"The often-stereotyped belles and matrons of the nineteenth-century South emerge as diverse personalities in this account of three generations of women from a South Carolina family whose fate rose and fell with the fortunes of the state. Through vivid, interwoven life stories, the book offers a unique perspective on how these women conducted their lives, shared personal triumphs and defeats, endured the deprivations and despair of civil war, and experienced social revolution."--BOOK JACKET.

"A Family of Women focuses on the female descendants of Louise Gibert Pettigrew (later changed to Petigru), who rose from upcountry obscurity to privileged prominence in Charleston and on low country plantations, where they variously flourished as belles, managed large households, shocked society with their unconventionality, educated their children, endured troubled marriages, and maintained close family ties."--BOOK JACKET.

"Ultimately, the failure of more than one-half of the third generation of Petigru women to marry shattered the family's continuity."--BOOK JACKET.