{"id":8278,"date":"2010-08-13T16:54:31","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T16:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8278"},"modified":"2017-05-12T02:26:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T02:26:05","slug":"robert-stafford-of-cumberland-island-growth-of-a-planter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8278","title":{"rendered":"Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Growth of a Planter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugapress.org\/index.php\/books\/robert_stafford\/1\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Growth of a Planter<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugapress.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">University of Georgia Press<\/a><br \/>\n1995<br \/>\n376 pages<br \/>\nIllustrated<br \/>\nTrim size: 6 x 9<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN: 978-0-8203-1738-0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mary R. Bullard<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ugapress.org\/index.php\/books\/robert_stafford\/1\/1\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ugapress.org\/images\/ugapress\/books\/9780820317380.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Society, politics, agriculture, and mixed-race unions in a coastal Georgia planter community<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island<\/em> offers a rare glimpse into the life and times of a nineteenth-century planter on one of Georgia\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sea_Islands\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sea Islands<\/a>. Born poor, Robert Stafford (1790-1877) became the leading planter on his native <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cumberland_Island\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cumberland Island<\/a>. Specializing in the highly valued long staple variety of cotton, he claimed among his assets more than 8,000 acres and 350 slaves.<\/p>\n<p>Mary R. Bullard recounts Stafford\u2019s life in the context of how events from the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Federalist_Era\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Federalist period<\/a> to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Civil War<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_era_of_the_United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reconstruction<\/a> affected Sea Island planters. As she discusses Stafford\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Stafford\u2019s 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mulatto<\/a> slave nurse. Bullard\u2019s discussion of Stafford\u2019s decision to move his family to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Groton,_Connecticut\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Groton, Connecticut<\/a>\u2014and freedom\u2014before 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s children and the trust funds Stafford provided for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Society, politics, agriculture, and mixed-race unions in a coastal Georgia planter community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,459,8,17,6940,20],"tags":[3510,3192,3512,3511,3509,463],"class_list":["post-8278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-cumberland-island","tag-georgia","tag-mary-bullard","tag-mary-r-bullard","tag-robert-stafford","tag-university-of-georgia-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53881,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278\/revisions\/53881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}