type & supplied instructions for assembling a "cedar-brush fence … first, throw up a ridge of earth about a foot above the level, & in this drive stakes on a line two to three feet apart, three & a half to four feet high, & then wattle in the cedar limbs, beating them down with a maul as compactly as possible." 

In the same journal, it was noted that the use of banking, as well as ditching, was an important aspect of fencing in the "low lands" of Gloucester & neighboring counties & along the Rappahannock River. Washington's pole variety of wattle fence also endured into the 19C; the placement of its stakes was observed to be 8 to 10 feet apart. Praised for its durability, especially when constructed with stakes of the cedar or chestnut then abundant in Tidewater, the wattle fence was said to survive for about twenty years with relatively little maintenance.

That wattle fence construction required less labor than other types is suggested by the comments of Landon Carter of Richmond County: "I fancy I must put a Watle fence round my new corn fields for I see what with idleness & sickness I can't get rails ready nor all in place."

Philip Vickers Fithian viewed the wattle fence with greater equanimity & wrote an account of fence building at Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, in 1774: "I walked to see the Negroes make a fence; they drive into the Ground Chestnut stakes about two feet apart in a straight Row, & then twist in the Boughs of Savin which grows in great plenty here …"

In the 17C & 18C Atlantic British American colonial coast, fences were built for mainly practical reasons. In the southern colonies, livestock of all kinds was accommodated in the woods surrounding the cultivated fields. As the animals could be branded or otherwise marked for owner identification & cleared land was often limited, crops came to be enclosed & livestock was thus fenced out. 

But, in New England & parts of the middle colonies, livestock was customarily fenced in.  By no means restricted to agricultural use, fences also defined & protected all types of rural & urban spaces, such as churchyards, gardens, & work-yards, throughout the colonies.

These fences were common in the Chesapeake & in Tidewater Virginia. Fencing was sometimes achieved by the use of masonry walls, but native stone is a scarce resource in the Tidewater region, though brick was used to build some churchyard walls & to enclose certain buildings there. The majority of Virginia fences were constructed of wood. All fence types co-existed during the colonial period; the historical record offers no indication that one type completely supplanted another.

Text from: Partitioning the Landscape: The Fence in Eighteenth-Century Virginia by Vanessa E. Patrick. December 6, 1983. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series - 0134

1750s Seeds & Plants - Philadelphia Seed Merchant Quaker Hannah Dubre (1709 -1775)

The Gardener After François Boucher (French, Paris 1703–1770 Paris) by John Ingram (British, London, ca. 1721–1759)

From the 1750s through the 1770s the most successful Philadelphia seed merchant & nursery-owner was a Quaker woman, Hannah Bissell Dubre (1709 -1775) of the Northern Liberties area 2 miles from the Philadelphia city limit, on the Wissahickon Road.  Hannah's parents were William Bissell (1680-1748) & Mary Pugh (1680-1713) & step-mother Hannah Warrington of Worcester, England

Hannah married Joseph Dubree or Dubre (1707-1748) in 14 Mar 1740/41; and they owned 33 acres, which they later increased to 50 acres, with a bearing orchard of grafted fruit trees, some meadow land, a large brick house and detached brick kitchen with a pump just outside the door, a barn and several other outbuildings, and a large kitchen garden that included many asparagus beds.

From 1754 through 1775, Hannah offered locally grown seed and fruit trees on both a retail and a wholesale basis. To accommodate customers who didn’t want to trudge out to her remote plantation, she introduced the idea of relying on agents in town to sell and supply to retail and wholesale customers, including international traders.  

By 1766, she was advertising that she could fill large orders for “Captains of Vessels” for exportation to the West Indies “on the shortest Notice.” Even after her husband’s death in 1768, “the widow Dubre” kept her garden and business going.   She warranted her seeds as “fresh and good" and sold large quantities to local shopkeepers for resale to their clients and to exporters for trade out of the country.  

Before 1770, she kept agents in town, including her brothers on Third Street John Bissell (1729-1805) and Samuel Bissell (1727-1762), and also with John Lownes, and Ann Powell near the Work House on Third Street, to supply both retail and wholesale customers who did not want to travel the two miles out of town to visit her plantation.  After 1770, she used James Truman, a butcher and meat curer in Elbow Lane near the Harp and Crown Tavern, as her local Philadelphia city agent. Over a twenty-year period, Hannah Dubre expanded her operation from a small local seed concern to a large-quantity supply business catering to merchants and international traders.

Note: Some claim Hannah Dubre as the wife of Jacob Dubre was an early relative of Jefferson Davis of Civil War note.

1799 Garden Design - The Rural House & Yards by Pennsylvanian John Beale Bordley (1726/27-1804)

John Beale Bordley (1726/27-1804) . Essays & Notes on Husbandry & Rural Affairs. Printed by Budd and Bartram, for Thomas Dobson, at the stone house, no 41, South Second Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1799

Design of the Rural House and Yards

The whole yard and its buildings, should be in view from the mansion; and that they be construdted at a proper distance, neither too near nor too far from the mansion. The food should be near to the housed live slock, for readily distributing it. The yard ought to be compact; and the doors of the buildings, and the gates of the yard, seen from the mansion.

It is not to save ground that compactness is here desired; but that the attentions due to the live stock may be performed in the readied and best way. A yard containing cattle always housed, is never to be littered with straw, but all litter carelessly dropt on it, is to be raked off, for security against fire dropt on the way to the boiling house; and the beasts are not suffered to stroll about wasting dung and urine. When let out and watered, they are to be instantly returned to their stalls, regularly in detachments, one set after another.

The homestead includes this yard; together with its stockyard, the garden, nursery, orchard, and some acres for occasional use: such as the letting mares, or sick beasts run in, at liberty. The farmstead should include:

Mansion
Pigeon-house
Kitchen, Oven, and Ash Hole
Poultry-house and yard
Wood-yard
Laboratory
Milk-house
Ice-house.
Cloacas
Family yard
Pump
Watering troughs
Sow and Pig Sties
Cow-house
Boiling-house
Hogs
Granary
Stercories
Barn
Sheep-house and yard
Stable, for farm
Bridge and vault
Chaise-house and stable
Bees
Waggon and cart-house
Implements of husbandry house
Workshop

1818 Garden Design - Formal Garden in Pennsylvania by Jacob Maentel (1763-1863)

Attributed to Jacob Maentel (American artist, 1763-1863) 

Pennsylvania Gentleman in Formal Garden c 1818

Jacob Maentel (1763-1863) was born in Germany & immigrated to the U.S. around 1805-6. Some report that Johann Adam Bernhard Jacob Maentel was born in the 1770s in Kassel, Germany, son of Frederich Ludwig Maentel & Elizabeth Krügerin. He may have immigrated to Baltimore, Maryland, sometime between his father’s death in 1805, & the appearance of a Jacob Maentel, “Portrait painter,” in the Baltimore directory of 1807, where he advertised for portrait commissions.  

Jacob Maentel made his living as a portrait painter, first in Maryland and then in Lebanon, York and Dauphin Counties in Pennsylvania. He painted more than 200 portraits of friends & neighbors. Although the first image in this posting is the only painting of a formal garden we know of by Maentel, the artist often painted his subjects in outdoor settings. 

Most landscapes the artist used in his portraits were farms or nature's choice.  Maentel was probably traveling as an itinerant artist up to Pennsylvania by about 1807, based on portraits of subjects in Dauphin, Lebanon, & York Counties. He traveled north of Baltimore about 50 miles, & applied for citizenship at York, PA, where a large German-speaking immigrant population thrived.  From September 1, 1814, to March 1, 1815, “Jacob Mantell” of Lancaster served in the Second Regiment of the Second Brigade of the Pennsylvania Militia based in York. He was paid $6.00 for this service & was
naturalized a short time later, in York County.

In 1816, Maentel was sketched by artist Lewis Miller of York County, PA.  Another second, older Jacob Maentel, identified as a confectioner, was also sketched at the same time.  Following his marriage in 1819, Maentel settled in Lebanon County, PA. He married Catherine Weaver of Baltimore in about 1818 or 1819, & had a daughter Louisa, born c. 1822; 4 more children followed.  Over the next 2 decades, the artist produced numerous portraits of local residents, many of them German Americans.

In 1820, Maentel is listed in the census for Dauphin County, PA, where he painted many subjects standing in grassy landscapes. By 1830, he was living in Schaefferstown, Lebanon County, PA, where 2 of his children were born & where his name appears with many of his subjects—Zimmerman, Bucher, Haak—in the parish register of the Saint Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Jacob Maentel name also appears, until 1833, in the Zimmerman ledger books for purchases of paint & confectioners’ supplies.

According to one of Maentel's granddaughters, Maentel & his family were bound for Texas in 1838, when illness forced them to stop in the vicinity of New Harmony, Indiana; where they stayed with their friends, the Jacob Schnee family. Maentel apparently went on to Texas, leaving his family with the Schnees. When Maentel returned from Texas & decided to stay in Indiana, Schnee helped him lease a farm.  In 1838, Maentel is listed in the Indiana tax rolls for New Harmony Township, where he continued to sketch members of the tight-knit German community, some of whom he had known in Pennsylvania. The German community there grew from the 1st attempt at a utopian society in New Harmony.

New Harmony, Indiana, is a small town located on the Wabash River in southwestern Indiana. During the early part of the 19C, New Harmony was the site of 2 attempts to establish Utopian communities.  The 1st, Harmonie (1814-1825), was founded by the Harmonie Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran Church. Led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left their home in Harmonie, Pennsylvania, & established a 2nd community on the western frontier of Indiana.  During the 10 years in which they cultivated the new town of Harmonie, the Harmonists, with their strong German work ethic & devout religious rule.  The Harmonists combined the Swabian work ethic "Work, work, work! Save, save, save!" with the Benedictine rule "Pray & work!". This resulted in an unheard of economic achievement that was recognized as "the wonder of the west."  Slightly more than a decade later, however, they sold the town & surrounding lands to Robert Owen, a Welsh-born industrialist & philosopher, for his communitarian experiment. The Owenite social experiment was an economic failure just 2 years after it began.

As late as 1850, Maentel continued to work as an itinerant portrait painter in Indiana & Illinois. The older Maentel also appeared in Indiana, after the artist was settled there, where there were also references to the artist’s wife as a confectioner.  Apparently some of the portraits Maentel painted of local residents were done in exchange for goods. In 1858, his house burned to the ground, & he moved in with his daughter Louisa & her husband Thomas Mumford. Jacob Maentel died in 1863, & is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery, in New Harmony, Indiana, where his initials, J.M. are recorded on the gravestone.

Garden Design & Plant Lists - The Kitchen Garden 1759 Moravian North Carolina Settlement of Bethabara

Bethabara, North Carolina, by Christian Gottlieb Reuter, 1766, Wachovia Area, NC. Moravian Archives, Southern Province,  MESDA

The Moravians were among the 1st Protestant groups in Europe during the 15C. For more than 300 years, they suffered religious persecution, which caused them to periodically uproot their community or go into hiding.  By the early 1700s, they had fled to Germany, where they built the town of Herrnhut.  From there, they sent missionaries to many areas in the world, including the British America colonies in North America, where they established a strong foothold in Pennsylvania.  In an effort to carry their religion to other parts of the American British colonies, in 1753, Moravians purchased a 100,000-acre tract in central North Carolina. There, missionaries established Bethabara as a temporary settlement on the new frontier; while they laid plans for a more permanent central town, which would become known as Salem.

The Upland Garden at Bethabara, laid out and planted by Bro. Lung, May 1, 1759. Bethabara (from the Hebrew, meaning "House of Passage," the Biblical name of the traditional site of John The Baptist & of the Baptism of Jesus Christ) was a village located in what is now Forsyth County, North Carolina. It was the site where 12 men from the Moravian Church first settled in 1753, in an abandoned cabin in the 100,000-acre (400 km2) tract of land the church had purchased from Lord Granville & dubbed Wachovia.

“Old World gardens in the New World: the gardens of the Moravian settlement of Bethabara in North Carolina, 1753-72” by Flora Ann L. Bynum, Journal of Garden History, (1996), Southern Garden History Plant List.

Allium cepa Onions
Allium sativum Garlic
Anthriscus cerefolium Kerbel (possibly chervil
Apium graveolens, var. dulce Celery
Armoracia rusticana [Cochlearia armoracia] Horseradish
Asparagus officinalis Asparagus
Beta vulgaris Mangolds (beets)
Brassica oleracea, Botrytis group Cauliflower
Brassica oleracea, Capitata group Cabbage
Brassica oleracea, Gongyloces group Kohlrabi
Capsicum annuum, Longum group Spanish pepper; Chili and red
Cochlearia officinalis Spoonwort, scurvy grass
Cornus sanguinea Dogwood (blood-twig or European)
Cucumis melo, Reticulatus group Melons
Cydonia oblonga Quince
Daucus carota var. sativus Carrots
Dianthus caryophyllus or D. plumarius hy. Cloves
Humulus lupulus Hops
Lactuca sativa Lettuce
Lepidium sativum Cress
Narcissus pseudonarcissus Daffodils
Origanum majorana
[Majorana hortensis] Marjoram
P crispum, var. tuberosum Turnip-rooted parsley, Hamburg parsley
Pastinaca sativa Parsnips
Petroselinum crispum Parsley, curly
Phaseolus vulgaris Black beans
Pisum sativum var. sativum Sweet peas
Raphanus sativus Radish
Ribes uva-crispa
 [R. grossularia] Gooseberries
Spinacia oleracea Spinach
Syringa vulgaris Lilacs
Thymus vulgaris Thyme
Tropaeolum majus, T. minus Nasturtium 'Kaper'
Valerianella locusta
[V. olitoria] Field salad or corn salad

Seeds & Plants - Teenage Girl changes the Economy of South Carolina - Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793)

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793)

Eliza Lucas Pinckney was born into privilege on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where her British military officer father was stationed at the time.  Her parents sent her back to England for a "proper" education, before they sailed to their new home in South Carolina. When Eliza was 16, her father, seeking a healthier climate for his ailing wife, brought the mother & their 2 daughters to a plantation, which he had inherited on Wappoo Creek in South Carolina, near Charleston, in 1738.

When the growing conflict between England & Spain, the War of Jenkins’ Ear, forced him to return to his military post in Antigua in 1739, the management of Wappoo, & of her father's 2 other plantations in the Carolina low country, fell to 16 year-old Eliza. Her observations of & contributions to botany & gardening & agriculture in South Carolina were immense. And the insights from her letters & memoranda into the life of an educated colonial woman in 18C America are revealing.

When Europeans colonized North America, they immediately started trying to grow crops of economic importance. Indigo is one of the 1st plants the British attempted to grow, when they got to North America. They tried growing it in Jamestown, while the Dutch tried it in New Amsterdam( New York City). The French had some success in Louisiana, but nobody had much luck making indigo commercially successful, until Eliza Lucas came along.

Indigo plant

In the 1730s, 16-year-old Eliza Lucas, whose father was lieutenant governor of Antigua & who had an interest in botany, was put in charge of 3 of her father's South Carolina plantations. Her father sent her seeds from Antigua, & indigo seemed to Eliza to have the most promise. 

At age 16, Eliza Lucas Pinckney became manager of her father’s 3 plantations, took care of her younger sister, & her dying mother. We have details of Eliza's life & hopes; because when she was 18, Eliza began keeping her letters & memoranda from 1740 - 1762. Her letterbook is one of the largest surviving collections of letters of a colonial woman. Her rich letters reveal her quick-witted perseverance & grit, as she forged an unique life for herself & plotted a new path for agriculture in South Carolina.

When she was 18, Eliza wrote of her new situation to a friend in England, on May 2, 1740. "I like this part of the world, as my lott has fallen here... I prefer England to it, ’tis true, but think Carolina greatly preferable to the West Indias, & was my Papa here I should be very happy...Charles Town, the principal one in this province, is a polite, agreeable place. The people live very Gentile & very much in the English taste. The Country is in General fertile...My Papa & Mama’s great indulgence to me leaves it to me to chose our place of residence either in town or Country, but I think it more prudent as well as most agreeable to my Mama & self to be in the Country during my Father’s absence. We are 17 mile by land & 6 by water from Charles Town where we have about 6 agreeable families around us with whom we live in great harmony...I have a little library well furnished (for my papa has left most of his books) in which I spend part of my time. My Musick & the Garden, which I am very fond of, take up the rest of my time that is not imployed in business, of which my father has left me a pretty good share...I have the business of 3 plantations to transact, which requires much writing & more business & fatigue of other sorts than you can imagine. But lest you should imagine it too burthensom to a girl at my early time of life, give me leave to answer you: I assure you I think myself happy that I can be useful to so good a father, & by rising very early I find I can go through much business."

The teenager brought her infectuous love of learning with her to Wappoo. She reveled in music & could “tumble over one little tune” on the flute. She quoted Milton, read Richardson’s Pamela, & spoke French. She enjoyed reading John Locke, Virgil's Plutarch, & Thomas Wood. But, her favorite subject was botany.

She tutored her sister Polly & “two black girls,” whom she envisioned making “school mistress’s for the rest of the Negroe children,” if her father approved. In 1741, she recorded sighting a comet whose appearance Sir Isaac Newton had predicted. Eliza enjoyed brief social visits in Charleston, but devoted most of her energy to her family & to plotting the success of the plantation.

In July of 1740, she wrote a memorandum, "Wrote my Father a very long letter on his plantation affairs and... On the pains I had taken to bring the Indigo, Ginger, Cotton and Lucerne and Casada to perfection, and had greater hopes from the Indigo (if I could have the seed earlier next year from the West India’s) than any of the rest of the things I had tryd."

Drying freshly picked indigo from the field.

Eliza recognized that the growing textile manufacturing industry was creating a worldwide market for good dyes. In 1739, she began cultivating & creating new strains of the indigo plant from which blue dye could be made. She introduced the successful cultivation of the plant indigo used in making dye to the American colonies.

Fermented Indigo

She continued to look for ways to make a profit from the family's plantations. On April 23, 1741, she wrote a memorandum, "Wrote to my Father informing him of the loss of a Negroe man also the boat being overset in Santilina Sound & 20 barrels of Rice lost. Told him of our making a new garden & all conveniences we can to receive him... Also about Starrat & pitch & Tarr."

 Indigo dyed cotton, wool, silk and linen yarns

In June of 1741, she finally heard from her father after 6 months without any letters, & she wrote him in return, "We expect the boat dayly from Garden Hill [plantation] when I shall be able to give you an account of affairs there. The Cotton, Guiney corn, & most of the Ginger planted here was cutt off by a frost.

"I wrote you in a former letter we had a fine Crop of Indigo Seed upon the ground, & since informed you the frost took it before it was dry. I picked out the best of it & had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of is come up...I make no doubt Indigo will prove a very valuable Commodity in time if we could have the seed from the west Indias in time enough to plant the latter end of March, that the seed might be dry enough to gather before our frost. I am sorry we lost this season."

Indigo Dyed Bed Cover 1770-90 ca. Detail of Fabric for Bed Cover, Cotton, Woven (plain), Block printed, Resist style.

Eliza hoped a fine grade of blue indigo grown in Carolina could be prepared into dye cakes for cloth manufacturers in England. The market for South Carolina rice had dwindled with the war, & indigo could be bought from South Carolina instead of the French Carribean islands, if she was successful at introducing a 2nd staple crop to the colony. “I was ignorant both at the proper season for sowing it [indigo] & the soil best adapted to it,” Eliza wrote. Yet it was her perseverance which brought to success experiments in growing this crop which had been tried & discarded near Charleston some 70 years earlier.

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1753 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Joseph Mann Bethia Torrey  

Knowing how complex was the process of producing the dye from the fresh-cut plants, Colonel Lucas sent an experienced indigo maker from the French island on Montserrat in the summer of 1741. Optimistically, Eliza wrote her father that October “informing him we made 20 weight of Indigo...’Tis not quite dry or I should have sent him some. Now desire he will send us a hundred weight of seed to plant in the spring.”

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1755 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)  Miss Russell

At the age of 19, in September of 1741, Eliza noted that she, "Wrote to my father on plantation business & concerning a planter’s importing Negroes for his own use. Colo. Pinckney thinks not, but thinks it was proposed in the Assembly & rejected. He promised to look over the Act & let me know. Also informed my father of the alteration ’tis soposed there will be in the value of our money- occasioned by a late Act of Parliament that Extends to all America - which is to dissolve all private banks, I think by the 30th of last month, or be liable to lose their Estates, & put themselves out of the King’s protection. Informed him of the Tyranical Government at Georgia."

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1755 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)  Mrs Todd

A month later, she recorded, October 14, 1741, "Wrote to my father informing him we made 20 wt of Indigo & expected 10 more. ’Tis not quite dry or I should have sent him some. Now desire he will send us a hundred weight of seed to plant in the spring."

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1758 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Anne Fairchild Mrs Metcal Bowler 

In April of the next year, she wrote to her friend in England, about her daily routine, "In general then I rise at five o’Clock in the morning, read till Seven, then take a walk in the garden or field, see that the Servants are at their respective business, then to breakfast. The first hour after breakfast is spent at my musick, the next is constantly employed in recollecting something I have learned least for want of practise it should be quite lost, such as French & short hand. After that I devote the rest of the time till I dress for dinner to our little Polly & 2 black girls who I teach to read...

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1763 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Anne Fairchild Bowler Mrs Metcalf Bowler

"But to proceed, the first hour after dinner as the first after breakfast at musick, the rest of the afternoon in Needle work till candle light, & from that time to bed time read or write...Thursday the whole day except what the necessary affairs of the family take up is spent in writing, either on the business of the plantations, or letters to my friends."

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1763 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Anne Fairchild Bowler Mrs Metcalf Bowler

She wrote to her friend again in May of 1742, "Wont you laugh at me if I tell you I am so busey in providing for Posterity I hardly allow my self time to Eat or sleep & can but just snatch a minnet to write you & a friend or two now. I am making a large plantation of Oaks which I look upon as my own property, whether my father gives me the land or not; & therefore I design many years hence when oaks are more valueable than they are now -- which you know they will be when we come to build fleets."

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1763 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mercy Scollay

The 1744 indigo crop did, indeed, "hitt" & was a success. Six pounds from Wappoo were sent to England & “found better than the French Indigo.” Seed from this crop was distributed to many Carolina planters, who soon were profiting from Carolina's new staple export product.

Inidgo Production in South Carolina. William DeBrahm, A Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia. . . London, published by Thomas Jeffreys, 1757.

On May 27, 1744, Eliza Lucas married attorney Charles Pinckney, a childless widower more than 20 years her senior. Pinckney built a house on Charleston’s waterfront for his bride. And at his plantation on the Cooper River, Eliza initialized the culture of silkworms to establish a “silk manufacture.”

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1763 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs James  Warren Mercy Otis

Charles Pinkney who wrote down the instructions for how to grow & process indigo, & after a while they made enough seed to hand out to the neighbors, which started an indigo bonanza in the Southern colonies. By 1746, Carolina planters shipped almost 40,000 pounds of indigo to England; the next year the total exported was almost 100,000 pounds. Indigo sales sustained the Carolina economy for 3 decades, until the Revolution cut off trade with England.

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1763 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Nathaniel Allen (Sarah Sargent)

Charles Pinckney's appointment as commissioner for the colony in London took the family in April of 1753, to England, where they had intended to live, until their sons finished their education. When war with France broke out, Eliza & her husband returned in May of 1758, to Carolina, leaving the boys at school. Pinckney contracted malaria & died in July of that year. After writing to tell her sons of the loss of their father, Eliza again turned to plantation business as she directed her husband’s 7 separate land holdings in the Carolina low country.  

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1773 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Moses Gill (Rebecca Boylston)

By 1760, Eliza was once again fully engaged in managing a plantation, "I find it requires great care, attention & activity to attend properly to a Carolina Estate, tho’ but a moderate one, to do ones duty & make it turn to account, that I find I have as much business as I can go through of one sort or other." 

Eliza recorded her last letter in her letterbook in 1762. "I love a Garden & a book; & they are all my amusement except I include one of the greatest Businesses of my life (my attention to my dear little girl) under that article. For a pleasure it certainly is &c. especially to a mind so tractable & a temper so sweet as hers. For, I thank God, I have an excellent soil to work upon, & by the Divine Grace hope the fruit will be answerable to my indeavours in the cultivation."

Indigo Dyed Blue Wrap 1763-64 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Gawen Brown (Elizabeth Byles)

She was able to send a substantial export of indigo to England in in return the Mother Country responded with the bounty to Carolina planters in an effort to cut out the French from dominating the market. In addition to economic motives, indigo production also succeeded because it fit within the existing agricultural economy. The crop could be grown on land not suited for rice & tended by slaves, so planters & farmers already committed to plantation agriculture did not have to reconfigure their land & labor. In 1747, 138,300 pounds of dye, worth £16,803 sterling, were exported to England. The amount & value of indigo exports increased in subsequent years, peaking in 1775 with a total of 1,122,200 pounds, valued at £242,295 sterling. England received almost all Carolina indigo exports, although by the 1760s a small percentage was being shipped to northern colonies.

Indigo Dyed Blue Head Wrap 1768 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Joseph Henshaw

By the beginning of the American Revolution, Indigo made up 1/3 the exports from South Carolina. In less than 50 years the market had grown substantially. However, the tension with the British & the establishment of the East India Trading Company led to the diminishing of the Carolina indigo trade.

Indigo Dyed Blue Gown 1771 by American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Mrs. Joseph Barrell (Hannah Fitch)

The American colonies winning their independence ended many indigo exports to the British market, as England turned its attention to India for its indigo needs. Pinckney spent 30 years, after her husband's death, overseeing their plantations & helping her family. She invested monies she earned from exporting indigo into her children’s education. Both of her sons became involved with the new nation. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1852) signed the United States Constitution, & Thomas Pinckney (1750-1828) served as South Carolina Governor & as US Minister to Spain & Great Britain.

In her later years, Eliza lived with her widowed daughter Harriet at Daniel Huger Horry's estate, Hampton Plantation near Georgetown . Eliza died of cancer on May 26, 1793, in Philadelphia, where she had gone for treatment. At her funeral, President George Washington, then presiding over the United States government in Philadelphia, served as one of her pallbearers.