Adams, James Hopkins (15 March 1812–13 July 1861), planter and politician, was born in Richland District, South Carolina, the son of Henry Walker Adams and Mary Goodwyn, planters. At an early age, both of his parents died and James was placed in the care of his maternal grandfather, an early settler of South Carolina from Virginia. Prosperous, his grandfather, a plantation owner, was able to raise Adams in an atmosphere of wealth and education. Shortly after his graduation from Yale in 1831, Adams married Jane Margaret Scott, with whom he had eleven children....
12
Article
Adams, James Hopkins (1812-1861), planter and politician
Ronald W. Fischer
Article
Aiken, William (1806-1887), planter and congressman
James M. Clifton
Aiken, William (28 January 1806–06 September 1887), planter and congressman, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of William Aiken, Sr., an Irish immigrant, and Henrietta Wyatt. At the time of his death, the elder Aiken was president of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company and a wealthy merchant. Aiken attended the South Carolina College, from which he graduated in 1825. He then traveled to Europe. Upon returning to Charleston, he married Harriet Lowndes in 1831. They had one child....
Article
Allston, Robert Francis Withers (1801-1864), planter and statesman
James M. Clifton
Allston, Robert Francis Withers (21 April 1801–07 April 1864), planter and statesman, was born on “Hagley Plantation” in All Saints Parish (Georgetown District), South Carolina, the son of Benjamin Allston, a planter, and Charlotte Anne Allston. Allston entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in December 1817 and graduated tenth in his class on 1 July 1821. Appointed lieutenant in the Third Artillery and assigned to the Coast Survey, he participated in the surveying of the harbors at Plymouth and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and of the entrance to Mobile Bay. He resigned his commission on 1 February 1822 in response to his widowed mother’s plea for help on their plantations and returned to South Carolina, where he remained a rice planter for the rest of his life. As a planter, however, he continued his interest in civil engineering and in 1823 was elected to the first of two terms as surveyor general of South Carolina. In 1832 he married Adele Petigru, sister of Unionist ...
Article
Alston, Joseph (1779-1816), planter and statesman
James M. Clifton
Alston, Joseph (1779–10 September 1816), planter and statesman, was born in All Saints Parish (Georgetown District), South Carolina, the son of Colonel William Alston, a rice planter, and Mary Ashe. He attended the College of Charleston from 1793 to 1794, then entered Princeton in 1795, his junior year, but he withdrew without graduating. He read law in the office of ...
Article
Alston, William (1757-1839), planter and legislator
James M. Clifton
Alston, William (1757–26 June 1839), planter and legislator, was born in All Saints Parish (Georgetown District), South Carolina, the son of Joseph Allston and Charlotte Rothmaler, planters. He became the first of the Allston family to spell his surname with a single l...
Article
Bowie, Robert (1750-1818), planter and politician
Gary L. Browne
Bowie, Robert ( March 1750–08 January 1818), planter and politician, was born near Nottingham, Prince Georges County, Maryland, the son of William Bowie, a and Margaret Sprigg. He was educated by the Reverend John Eversfield near Nottingham and then by the Reverend Thomas Craddock, the first rector of St. Thomas Parish in Garrison Forest, Baltimore County, Maryland. On the eve of the American Revolution, about 1773, tradition has Bowie eloping with Priscilla Mackall, a daughter of the richest man in Calvert County, James John Mackall. Bowie’s father gave them a farm near “Mattaponi,” the family plantation where Bowie had been born. They had five children who survived to adulthood....
Article
Carpenter, Cyrus Clay (1829-1898), politician and farmer
Morton M. Rosenberg
Carpenter, Cyrus Clay (24 November 1829–29 May 1898), politician and farmer, was born in Harford, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, the son of Asahel Carpenter, a farmer, and Amanda Thayer. Orphaned during his early teens and raised by relatives, Carpenter attended public school in Harford. Between 1848 and 1851 he alternated teaching jobs with attendance at Harford Academy. During these early years he developed the temperance and antislavery views that he held during his adult years....
Article
Carr, Elias (25 February 1839–22 July 1900), North Carolina governor, Farmers' Alliance leader, and planter
Lala Carr Steelman
Carr, Elias (25 February 1839–22 July 1900), North Carolina governor, Farmers' Alliance leader, and planter, North Carolina governor, Farmers’ Alliance leader, and planter, was born at “Bracebridge,” the family plantation near Old Sparta, Edgecombe County, North Carolina, the son of Jonas Johnston Carr and Elizabeth Jane Hilliard, planters. Within four years both parents died, and with his sister Mary and brother William, Carr moved to Warren County to live with his mother’s sister, Temperance, and her husband, John Buxton Williams. Carr’s first education was at a school established by Williams. Later Carr attended the Bingham School in Orange County, spent two years at the University of North Carolina, and took courses at the University of Virginia, but he did not get a college degree. In 1857 he returned to Bracebridge, and in 1859 he married Eleanor Kearny; they had six children. In September 1861, after the Civil War had started, Carr enlisted as a private in Company G, Forty-first Regiment, North Carolina Troops, known as the Scotland Neck Mounted Riflemen. In June 1862 he left the army to supply the Confederacy with farm products....
Article
Furnas, Robert Wilkinson (1824-1905), governor and agriculturist
Jon C. Teaford
Furnas, Robert Wilkinson (05 May 1824–01 June 1905), governor and agriculturist, was born near Troy, Ohio, the son of William Furnas and Martha Jenkins, farmers. Orphaned at the age of eight, Robert lived with his paternal grandfather until he was twelve and then went to work in a general store in Troy. At fourteen he began an apprenticeship with a Troy tinsmith, followed by four years as a printer’s apprentice in Covington, Kentucky. During his childhood, Robert attended school only irregularly, accumulating no more than twelve months of formal schooling....
Article
LeFlore, Greenwood (1800-1865), chief of the Choctaws, planter, and member of the Mississippi legislature
Yasuhide Kawashima
LeFlore, Greenwood (03 June 1800–31 August 1865), chief of the Choctaws, planter, and member of the Mississippi legislature, was born near the present site of the old state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, the son of Louis LeFlore, a French Canadian who lived among the Choctaws as an agent and trader, and Rebecca Cravat, a young girl from an important Choctaw family. When Greenwood was twelve years old, Major John Donley, who handled mail along the Natchez Trace, took the boy to his home near Nashville, Tennessee, where he stayed for five years attending school. At seventeen Greenwood asked permission to marry Donley’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, but Donley did not consent to the marriage because they were too young. Greenwood and Rosa slipped away to a friend’s home to get married, and Greenwood thereafter took his bride home to Mississippi, where two children were born....
Article
Lloyd, Edward (1779-1834), politician and farmer
Jean B. Russo
Lloyd, Edward (22 July 1779–02 June 1834), politician and farmer, was born in Maryland, the son of Edward Lloyd, a Maryland official and planter, and Elizabeth Tayloe. Lloyd received his education primarily from private tutors but also from exposure to his father’s political activities and plantation management. Upon his father’s death in 1796, Lloyd, as the only son, inherited all of his father’s land, principally over 11,000 acres in Talbot County, and more than two hundred slaves. In 1797 he married Sally Scott Murray; they had three sons and four daughters....
Article
Lowden, Frank Orren (1861-1943), businessman, governor of Illinois, and agriculturist
John M. Allswang
Lowden, Frank Orren (26 January 1861–20 March 1943), businessman, governor of Illinois, and agriculturist, was born near the village of Sunrise City, Minnesota, the son of Lorenzo Orren Lowden and Nancy Elizabeth Bregg, and grew up in central Iowa. His father, a restless and independent man, worked as blacksmith and farmer, then studied law while in his forties; he was also somewhat of a rebel and political activist, involved in the Grange and the Democratic and Greenback parties. Lowden studied at rural schools, became a teacher at the age of fourteen, and in 1881 entered the University of Iowa, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1885. He then moved to Chicago, where he studied law at the Union College of Law, graduating in 1887, and landed a position at a major law firm. In 1896 he married Florence Pullman, daughter of the extremely wealthy and powerful industrialist ...
Article
McMinn, Joseph (1758-1824), soldier, planter, and governor of Tennessee
Robert E. Corlew
McMinn, Joseph (22 June 1758–17 November 1824), soldier, planter, and governor of Tennessee, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert McMinn and Sarah Harlan, farmers. He grew up in Pennsylvania, but as a young man he moved with his wife, Hannah Cooper, whom he had married in 1785, and their only child to Hawkins County, North Carolina (later Tennessee), where at least one other member of his family had settled. He established himself as a planter and soon was commissioned a militia captain in the Southwest Territory, which was created in 1790 to prepare Tennessee for statehood. He was a member of the territorial legislature in 1794 and of the constitutional convention that assembled in Knoxville in 1796 to draft a constitution and a petition to Congress for Tennessee’s admission to the Union. McMinn was entrusted by the assembly to deliver the document and petition to national leaders in Philadelphia. Having presented the documents to the secretary of state, he remained in Philadelphia long enough to sit for a portrait by ...
Article
Mercer, John Francis (1759-1821), planter and officeholder
Gregory A. Stiverson
Mercer, John Francis (17 May 1759–30 August 1821), planter and officeholder, was born at “Marlborough Point,” Stafford County, Virginia, the son of John Mercer, a lawyer and wealthy landowner, and Ann Roy. John Francis Mercer graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1775. In February 1776 he enlisted in the Third Virginia Regiment. Despite his youth—he was not yet seventeen—his family’s social status enabled him to secure a commission as a first lieutenant. In a little more than a year Mercer achieved the rank of captain. He was wounded in September 1777 at Brandywine. In June 1778 he was commissioned a major and became an aide-de-camp to General ...
Article
Middleton, Henry (1770-1846), planter, politician, and diplomat
Dean Fafoutis
Middleton, Henry (28 September 1770–14 June 1846), planter, politician, and diplomat, was born in London, England, the son of Arthur Middleton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Continental Congress, and governor of South Carolina, and Mary Izard. He was educated in classical studies by private tutors at Middleton Place, the family plantation near Charleston, and in England. While residing in Great Britain, on 13 November 1794 he married Mary Helen Hering, the daughter of Juliness Hering of Heybridge Hall, captain of his Majesty’s Thirty-Fourth Regiment. The couple had twelve children, eight of whom survived infancy. Upon Middleton’s permanent return to the United States in 1800, he inherited Middleton Place, where he planted the first camellias in the United States, and the family estate at Newport, Rhode Island....
Article
Murray, William Henry David (1869-1956), politician and agricultural advocate
Keith L. Bryant
Murray, William Henry David (21 November 1869–15 October 1956), politician and agricultural advocate, was born in Toadsuck, Texas, near Collinsville, the son of Uriah Dow Thomas Murray and Bertha Elizabeth Jones, poor farmers. He grew up in north central Texas, running away from home at the age of twelve. For the next seven years he worked as an agricultural laborer, attending public schools sporadically. After matriculating at College Hill Institute, a secondary school at Springtown, he became a public school teacher in Parker County. There he became an activist in the Farmers’ Alliance....
Article
Page, John (1743-1808), planter, revolutionary leader, and governor of Virginia
John E. Selby
Page, John (17 April 1743–11 October 1808), planter, revolutionary leader, and governor of Virginia, was born at “Rosewell” plantation, Gloucester County, Virginia, the son of Mann Page II and Alice Grymes, planters. Page’s grandmother, Judith Carter Page, gave him intellectual guidance during his childhood. In 1752 Page attended Abingdon Parish glebe school but disliked the teacher, William Yates. For the next four years Page studied with a tutor, William Price, whom he credited with teaching him the ideas of classical republicanism and the Whig political principles of the seventeenth-century English revolutions. Page attended the College of William and Mary from 1757 to 1763. There he formed a lifelong friendship with ...
Article
Pinchot, Gifford (1865-1946), forester, conservationist, and governor of Pennsylvania
James Penick
Pinchot, Gifford (11 August 1865–04 October 1946), forester, conservationist, and governor of Pennsylvania, was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, the son of James Wallace Pinchot, a wealthy merchant, and Mary Jane Eno. Proud of his French ancestry, James W. Pinchot raised his family in a primly decorous but brilliant social environment steeped in French culture....
Image
Pinchot, Gifford (1865-1946)
In
Gifford Pinchot Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-3906).
Article
Plater, George (1735-1792), planter, legislator, and governor of Maryland
Jane Wilson McWilliams
Plater, George (08 November 1735–10 February 1792), planter, legislator, and governor of Maryland, was born at “Sotterley,” his father’s plantation near Leonardtown, St. Mary’s County, Maryland, the son of George Plater and Rebecca Addison Bowles. His father was a lawyer, legislator, planter, and wealthy landholder who held a variety of proprietary positions, including service on the governor’s council from 1732 until his death. The younger Plater graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1754....
12
