Sherry Chandler

The plantation wife

Helen Deiss Irvin (Women in Kentucky) forwards a version of southern culture/economy that I’ve heard elsewhere: that however frivolous the plantation daughters might be, however dashing and high flying the men, plantation wives were in fact the ones who ran the big plantations:

. . . a distinction must be made among wives and daughters of the wealthy. . . . Wives of large landholders, however, had heavy responsibilities. They might work harder than their husbands, although this fact they self-effacingly concealed. While many landholders devoted themselves to gambling, hunting, and sometimes the pursuit of women, their wives saw to it that the farms produced and the the slave work force was healthy and cared for.

One such hard-working woman was Lucretia Hart Clay. While Henry Clay advanced his career in Washington, she spent most of the time in Lexington, running “Ashland.” A hemp and stock plantation, “Ashland” made use of fifty to sixty slaves, the responsibility of Lucretia Clay.

Graced by a free and easy attitude toward money, Clay signed notes for friends rather casually. He also gambled for high stakes, once losing eight thousand dollars . . . and winning it back in one evening’s play. Money did not worry him: that was Mrs. Clay’s problem, and she managed the plantation with skill and frugalilty. Mother of eleven children, she found time to sell—often in person—butter, egges, chickens, and vegetables to the Phoenix Hotel and other Lexington hostelries. Clay appreciated her industry, which was good political capital as well, and said of her: “Again and again she saved our home from bankruptcy.” [pp. 33-34]

(I’m not sure what’s with the quotation marks around “Ashland.”)

Rebecca Smith Lee provides us with a description of Mrs Clay in her biography of that Boston bluestocking Mary Austin Holley (University of Texas, 1962):

She liked Lucretia Hart Clay, a small auburn-haired, friendly woman, who was a little older than herself. Lucretia had been no beauty even in her youth, but the years had bestowed on her the poise and dignity that were her birthright. She had married for love at sixteen, and was still devoted to her famous husband in a realistic sort of way. Their house was set in twenty acres of native trees and shrubs, with a garden that L’Enfant had planned for them. . . . Mrs. Clay was more practical than her husband. On afternoons when Mary called, her hostess was likely to be busy with the small children or conferring with young Amos Kendall, the tutor for the older boys, while she directed the servants in preparations for a formal dinner. When she “rested,” she usually picked up her needlework frame. Her husband supervised the blooded cattle and the racing stock on his extensive farms, but it was she who made Ashland a home place . . . [p. 128]

Those trees are a Clay legacy that still graces Lexington, Kentucky. My husband has carved some pieces from pecan trees that were planted by Clay and brought down by the ice storm of 2003, the one that hit Kentucky just before George W. Bush invaded Iraq. The wood was a gift from Robert and Pam Sexton.

Mary Holley, by the way, was at first uneasy about having leased slaves for her householdservants. but she adjusted fairly quickly, finding

. . . her new servants were industrious and obedient and wonderfully kind, especially with the children [p. 120]