Charleston Loan Exhibition

48 Susan Stevens Kennedy (b. 1812) Sampler Charleston, SC, 1821 Silk thread on woven linen ground, cross-stitch H. 16½ x W. 12½ inches Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC, gift of Mrs. John Littlefield and Mrs. Frederick Deane, 88.1.1 The acquisition of embroidery skills under the guidance of a schoolmis- tress or tutoress had been an important accomplishment for Charleston’s daughters for over a century when Susannah Stevens Kennedy completed her bold cross-stitched sampler. Dated 1821, the silk-on-linen needlework includes the headline “Charleston SC” and a stitched note stating that “Susan” finished the project “in the eighth year of her age.” For the centerpiece of her sampler, Susan worked an adaptation of the Great Seal of the United States, the design of which had been adopted by Congress in 1782. Engravers Robert Scot (1744–1823) and John Reich (1768-1833) incorporated the Great Seal’s eagle on designs for the reverse of several denominations of early-nineteenth century American specie. One of the minted coins may have inspired the needlework. The daughter of Mary Ann Jane Stevens (born 1791) and Lionel Henry (1787–1841) Kennedy, Susan was born on May 10, 1812, into an important and influential Charleston family. Lionel Kennedy, an attor- ney-at-law, was one of the two presiding judges in the Denmark Vesey slave insurrection trial in June 1822. 1 Susan’s paternal grandfather, Lio- nel Chalmers (1715–1777), was a respected and experienced Charleston physician, educated in Edinburgh and noted for his investigations on the nature and origins of fever. 2 Her paternal great-great-grandmother, Martha Daniell Logan (1704–1779), a Charleston horticulturalist, wrote the first American treatise on gardening. 3 KS Kathleen Staples & Associates, LLC Fanner basket South Carolina, nineteenth century Sweetgrass and palmetto frond H. 4¾ x Diam. 23¼ inches Lent by The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, HW0132 Boasting a plantation-based economy and a port city located between the Caribbean and Europe, Charleston was a major center of trade and agriculture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Early in the eighteenth century, planters discovered that Charles- ton’s marshy environs were well suited for the production of rice; by 1761 Governor James Glenn observed that rice was the only commodity of any consequence in South Carolina. 1 The labor-intensive production of rice led to an increase in the importation of slaves from Africa, especially the Gold Coast—present-day Ghana. Africans from this region were desirable to planters because the western part of Africa had a tradition of rice cultivation dating back to the first century C.E. 2 These enslaved agriculturalists brought with them a cultural identity preserved today in the language, arts and religion of the Gullah culture. Combining traditional weaving methods with local resources, enslaved Africans made baskets of traditional African forms from sweetgrass and rush found in the surrounding landscape. The fanner, or winnowing, basket was used to manually separate the chaff from the grain by “fanning” it into the wind. While many basket forms were woven of sweetgrass, the fanner was generally constructed of rush, cornshuck or straw—more durable grasses that could withstand the rigors of rice cultivation for several planting seasons. BJO 1. Stephen J. Hornsby, British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2005), 113. 2. John Michael Vlach, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990), 9. 1. Kennedy co-authored, with fellow judge Thomas Parker, An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes, Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina (Charleston, SC: James R. Schenck, 1822). 2. In 1776, Chalmers’s An Account of the Weather and Diseases of South-Carolina was printed in London (Edward and Charles Dilly). 3. The “Gardener’s Kalendar,” 1752, first appeared in the South Carolina Almanack , published by John Tobler.