The Oaks - The First Generations

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The northern part of the Waccamaw Neck owned by Percival Pawley was deeded in the 1730s to members of the Allston, LaBruce, and Pawley families who had met when their fathers were immigrants in Charleston.  They were the ones who broke the large grants into ones suitable for plantations.

As mentioned in the post for 16 July 2023, William, the son of the immigrant, bought 1,129 acres from George Pawley in 1730.  In his 1743 will, he referred to it as “the tract of land I now live on with my dwelling house.” [1]  He made no mention of agriculture, but said he had “twelve hefers and twelve steers of the stock on Sandy Island.”  [2]

The inference is that he grew food on his land and raised cattle on the island for income.  This is reinforced by the fact that he held at least 5,322 acres and six lots in Georgetown, but only 35 slaves.  It seems he invested his profits in land, because he had no need for many slaves.

William had married when he was 23 years old. [3]  At the time he wrote his will 23 years later he had six living daughters, three sons, one granddaughter and a pregnant wife. [4]  Only the oldest daughter was married; his oldest son and next daughter had reached the age of maturity as defined in the his will. [5]

The boys were given land that could be developed, while the five unmarried girls were asked to split two tracts among themselves.  His son William, who was 20 years old, received 920 acres that his father had purchased elsewhere on the Waccamaw Neck.  He split the original Pawley land between his two other sons, Joseph, age 11, and John, age 4.  Joseph received the part where Hagar Brown lived after the Civil War. [6]

William appointed four men to oversee his estate: his son William; his brother John; the husband of his sister Elizabeth, Joseph LaBruce, and the husband of LaBruce’s sister, William Poole. [7]  John [8] and Poole died in 1750, [9] which left the management of Joseph’s land to his brother William and uncle Joseph.

Joseph took ownership in 1756,  one year after he married. [10]  He soon built a new house since his mother and younger siblings would still have been in his William’s home.  In 1769, he bought land downriver, closer to Georgetown from John Huger.  Huger just had purchased the 775 acres from the estate of Robert Pawley, [11] who was married to Joseph’s sister Frances, then 30 years old. [12]  Joseph may have let her continue living there.

Later that year, Joseph bought 280 acres to the north.  At the time, his oldest son Billy was fifteen years old. [13]  His younger one, Thomas, was five. [14]

Three years later, in 1770, he bought George Smith’s Castaway Plantation to the south of Robert Pawley’s land.  It had 300 acres. [15]  No mention is made of the crops at this time, although indigo had been the primary one along the lower Waccamaw until the 1760s. [16]  The men who had been active growers included Thomas Lynch and Archibald Johnston. [17]  Lynch was married to Joseph’s sister Elizabeth; Johnston was the husband of Joseph’s sister Esther. [18]

Joseph bought more land in 1772.  Again, the investment combined personal interests with those of the extended family.  This time the land was the Turkey Hill plantation directly south of The Oaks.  The land originally had been claimed by his father’s brother Joseph who willed it to his son Josias. [19]  Rowena Nyland said: “The reason Josias sold his inheritance is unknown.  He relocated in the Little River area on the North/South Carolina border on lands which his will suggests he obtained from Joseph Allston.” [20]

At the same time, Joseph probably acquired the property south of Turkey Hill which became known as Oatland.  Nyland said the documentary trail ended when Joseph’s Uncle Joseph willed the land to his son, Samuel. [21]  Nothing is known about him, and Nyland surmises Oatland may have come into the hands of his brother Josias. [22]

By 1773, he owned five plantations each with a hundred slaves.  A northern visitor declared “his plantation, negores, gardens, etc., are in the best order of any I have seen!” [23]  Unfortunately, Josiah Quincy was a city boy who only mentioned Joseph grew grapes. [24]

James Michie surveyed the site in 1993, and found the evidence that slave cabins were built on “lower elevations around the swamp.” [25]  This implies Joseph was growing rice with swamp irrigation. [26]  Swamps apparently had some structural limitations that led planters to develop separate plantations rather than amalgamate their land holdings.  The fact Joseph claimed to have 100 slaves per plantation suggests he also view of an ideal ratio of slaves to land. [27]

Joseph died in 1784 at age 51. [28]   He left northern part of Robert Pawley’s land to Billy, who soon after bought the Clifton plantation to the north.  He left the southern part [29] and Turkey Hill to his other son, [30] with the priviso that his widow, the former Charlotte Rothmahler, [31] live there until a home could be built for her at Oatland. [32]

He left The Oaks to his son Billy’s son Joseph, then age five. [33]   Michie did not indicate who supervised the plantation in the interregnum when rice growing was revolutionized.  The post for 16 January 2019 mentioned the popularization of tidal irrigation by Nathaniel Heyward in 1787.

The same year, 1787, Jonathan Lucas built the first workable rice mill to speed the preparation of the grain for market.  His first customers included John Bowman and Billy Alston. [34]  Alston, of course, was Joseph’s father, while Bowman’s wife was the granddaughter of Josephs’s great-aunt Elizabeth. [35]
    
As Michie discovered, the plantation was reconfigured for tidal irrigation and the slave quarters were moved [36]  The mill at The Oaks appears on a 1825 map. [27]  Little remains: the iron parts were removed during World War II, and the bricks from the chimney were reused for a beachfront house. [28]  For some period, rice may have been taken down the Waccamaw to Billy’s mill.

End Notes
1.  William Allston Senr.  Will, 29 January 1743.  Transcribed on “Yauhannah Wills.”  RootsWeb website.

2.  Allston.  The map in the post for 16 July 2023 shows the location of Sandy Island.

3.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  173.

4.  Joseph A. Groves.  The Alstons and Allstons of North and South Carolina.  Atlanta, Georgia: The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, 1901.  68.  Thomas was born in 1744 and died unmarried.

5.  The age of maturity for boys was 18, the age for girls was 17 or when they married.

6.  Allston.  Hagar Brown is mentioned in the posts for 25 December 2022 and 17 July 2023.

7.  Allston.  William Poole was a Georgetown merchant [39] who married Hannah [40] DeMarboeuf. [41]

8.  Coggeshall.  172.

9.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  60.

10.  James L. Michie.  The Oaks Plantation Revealed: An Archaeological Survey of the Home of Joseph and Theodosia Burr Alston, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.
Columbia, South Carolina: Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies, 1993.  10.

11.  “Prospect Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

12.  Coggeshall.  173.  Robert was the son of the Percival Pawley who, according to the post for 17 July 2023, moved to North Carolina.

13.  Joseph’s son William was known as King Billy of Clifton.  He changed the spelling of his last name to Alston. [42]  I’m using the nickname to make it easier to keep track of members of a family that repeated given names in each generation.


14.  Given the large gap in ages, it’s possible there had been others who were girls who did not inherit or children who did not survive.

15.  “Prospect Hill.”
16.   Rogers.  53.
17.   Rogers.  88.
18.  Coggeshall.  173.

19.  Rowena Nyland.  “Historical Analysis of the Willbrook, Oatland, and Turkey Hill Plantations.”  14-60 in Archaeological and Historical Examinations of Three Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rice Plantations on the Waccamaw Neck, edited by Michael Trinkley.  Columbia, South Carolina: Chicora Foundation, May 1993.  30.

20.  Nyland.  32.
21.  Nyland.  31.
22.  Nyland.  34.

23.  “Journal of John Quincy, Junior, 1773.”  Massachusetts Historical Society.  Proceedings 44:453:1915–1916.  Quoted by Rogers.  99.

24.  Quincy was involved with the Sons of Liberty in Boston in the period leading to the American Revolution.  He went south in 1773 to encourage support for the coming revolution. [43]

25.  Michie.  28.
26.  Swamp grown rice is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

27.  The concept of an optimal size developed in Barbados and is discussed in the post for 23 January 2022.

28.  Coggeshall.  173.
29.  “Prospect Hill.”
30.  Nyland.  32.
31.  Coggeshall.  173.
32.  Nyland.  34.
33.  Michie.  11.

34.  Lucas, James Jonathan.  Letter dated 20 April 1904 reprinted by The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, volume 32, 1904.

35.  Elizabeth Allston married Thomas Lynch.  She was the granddaughter of the immigrant Allston, sister of his sons William and Joseph, and great-aunt of Joseph’s grandson Joseph.  Their granddaughter Sabina Lynch married Bowman.

36.  Michie.  30.

37.  Lesley M. Drucker.  A Cultural Resources Inventory of Selected Areas of The Oaks and Laurel Hill Plantations, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: Carolina Archaeological Services, 1980.  70.  Her source was Robert Mills.  Atlas Of The State Of South Carolina.  Baltimore, Maryland: F. Lucas Jr, 1825.  Reprinted by Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr. as Mill’s Atlas: Atlas of the State of South Carolina, 1825.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1980.  Georgetown District.  Cited by Michie.  48.

38.  Michie.  48.
39.  Rogers.  60.

40.  Sonya Suzann Beckenbach Manderson.  “James Coachman.”  Page of Beckenbach Simons genealogy on RootsWeb website.

41.  “Joseph de Marbeuf La Bruce, 1705 - 1751.”  My Heritage website.
42.  Coggeshall.  174.
43.  “ Josiah Quincy II.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 14 July 2023.