An antebellum plantation household

by Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq

At the age of nineteen Emily Wharton married Charles Sinkler and moved eight hundred miles from her Philadelphia home to the swampy Low Country region of South Carolina. Suddenly she found herself living in a totally unfamiliar environment - a cotton plantation in an isolated area along the Santee River. In monthly letters to her family she recorded thoughtful musings about her adopted home, and in a receipt book she assembled a trusted collection of culinary and medicinal recipes that reflect her ties to both North and South. Together with an extensive biographical and historical introduction by Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq, these documents provide a flavorful record of plantation cooking, folk medicine, travel, and social life in the antebellum South.