Description
Not up to a year and a half before her death, a young woman from Virginia – a really perfect (x3) niece of Thomas Jefferson – took ship in New York City for an extended tour of Jamaica. What she found there was once exotic to her – the plants, the topography, the customs – not least the equality of races, which was once still far sooner or later in her place of birth. Martha was once a teacher and published poet, and her journal and letters home are vivid, humorous, and continuously moving. She traveled in grand style in a four-in-hand carriage, visiting Kingston and Spanish Town in the south, Black River and Savannah La Mar in the west, and Lucea, Montego Bay, and Falmouth in the north. At Black River, she had her first ever experience of the seashore. She also visited one of the vital large sugar plantations that still flourished on the island. Martha endured several close calls on precipitous mountain roads and an ongoing struggle with a bad-tempered, unwanted suitor, the son of her hostess. Martha Jefferson Trice died unmarried on the age of 24 in 1880, but she lives on through her writings. This book features a brief biography by her great (x2) nephew, Jasper Burns.