Cote Bas and Mepkin Plantation Journals, 1865-1877

The Cote Bas and Mepkin Plantation Journals, 1865-1877 is comprised of four volumes written by Peter Gourdin that includes data for planting, personal information and clippings. The son of Samuel and Mary Gourdin, Peter Gourdin lived at Buck then Cote Bas Plantation and later settled at Mepkin Plantation with his wife, Constantia Harleston Moultrie Gourdin, who also owned the Bluff, Elwood, and Irish Town Plantations. Volume 1 (1865) pertains to Cote Bas Plantation and contains a list of the enslaved men, women and children recording their names, ages, deaths and relationships to one another. Volume 2 (1866) is a Miller’s Interleaved Almanac repurposed as a journal with entries recording rice planting, livestock, social activities as well as a newspaper clipping on the General Order No. 1, January 1, 1866 issued by Federal authorities to govern the employment of freedmen as plantation laborers. Volume 3 (1870) is a Southern Almanac repurposed as a journal that includes planting information from Cote Bas and Mepkin Plantation such as rice and cotton farming, payments for goods and social activities. Finally, Volume 4 (1876) is a Miller’s Planter’s and Merchants’ Almanac that contains both journal and commonplace book entries such as addresses recipes for dynamite, gun cotton and payments for goods and services.