Letters from Forest Place: A Plantation Family's Correspondence, 1846-1881
edited by E. Grey Dimond and Herman Hattaway
This is a collection of letters written over a period of thirty-five years by members of the Thomas A. Watkins family of Carroll County, Mississippi. The correspondence provides an intimate look into activities in the household of Forest Place during a period of great prosperity and a period of decline. The letters reveal the poignant history of Dr. Watkins, a nonpracticing physician, his wife, and their two daughters. Some include passages written to various favored slaves, who in return dictated their responses. Besides offering a glimpse into the domestic life on a cotton plantation, these letters picture the years of abundance and decay. The national sectional controversy attracts only scant attention. This antiabolitionist family watches, comments to one another, and witnesses the nation's drifting toward disunion and civil war. When it comes, the war for them remains an awful event happening at a distance, although more and more its effects become the focal subject of the family correspondence.
The Watkins women make uniforms and engage in raising money to benefit units at the front. As early as 1861 the plantation begins to feel the pinch of shortages and the economic discomfort of shockingly high prices. Dr. Watkins is alarmed over the growing illiquidity of Mississippi state bank notes. At war's end the family's economic stability has been eroded. Many friends and loved ones have been lost. For Dr. Watkins the most bitter misfortune comes when his beloved wife falls ill in 1865 and dies. Through the Reconstruction the family has little relief from struggle. Poor growing seasons and uncertain prices finally cause Dr. Watkins to sell Forest Place and move to Texas to live near his elder daughter. The Mississippi remnant of the family eventually dies or, like the patriarch, moves away. Now only the letters remain.
E. Grey Dimond is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Provost Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.
Herman Hattaway is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
