Robert Manson Myers (1921–2014)

If you liked the National Book Award-winning, Children of Pride, edited by this author, this is not the book for you. In Children of Pride dramatic events occur. In this book, which is a prequel, very little occurs. Children of Pride centers around the American Civil War. It follows the Jones family of Liberty County (near Savannah). This well-off plantation and slave-owning family lives through the most cataclysmic event in American history and the subsequent destruction of their way of life. In A Georgian at Princeton the family moves North, they go to church often and catch cold occasionally.
I felt that perhaps the editor, Myers, was trying to cash in on the success of Children. Georgian at Princeton came out a few years after Children. The focus of this book is the early 1850s. There is just is not enough drama in those years to form a passable narrative. Most of the book consists of back and forth letters between the Jones' parents in Philadelphia and the Jones' son in Princeton where they were going to school. The most dramatic event is near the beginning when the family house in Columbia burns down. This and other factors lead the family to move North for several years. The family members write in a flowery, formalistic manner to each other. A comment about a sore throat that could be conveyed in one sentences requires a paragraph. A vast majority of the book is taken up with church matters and reports on family members health. If you do elect to read this book, you should have a copy of Children of Pride handy to refer to. The editor does not bother to provide in a back story to the Jones family in this volume, so at times you may find yourself a bit lost.
If you want to read more about the Civil War from the Southern perspective or the Jones family specifically I would recommend Dwelling Place by Erskine Clarke.… (més)

Family letters of a religious South Carolina family from around the time of the Civil War.

I cross-referenced these letters with items on the Internet--saw not only the sea islands off S.C. where the family (and servants, as they always called their slaves) grew high-quality "sea island" cotton, saw the old church where the father preached (tiny!! and almost overgrown by the forest), information about the Indian mounds/remains that were studied by the older son at Princeton (the thesis he wrote about those mounds was wrong), and (unprofessionally) researched the, to me, quaint and haunting phrase "no more forever." The earliest reference I found was in a Protestant sermon from Ireland.

Unforgettable view into the past.… (més)