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“P” is for Pringle, Elizabeth Waites Allston (1845-1921)

“P” is for Pringle, Elizabeth Waites Allston (1845-1921). Born to wealth and privilege, the Civil War left Pringle and her family in financial distress. She determinedly acquired the two plantations that once been family property. With minimal assistance from family and friends, Pringle oversaw two farms. Pringle convinced the New York Sun editor to buy weekly articles she wrote about being a female rice plantation owner. Under the pseudonym “Patience Pennington,” Pringle’s essays were printed from 1904 to 1907. In 1913 her articles were collected in a single volume, A Woman Rice Planter. By 1920 she began writing another book about her childhood and how women fared during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her manuscript was published posthumously the next year. Like Elizabeth Waites Alston Pringle’s first book, Chronicles of Chicora Wood depicts an aristocratic point of view.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.