Best Companions

Edited by Eliza Cope Harrison In the spring of 1839, Eliza Middleton (1815-1890), the youngest daughter of a wealthy South Carolina rice planter and diplomat, married Philadelphian Joshua Francis Fisher at Middleton Place, one of the most celebrated plantations in the South. Soon after the wedding Eliza began a new life in Philadelphia. In her first letter home, she begged her mother, "Tell me everything when you write". Thus began a seven-year conversation -- on paper -- between Eliza and her British-born mother, Mary Hering Middleton (1772-1850), that would encompass some 375 letters. The correspondence offers a sweeping view of antebellum Charleston, Philadelphia, and the fashionable resort of Newport, Rhode Island. The letters delineate a cultural and social life that bound together North and South at a time when sectional interests worked to sunder the nation.These letters hold particular significance because they record the joys, sorrows, frustrations, and concerns of a mother an