Mistress of Riversdale:
The Plantation Letters of
Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795-1821

Mistress of Riversdale reveals to us the day-to-day family and social life of one who, though too rich and too European to qualify as a representative plantation mistress, does have some experiences universal to her class and her sex. Rosalie Stier, along with her parents, two older siblings and their spouses and children, and two servants, fled Belgium in the summer of 1794 as France's Reign of Terror spread towards Antwerp. They arrived in Philadelphia; Rosalie was sixteen years old. The family spread out over Maryland and Virginia in search of a suitable place to settle but it would be only Rosalie who would find a permanent home in America.

When Rosalie was twenty, George Calvert, the son of Benedict and Elizabeth Calvert, became her "serious suitor." On 11 June 1799, Rosalie and George were married. Their first home together was called Mount Albion; it was a two thousand-acre tobacco farm near the town of Queen Anne. Rosalie's parents moved into the partially completed Riversdale in August 1802 but returned home to Belgium later that year, and they left the property to their daughter and son-in-law.

Rosalie and George Calvert moved into Riversdale. She wrote numerous letters (230 have been found) over the next eighteen years to her parents and her two siblings; she would never see any of them again. The couple would have nine children. Their son, Charles Benedict Calvert (1808-1864), inherited Riversdale and was the founder of the University of Maryland.

Rosalie wrote direct, straightforward accounts of her life meant only for the eyes of her family. She was neither posturing nor writing for posterity (as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams clearly were in much of their correspondence). She reveals her hard work as a mistress of a large plantation, her hauteur towards her slaves, and her business acumen in successfully managing the Stier family's American investments. She is the dutiful daughter to her father, the playful little sister to her brother, and most revealing of herself to her sister.

Callcott provides plenty of informative background and introductory commentary, explanatory footnotes, and illustrations as well as a genealogical chart.