This plantation diary includes day-to-day management of Drayton plantations, (particularly Drayton Hall and Jehossee), focusing on crops, livestock, labor, and the movement of these between estates. Includes details on the unsatisfactory work of overseers, marriage of Charlotte Drayton, building of a new barn and slave houses, slave deaths from snake/spider bites and lightning strikes.
A letter from Stoke Plantation overseer Thomas Finklea to John Ball in Charleston discussing the corn crop, raising the riverbank, the poor health of numerous enslaved persons, the work of Scipio and Pompey with the cattle, the birth of two enslaved children from the enslaved women Belle and Elsey, the death of a sow from a snake bite, the "stoke negro houses," an inventory of cattle and the chimney getting struck by lightning.
