The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley [Paperback]

Archibald C. McKinley (Author)
ARCHIBALD C. McKINLEY (1842–1917) was born in Lexington, Georgia, and served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War. In 1869, he and his family moved to Sapelo Island, Georgia, to raise cotton, sugar cane, and other crops on a plantation that had been in his wife's family for generations. He remained there for the rest of his life.

Robert L. Humphries (Editor)
ROBERT L. HUMPHRIES was a biologist and ecologist who worked for Georgia Power and the Environmental Protection Agency. He was an avid outdoorsman who made many trips to Sapelo Island, studying the barrier island’s history and heritage.

A valuable document from the Reconstruction era, The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley offers the modern reader a rare glimpse of daily life on Sapelo Island, Georgia, as seen through the eyes of an upper-class farmer.

A descendant of Scottish settlers, Archibald McKinley was born in Lexington, Georgia, in 1842 and served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War. Just after the war, he began farming near Milledgeville, Georgia, and within a year had met and married Sarah Spalding, a granddaughter of Thomas Spalding, who had built his plantation empire on Sapelo Island. In 1869, the McKinleys moved to Sapelo to raise cotton, sugar cane, and other crops. The bulk of this journal is a sustained account of their sojourn on the island through 1876, before their return to Milledgeville.

The brief, matter-of-fact entries that make up McKinley's journal focus mainly on the small occurrences that filled his days: farm work, hunting and fishing expeditions, sailing excursions, church services, changes in the weather, the disposition of his crops, the development of the Darien timber shipping trade. Scattered throughout, however, are intriguing references to dramatic elÃ)