The Mighty Fallen: The Holmes Family of South Carolina

Emma Holmes (1838-1910)

Portrait from 1900

In South Carolina's new post-Civil-War economy former elite Charlestonian Emma Holmes and her family struggled to adjust to a system without slaves or fortune. Emma (in her late 20s) and her sister attempted the household chores their enslaved house servants had always done.

Photograph by J. Byerly, Maryland

Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection

of occupational images

Laundry may have been the most arduous. It wasn't just washing and drying clothing; it was ironing and starching to very high standards. Sending out the laundry was the Holmes's one luxury in the first weeks after the war. How to pay for it in a house without money?

July 17, 1865
"Sue & myself are taking in sewing to assist in paying for our washing."

Another Kelbaugh Collection photo

Washerwoman and seamstress were two of the few money-making options open to the female entrepreneur. Emma certainly was in the category of "decayed gentlewoman" as a woman of good family who had fallen upon hard times was called. Nearly every gentlewoman in Charleston and Camden was decayed after the war.

Emma was not confident she would earn any money at a profession she found unpleasant.

Dressmakers

"It certainly won't be much more than [paying for laundry], for I've always considered seamstresses as a dreadfully ill-paid class & always declared I would never take sewing as my means of livelihood, for it would soon kill me or at least make me feel like committing suicide. 

Kelbaugh Collection 

"For with closest application, a very quick workwoman could barely finish one chemise a day, that is putting really good work upon it.

A "Fancy Chemise", a cotton or linen undergarment,

from Godey's Lady's Book in 1862.

The Holmeses were not making "fancy" chemises.

"Those we are doing are quite plain, save four rows of cord stitched into the band & three little tucks in the sleeve, & I know it would take me two days of steady work to make one."

Fancy chemise

Well, it turns out they had nothing else to do as they had no fabric to make their own clothing...and they really didn't earn money for the work. They traded for scarce commodities---perhaps to a contractor who supplied the fabric.

 "But as we have very little work of our own, save mending, in which Nina [probably a now-hired former slave] assists, we work together mother assisting...We lighten our labor by reading aloud.... We are to be paid in sugar and soap at 50 cents a garment. Of course, we should much prefer money, but, that being scarce, barter is the order of the day."

Emma was a real fire-eater when the war began, willing to sacrifice anything to uphold her perceived class and state's rights. Winding up as a seamstress was not so bad a fate as others. (Note: She didn't keep up professional sewing for long.)

Emma Holmes tale is told in her published diary:
Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861--1866, edited by John F. Marszalek

https://lsupress.org/books/detail/the-diary-of-miss-emma-holmes-1861-1866/