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[Charleston, S.C., 1867]; Charleston S.C., 1867. 2 pp. in ink on 2 lined sheets, 8” x 5”; circular, 8” x 5.5”, 2 pp. Charleston, S.C., 1867. CONDITION: Letter very good, small brown stain to margin, old folds; circular very good, light toning at folds.

A letter by a Southern Catholic widow soliciting support for her school for young women, written soon after the Civil War and shortly before she joined a convent.

Addressed to her student “Mary,” this letter written by schoolmistress Adeline Brisbane begs that “your Mother, & Self, will use your influence for me.” Brisbane encloses a circular detailing the school and curriculum, since an earlier letter—which accompanied “two of my circulars”—had gone unacknowledged. The rest of the letter discusses school and local affairs: her student “Minnie,” whose father had “lost his crops”; the weather in Charleston, where “the whole of the southern coast has been inundated with rain”; and the state of the city itself, which had begun “to look bright and cheerful…Genrl. Sickles with his four in hand has past away, & Genrl. Cansby rides in the street Cars, which are now again being generally used.” 

The accompanying circular advertises a wide array of classes for girls twelve and older, promoting “their education, refinement of manners and comfort.” The curriculum embraced “Ancient and Modern Geography…Mythology, Grammar, Rhetoric, Intellectual and Natural Philosophy…Chemistry…English Classics, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.” Additional offerings included a three-hour per day “English Belles Lettres Class” for up to twelve day-students, and “Foreign Languages, viz: French. Latin. German. Italian and Spanish,” taught by “Masters.” The verso of the circular states the general cost for room, board, and tuition, plus additional fees for certain classes. The school was located in Brisbane’s home at 21 Legare Street in Charleston.

Mrs. Brisbane (1807–1872) was born Adeline E. White, daughter of the painter John Blake White. In 1828, she married the South Carolinian West Point graduate Abbott Hall Brisbane, who served as a corporal during the Seminole War and later worked as a construction engineer for the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad, as well as a professor of history, belles lettres, and ethics at the Citadel Academy, a military school, for five years. He later owned some fifty slaves. The couple converted to Catholicism following the death of their young son, and in the late 1840s, according to a recollection written by his niece, Brisbane “engaged in surveying a road in Georgia, which was called Rabon [Rabun] Gap and which he was convinced would become the greatest railroad in the country…He was either mistaken in his views or looked too far ahead…On the strength of this road…Abbott bought eight miles of land from which he and Aunt Adeline…expected to realize an enormous fortune. They persisted…until they spent every dollar they had in taxes and working…for the improvement of the property” (Hickox). As a result, by Brisbane’s death in 1861, his wife was a pauper. In 1865, Mrs. Brisbane applied to the state of South Carolina for the restoration of some of her property, presumably to operate this school. At some point following the failure of her school, she “joined the nuns of the Ursuline Convent of Columbia, SC.” Mrs. Brisbane was remembered as “bright, intelligent and learned. Her friends called her the walking dictionary” (Hickox).

REFERENCES: Hickox, Mary Catherine Brisbane. “Abbott Hall Brisbane,” at Internet Archive online.

Item #7401

Price: $450.00