author
Margaret Devereux
1824–1910
A North Carolina writer who turned family memories into a book, she is known for Plantation Sketches, a late-life collection written for her grandchildren and privately printed in 1906. Her work preserves a personal, deeply rooted view of antebellum Southern plantation life.
1 Audiobook
Plantation sketches
by Margaret Devereux
About the author
Born Margaret Mordecai in Raleigh, North Carolina, she later became Margaret Devereux through her marriage to John Devereux Jr. Archival records identify her as Margaret (Mordecai) Devereux (1824–1910), and surviving family papers show her as part of two prominent North Carolina families, the Mordecais and the Devereuxes.
She is best known for Plantation Sketches, a book privately printed in 1906 and later made widely available through public-domain archives. Library and archival descriptions note that the book grew out of reminiscences written for her grandchildren, reflecting on plantation life in the antebellum South from her own family perspective.
Because so much of what survives about her comes from family and regional archives rather than broad literary reference works, the picture we have is necessarily partial. Still, she remains an interesting figure for readers drawn to memoir, Southern history, and firsthand accounts that illuminate the values and assumptions of their time.