The Pascalis plantation

Pascalis Plantation / Pascalina

By Mike Stroud, July 2008 1. Pascalis Plantation Marker Inscription.  Pascalis PlantationElizabeth Pascalis purchased these 790 acres in 1835, settled here with her son Cyril Ouviere, and brought the orphaned children of her daughter, here, to live. Cyril, a civil engineer, was a resident engineer constructing the Charleston-Hamburg railroad (world’s longest when completed in 1833). In 1834 he helped lay out and survey streets in nearby Aiken. PascalinaElizabeth Pascalis, born in Philadlephia and widow of the brilliant Dr. Felix Pascalis-Ouviere, MD, willed this house, once know as Pascalina, to her granddaughter, Theodosia Canfield, and husband John C. Wade, in 1863. The Wades were living here in February of 1865 when Union general Hugh Judson Kilpatrick used the house as headquarters during the Battle of Aiken. Theodosia's mother was a young poet Francesca Canfield. The house remained in the family until 1944.

FRANCESCA CANFIELD (FRANCESCA ANNA PASCALIS) a daughter of 

Dr Felix A. Pascalis -1762 France-July 1833 at 71 Liberty St NY,NY-

New York, Death Newspaper Extracts, 1801-1890 (Barber Collection- Felix Alex Cuviere Pascalis MD Publication: 22 Jul 1833) an Italian physician and scholar who had married a 

native of Philadelphia, Elizabeth, and resided several years in Philadlephia.

Francesca was born in August 1803 in Philadelphia. In 1810 NY NY

her father had a boy and a girl under 10. While she was a child her 

parents removed to New York where Dr Pascalis was conspicuous 

not only for his professional abilities but for his writings upon various 

curious and abstruse subjects in the medical field and philosophy 

and was intimate with many eminent persons among whom 

was Dr Samuel L Mitchill who was so pleased with Francesca that in 1815, 

when she was in the twelfth year of her age, he addressed to her the 

following playful and characteristic Valentine -

Descending snows the earth o'erspread 

Keen blows the northern blast 

Condensing clouds scowl over head 

The tempest gathers fast 

But soon the icy mass shall melt 

The winter end his reign 

The sun's reviving warmth be felt 

And nature smile again. 

The plants from torpid sleep shall wake 

And nursed by vernal showers. 

Their yearly exhibition make 

Of foliage and of flowers 

So you an opening bud appear 

Whose bloom and verdure shoot 

To load Francesca's growing year 

With intellectual fruit 

The feathered tribes shall flit along 

And thicken on the trees 

Till air shall undulate with song 

Till music stir the breeze 

Thus like a charming bird your lay 

The listening ear shall greet. 

And render social cireles gay 

Or make retirement sweet 

Then warblers chirp and roses open 

To entertain my fair 

Till nobler themes engage her hope 

And occupy her care 

In school Miss Pascalis was particularly distinguished for the facility with 

which she acquired languages. At an early period she translated with ease and elegance from the French 

Italian Spanish and Portuguese and her instinctive appreciation of the 

harmonies of her native tongue was so delicate that her English 

compositions in both prose and verse were singularly musical as well as 

expressive and correct. The version of a French song 

Quand reverrai je en un jour ete 

is among the memorials of her fourteenth year and though much less 

compact than the original it is interesting as an illustration ol her own 

fine and precocious powers. While yet at school Miss Pascalis translated 

for a friend a volume from Lavater and soon afterward she made a 

beautiful English version of the 

Roman Nights from Le Notti Romane al Sepolcro Dei Scipioni 

of Ales sandroVerri. She also translated The Solitary and The Vine Dresser 

from the French and wrote some original poems in Italian which were 

much praised by judicious crities. She was a frequent contributor under 

various signatures to the literary journals and among her pieces for this 

period that are preserved in Mr Knapp's biography is an address to her 

friend Mitchill which purported to be from Le Brun. A marriage of 

convenience was arranged for Miss Pascalis with Mr Canfield a broker 

who after a few months became a bankrupt and could never retrieve his 

fortunes. She bore her disappointments without complaining and when 

her husband established a financial and commereial gazette she labored 

industriously to make it attractive by literature but there was a poor 

opportunity among tables of currency and trade for the display of her 

graceful abilities and her writings probably attracted little attention. 

She was a good pianist and she painted with such skill that some of her 

copies of old masters deceived clever artists. Her accomplishments 

however failed to invest with happiness a life of which the ambitious 

flowers had been so early blighted and yielding to consumption which 

can scareely enter the home of a cheerful spirit she died on the 28th 

of May 1823 before completing the twentieth year of her age. 

Dr Pascalis whose chief hopes were centred in his daughter abandoned 

his pursuits  and after lingering through ten disconsolate years died in 

the summer of 1833 and the death of her husband in the following autumn

prevented the publication of an edition of her works which he had 

prepared for that purpose. 

The female poets of America By Rufus Wilmot Griswold

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