James Kirke Paulding (1778-1860) was among the first generation of truly American authors - authors who were not only born in America, but used early Americans as the subjects of their writing. Though he mostly wrote fiction, Paulding's book Letters from the South (1817) is a fine example of a travelogue, or a diary describing the sights, people and customs of a particular place. It may seem strange to write about Virginia as if it were a foreign place but few people in the early United States could afford to travel freely; vacations as we know them today were virtually unheard of. Travelogues in books, newspapers, and magazines offered entertaining (if not completely accurate) looks at how people lived in other regions.

In this section from his book, Paulding compares the gentry farmers (which he calls the Tuckahoe, after a river in central Virginia not far from Jefferson's home Monticello) with the common farmer (which he calls the Cohee). Paulding makes his sympathies known early on - he dislikes richer farmers who act like "gentlemen farmers" (a idea taken from Jefferson) to hide their laziness and lack of agricultural skill. He is far more sympathetic to the farming family that works together in the interest of self-sufficiency and the middling-sort farmer (like the one in Electronic Field Trip Mr. Alderson's Farm). When meeting one such middling-sort family, Paulding discovers a few interesting things about their ambitions and the work they do.

* * * Please be sure to read every page of Paulding's account.

James Kirke Paulding's Letters from the South

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