Jean Skipwith

Jean Skipwith, Lady Skipwith (February 21, 1747 or 1748 - May 19, 1826) was a Virginian planter's wife and later plantation owner who is noted for her garden and library. At her death, her library was perhaps the largest existing library assembled by a woman.

Early life

Born Jane Miller, February 21, 1747 or 1748, in Prince George County, Virginia, youngest of four children of Hugh and Jane (Bolling) Miller, tobacco grower, merchant, and vestryman of Old Blandford Church of Bristol Parish, Petersburg, VA.;[1][2] Mr. Miller returned to Scotland with his family before December 8, 1760.[3][4]

Family and marriage

Jean's older sister, Anne, had married Sir Peyton Skipwith, 7th Baronet, in 1765.[2] The Skipwith Family Papers show bills and receipts for her book purchases in Edinburgh in 1781.[4] In January, 1788, letters to Sir Peyton began to be addressed to him at his new house, Prestwould Plantation, in Mecklenberg County, named for Prestwold Hall, the country home of the Skipwith family. Originally, the Plantation had been acquired by William Byrd II and named "Blue Stone Castle." On November 6, 1765, Sir Peyton paid William Byrd III 200 pounds for the plot of Blue Castle land that would become Prestwould (deeded Oct. 30, 1765).[5]

On September 7, 1788, Sir Peyton wrote to Jean Miller (then living at Sir Peyton's Elm Hill Plantation) expressing his wish "to complete a union on which my future happiness so much and so immediately depends." He requested her permission to tell his daughter that, on a journey to Cototoman, he would be accompanied by "Lady Skipwith and not Miss Miller . . . by their [new] mother and not their aunt." They were married on September 25, 1788 in Granville, North Carolina, and by April, 1789, Lady Skipwith was corresponding with Samuel Goode regarding hop roots. Lady Skipwith's first daughter was born June 25, 1789 at Elm Hill Plantation.[4]

The family moved to Prestwould in 1797, a Georgian-style house sitting above the Roanoke River.[6][7] The Prestwould Plantation, its outbuildings, and its grounds are now a National Historic Landmark and are open to the public, including what may be the earliest known slave house in Virginia.[8] This was a working tobacco plantation with farm and livestock with a mill, blacksmith shop, store, ferry, and thoroughbred horses were raised.[8] The records reflect many skilled laborers, as well as meticulous bills of sale for slaves.[4][9] A plantation of this size would have had over a hundred. Prestwould's extensive archives are held by The College of William and Mary, Earl Gregg Swem Library. These include plans for the house and gardens.[4]

Garden

It was at Prestwould Plantation that Lady Skipwith had her garden built.[10] The archives reflect orders for vegetables, roots and bulbs grown in raised beds. Orange and lemon trees were grown in pots and brought indoors during the winter. Plans show the layouts of gardens for verbena, strawberry, crocus, phlox, violets, pansies, and portulaca, as well as annuals and shrubbery.[11] Lady Skipwith listed the many wildflowers she collected, including trillium and viola, identifying them from Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary—and noting when they were not in that source. Her wildflowers grew in her garden, but also on a nearby island. She recorded each, with details for best location and how it propagated, such as the "blue funnel flower", which Ann Leighton tells us is now known as the Virginia bluebell. She kept records of her fruit crops, notes on how to raise trees from cuttings, and lists of what she planted. She ordered from Prince Nurseries on Long Island, as did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.[2]

Lady Skipwith was a keeper of lists. She listed "Shrubs to be got when I can". Among her house plants she listed, not only oranges and lemons, but limes, oleander, dwarf myttle, rose geranium and chrysanthemum, observing that those would "live in the garden through the winter though the first frost would destroy the flower." Living, as she did, far from markets and major trade routes, Lady Skipwith also listed, for example, "Bulbous roots to get when in my power. . . . Meadow saffron a bulbous root about the size of a tulip, flowers in autumn and the leaves continue green all winter. Called by the common people Naked Ladies, great varieties may be obtained from seed".[2]

Later life

Her husband died in 1805, and Lady Skipwith managed Prestwould Plantation for the next 21 years. By her death in May, 1826, Lady Skipwith had acquired a library of more than 850 volumes, mostly novels.[8][12] It was, perhaps, the largest library assembled by a woman of that era.[13] Her collection, the product of an independent and curious mind, also reflected her interests in gardening, travel, geography, and history.[14] Her collection also included will allowed her daughters and daughter-in-law to choose 200 books each from her library and left her son-in-law her Encyclopædia Britannica.[2][15]

References

  1. ↑ The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, VA, 1720 - 1789 (transcribed and privately published by Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne 1898), .
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Ann Leighton, American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, "for Use and for Delight", 262-283 (Univ. Mass. Amherst 1986), available on google books, a source which provides a biography, and reproduces many of Lady Skipwith's plant lists.
  3. ↑ in The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, VA, 1720 - 1789 (transcribed and privately published by Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne 1898), .
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Skipwith Family Papers, 1760 - 1977,Swem Library, Special Collections Database, College William & Mary, .
  5. ↑ Herbert A. Elliott. "Sir Peyton Skipwith and the Byrd Land." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 80, no. 1, (Va. Hist. Soc. 1972), pp. 52–59. [www.jstor.org/stable/4247695].
  6. ↑ Julian Hudson, Exec. Dir. Prestwould Foundation, "Prestwould: Gracious Living on the American Frontier, 1790-1830 (lecture, Va. Hist. Soc. 2009).
  7. ↑ Sumpter Pinody, et. al., Prestwould Plantation - 1797, Historic Home Plans, (plans, elevations, and history).
  8. 1 2 3 Pamela A. Stamford, "Archaeological Investigiations of the Prestwould Slave Quarter, Mecklenburg County, Virginia (44MC534), Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series - 0393 (Williamsburg, 2009)
  9. ↑ Prestwould Plantation, African American Historic Sites Database
  10. ↑ Peggy Cornett, Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, "In the Company of Gardeners: The Flower Diaries of Jefferson, Skipwith, and Faris" (Monticello, Jan. 2000),.
  11. ↑ Peter Martin, The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson, 126-130 (Univ. Press of Virg. 1991).
  12. ↑ Catherine Kerrison, The Novel as Teacher: Learning to be Female in the Early American South", The Journal of Southern History, vol. 69, no. 3, (Univ. Ga.) 2003, pp. 513–548. [www.jstor.org/stable/30040009].
  13. ↑ Phillip Emanuel, Special Collections Apprentice, An Acquired Taste, "Exceptional in Any Age": The Library of Lady Jean Skipwith (exhibition, Swem Library's Special Collection, Coll. Wm. & Mary, March 16, 2016),
  14. ↑ Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, (Univ. Cornell, 2006).
  15. ↑ Mildred K. Abraham, "The Library of Lady Jean Skipwith," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 91, 296-347 (Va. Hist. Soc. 1983).
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