1830 to 1835

LIBERTY, Georgia

African-Americans, Health/Death, Race-Relations, Slavery, Women

In the days before baby formula, new mothers had far fewer options for food for their babies. Because of rampant childhood diseases and absence of many other options of sustenance for infants, breastmilk played a vitally important role in the development of society and families. Many slaveholding women designated enslaved women to be wet nurses for the newly born white children. As Robert Mallard describes...

December, 1827 to June 6, 1828

CHATHAM, Georgia

Economy, Migration/Transportation

In the Antebellum South, before railroads were widely used, Southern societies did not encounter people from other places very often. An anonymous man wrote a letter to the editor of The Argus in the summer of 1828, and in his etter he clearly demonstrated his inherent mistrust of outsiders. This man owned a boarding house and was writing to the paper in search of a solution to a problem he had run...