Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Rebecah W Pettus at Steel Creek Female School

© Kathy Duncan, 2018


Back in 2005, which seems like yesterday by the way, my cousin Louise Pettus sent me this very exciting find. It is a record of my great-great-great grandmother Rebecah W (Pettus) Duncan, attending the Steel-Creek Female School in York District South Carolina 1820. It indicates that she well educated for a woman of her time, receiving instruction in everything from spelling to moral philosophy to embroidered maps!



A snippet of the original clipping article from the Western Carolinian newspaper of Salisbury, North Carolina:



Of almost equal excitement is the account and photograph of an embroidered map created by a Mary Elizabeth Hartt, a classmate of Rebecah W Pettus's at the Steel Creek Female School, in 1820. The detail of the map and skill of her needlework is breathtaking. Selfishly, I wish I could see the embroidered map that Rebecah W Pettus may have created. And, of course, I wonder what might have happened to it.

Rebecah W Pettus was fully capable of writing the letters that will follow in the next few posts. They were written to John Springs, who administered the estate of her father William Pettus who died in 1818 in York County, South Carolina.

Rebecah W. Pettus was the daughter of William and Mary (Knox) Pettus and the wife of Browning Duncan.







No comments:

Post a Comment

I will always try to respond to your comments. If you are anonymous and cannot be reached by email and if you do not choose to follow responses to your comments, then please check back here for a response.