The World of Westover: Mary Willing Byrd, Gender, Slavery, and the Economics of Citizenship in Revolutionary Virginia

FAIN: FEL-262454-19

Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch
University of Toledo (Toledo, OH 43606-3328)

Writing leading to publication of a book length study of the life of Mary Willing Byrd (1740-1814), one of the few women who ran a large plantation in the early American South.

“The World of Westover" contributes significant insight into the intersection of gender, economics, and citizenship in the revolutionary era American South. Using the life of eighteenth-century plantation owner Mary Willing Byrd as a through-line, my study explores the political meaning of women’s economic experiences in the highly politicized atmosphere of revolutionary era Virginia. During this tumultuous time, women’s economic choices had important political meanings that could be used to signify their political loyalty. Drawing on Byrd’s experience as a female head of household, slave owner, and participant in numerous lawsuits, this project examines how the remaking of Virginia’s legal, economic, and cultural institutions during and after the war laid the foundation for the construction of gendered and racial hierarchies that would come to define women’s citizenship by the beginning of the nineteenth century.