Abstract
Most famous for her 1938 book, Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies, Julia Cherry Spruill’s research anticipated the methods and interests of later feminist and social historians. From her youth, Spruill defied convention, promoting women’s rights and standing out academically. Yet, although her intellectual abilities were recognized—she was awarded both academic prizes and research funding, and obtained an MA degree at the University of North Carolina—she never held more than a part-time academic position. In her later life, she focused primarily on her domestic role, apparently accepting the conventional values of her region. Decades later, the innovativeness of her research was rediscovered. Spruill had developed a detailed analysis of ordinary women’s lives during the colonial period, utilizing painstaking investigation into unusual sources. Her work revealed many new aspects of colonial women’s experiences, and demonstrated that women had participated in public life in hitherto unexpected ways. Her book became a model and a source of insight for later historians investigating under-researched groups. It is still assigned in college classes, and is today considered a classic of historical analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Julia Cherry Spruill, Women’s Life and Work in the Southern Colonies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998 [1938, 1972]).
- 2.
Anne Firor Scott has written three pieces that discuss Spruill’s life and intellectual trajectory, two introductions to newer editions to Spruill’s book: Ann Firor Scott, “Introduction to the Norton Library Edition” in Spruill, Women’s Life and Work, 1972 edition, pp. v–vii; and a more developed introduction that discusses Spruill’s life: Ann Firor Scott, “Introduction” to Spruill, Women’s Life and Work,1998 edition, pp. ix–xv; and also in Scott’s book which introduces and presents selections from the work of five early women historians, Unheard Voices: The First Historians of Southern Women (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), 33–38.
- 3.
On the loss of Spruill’s papers, see Scott , “A Different View of Southern History” [introduction], Unheard Voices, 4. In addition to her book, Spruill’s publications included the following: “Mistress Margaret Brent, Spinster,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 29:4 (Dec. 1934), 259–268; “The Southern Lady’s Library, 1700–1776,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 34 (1935), 23–41; “Virginia and Carolina Homes before the Revolution,” North Carolina Historical Review, 12:4 (Oct. 1935), 320–340; “Southern Housewives before the Revolution,” North Carolina Historical Review, 13:1 (Jan. 1936), 25–46; “Women in the Founding of the Southern Colonies,” North Carolina Historical Review, 13:3 (July 1936), 202–18; and a few book reviews, of Maria Kimball, Thomas Jefferson’s Cook Book (1938) in North Carolina History Review, 15:4 (1938), 410–411; Helen Bullock, The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion (1938) in North Carolina Historical Review, 16:4 (Oct. 1939), 460–2; Philip Fithian, Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773–1774: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion Homer Dickinson Farish, ed. (1943), in North Carolina Historical Review, 21:1 (1944), 77–8; and Adelaide L. Fries, The Road to Salem (1944) in William and Mary Quarterly, 1:4 (1944), 417–421.
- 4.
Scott , Unheard Voices, 33.
- 5.
Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), ix and Scott, Unheard Voices, 33.
- 6.
On the college’s founding, see Harry McKown, “February 1891: Founding of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; This Month in North Carolina History,” February 1, 2009 in Learn NC: North Carolina Digital History, http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newsouth/5500. On Spruill’s experience, see Scott, “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), ix.
- 7.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), ix.
- 8.
Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, Barbara Caine, eds., Companion to Women’s Historical Writing (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 539; Pamela Dean, Women on the Hill (Chapel Hill: Division of Student Affairs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1987), 16.
- 9.
Scott , Unheard Voices, 37.
- 10.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), ix.
- 11.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), ix; Scott, Unheard Voices, 33; Dean, Women on the Hill, 7.
- 12.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), ix.
- 13.
Eleanore Elliott Carroll, “Julia Cherry Spruill’s New Book,” Alumnae News (Greensboro, NC: Women’s College of the University of North Carolina, Feb. 1939), 9 mentions six years as “one of its first research assistants.” Also see Scott, Unheard Voices, 33.
- 14.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), x.
- 15.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), x.
- 16.
Spruill, “Preface,” Women’s Life and Work.
- 17.
Spruill, “Preface,” Women’s Life and Work.
- 18.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), x.
- 19.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), x.
- 20.
Scott , “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), x.
- 21.
Spruill (1972), throughout; Scott, “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), xiii.
- 22.
Spruill (1972), 208.
- 23.
Spruill (1972), 163.
- 24.
Spruill (1972), 179–183 and illustrations between 207–208, also discussed in Scott, “Introduction,” in Spruill (1998), xiv.
- 25.
Spruill (1972).
- 26.
Spruill (1972), chap. 8.
- 27.
Spruill (1972), 255, and see 51, 241–248, 275, and chap. 12. Also mentioned in Scott, “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xiv.
- 28.
Ann Firor Scott points to Lois Green Carr, Lorena Walsh, Marylynn Salmon, Donna Spindel, Joan Gunderson, Gwen Gampel, and Linda Speth; Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xiii. Others might include Catherine Clinton, Jacqueline Dowd Hall, Suzanne Lebsock, Marjorie J. Spruill (no relation), and many others, and obviously Scott herself.
- 29.
In chronological order, Mary Beard, Social Forces, 17:3 (1939), 449–450; Philip Davidson, Journal of Southern History, 5:2 (1939), 254–255; Georgia Historical Quarterly, 23:2 (1939), 216–217 (no author); T. E. Hulett Jr., American Sociological Review, 4:2 (1939), 293–294; Journal of Educational Sociology, 13:8 (1940), 508–509 (no author); Lowell Joseph Ragatz, North Carolina Historical Review, 16:2 (1939), 218–220; Eudora Ramsay Richardson, William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd ser., 19 (1939), 248; Reba Strickland, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 25:4 (1939), 556.
- 30.
Richardson, 248.
- 31.
Hulett.
- 32.
Journal of Educational Sociology.
- 33.
Davidson. Note that the 1972 edition is 426 pages long, so it appears that Davidson is referring to a particular section.
- 34.
Carroll, “Julia Cherry Spruill’s New Book,” 9.
- 35.
Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xi.
- 36.
Spongberg et al., Companion to Women’s Historical Writing, 539.
- 37.
Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xi.
- 38.
Spongberg et al., Companion to Women’s Historical Writing, 539.
- 39.
Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xii.
- 40.
Scott , “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xi.
- 41.
Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh , “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 34:4 (1977), 542–557.
- 42.
For example, see Carr and Walsh , p. 10, fn. 25 or p. 13, fn. 38.
- 43.
John McCusker, “In Memoriam: Lois Green Carr,” Perspectives in History (December 2015), accessed from https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/in-memoriam-lois-green-carr, and “Foreword” and “Preface” in Lorena S. Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763 (Williamsburg, VA: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
- 44.
bell hooks, “Racism and Feminism,” in Les Back and John Solomos, eds., Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2000), 373–388, 381.
- 45.
Spruill (1972): “Wench”—56; “Half breed”—177; “Savage”—7; and also on “savage” see Scott, “Introduction” in Spruill (1998), xv.
- 46.
Review of Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773–1774: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion (1943) in North Carolina Historical Review, 21:1 (1944): 77–78.
- 47.
Corydon Spruill, Letter to David M. Britt, November 5, 1965. SR_Speaker_Ban_Correspondence_Spruill_to_Britt_19651105, North Carolina Digital Collections State Archives of North Carolina, http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p16062coll12/id/138
- 48.
“Order of the United States District Court – Greensboro” (February 19, 1968), available at “I raised my hand to volunteer,” Speaker Ban Controversy, Manuscripts Department, UNC Libraries http://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/items/show/867
- 49.
Herbert Aptheker, “The Quakers and Negro Slavery,” The Journal of Negro History, 25:3 (1940), 331–362, 341.
- 50.
W. Lee Johnston, Jr., “Speaker Ban Law,” in William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006) retrieved from NCpedia http://www.ncpedia.org/speaker-ban-law; Maximilian Longley, “Speaker Ban Law,” NorthCarolinahistory.org: An Online Encyclopedia, North Carolina History Project, retrieved from http://northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/speaker-ban-law/; Robert Spearman, “The Rise and Fall of the North Carolina Speaker Ban Law,” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013 Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture, retrieved from http://library.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/2013_spearman.pdf
- 51.
Corydon Spruill letter to Britt.
- 52.
William A. Link, William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 81; Corydon Spruill letter to Britt.
- 53.
Link, William Friday, 82.
- 54.
On the views of 1930s Southern feminists, see John Thomas McGuire, “The Boundaries of Democratic Reform: Social Justice, Feminism, and Race in the South, 1931–39,” Journal of Southern History, 78:4 (2012), 887–913.
- 55.
McGuire, “The Boundaries of Democratic Reform,” 888–889; on Tillett’s attendance at the college, 896. Note that, as McGuire and others have pointed out, a few white Southern feminists of the era did strive to support a broader conception of rights that included the rights of African Americans; McGuire, “The Boundaries of Democratic Reform,” 887 and following. See for example Jacqueline Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
- 56.
McKown, “A Women’s College.”
- 57.
The first award in 1987 was given to Jacqueline Jones for Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985). Others included Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Nancy Hewitt, Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s–1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Katherine Charron, Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Katy Simpson Smith, We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750–1835 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); LaKisha Michelle Simmons, Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
- 58.
Dowd Hall , Revolt against Chivalry.
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Suranyi, A. (2018). Julia Cherry Spruill, Historian of Southern Colonial Women. In: Smith, H., Zook, M. (eds) Generations of Women Historians. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_4
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