Frances kemble

• Main Author: Dusinberre, William
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1996
• Subjects: Butler Island
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195090215.003.0007; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/51981075/isbn-9780195090215-book-part-7.pdf

Abstract Sixty miles south of Gowrie, and athwart Georgia’s Altamaha River, lay a rice plantation which gained notoriety in 1859 through the well-publicized, two-day auction of hundreds of its slaves, reported at length in the New York Tribune. Permanent fame came to Butler Island four years later when a remarkable Englishwoman, Frances Kemble, published her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. The estate described by Kemble was indirectly connected to Charles Manigault’s family: for a favorite niece of Charles’s, Gabriella Manigault Morris (Butler), was married to its coproprietor, John Butler of Philadelphia.1 In 1834 the actress Frances Kemble-a younger member of Britain’s foremost acting family-had ruined her life by marrying the other proprietor, Pierce Butler, thus setting the stage for her traumatic confrontation with life on a Georgia rice plantation (see genealogical table 16).