Volume 03 Page 0019

Gowrie and East Hermitage

		To	$
1860 Oct'r		To Middleton & Co Factors Oct'r 1860 @ Oct'r 1861	$1142	21
1861 Jan'y	1	Overseer's Wages for past year	1000
	23	A. A. Solomons & Co. Medicines &c	73	11
		J. B. Habersham (Apothecary ) &c	89	24
		A. McAlpin & Bro. (Lumber)	110	27
		Samuel Palmer & Son (Hardware)	129	66
		Gilliand & Co (Powder, Paint &c &c &c	138	90
		Dr. Joseph C. Habersham for plantation	50
		John F. OByrne (500 Shingles @ $5)	25
	24	McLeod & Bro. (Shingles & boards)	69	27
		W. B. Giles & Co Lumber, new House at Camp	269	93
		R. & J. Lacklison & Co (Middleton paid)	40	41
			$3138	00

The Crop of 1860 has been a small one. Mr. Capers, Our overseer is a Man of
experience and good planter, and May 1860 I left all things on the plantation
doing well, with a find stand of that portion of the Crop of which we could then
judge. Things looked bright until Saturday 7th July 6½ P.M. when a "very severe storm of wind,
"rain, and hail passed over the plantation from West to East laying down the rice as
"if threshed with a flail, breaking the stalks of rice" and doing vast injury. The crop
never recovered from this shock. Judging from what I could hear, it must have been a species of "White Squall" such as we experience in the Tropics, where the immense
force of wind, in it Circular motion, is confined to a very limited space, yet sufficient
to dismast vessels and Cause great injury. As fortune would have it this Squall was
confined to Gowrie plantation. The Summer of 1860 was quite a tropical one. The heat
being so intense that the Negroes were not allowed to work from 12 until 2 for several