The Georgia Lowcountry

Gender, Race, and Rank in a Revolutionary Age: The Georgia Lowcountry 1750-1820, was written by Betty Wood and surveys the different groups of women around the time of the revolutionary era. Dr. Betty Wood is a prominent scholar and has written several articles and books in the specific areas of early American and African American history in the colonial and revolutionary era Lowcountry. Because women’s history during that era is not well documented, her analysis of early American women during the colonial and revolutionary era is important.

This book shows how women are linked by their gender but divided by their race and social standings; and survey’s how their race and social standings affected their relationships and encounters with each

They both shared religious preferences and marketing activities. As far as religious events many women, men, and children in the Lowcountry got together from adjoining plantations to celebrate the marriage of enslaved couples. These festivities often provided opportunities for the constructing and reassertion of female affiliations. Although some of the other regions in Georgia focus was not religious based, some of their domestic servants did have the opportunity to meet up with other slaves and free colored women; they were able to form relationships through their market activities. Their marketing activities helped to invigorate the development of enslaved women’s networks. The African American women were both sellers and buyers. The marketplace was a medium where the women were able to converse and also a place where reputations could be built or destroyed. Many of the free women of color held different jobs including seamstresses, washers, bakers and shopkeepers. Unlike enslaved women free black women were able to move from selling products to being a shopkeeper which was considered a socially respected profession. They ran businesses that in different extents depended on the enslaved women they owned. Savannah’s free colored women were disinclined to deprive themselves of their capital properties and workers. Free colored women made no move in disintegrating the institution of slavery by freeing their slaves. The diverse religious preferences helped define the association between enslaved women and free women of color. Some of the free women ranked themselves by job, national origin, and religious association but a number of them supported the system of racially based slavery. For enslaved women could work together in order to outline mutually conventional standards of morality and behavior. Sometimes there was tension in the church between close