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140 spirited woman regarded not her own advantage, but always and ever the public good.

Perhaps one of the "biggest little" things Rebecca Motte ever did was the assumption of the responsibility of certain claims against her husband's depleted estate, he having become deeply involved by securities undertaken for his friends. Despite her friends' warning of the apparent hopelessness of such a task, she set about determinedly to devote the rest of her life to the task of honorably discharging those obligations, and steadfast in the principles that had governed all her conduct, she persevered. She procured on credit a valuable body of rice land, then an uncleared swamp, on the Santee, built houses for her negroes, and took up her abode on the plantation. Living in an humble dwelling and sacrificing all her habitual comforts, she so devoted herself with untiring industry to the problem before her that, in spite of the distracted state of the country, following the war, she eventually triumphed over every difficulty, and not only succeeded in paying her husband's debts, but secured for her children and descendants a handsome and unencumbered estate. As her biographer said: "Such an example of perseverance, under adverse circumstances, for the accomplishment of a high and noble purpose, exhibits in yet brighter colors the heroism that shone in her country's peril."

This woman of whom her state and country should be so justly proud, died in 1815 on the plantation on which her long years of retirement since the war had been passed, the seventy-seven years of her splendid life having embraced the most thrilling period of our Nation's life.

Closely connected with the better-known name and personality of Rebecca Motte, there lies in the memory of South Carolina history a proud recollection of