The Spinster Perfect Love Club

Mills Hotel, Charleston, SC    

In 1862 a young girl in Anderson, S.C. wrote in her diary during the civil war, ending the journal entry with a pledge that she and her spinster friends would meet again at the Mills House Hotel in Charleston on November 5th, 1867 and share a bottle of Perfect Love.

We don't know if they held their meeting or not but today, 150 years later to the day we met in their honor. My friend Josephine Humphreys discovered that there is indeed a drink called Perfect Love - or Parfait Amour. She ordered it to be delivered and let the Mills House know of our plans and we had a meeting of the Spinster Perfect Love Club. It was great fun and a treat to put faces to names primarily from the Charleston History before 1945 group. Thanks for a great afternoon!

Here's the original post where we first discovered perfect love. 

"Anderson, SC, Nov 5, 1862: We, the undersigned, all spinsters, more or less young and all reasonably attractive, do hereby vow and declare, that on the 5th day of November, 1867, being five years from this date, we will meet in the parlour of the Mills House, at 12 o’clock, and drink with much solemnity a bottle of Perfect Love, in token of our present friendship and good fellowship. Those who shall meanwhile have entered into the holy bonds of matrimony will be excluded, but hereby promise that in lieu of themselves they will send to the survivors in life and maidenhood a letter describing their position as wives or widows. If one of these below-mentioned subscribers be tempted to forget her promise and refuse to come, or refuse to betray the secrets of her prison house, or write falsely, each of the subscribers who faithfully keeps hers shall be entitled to claim from the defaulter a ring, made of her hair. All this being fully settled and agreed to, we have hereunto set our hands and seals.All’s well that ends well. 

Magdalen Elizabeth Keith; Sarah Abagail Whaley; Anna Bella Keith; Anna Charlotte Keith; Members of West End Club 

from http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:40742

Not many of us if any, are actually spinsters and the drink was pretty awful but we did have a grand time!