By Richard N. Côté           

WHO WAS MARY PRINGLE?

Born to affluence and opportunity in the South's Golden Age, Mary Motte Alston Pringle (1803-1884) represented the epitome of Southern white womanhood. Her husband was a wealthy rice planter who owned four plantations and 337 slaves. Her thirteen children included two Harvard scholars, seven world travelers, three socialite daughters, a U.S. Navy war hero, six Confederate soldiers, one possible Union collaborator, a Confederate firebrand trapped in the North, an expatriate bon vivant in France, and two adventuresome California pioneers. Mary's World illuminates in lavish detail the world and psyche of this wealthy, well-educated, well-intentioned woman and her family in the antebellum South.

WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?

This intimate, visceral biography was drawn directly from over 2,500 pages of Mary's handwritten letters, journals and diaries, none of which, she could have imagined, would ever be read by strangers. Therein lies their power. During the Civil War, Mary and her husband, William, stood helpless as two sons were killed, another was driven insane, their slaves were freed, and the world as they knew it was swept away by a hurricane of social change. In her own words, Mary tells us about the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and terrors she and her family faced in nineteenth-century Charleston. The letters and images they left behind offer priceless insights into the anguished roots of Southern social history.

Readers also learn about the vastly different lifestyles, food, clothing, and experiences of their slaves. Mary's World also pays special attention to Lucretia “Cretia” Stewart, Mary's favorite servant, Cretia's husband, Scipio, and their free descendants, some of whom worked for Mary's grandchildren well into the twentieth century. How Mary, William, their children, and slaves lived before the Civil War, clung desperately to life in the eye of the maelstrom, and coped -- or failed to cope -- with its bewildering aftermath is the story of this book.

Mary's World is available in a 6" x 9" deluxe hardcover library edition ($29.95) or a high-quality trade paperback edition ($24.95). Both feature 480 pp., eye-ease acid-free paper, 89 paintings, photographs, illustrations, and maps, an extensive bibliography, and a comprehensive subject and name index.

MARY'S WORLD FEATURED ON SCETV SPECIAL!

In August 2001, Patti Just, the popular host of South Carolina Educational Television's highly rated program, "The Writers' Circle," traveled to Charleston, where she and her crew filmed a 30-minute feature program about Richard Côté's best-selling South Carolina biography, Mary's World, and his new novel, The Redneck Riviera. The main interview was conducted in the ornate ballroom of The South Carolina Society Hall. Additional filming was done at Mary Pringle's home, the Miles Brewton House, and in the churchyard of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, where Mary and her family are buried. "The Writers' Circle" program on the book first aired October 13, 2001 and was re-broadcast a number of times in 2002.

WHAT THE TRADE REVIEWERS SAY:

• "History IS better than fiction. This elegant saga of the Pringle family before and after the Civil War is a must read for anyone interested in Southern and American history. It's also a good read -- something rare in works of non-fiction these days." -- Walter B. Edgar, Ph.D., author of South Carolina: A History

• "The Pringle family embodied all the key characteristics of South Carolina's antebellum rice barons. This study, and the family papers from which it was drawn, offers the reader an unparalleled window into the mind and heart of one of South Carolina's most interesting nineteenth-century women." -- George C. Rogers, Jr., Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of South Carolina

• "Mary's World tells what happened to the Pringle family before and after the war. How they adapted or failed to adapt to the modern era is a significant contribution to historians' understanding -- all taken from original manuscripts -- no need for speculation about motives or attitudes." -- Alexander P. Moore, Ph.D., former Executive Director, South Carolina Historical Society

• "Mary's World is pure Southern tragedy. Events and circumstances spin out of control as the story unfolds, arousing deep within the reader a sense of anger as well as pity and fear. The characters are rich, even regal in storybook fashion, and yet they are real -- ingenuously ignorant of their own fatal flaws as well as those of their hopelessly cruel system of economics.... It also offers an interesting perspective on the complex social, economical, spiritial and political dilemma wealthy white South Carolinians of that era found themselves in because of that 'peculiar institution' known as slavery." -- John M. Burbage, publisher, The Times, (Georgetown, S.C.).

• "A fascinating, mesmerizing, and satisfyingly lengthy look into a fractured world.... Mary's World is a unique peek into the privileged lives of antebellum rice planters and their slaves, what they experienced during the war, and how their lives changed in the war's aftermath." --Becky Billingsley, the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News.

• "Living in the 'Golden Age' of the Victorian South, Mary Pringle embodied Southern white womanhood, though she chafed under the restrictions her status imposed. It was not her only inner conflict. While opposing slavery on moral grounds, Pringle believed it necessary for the survival of a culture. Like her husband, William, she died 'an embittered relic of the Lost Cause,' unable to cope with the new realities of the post-Civil War era yet bequeathing to posterity an important legacy." -- Bill Thompson, Book Editor, The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier

• "Côté does not impose his own hindsight on Mary's world, permitting her to be who she was and for us to learn from that rare experience. Côté's narrative -- this is not a collection of printed letters strung together with annotation -- offers samples of everyday life and reflects Mary's interests in and outside her family. From her words, we can draw a much fuller picture of 19th-century community in Charleston, though these papers -- understandably -- include far too little detail about the lives of the Pringles' black slaves. What is here, however, is a very accessible historical account from which even those readers who might find history boring can take heart. Mary's story has been well told indeed." -- William W. Starr, Books Editor, The State (Columbia, S.C.)

• "Mary's World is nothing short of remarkable! This volume eloquently pieces together one more part of the puzzle that is our great Southern history! Well done! -- Bruce Mayer, co-producer, "The Writers' Circle," South Carolina Educational Television, November 6, 2001.

• "Drawing from some 2,500 pages of unpublished letters, journals, and diaries, Côté's biography of Mary Motte Alston Pringle presents a slice of a Southern plantation family's life before, during, and after the Civil War. It also offers details about the vastly different food, clothing, and experiences of the white family's 337 slaves. Côté quotes Mary Pringle extensively but also provides comment and context for what she has to say. Illustrated with [89] b&w photographs, the biography includes a painstakingly detailed index." -- © Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (www.booknews.com)

• "Côté reveals [Mary Pringle's] determination to see that all of her children became well-educated, her struggle with the limitations placed on women in 19th century society, and her feelings about slavery." -- Dale Linder-Altman, The Press and Standard (Walterboro, S.C.), December 11, 2001

• "In research and writing that consumed a decade, Charleston historian Richard N. Côté discovered that surviving letters and journals of the Pringle family and its relations [were] thick with significant materials.... The main body of the book, chapters four through fifteen, utilizes copious excerpts and summaries of family papers, including some gems never before used, to present the convictions, crotchets, and patterns of experience of a long list of Brewtons, Alstons, and Pringles.
         "The story properly begins with a wedding in the Miles Brewton House in Charleston and has its center in the years of the married lives of Mary Motte Alston and William Bull Pringle of Charleston and Georgetown District, 1822-1881, a momentous period of crisis and civil war in the history of Charleston, South Carolina, and the United States. The focus is Mary Motte Alston Pringle, whose father was, like her husband, a rice planter and owner of many slaves, and whose life traced an emotional arc from youthful vividity into shades of melancholy. Public issues, business and law, plantations and slavery (even one house slave, 'Cretia,' rendered as an individual) are part of the story. But the emphasis is on family life and the concerns of upper-class people. Parents speak to children and children to parents. Women reveal something of their 'inner' lives. There are few surprises. The author says that Mary was the epitome of conventionality, a perfect Southern lady who devoted 'her entire life to God, her family, and the Southern way of life,' and her writings suggest it is so. The people of Mary's world inherited their political views, philosophical premises, cultural expectations, and moral values along with a web of family ties and wealth, land, slaves, and business.....
         "Everyday, she had to cope with an aloof, emotionally withdrawn, and spendthrift husband. Her writings show she was conscious of, and occasionally chafed under, social norms that closely circumscribed her life because she was a woman. And like [Mary Boykin] Chesnut she worried about slavery, finally concluding that the South's 'peculiar institution' was morally intolerable if necessary, given the Southern climate and disease environment and the indolence of the ruling race. Yet her allegiance to the South was unequivocal. She gave up her two sons, Robert and Charles, to its defense in the Civil War. Two other sons, including James, the youngest of her and William's thirteen children, and Brewton, who lived the last of his thirty-nine years in the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, also predeceased their parents.
         "Richard Holmes, the author of books on Romantic poets Percy Shelly and Samuel Coleridge, likened biography to a voyage of discovery, an empathetic quest ending in a handshake across time. So it is with this book. While it avoids eulogy and apologetic, the author's sympathetic identification with his subject is apparent: this is the truth of Mary's World told charitably.... The book is handsomely illustrated and well made. Appendices provide additional genealogy, including descendants of slaves in the family.... The book should appeal both in style and content to a diverse readership.... It is a strong and useful book, providing fresh details of a fascinating story that is well worth telling and remembering." -- The South Carolina Historical Magazine, July 2001.

• "Côté provides a detailed re-creation of the lives of the Pringles, members of Charleston's rice planting aristocracy. Both Mary Alston and William Bull Pringle descended from South Carolina political, economic, and social elites.... Although their wealth derived from rice plantations, their lives revolved around the family residence in Charleston, the Miles Brewton House, which Côté describes extensively.... Readers interested in the fortunes of antebellum Charleston society will enjoy this meticulous study." -- CHOICE: Current Reviews For Academic Libraries, November 2001

READER REVIEWS

Average reader rating = (4.9 of 5.0 possible stars)
Read all the reader reviews on Amazon.com

"Mary Pringle's world was the world of America's only aristocracy - the elite society of Southern planters who were born to privilege. In the mid-nineteenth century they rode a crest of heady arrogance straight into the "fateful lightning" of Northern resistance to slavery, the cornerstone of the plantation culture. Those who fought to preserve "our way of life" have been eulogized and vilified at length, but "our way of life" has never been so thoroughly examined and explained as it is in Mary's World. Embroidered linens, flocked wallpaper, leatherbound books, elegant china, gleaming silver, polished brass, fine wine, liveried footmen and seamstresses bent to their task - all were part of the planters' world. Four years after lightning first struck at Fort Sumter, that way of life had been totally turned upside down. Planters were beggars and freedmen and freedwomen were in power - or so it seemed to an outraged Mary Pringle as she surveyed the ruin of her world. Blinded by their own sense of superiority, the Pringles are nonetheless sympathetic, and their ruin is not celebrated. Instead, the reader cheers for their survival amidst the most appalling poverty. The Pringle women were steel magnolias who refused to wilt in the early morning frost. Their determination to survive - surprisingly - explains much about the tortured course of American race relations following the Civil War." -- Elizabeth Burnett, Ph.D.

"Mary Motte Alston Pringle, the Mary of Mary's World‚ comes through the pages of her own letters, journals, and accounts, and author Richard N. Côté's elegant presentation, as a woman resolutely determined to meet her responsibilities in a world where the outward appearance of a life of ease often masked deep fissures. Mary's world is chronicled in rich detail thanks to an astonishing assemblage of original materials. Readers will thank the author for his deference to these remarkable manuscripts which are allowed to speak eloquently for themselves. Mary's long life and the lives of those around her provide a fascinatingly chromatic portrait of very human beings in a largely misunderstood and overly romanticized time and place. Not simply an elegy to an age, not quite a nonfiction Age of Innocence, Mary's World stands on its own terms as a book this reader would not have wanted to miss. Its texture rewards reading and re-reading as we come to understand more of how that world and its people, Mary's world, moved from the post-Revolutionary period to the beginning of the modern world. -- Mary M. Giles, Archivist, Diocese of Charleston

"Superb descriptions of rice culture, slave life, schooling in Charleston, and of one of America's most amazing and least-known U.S. Navy heroes, Midshipman John Julius Pringle, Mary's second son." -- David F. Emerson, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

Mary's World, a carefully-documented story of a remarkable Southern lady, almost reads like fiction. Far from fiction, her story is very real. The author has done a masterful job of presenting a glimpse of life behind the scenes in 19th-century South Carolina from the thousands of letters and the journals which she and her family kept. He has provided background information and left the reader long quotations from the original letters. The book is so smoothly crafted that only the unobtrusive endnote numbers remind the reader that Mary's World is a real story of a remarkable family. As remarkable is is the knowledge that this voluminous collection of writings was read, exchanged, and preserved by the descendants of this family for over a century. Mary Pringle would certainly never be called a typical Southern lady. Her honesty, outspokenness, and sense of duty revealed in these papers show she was in a class by herself. Her writings are so revealing that you might say this biography of Mary Motte Alston Pringle was written by Mary herself 150 years ago." -- Agnes Leland Baldwin, author of First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670-1680

"A well-written, wonderfully researched narrative of a wealthy and prominent family in nineteenth-century South Carolina. Their personal accounts reveal their lives in the antebellum South and how the Civil War affected them during and after the conflict." -- Darlene Jackson, Director, Mt. Pleasant (S.C.) Regional Library

"Fantastic work! I have been fortunate to spend a great deal of time in Charleston over the years and I have of course passed the Miles Brewton house. It's a little hard to miss with that fence! I never gave it a great deal of thought until I stumbled on this book on my last visit to the area. I almost didn't buy it because I had thought it was a book regarding Mary Chestnut, whose diaries I do have, but my husband told me to take another look. I am glad I did. The book is chock full of history but it reads like a novel. A book for the layman and historian alike, it is a book you won't be able to put down.... What a fantastic book, a MUST read for anyone who loves history or novels, you can't put it down. The sad thing is when it ends you feel like you have said goodbye to friends. These people will stay in your head long after you finish." --Patricia Charping, Charlotte, NC, courtesy of Amazon.com.

"Mary's World traces the life story of Mary Motte Alston Pringle, a prominent South Carolinian woman, from her youth in the early 1800s to her passing at an advanced age. Much of the story is drawn from her own writings, which are voluminous and articulate, though Côté steers clear of the trap of overquoting and invests the effort to interpret and present -- just as an historian should. Most authors would be delighted to succeed in one significant way with a book -- Côté succeeds in many with Mary's. It is dispassionate history, navigating the shoals of one of the most partisan events U.S. history (the Civil War) without demonizing or deifying either side. It is 'herstory', if you will, giving us a view of times past from the standpoint of a courageous woman who went from genteel wealth to genteel poverty. It is also African American history: the blacks who played integral roles in Mary's world have names, faces and attitudes, which naturally changed with society. It asks and answers deeper questions about the protagonists' motivations, ideas, beliefs and viewpoints. It makes abundantly clear that Reconstruction was an equal opportunity failure, destroying rather than redistributing wealth. Côté's style is uncluttered, perceptive and engaging. It plays no favourites and panders to no one. The notes often explain contemporary slang and add value to the main text; the index is very helpful; the bibliography is impressive. Strongly recommended as 19th-century US history, Southern history, Civil War history, women's history and/or black history. It would be of particular value for the high school or college student of US history writing an essay or looking for inspiration for one. I look forward to more work of this calibre from the author. -- Jonathan K. Kelley, Amazon.com Top 100 Reviewer

A powerful, clear view of a complex woman in troubled times. "Mary's World is a powerful book which gives readers clear insights into how Mary Motte Alston Pringle, her family, and slaves thought and lived in South Carolina before, during, and after the Civil War. Because Mary and her husband William were descendents of successful rice planters and continued the tradition until after the war, Mary and her family are good representatives of the planter elite during this period. The Pringles left behind a large body of papers, enabling Côté to conduct a thorough study of a high-born planter family's attitudes towards society, slavery, education, and family values in nineteenth century South Carolina. The Pringles experienced enormous prosperity before the war. Through their correspondences and documents, the reader can glimpse into the past to witness the personal tragedy, financial calamity, and utter desperation this family endured when they were stripped of their livelihood, and their young sons and daughters fell prey to war and disease. Readers may well be astonished at how Mary and her family braved these continuing catastrophes in a time period which has become so romanticized over the years. Côté's research and writing also reveals the racial inequities and insecurities during antebellum plantation life. Especially poignant was the disillusionment some slaves were left with after emancipation, with no place to go and no way to make a living. Charleston, once a thriving, prosperous city, was reduced to ruins after the war. Formerly wealthy landowners were left without homes, plantations were abandoned, their tools broken or worn out, and blacks and whites alike struggled to eke out some form of living. Mary's World carefully traces the complex lives of a prominent Southern family and their slaves from antebellum prosperity to the beginning of a new economic and social era that would shape Southern life for the next century. I loved it." -- Lisa Dawkins from Charleston, SC, courtesy Amazon.com

"Mary's World is an incredible, fascinating read that I highly recommend." When I was a child growing up in Oklahoma my mother, whose genealogical roots began in Arkansas and spread into Tennessee through the Carolinas and into Virginia, would often look me in the eye and seemingly warn me "the South would rise again."

As I became older, wiser and more geographically astute, I could never quite understand how a modern-day woman, living in a Great Plains state, could harbor such passion about a place and time and people that she never knew. And who, I thought, didn't exactly leave behind a noble legacy for her to embrace.

For me, Richard N. Côté's epic work of fact finding in Mary's World did what Margaret Mitchell could not do in "Gone with the Wind." I found myself empathizing, if only briefly, for the plight of the people who endured seeing their children march off to their death; instantly lost several generations of accumulated wealth; and had their priceless ancestral possessions carted off and destroyed as they watched their homes burn to the ground.

If it took the Civil War between the North and the South to end the practice of slavery -- then the Civil war was a noble, righteous and necessary event in the lives of our ancestors. I have never doubted this for a moment. Richard Côté masterfully and skillfully delivered me into the time and place of Mary's World and I was finally able to better understand where my ancestor's torch of pain was born and how it was passed on for generations until reaching my very own mother -- one hundred years later, three thousand miles away.

Mary's World is much more than a historical introduction to the well-documented sorrows and destruction of the Civil War for those born to affluence in the South. Côté introduces the reader to a curiously fascinating woman, Mary Motte Alston Pringle, who, Côté tells us, "represented the epitome of Southern white womanhood. Her thirteen children included two Harvard scholars, seven world travelers, three socialite daughters, six Confederate soldiers, one possible Union collaborator, a Confederate firebrand trapped in the North, an expatriate bon vivant in France, and two California pioneers." Côté also provides the reader and historical enthusiast with a detailed glimpse of the every day trials and tribulations Mary and her family endured in nineteenth-century Charleston.

As a social historian of South Carolina plantation life, Côté masterfully assembles original letters and manuscripts to produce a rich detailed work of non-fiction that easily reads like an epic novel of nineteenth-century life in the South. His careful examination and prolific research will amaze and delight anyone with a curiosity for this period and certainly appeals to a far-reaching audience.

Once we get beyond Mary's almost pathetic need to 'keep up with the Joneses' we eventually see a woman whose passion for her family, her children and her ancestors is noble and commendable, including the care and concern that she gave to her household staff. We marvel at her almost revolutionary ideals of the time. She educated herself and her children well beyond that which we have done for ourselves in modern times. Mary endured her post-war poverty with a steely determination to survive and a humble dignity that will amaze and inspire even the most unsympathetic reader.

We see Mary's world come to life through her thousands of letters and are also given some insight to the slaves of the urban household. The descriptive passages of the efforts needed to cultivate rice give harrowing thought to the reader as to what life must have been like for rice plantation slaves. One is almost led to cheer when, following the emancipation of the slaves, the formerly rich southern white plantation owners were forced to toil and labor in their own rice fields. The rapid and eventual decline of the rice plantation society following the end of the war is further testimony to the horrific, backbreaking work the slaves in the rice fields were forced with.

I was also stung with the realization that once the war was over and the slaves nobly freed, they were then seemingly abandoned by the North without any infrastructure in place to insure their survival in that free world. Mary's World clearly reminds the reader of the immensity of these grave implications in what was for many slaves a lose-lose situation. The book also reminds us that the carpetbagger's reconstruction of the South did not make place or convenience for the new black citizens of our United States.

The book does an exemplary job of detailing the individual lives of all of Mary's 13 children from their own perspective with regard to their inherited circumstances, education, challenges of adult responsibility, war-time participation and eventual struggle to survive and make their own place in the world. For me, son John Julius Pringle, who became a wealthy French expatriate despite the war, proves to be quite an enigma throughout the story and even now leaves me puzzled with intrigue.

Fortunately, for my generation and those to come, the plantation elite's aristocratic South will not rise again. And more importantly, my mother's children will leave behind a legacy of compassion and a policy of embracing all human beings regardless of color. In Mary's World, Richard Côté delivered me an unprecedented passport back into a distant time and distant place to better understand the life and intentions of my own legacy of ancestors. Mary's World is an incredible, fascinating read that I highly recommend. -- Timothy R. Ryan, courtesy of Amazon.com

Step back in time and make some new friends! Mary's World is a well-written, wonderfully researched narrative of a wealthy and prominent family in nineteenth century South Carolina. The backdrop is the family's generational home, Charleston's Miles Brewton House, built in 1765, where family members wrote many of the letters used by Mr. Côté to reconstruct their lives. A chapter devoted to this historic site, now restored, plus frequent references, literally bring the reader into the Pringle home to observe the many lives that began and ended there. Mary Motte Alston Pringle (1803-1884) is the focal point of the story and the vehicle the author uses to familiarize the reader with the extended family and their various adventures. Mr. Côté draws on a rich mixture of personal letters, journals, and business and family records, plus a variety of secondary sources to piece together the lives of multiple generations and branches of this aristocratic planter family. His informed insight and objective analysis of Mary's fascinating world allows family members to speak for themselves and the reader to become virtually acquainted with them across the years. Their personal accounts reveal their lives in the antebellum South and how the Civil War affected them during and after the conflict. Interspersed throughout the book is information about their relationships with and attitudes toward their slaves before the war and the Freedmen after the war. Through this woven tapestry of emotions, beliefs, activities, customs, and culture people long dead speak again, explaining what it was like to live in their world, now long past." -- Carolyn Cuskey, courtesy of Amazon.com

I received an autographed copy of Mary's World for Christmas 2000. This book is an astonishing selection of actual writings from Mary Pringle, a wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother in the 1800's. The writer has captured the aura of pre- and post-Civil War Charleston, S.C. These writings have some spectacular historical significance as some of the homes and plantations discussed can still be seen today. I found the medical practices of this period of time most interesting, as I am a nurse. This collection of writings is priceless and I have rarely, if ever, enjoyed a book more. I am an avid reader and love books about the Civil War. This book has shown how the one member of this family, Mary, kept her faith in God and in humanity through times of trial, tragedy, death, war, childbirth, and yes, happiness. This book is a MUST for anyone with the slightest inkling of historic South Carolina. A reader from Moncks Corner, SC, courtesy of Amazon.com

"The soul of the South, bare and vulnerable. When I received this book as a Christmas gift I thought it would be a dry historical biography. The first thing that struck me when I read the thumbnail biographies and family faces which greeted me at the front of the book was the diversity I found in Mary Pringle's thirteen (yes, thirteen!) children. I didn't know very much about the South Carolina Lowcountry, and less about rice planting and slavery when I started, but now I think I have some feeling for how difficult life must have been for the Pringles and their slaves. Heat, humidity, raging epidemics of malaria and yellow fever, medicines and treatments worse than the diseases themselves - and then the Civil War, with cannonballs whizzing right over their house! Mary Pringle's own letters - sometimes impassioned, usually instructional, sometimes prayerful -- but never dull - are the real treasure of this book. Fortunately, the author mostly stayed out of the way and let the letters written by Mary and her children tell the story. Yet I was amazed how much information the author was able to piece together on the day-to-day life of the slaves who kept the family mansion clean, the silver polished, and the family fed and clothed. After the Civil War was over - and two of their sons lay dead and another going crazy - I was amazed at what the Pringle children did to entice their parents to sell everything and move to California! It was also fascinating to learn how the freed slaves reacted to their new-found freedoms, the first of which was unemployment. I would never want to go back to that time, when women were legally only one step above the slaves, but it was a fascinating and emotional experience to have such an intimate view of a family's life in that strange, faraway place called the Victorian South." -- A reader from Charleston, S.C., courtesy of Amazon.com

"He does a great job of bringing an old world to life. Mary's World is an incredible look at the two decades prior to the Civil War itself, and the subsequent aftermath. Archivist-writer Richard N. Côté evaluated and categorized over 2500 handwritten pages of entries and journals written by Southern aristocrat Mary Motte Alston Pringle. In her own words, we learn much about antebellum South plantation life, especially the owner-family and the manor house slaves. Even more to the point, is the effect of the Civil War and its aftermath that ended a lifestyle, leaving individuals in shock and struggling to cope (or die) with more than just the deaths of loved ones as the iceberg is turned upside down almost over night. This biographical compilation is extremely interesting for those historical readers who devour anything Americana, especially things related to the Civil War. The journal and letters keep the audience fascinated in a voyeur like look because it is obvious that Mary hid little, as she was writing for herself and not mass publication. It is that open glimpse that makes this a fabulous non-fiction work." -- Harriet Klausner, Amazon.com Top Reviewer #1

Mary's World is an amazingly rich and detailed portrait of the 19th-century South. What an extraordinary mother / teacher Mary Pringle was to her thirteen children! Despite the many burdens she shouldered, Mary always rose to the occasion and never faltered. Beyond just telling her story, the author has painted such vivid word pictures of Mary Pringle, her family, and their slaves, that I felt I was one of the family. The preface, and its invaluable portraits and thumbnail biographies of all the major characters, made the whole book extremely easy to comprehend and a delight to read. -- Janet H. Woodard, genealogist and South Carolina native

"This book may appear daunting because of its size, but this is not the case. Happily, the the book is filled with an unusual number of photographs that are placed in context, not isolated in the midst of the book, forcing the reader to copy and paste their memories and pictures to the relevant passage. The book is also filled with excellent source notes befitting a work of scholarly writing.... This is the story of a way of life that lead to the deadliest war this nation has ever fought. [Mary's World is] an extraordinary and scholarly work that is not only a monument to the time that was spent creating it, but to the author who gave his time to bring it to all of us. Unconditionally recommended!" -- Francis J. McInerney, Amazon.com Top 10 Reviewer.

"Mr. Cote's insight into another, very personal world that happened generations ago is written with a taste and complexity that is very evident. The book starts out with family history, tracing both her and her husband's lines. On into through Mary's childhood, her marriage, education, her children (and her relationships with each), and the trial and tribulations that affected a woman of her station in the early-mid 19th century, most notably the War Between the States: The conflict that shattered and undeniably destroyed Mary's World with such a fierce finality. For me, this presented a whole new perspective on an early part of United States history. For anyone interested in that, or women's biography, put this one in your collection. It's a keeper." -- James S. MacDuff, courtesy Amazon.com.

"I live on the grounds of two of the former rice plantations mentioned throughout Richard Cote's wonderful book and am in the process of writing my own book about the history of these plantations. Needless to say, I was already very familiar with the subject matter and the great Allston/Alston family when I purchased Mary's World. But Cote's easy-to-read, moving style made the individuals within that family come alive for me. Even though I often visit a number of the graves of those mentioned in the book, Cote's insight has enabled me to feel even more connected to the family than I did before. I couldn't recommend Mary's World more highly. -- Nancy Rogers, from Pawleys Island, S.C., courtesy Amazon.com.

DICK COTE' TALKS ABOUT MARY PRINGLE'S WORLD

The thirteen-year odyssey which evolved into Mary's Worldstarted with a phone call from my alma mater and former employer, The South Carolina Historical Society, in 1988. Peter Manigault, publisher of the Charleston News and Courier and owner of the Miles Brewton House, was preparing to restore the house and donate an enormous collection of family historical papers to the Society. A man intimately familiar with the needs of historical researchers, Mr. Manigault recognized that until the papers were thoroughly read, arranged, and described, they would be useless to scholars. Accordingly, he contacted the Society to recommend an archivist to undertake this work. The Society's Executive Director referred him to me.

Funded by a grant from the Post-Courier Foundation which was administered by the Society, I spent two years reading, abstracting, arranging, and boxing the 9,000+ pages of papers and record volumes which came to be known as the Alston-Pringle-Frost manuscript collection. In the process, I came to realize what a broad, clear window these papers provided into that stormy period of American history: the two decades before and after the Civil War.

Under a supplemental grant from the Foundation, I spent two more years conducting additional research gathering additional Pringle and Frost records from archives and libraries in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. I also consulted approximately 220 reference books to learn more about the life and times of Mary Pringle's family. Then, on my own, with Mr. Manigault as my chief consultant, and two distinguished historians, Drs. George C. Rogers, Jr. and Theodore Rosengarten as my chief manuscript advisors, two years of writing followed. The result was a 700-page, 170,000-word manuscript.

Dismayed but not discouraged by rejections from a number of literary agents and publishers, I twice rewrote and refined the manuscript, most recently with the help of Dr. Elizabeth Burnett. She helped me trim off 220 pages and 50,000 words while providing the book with a much sharper focus. It finally went to press at Corinthian Books in September 2000 and the first copies were sold at a signing hosted by the Historic Charleston Foundation on November 16, 2000. The first printing of 3,000 copies sold out before Christmas. The second printing sold out in March 2001. The third printing, a slightly revised edition which incorporates some minor additions, corrections, and a new portrait of Theodosia Burr Alston, sold out in the summer of 2001. The sixth printing in January 2003.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime honor to be the first scholar granted unlimited access to this extraordinary collection of priceless historical papers and images. It's my hope that readers will find the book as interesting and useful as I found the project challenging and exciting.

HERE'S A SAMPLE:

Chapter Ten: The Rice Paupers

We have slept, again, under our own roof, although it was on a mattress thrown on the floor. We have eaten breakfast on plates borrowed from our Freedwomen, sitting at a narrow old table found in a corner, sitting on boxes turned on their sides. -- Mary Motte Pringle, October 25, 1865

In Charleston, the once-elegant Pringle residence on King Street was in shambles. Empty picture frames stared blankly from the walls, and three years' worth of dust and grime coated Mary's formerly-immaculate house. Gas for the lights was unavailable and matches too costly to afford. Mary resolutely clung to her faith in God and offered prayers each day. "She had lost two noble sons in the defense of Charleston and all that she was worth, save the house I am writing of," wrote Jacob, "and yet this noble woman, who followed so closely in the footsteps of her sainted mother, and patriotic grandmother, offered up to the Throne of Grace her earnest and pathetic prayers for those who had despoiled her of her all; and thanks and mercies still left in her old age. Men may be brave, honest and true -- but a noble woman is the crowning work of God."

By 1866 the fundamental pattern of life at the Miles Brewton House had been irrevocably changed. The pre-war Pringles were a happy, light-hearted, nuclear family consisting of a mother at home, a father who managed the plantations and a gaggle of lively children growing up in a cheerful, positive-thinking and affluent society.

The weary survivors who slowly regrouped their lives in post-war Charleston were quite another case. By the fall of 1865, the King Street household had been reduced to five demoralized and nearly-penniless adults. William Bull Pringle was now 65 and too old to take an active part in managing Richfield, his one remaining rice plantation.

Mary, now 62, was bone-weary from the hardships of four years as a refugee. She was depressed over the loss of her sons, Charles and James, and Brewton's deteriorating mental condition. Susan, 36, the elder daughter at home, helped take care of Brewton and restore family life at King Street. Rebecca, 26 and engaged to Dr. Francis L. ("Frank") Frost, left to visit her sister, Mary Mitchell, in Connecticut in September and October 1865.

The rest of the family was dispersed among residences in Charleston, Georgetown District, Connecticut, California, Louisiana and France. Alston, 43, and Emma and their growing flock of nine children survived the war relatively unscathed and moved back into the Judge Robert Pringle House on Tradd Street. His his meager salary as recorder of Charleston barely kept food on the table. Julius, 41, Maria and their family were now wealthy expatriates living in France and hobnobbing with the paté and Dom Perignon set in Paris, London, Newport, New York and New Orleans.

Edward, 39, Cornelia and their expanding family remained in San Francisco, where he had yet to recover all of the family funds he lost through speculative investments. A few years after the war's end, he opened his home and his office to his younger brother, James, who joined him in California. Motte, 38, Ella and their flock roomed with their parents in King Stret. Mary Mitchell, 34, was in New Haven, raising her seven children at Edgewood and caring for her famous author-husband, Donald, who was 43, still teaching, and in semi-retirement as a writer.

Their income having all but ceased, the Pringle family was in no position to let any of their assets lie unused -- not even the coach house. "Our pride is being humbled by the tendency of the establishments around us, they are almost all being converted into stores for the convenience of negroes," Mary wrote. "Three storey houses are to be made into shops to entice the negroes as they come into town from the surrounding islands. Alas! Alas! my dear old paternal homestead is by this innovation lowered to one half of its value; an application was made for our coach house to be converted into a 'dry goods store'!!!"

The Pringle family never lacked determination, and ruinous as was their condition, they were enormously relieved when they regained possession of their house. On October 25, 1865, Mary wrote, "Our dear Sue is with me. We have slept, again, under our own roof, although it was on a mattress thrown on the floor. We have eaten breakfast on plates borrowed from our Freedwomen, sitting at a narrow old table found in a corner, sitting on boxes turned on their sides. Having possession in four straight backed wooden chairs that the vandals stole from some church aisle and left in my house. These inconveniences will not continue long as we are to have our furniture soon, the [rail] car with it being on the way down. Your Papa and James were to go on their weary journey to Santee yesterday."

Copyright © 2002 by Richard N. Côté. All rights reserved.