“Jessie Lin,” aka Jane Thigpen (c. 1824-Feb. 9, 1914), is the Clinton Female Seminary’s most famous student. Born the same year as the enslaved Ellen Craft, she had access to education, unlike Ellen, and eventually taught in both Clinton (Georgia) and Rome (Georgia), and became a published poet. As was customary for nineteenth-century writers, Thigpen published under a nom de plume or pen name. Perhaps she chose “Jessie Linn” as a romantic homage to Sir Walter Scott (Aug. 15, 1771-Sept. 21, 1832), one of the nineteenth-century’s most popular anglophone poets, whose verses she would have memorized for school exercises. A woman only known as “Jessie” had been the recipient of love letters from Scott, and “linn” is a Scottish name for “waterfall.” In addition to at least one poem in Nashville’s antebellum Home Circle, Thigpen published a collection of her verses, The Lover’s Revenge (J.W. Burke & Company, New York, 1876). In this volume, “The Last of His Race” may have been inspired by the Muscogee Creeks, the original occupants of middle Georgia. Thigpen depicts the physique and homelands of a fictive Native American warrior in romantic, yet stereotypical ways. Perhaps she was sensitive to the role that White people had played in the removal of the Creek Nation, the stereotyping of their culture, and the appropriation of their lands. She may have meditated upon this bygone warrior and his culture as a form of nostalgia, to express the desire for a slower, more agrarian time as Georgia and the US became more urban and industrial. Sources “Clinton Female Seminary.” Georgia Messenger (Fort Hawkins). May 18, 1837, 70. “For the Messenger. Clinton Female Seminary.” The Georgia Citizen (Macon). April 7, 1836, 70. Thigpen, J[ane]. The Lover’s Revenge and Other Poems. New York, J.W. Burke & Company, 1876. 9. Williams, Carolyn White. History of Jones County, Georgia for One Hundred Years, Specifically 1807-1907. Macon: J.W. Burke Co., 1957, pp. 208, 565. Type: Story
