Updated March 14, 2022
Strong Women
Women’s History Month was ‘born’ in 1987, though its roots go back to 1911. So many Sams women, and we don’t know enough about them. It seems reasonable to assume they all were strong to survive the circumstances of their southern antebellum era. For most women, their role in the family in the 19th century was still defined by the husband [Hussung, 2015.]
Here are four particular women who persevered, even excelled, despite the challenges they encountered back then: Elizabeth (Fripp) Sams, Sarah Stanyarne (Sams) Sams, Sarah (Fripp) Sams, and Kate Gleason.
Elizabeth (Fripp) Sams (1795 – 1831)
Elizabeth was born, married, and died in an age where motherhood had dramatically different expectations than it does today. She married Dr. Berners Barnwell Sams (1787 – 1855) in 1812 at age 17. Elizabeth was strong in my mind because she had 11 children in 17 years; none were multiple births. Having this many children was not uncommon in those days. According to most census estimates, an American woman had, on average, seven to eight children in 1800 and married young. By 1900 the number dropped to about three to four children per family [Economic History Association.]
Elizabeth died giving birth to daughter Elizabeth Exima Sams on March 16, 1831. She is buried next to her husband in the Sams Family Cemetery here on Datha. Sadly, two of their 11 children died young, William (3 months) and Ariana (9 months).
Sarah Stanyarne (Sams) Sams (1840 – 1902)
“Sallie” (Sams) Sams (1840 – 1902) married John Hanahan Sams (1839-1924) in 1865 at age 24. According to her Aunt Elizabeth, life was very tough on their Churchlands plantation on Johns Island.
Sarah was married to Johnnie Sams, who was unsuccessfully planting on John’s Island.
Aunt Elizabeth Exima Sams
March 18, 1905
Sarah and John moved the family to Brevard County, Florida, in 1875 to take advantage of homesteading. (Florida issued their first homestead grants on January 6, 1873.) Her husband and relatives built a 600 square foot cabin for the family there. At the time, they had five young children ranging from ages 1 to 8. Before air conditioning, they moved over 400 miles to a tropical climate with five young children. Sarah is another strong woman in the Sams family.
Sarah (Fripp) Sams (1789 – 1825)
Sarah was the first daughter born to Thomas Fripp (1761 – ?) and his wife Martha Hann (1765 – 1799) and the older sister of BB Sams’s first wife, Elizabeth Fripp, mentioned above. I am not sure where Sarah was born, but the Fripp’s other three children were born on St Helena Island, so I assume she was also. During the antebellum period, the Fripp dynasty comprised one of the most prominent plantation clans in the Beaufort District, particularly Saint Helena Island [Rosengarten]. About 1809, at age 20, Sarah Fripp married Lewis Reeve Sams; she bore him eight children between 1810 and 1823. And though their youngest child was only two years old when Sarah died, Lewis did not remarry until ten years later. His second wife gave him another four children.
I don’t know why he waited so long to remarry, but it appears he had an extraordinary bond with Sarah (Fripp) Sams. He buried her in the Sams family cemetery on Datha with an elegant crypt over her gravesite. This crypt was carefully restored by the Dataw Historic Foundation over five years, ending in 2010. That is another story.
Unfortunately, we do not have a good portrait of Sarah.
Catherine “Kate” Gleason (1865 – 1933)
My last example of a strong woman is the great industrialist Catherine “Kate” Gleason (1865 – 1933). She was not a Sams family member but is a critical link in our Dataw Island history. The Federal government confiscated Datha Island during the Civil War. It eventually was sold in pieces. No one person owned the island again until Kate bought it in the fall of 1927 for $15,000 (today’s equivalent of $245,000). For this, we have Professor Lawrence Rowland’s mother to thank, Elizabeth ‘Libby’ (Sanders) Rowland. Libby introduced Kate Gleason to Beaufort. Kate saw great promise in the area [Gleason, 2010.]
Kate Gleason led an exciting, independent life, rare for a woman in her time. Her Associated Press obituary dated January 1933 says,
“ She was the first woman president of a national bank, the first woman to be appointed a receiver in bankruptcy, the first to be elected a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the first to be a member of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieuren (Associated of German Engineers).”
On the heels of these accomplishments, she set her sights on the Beaufort area.
Miss Gleason did much to help the Beaufort area during the depression. For instance, she hired a grandson of ‘our’ BB Sams, H. Reeve Sams (1869 – 1949), to oversee the first causeways built between St. Helena and Polowana Islands and between Polowana and Dataw Islands, which she paid for. These and many other projects provided local jobs when they were sorely needed.
One of her surprising plans for our little corner of Beaufort County was to turn Dataw Island into a turkey farm! Kate had some success on land she owned in France with turkey farming. But, as the Gleason family story goes, “…a carload of turkeys, purchased by Kate, went awry. The train car was routed to Beaufort, North Carolina, instead of Beaufort, South Carolina. The turkeys languished on a railroad siding over the Fourth of July weekend, perishing from the heat. Kate’s Dataw turkey initiative never got off the ground…” [Gleason, 2010.]
Kate Gleason excelled in a man’s world; we owe her a lot. If you enter “Kate Gleason” into the search box on any page on this website, you’ll see newspaper articles published about her entrance onto the Beaufort scene in the late 1920s.
Sources
Economic History Association, accessed March 9, 2020
Gleason, Janis F. – The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason, 2010
Griffith, Jane – Insights Into Slavery and Dataw Island’s Enslaved, 2020
Holden, Joel and Riski, Bill – Family Tree for Sams of Dataw, accessed Mar 5, 2020.
Hussung, Tricia – Concordia University, St. Paul MN – The Evolution of American Family Structure, posted June 23, 2015
Sams, Conway Whittle – History of the Sams and Whittle Families, circa 1905, unpublished. Includes the remembrances of Elizabeth E. Sams, March 18th, 1905.
#52Sams Week 10