[1] Her date of death is unknown but it is likely to have been in 1806, because of 1807 court records that indicate both Eliza and her husband were dead, and had left behind four minor children.
[1] Before the War of Independence, her letters mainly focus on her life as a plantation woman and how she tended to the physical and emotional wellbeing of those around her.
[2][4] She provides a primary account of hiding possessions, fleeing from enemies, and the romantic attention of British soldiers.
She utilises irony and humour, such as when explaining her purpose for recounting the 1779 campaign: "As I mean never to forget the loving-kindness and tender mercies of the renowned Britons while among us ...", and when writing about her outbreak of smallpox: "My face is finely ornamented, and my nose honored with thirteen spots."
In one letter she recounts personal injury in detail: "upon first entering the house, one of them gave my arm such a violent grasp, that he left the print of his thumb and three fingers, in black and white, which was to be seen, very plainly, for several days after.
[8] A passage in Letter VI expresses this sentiment: "our [women's] thoughts can soar aloft, we can form conceptions of things of higher nature; and have as just a sense of honor, glory, and great actions, as these 'Lords of the Creation.
'"[1] Although Wilkinson was able to take part in political discourse, she maintained her dependence on leading men in society and did not challenge the traditional domesticated role of women.
[1][5] Caroline Gilman collected and edited twelve[5] of Wilkinson's letters, and published them in her magazine Southern Rose Bud.
[4] Gilman arranged Wilkinson's letters to form a coherent timeline from spring 1779 to Lord Cornwallis's surrender in October 1781.
There are a number of letters that were not published by Gilman, the contents of which depict the social life in Charleston and Wilkinson's ambitions to find a new husband after the death of her first.
[1] George Armstrong Wauchope published an anthology of works, The Writers of South Carolina, in 1910, which included one additional letter from Wilkinson to Mary Porcher.