The Carolina Charter

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The raison d’être for the South Carolina proprietary grant was obscured from the beginning by individuals writing to persuade rather than to reveal underlying motives.  Lou Roper says the milieu of Charles II was “notoriously pervaded by cynicism, failure, exploitation, plotting, treachery, and disingenuousness.” [1]  Almost nothing from the period should be taken at face value.

Charles came to the throne in 1660 with the same problems as his father, a Parliament unwilling to supply him with funds to support his policies.  Since he could not raise taxes in England, he imposed fees on the colonies, especially Barbados.  It not only was the wealthiest center, but it had not supported him after his father was executed. [2]

He returned Humphrey Walrond as acting governor in August 1660, [3] and passed a new Navigation Act on September 13.  This one continued Oliver Cromwell’s requirement that all shipping be done on English ships, [4] but added sugar and cotton to the list of goods that only could go to English ports.  The receiving merchants also had to be English. [5]

Charles needed ways to acknowledge men, like Walrond, who had supported him after his father was executed.  One way was to grant land or trade monopolies to those, who were dependent upon him for their positions, with the implied understanding that they would use their personal resources to further his goals.

On 18 December 1660, he issued a charter for the Royal Adventurers into Africa to reward his cousin Rupert. [6]  The company was granted lands in parts of Africa and exclusive rights to the gold trade. [7]  Most of the investors were “Cavalier politicians” including military leaders, like George Monck [8] and John Berkeley, [9] and administrators, like Anthony Ashley Cooper. [10] William Craven was chairman of the committee; [11] he had been supporting Rupert’s mother after her husband died in 1632. [12]

In 1663, Charles began consolidating his control over all lands claimed by the Crown.  The first grant, on March 24, was for that between Spanish Florida and Virginia.  The initial charter [13] listed the Lord Proprietors in order of rank: one earl, one duke, three lords, and three knights.  In addition to their positions, Charles described Edward Hyde and Monck as “right trusty, and right well beloved cousins and counsellors.”  The next three, Craven, Berkeley, and Cooper as “right trusty and well beloved.”  The same label was used for the seventh man, Berkeley’s brother William Berkeley.  The sixth, George Carteret gave him refuge on the isle of Jersey during the war, [14] but only was described by his role in the court.  The last, John Colleton, was simply a baronet.

The same year, 1663, Charles bought out the rights to Barbados from the heirs of James Hay, and used the export fees, which had been intended to finance the island’s government, to pay them an annuity. [15]  In August, Charles sent back Francis Willoughby as governor. [16]  He was the one who had purchased rights to the grant from Hay’s son. [17]  This had the effect of raising taxes on Barbados, since the island had to raise more money to pay the governor and run the government. [18]

Just before Willoughby returned, Charles passed another Navigation Act on July 27.  This one required that all goods shipped to Barbados, and other colonies, come from an English port. [19]  In December, he rechartered the Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa. He granted it exclusive rights to supply slaves to colonies, and opened subscriptions to London merchants [20] like John Colleton and James Modyford [21].  Charles’ brother James became president

At the same time London merchants were being offered a percentage of the profits of the slave trade, they started to see the “teeming masses” that supplied Barbdos with indentured servants as “cheap labor in England.” [22]  Charles began to fear the country was being depopulated, [23] when he needed men to fill the quota of seamen on his ships imposed by the Navigation Act of 1660. [24]  Trade in servants was discouraged. [25]  Charles made one exception in 1663: he allowed the export of the poor from his native Scotland.  They became the “most profitable cargo.” [26]

Charles’ policies took a cut of the profits of Barbados planters when they bought supplies and labor, when they shipped their sugar, and, again, when it arrived in England.  On 19 June 1663, three months after the charter was issued, John Colleton sent a letter to Monck stating “divers people” on the island “desired to settle and plant his majesty’s province of Carolina under the patent granted.” [27]

In August, Colleton’s son, Peter, and Thomas Modyford submitted a more concrete proposal. [28]  This led to negotiations that lasted until 1665, with the Barbados group demanding the same status they had in Barbados before Cromwell.  This was more than the proprietors wanted or could provide under the reign of Charles. [29]  Finally, before the last agreement was made, an impatient John Yeamans led a group to Cape Fear to make their colony [30] a fiat accompli.

This expedition not only led to the first settlement by Barbadians within the Carolina grant, but conflicting views of the subsequent history of what became South Carolina.  In 1937, Charles Andrews asserted the grant was not a “premeditated act of royal generosity to favourites whom a spendthrift king wished to reward.”  Instead, it was “something originated and put through by others and assented to by the king who seemed unable to refuse a request from those whose will and purpose were stronger than his own.” [31]

He thought the three men who had land in the colonies, Cooper, John Colleton, and William Berkeley, proposed the colony [32] to a group of venial politicians they met through their memberships in the Council of Plantations, which was appointed on 1 December 1660.  Among the men, in rank order, were Hyde, Willoughby, John Berkeley, and Carteret. [33]

Andrews, who wrote a comparative history of English colonies, asserted Hyde was “always willing to extend his holdings and increase his property,” [34] and Monck had a “reputation for parsimony and covetousness” that led to an “interest in anything that would increase his wealth.” [35]  He thought John Berkeley to be a “good deal of a schemer for place” and “vain.” [36]

When one sees the same names involved with every project—the Council on Plantations, the Africa company, the South Carolina charter, and later the New Jersey grant—one may think they were the most important men in England. [37]  However, if one looks in Wikipedia for the names of members of the court or the more significant courtiers, their names do not appear.  It is possible this small group distinguished itself by having a more entrepreneurial spirit than their rivals for Charles’ attention.

None of the Lords Proprietors were born to rank, like Charles.  All had risen through initiative and talent.  Three were oldest sons, but only one enjoyed the privileges of fortune and rank. Craven’s father was a self-made man who had risen to mayor of London without title. [38]  Cooper’s father died in Dorset when he was a minor and the estate dwindled through trustee mismanagement. [39]  Carteret was the son of an unpropertied man on Jersey, where the de Carteret family had held fiefs in 1135. [40]

Colleton was the second son of an Exeter cloth trader. [41]  Of the others, Monck was the second son of an Devon gentlemen in straitened circumstances, [42] Hyde was the third son of a Cheshire county family, [43] and the Berkeley brothers were the fourth and fifth sons of a courtier to the king from Somerset who died in debt. [44]

More recently, Roper has argued Charles, or at least his closest advisor, Hyde, was more astute than Andrews would allow.  Hyde negotiated the 21 May 1662 marriage contract between Charles and Catherine of Branganza.  Her primary attraction was her wealth.  One clause stipulated that Charles support Portugal’s war with Spain. [45]

Roper found a letter from Robert Harley that indicated Monck and Carteret already were planning to assert English rights to land bordering Spanish Florida in October 1662.  Monck had contacted Harley about accepting the governorship of a proposed colony that would draw settlers from Virginia and New England.  Harley turned him down because he doubted the backers would devote the necessary energy to the project. [46]  Roper suggests it was this vacuum that led Colleton to propose an alternative group of colonists once the charter was attained in 1663. [47]

End Notes
1.  L. H. Roper.  Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  3.

2.  For more on Barbados in the English Civil War, see the posts for 3 April 2022, 10 April 2022, and 17 April 2022.

3.  “List of Governors of Barbados.”  Wikipedia website.  Walrond is discussed in the posts for 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022.

4.  Cromwell’s Navigation Act is discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.
5.  “Navigation Acts.”  Wikipedia website.

6.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  198.  Rupert and his mother are discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.

7.  George Frederick Zook.  “The Royal Adventurers in England.”  The Journal of Negro History 4(2):143–162:April 1919.

8.  The original charter describes Monck as “George Duke of Albemarle, master of our horse and captain general of all our forces.”  “Charter of Carolina - March 24, 1663.”  Avalon Project, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library website.

9.  John Berkeley’s military role in Exeter and the surrounding county of Devon during the Civil War in England is described in the post for 3 April 2022.

10.  The 24 March 1663 charter describes Anthony Ashley Cooper as “chancellor of our exchequer.”

11.  Thomas.  198.
12.  “William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven (1608–1697).”  Wikipedia website.
13.  “Charter of Carolina.”
14.  “George Carteret.”  Wikipedia website.

15.  N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  177.

16.  Wikipedia, Governors of Barbados.
17.  Willoughby is discussed in the posts for 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022.

18.  Richard Waterhouse and, before him, Alfred Chandler are the most useful sources for information on the condition of Barbados in the 1660s.

Richard Waterhouse.  “England, the Caribbean, and the Settlement of Carolina.” Journal of American Studies 9(3):259–281:December 1975.

Alfred D. Chandler.  “The Expansion of Barbados.”  The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 8:106+:1946.  Reprinted by P. F. Campbell.  61–89 in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.

19.  Wikipedia, Navigation Acts.
20.  Zook.

21.  “Warrant to prepare a bill for the King’s signature, containing a grant to the Royal African,” 10 January 1663.  In Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series.  Volume 5, America and West Indies, 1661-1668, edited by W. Noël Sainsbury.  London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1880.  Posted on “America and West Indies: January 1663.”  British History Online website.  James Modyford was the brother of Thomas.

22.  Abbot Emerson Smith.  Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607–1776.  University of North Carolina Press, 1947.  6.

23.  Smith.  7.
24.  Wikipedia, Navigation Acts.

25.  Chandler says “after 1660 the immigration of white indentured servants to Barbados had almost ceased.” [48]

26.  Smith.  144.

27.  Sir John Colleton.  Letter to Duke of Albermarle, 19 June 1663.  Quoted by Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  70–71.  His source was the then just published papers of Cooper. [49]

28.  T. Modyford and P Colleton.  Letter to Proprietors, 12 August 1663.  10–11 in The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina and the First Settlement on Ashley River prior to the Year 1676, edited by Langdon Cheves.  Charleston, South Carolina: The South Carolina Historical Society, 1897.  Cited by Peter H. Wood.  Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion.  New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974.  14.

29.  Chandler.  Campbell, 77.  “That said Free-Holders shall have the freedome of Trade, Immunity of Costumes, and other Priviledges.”

Charles M. Andrews.  The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements III.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.  195.  “They demanded permission to buy of the natives a tract thirty miles square controlled by what they proposed to call the ‘Corporation of the Barbados Adventurers,’ under which the colonists were to enjoy and exercise all the privileges and immunities granted the proprietors by the king, with a large measure of self-government similar to that of the city of Exeter.”

30.  Wood.  13–17.
31.  Andrews.  183.

32.  Andrews.  183.  He may be basing his conclusions on the Hudson’s Bay Company.  In this case, Pierre Radisson and Médard Chouart proposed a fur-trading monopoly to Carteret in 1665.  After they met Rupert, Charles became interested and put them in touch with Peter Colleton, who introduced them to other backers.  Cooper, Craven, and Monck were among the early investors. [50]  The company was granted a charter in 1670 for Rupert’s Land, and Rupert was the first governor. [51]

33.  “Councils of plantations 1660-72.”  20–22 in Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 3, Officials of the Boards of Trade 1660-1870, edited by J. C. Sainty.  London: University of London, 1974.  Reprinted by British History Online website.  Some, like Cooper and Colleton, owned plantations on Barbados including James Drax [52] and Thomas Middleton. [53]

34.  Andrews.  186.
35.  Andrews.  186.
36.  Andrews.  187.

37.  In 1664, Charles gave his brother James rights to New Netherlands.  Later that year, James gave part of what is now New Jersey to Carteret.  He sold another section that year to John Berkeley. [57]

38.  Wikipedia, Craven.
39.  “Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.”  Wikipedia website.
40.  “George Carteret”  and “History of Jersey.”  Wikipedia website.
41.  John Colleton is discussed in the posts for 3 July 2022 and 10 July 2022.
42.  “George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle.”  Wikipedia website.
43.  “Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon.”  Wikipedia website.

44.  Doug Lockwood and Magna Carta Project.  “Maurice Berkeley MP (abt. 1579 - 1617).”  Wiki Tree website, 30 September 2014; last updated 1 August 2021.  He was their father.

45.  “Catherine of Braganza” and “Marriage Treaty.”  Wikipedia website.  Before Andrews, David Duncan Wallace saw the charter for Carolina as a continuation of a policy begun by Charles I to assert English “rights as far south as the settled portion of Florida.” [58]

46.  Sir Robert Harley.  Letter to Sir Edward Harley, 31 October 1662.  Cited by Roper.  16, and 165, note 36.

47.  Roper.  16.
48.  Chandler.  Campbell, 71.
49.  Cheves.
50.  “The Original Investors of Hbc.”  Hudson’s Bay Company website.
51.  “Hudson’s Bay Company.”  Wikipedia website.

52. Drax is discussed in the posts for 17 January 2022, 23 January 2022, 6 February 2022, and 17 April 2022.

53.  Thomas Middleton is discussed in the posts for 27 March 2022 and 17 April 2022; he was a ship’s captain.  His background is obscure.  Alice Granberry Walter believes he was the nephew of Thomas Willoughby, who migrated to Virginia about 1635. [54]  That Willoughby was the son of Thomas Willoughby of Kent and Elizabeth Middleton. [55]  Her background is unknown.  Thomas is not same family as the Middletons, Arthur and Edward, discussed in the posts for 5 June 2022 and 19 June 2022.  They are descended from Henry Middleton of Twickenham, Middlesex. [56]

54.  Alice Granberry Walter.  Captain Thomas Willoughby (1601-1657) of England, Barbados and Lower Norfolk County, Virginia [and] some of his descendants, 1601-1800.  Virginia Beach, Virginia: A. G. Walter, 1988.

55.  Daniel Robert May.  “Captain Thomas Willoughby, III. of Barbados.”  Geni website.  29 April 2022.

56.  Linden Holder.  “Henry Middleton (1612 - abt. 1664).”  Wiki Tree website, 17 October 2012; last updated 19 March 2021.

57.  “Province of New Jersey.”  Wikipedia website.

58.  David Duncan Wallace.  The History of South Carolina.  New York: American Historical Society, 1934.  1:56–57.

South Carolina’s Legendary Past as Seen by Historians

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Early histories of South Carolina mentioned in the post for 5 June 2022 discussed either the origins of Charleston’s social life or the political manipulations of the early years.  In 1973, Richard Dunn began his study of the planter class by reciting the names of migrants from Barbados to Charleston. [1]  He quoted Jack Greene, who listed political leaders who had come from the island, including John Yeamans, Arthur Middleton, and Robert Gibbes. [2]

Dunn changed the focus from slavery to plantations as economic institutions.  These men were important because the state’s “planter class took shape initially and most decisively in Barbados.”  They produced “the most perfectly articulated colonial aristocracy in English America.” [3]

Some of the credibility for Sugar and Slaves came from the fact Dunn was not from the South, and thus could not be suspected of harboring the provincial views of local historians.  He was raised in Minnesota, and his degrees were from Harvard and Princeton. [4]  His previous work had been on John Winthrop’s family. [5]

More important, his book happened to coincide with the introduction of globalization into the American economy.  Historians were starting to look at the United States as part of an Atlantic community that had developed after the Spanish began colonizing the Caribbean in the early 1500s.

Greene trained as a political historian specializing in the period after Charles II’s brother was deposed in 1689. [6]  He was teaching at John Hopkins in 1986 [7] when Donald Meing published a geographical history of the Americas that focused on the contributions of two cultures: the Muslim and the Christian. [8]  He introduced the term “cultural hearth” to describe an area where “new basic cultural systems and configurations are developed and nurtured before spreading vigorously outward to alter the character of much larger areas.” [9]

Greene published an article a year after Meinig’s book that applied the term “cultural hearth” to Barbados. [10]  His argument that the particular type of sugar plantation, which developed in Barbados, was taken to other Caribbean islands can be substantiated.  As mentioned in the posts for 23 January 2022 and 5 June 2022, migration to other lands that could grow sugar began early.  Thomas Modyford went from Barbados to Jamaica as governor in 1664. [11]

Greene went farther to claim “the extension of Barbadian culture went beyond the West Indies to the North American mainland.” [12]  This was not a wholly new thesis; it had been anticipated by Arthur Chandler.  In 1946, he wrote: “the significance of Barbados as a source for the growing American colonies has been largely overlooked.” [13]

Chandler showed the primary movement of planters from Barbados to South Carolina occurred between 1678 and 1682, and suspected that the underlying reason was decreased profits caused by the exhaustion of the soil. [14]  In a repeat of the consolidation of land ownership that occurred when sugar became profitable, the planters who stayed had to have had the wherewithal to improve their soil.  The cost of wood was also a factor, and those who wanted to stay out of debt began investing in wind power. [15]  Once those who couldn’t afford to upgrade their operations had left Barbados, the migration ended.

To prove Greene’s hypothesis, one needs names of individuals like Modyford who were planters in Barbados and moved to a new location where plantations were introduced.  Greene quoted Dunn to list the early “important immigrants” who “held the best land, sold the most sugar, and monopolized the chief offices on the island.”  They included Edward and Arthur Middleton, and Robert and Thomas Gibbes. [16]

Apart from the circularity of  Greene quoting Dunn who had quoted Greene, not all these people meet the criteria needed to support Greene.  Agnes Leland Baldwin found evidence they all appeared in records in South Carolina at the right time:  Edward arrived before 1678, [17] Arthur by 1672, [18], Robert by 1678, [19] and Thomas before 1680. [20]

However, as Peter Campbell made clear, not all were planters in Barbados.  Arthur’s brother was there, but Edward seems to have only stopped over. [21]  Brice McAdoo Clagett found evidence eight different families named Gibbes were on the island in 1708, [22] and that the records for the area where Robert and Thomas lived did not survive. [23]  Another person’s search found Thomas Gibbs had at least 68 acres in 1659 when he sold 48 to one man and transferred 20 to Robert. [24]

Greene was writing at a time when the nature of writing history was changing.  More people were earning PhDs at a time when the numbers of academic jobs and professional publications were declining.  A feeling arose that primary research may be necessary to write a dissertation, but one did not get published without contributing some new idea.  Young scholars grasped at new ways to reformulate known facts.

Details no longer mattered.  The concept of “cultural hearth” was taken up by historians, who repeated it in their own ways.  With the loss of particulars, it was easy for readers with less knowledge to become confused or draw false conclusions.  In the early 1990s, Russell Menard went to Barbados to verify parts of his 1985 economic history of British North America. [25]  He was shocked to discover that many of the things, which he had accepted as true, were not supported by evidence in the archives. [26]

Menard noted that Philip Curtin had defined the plantation complex in 1998 with precision as one that grew specialized crops for a distant market.  The owners controlled all steps of production, and relied upon forced labor that could not reproduce itself.  Curtin was clear the institution did not emerge until the 1700s. [27]

Menard focused on the large “integrated plantation” that relied upon “gangs of slaves.” [28]  He credits James Drax with developing the self-contained operation, [29] but does not note he was active in the mid-1640s.  He admits gang labor did not develop on Barbados until a hundred years later. [30]

Despite the presentation of some fairly precise data, Menard then makes the same kinds of unanchored generalizations that led him to his feeling of shock when he spent time in the Barbados archives.  He wrote that the emigration from Barbados after the end of the sugar boom in the 1650s, [31] “made the island a major “cultural hearth for the colonies of British America.” [32]  Charleston was founded twenty years after 1650.  That was thirty years before Curtin’s 1700s and his own 1740s.

If Menard’s refined view of the cultural hearth were true, then the men who transferred it to South Carolina had to have been owners of such plantations in Barbados.  However, the Gibbes brothers were middling, not grand planters on the island, the type who were squeezed out in the transition to larger plantations.  The skills they brought were ones that were being obsoleted by changes in Barbados that gave rise to the plantations described by Curtin and Menard.

Chandler implies the ones who had those skills were not the large planters.  John Godfrey arrived in 1770 [33] as the agent for one of the colony’s proprietors, Peter Colleton. [34]  Overseers were the ones who knew how to manage plantations, not men like Modyford, who purchased an already functioning operation. [35]  Campbell identified Godfrey as an owner of a medium-sized plantation. [36]

If integrated plantations and a heavy reliance on slave labor do not appear in the first generation in South Carolina, then the cause is not the emigration of planters from Barbados that occurred between 1678 and 1682.  Greene provides an alternative by suggesting information about plantations flowed from Barbados to Charleston through trade connections that continued to at least the American Revolution.  Beyond the problems of finding concrete, or even anecdotal evidence for this, is the fact that London, Bristol, and other British cities could also disperse information on what was succeeding elsewhere in the world.

Historians are a cautious lot. [37]  As Menard discovered, once a book has been published, it is assumed that all the controls of peer review worked, and that it is accurate.  Thus, when Walter Edgar wrote the contemporary textbook on South Carolina’s history in 1998, he noted Barbados was the colony’s “cultural hearth.” [38]

Even more for a local historian, the idea of a “cultural hearth” provides a variation on the transference of responsibility for slavery that was part of the early histories quoted in the post for 5 June 2022.  Edgar implicitly justified all that was negative about the past by saying “South Carolina’s cultural heritage differs from that of other English Colonies.” [39]  And so, history books, especially when they elide details, feed existing legends.

End Notes
1.  Richard S. Dunn.  Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.  112, note 41.

2.  Jack P. Greene.  The Quest for Power.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.  457–458.  Quoted by Dunn, Sugar.  112.  The origins of these men are discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

3.  Dunn, Sugar.  48.
4.  “Richard Slator Dunn.”  Wikipedia website.

5.  Richard S. Dunn.  Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630– 1717.  Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962.

6.  “Jack P. Greene.”  Wikipedia website.
7.  Johns Hopkins had a particularly strong geography department.

8.  D. W. Meinig.  The Shaping of America.  Volume 1. Atlantic America, 1492-1800.  New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1986.  51.  He was influenced by Carroll Quigley’s The Evolution of Civilizations. [40]  It argued new civilizations developed when two or more cultures mixed. [41]

9.  Meinig.  52.

10.  Jack P. Greene.  “Colonial South Carolina and the Caribbean Connection.”  The South Carolina Historical Magazine 88(4):192–210:October 1987.

11.  “Thomas Modyford.”  Wikipedia website.  He was governor from 1664 to 1671.  He is mentioned in the posts for 6 February 2022, 3 April 2022, 10 April 2022, and 17 April 2022.

12.  Greene, South Carolina.  192.

13.  Alfred D. Chandler.  “The Expansion of Barbados.”  The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 8:106+:1946.  Reprinted by P. F. Campbell.  61–89 in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.  61.

14.  Chandler.  80.

15.  Laura Hollsten describes the introduction of dung farms to provide manure. [42]  Michael Bennett discusses the role of London merchants in the change to windmills. [43]

16.  Greene, South Carolina.  198.

17.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.  160–161.  She is discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

18.  Baldwin.  160.
19.  Baldwin.  100.
20.  Baldwin.  100.
21.  P. F. Campbell.  Some Early Barbadian History. Barbados: 1993.  151–152.

22.  Brice McAdoo Clagett.  “The Gibbes Family of St. Andrew’s Parish, Barbados, with Notes on its Ancestry in County Kent, England, and its Descendants in South Carolina.”  Yancy Family Genealogy website.  3.  Robert’s genealogy was preserved in a Bible, which was taken from Barbados to South Carolina.

23.  Clagett.  2.

24.  “Barbados Plantation History.”  Creole Links website.  Campbell simply said Robert was a “member of a huge Barbadian family.” [44]

25.  John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard.  The Economy of British America, 1607–1789.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

26.  Russell R. Menard.  Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.  xi.

27.  Philip D.  Curtin.  The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.  10–13.  Summary by Menard, Negotiations.  104.  Note the title of Curtin’s collection.

28.  Menard, Negotiations. 1.
29.  Menard, Negotiations.  94.
30.  Menard, Negotiations.  96.
31.  Menard, Negotiations.  5.
32.  Menard, Negotiations.  106.
33.  Baldwin.  102–103.
34.  Chandler.  84.

35.  The post for 10 April 2022 makes clear Modyford was dispatched by his brother-in-law, who was a London merchant.  Thomas Kendall sent Richard Ligon to keep an eye on Modyford.  It was Ligon who learned how a plantation operated, as attested to by his book, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes.  London: Peter Parker, 1673.

36.  Campbell, Barbadian.  154.

37.  Young historians are cautious in another sense as well.  When one never knows who might be on a committee that determines if one is hired or published, it is best to mention every possible name, with no potentially damaging caveats.  Thus, contradictory works are blurred into summaries that imply all research is equally significant.

38.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  36.

39.  Edgar.  36.

40.  Carroll Quigley.  The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis.  New York: Macmillan, 1961.

41.  Meinig.  52.

42.  Laura Hollsten.  “Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean.”  Global Environment 1:80–113:2008.  101–102, 106–107.

43.  Michael D. Bennett.  “Merchant Capital and the Origins of the Barbados Sugar Boom, 1627-1672.”  PhD dissertation.  The University of Sheffield, June 2020.  160–161.

44.  Campbell, Barbadian.  151.

Jack Yeamans in Barbados

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
John Yeamans’s life, more than that of any other early settler in South Carolina, has been turned into legends that say more about the needs of Southerners for a usable past, than they do about him.  While few actual facts survive, romanticists have transformed every aspect, from conception to death.  They tend to call him Jack.

The popular view, published in an 1884 Burke’s peerage, is that Yeamans’ father was an alderman and sheriff in Bristol who was hung for plotting to turn the city over to forces supporting Charles I in 1643. [1]  This was a particularly useful rumor when Charles’ son was crowned king in 1660.  Another Yeamans was appointed comptroller that year after claiming his brother had been murdered, and he had been “wounded, imprisoned, and banished.” [2]  It remained a useful story when Southern whites were redefining their own civil war as a lost cause, led by heroes willing to risk everything.

The confusion was understandable.  There have been Yeamans, Yemans, and Yeomans in Bristol since the late 1400s when William Yeamans was a grocer.  Almost all were tradesmen. [3]  John’s father was a brewer according to Vere Oliver, who tried to set the record straight in 1894. [4]  The brewer became the accepted père after his name appeared in the 1900 volume of Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography, [5] though the martyr still appears. [6]

Yeamans was baptized in 1611 [7] and would have been 31 when Thomas Essex occupied the port city for Parliament in 1642.  The next year, Charles’ nephew, Rupert, took the city and it remained a Royalist center until 1645. [8]  In 1856, William James Rivers referred to him as “Major John Yeamans. [9]  In 1900, John Andrew Doyle said he became a colonel in the Royalist army. [10]

I have found no evidence for this; it does not appear in Burke’s peerage.  It may come from his time in Barbados where he may have served in the local militia.  Oliver identified him as “Colonel John Yeamans” in Barbados in 1660 when he was elected to the island council. [11]  It was his son, William Yeamans, who was a major in the island’s militia. [12]  Again, this fits the revised view of the American Civil War, when every man who had been an officer used his rank in place of his first name in public.

Exactly what he was doing during the war years is unknown.  Three men named Yeomans had property in Barbados in 1638.  Oliver could not identify them, because “the family was so numerous, and to be found in nearly every parish in Bristol.” [13]  Not only that but Richard Williams found their names — John, Thomas, and Robert — appeared in many of the families, but Thomas was not a son of the brewer. [14]

Some John Yeamans was a partner with Benjamin Berringer in real estate speculation on the island in 1641.  Peter Campbell notes that they shared the same Barbados address on 1643 documents, which implied that Yeamans was not then living there. [15]  By 1648, the partnership had soured and they divided the assets. [16]

The next part of the legend is that Yeamans moved to Barbados in 1650, where he became a planter.  The first one to specify that date was Doyle. [17]  Edward McCrady had simply said in 1897: “after the success of the parliamentary forces he retired to Barbados.  There he still maintained the Royal cause.” [18]  Yeamans’ name does not appear in Darnell Davis’ history of royalist conflict on Barbados in the 1650s. [19]

Unlike Thomas Modyford, Yeamans did not arrive with the capital necessary to buy a plantation. [20]  When Yeamans’ father died in 1645, his mother inherited the brew house; he was willed 40 pounds.  When she died in 1647, it went to his brother, Edward.  John was willed 200 pounds, [21] but it is not known if he actually received that amount.  Wills express wishes, but may not reflect assets at the time of probate.

He was admitted as a citizen of Bristol in 1649, when he was 38 years old.  This was years after his younger brothers were granted that status. [22]  This late date might be explained by his just having returned from Barbados, or could be after he had cleared his name with the Parliamentary government. [23]

Yeamans may have been confused with Berringer, who is mentioned by Davis as a supporter of Francis Willoughby, the governor appointed by the son of Charles I. [24]  Berringer was a member of the island council in 1651, but retired when Willoughby was deposed.  He went to England sometime after that. [25]  Berringer left his wife on the island, and someone must have been acting as an overseer for his plantation.  It then seems to have been 400 acres. [26]

Peter Campbell has done the most thorough research on Yeamans in the Barbados archives.  He found evidence that Yeamans’ wife was on the island in 1654, and he was in the House of Assembly in 1655. [27]  When Yeamans wrote his will in 1671, before sailing to Carolina, he was living on 45 acres that abutted Berringer’s property, and owned another 30 acres elsewhere on the island. [28]

History gets murky at this point.  Rumors at the time said Yeamans became romantically involved with Berringer’s wife while Berringer was away.  After Berringer returned to the island in 1656, [29] the marital relationship was stormy and he often went into Speightstown for relief. [30]  He died there in January 1661. [31]  Yeamans married his widow in April [32]  In December, a probate court in England wanted information concerning Berringer’s estate, for he had left a will leaving everything to his sister and brother-in-law. [33]

Legend says the two fought a duel, and Berringer lost. [34]  Poison was suspected at the time, done by someone on Yeamans’ behalf. [35]  His widow had an oral will witnessed by her indentured servants substituted for what she called the fraudulent written one. [36]

Hearings were held, but the presiding officer was Humphrey Waldron.  There was no governor at the time, and he was president of council.  He had returned after Charles II was installed. [37]  Campbell noted he “was far from incorruptible; indeed, it was corruption that was shortly to force him to flee” [38] again.

In 1663, Willoughby’s son was back as acting governor. [38]  He wrote in 1668 that he had “appointed John Yeamans, another of this Assembly, a judge, but the last Assembly brought an accusation against him of having been comittited for hiring a witness to take away a man’s life for no other reason but that he had a mind to the other gentleman’s wife.” [39]

Although Campbell’s notes were not published until 1986, the murder since has been affixed to the legend.  The most elaborate rendering turned the relationship into a Harlequin romance:

“The Berringers loved his visits, but to Mrs. Berringer, John Yeamans was a savior.  She was lost in long, lonely days in a rambling mansion, tucked away in a wilderness of mahogany trees, far away from like minds and interest.  Her husband did not understand her loneliness.  He was content with his life, the business, the military reserves, the plantation and the stately home.”

Then, the author places it in the context of the late nineteenth-century South where African Americans were turned into convict laborers:

“Margaret Berringer felt lost and alone.  She was uncomfortable with the workers and the slaves.  One white worker, a foreman, had been a convicted criminal.  He was crude and frightening.  Often she stayed indoors just to avoid his stare and uncouth manner.  ‘I am a prisoner in paradise,’ she thought.” [41]

Men, of course, were expected to protect women in this environment.  Berringer and Yeamans fought their legendary duel with pistols.  In 1809, David Ramsey described the character and manners of gentlemen in Charleston.  He noted: “A few duels are recollected as having taken place before the revolutionary war, and were often fought with swords.  During and since that period they have been more frequent; and always with pistols.” [42]

End Notes
1.  John Burke and Bernard Burke.  “Yeamans, of Bristol.”  592–593 in A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland.  London: J.R. Smith, 1844.

2.  Captain Richard Yeamans.  Cited by Richard Williams.  “Yeamans of Bristol (Updated).”  Genealogy website, 12 April 2013.

3.  Williams.

4.  Vere L. Oliver.  “Historical Notes.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 11(3):184–186:July 1910.  He was publicizing “Yeamans of Bristol.”  Gloucestershire Notes and Queries 5:307–308:1894.

5.  Albert Frederick Pollard.  “Yeamans, Robert.”  63:308 in Dictionary of National Biography.  Edited by Sidney Lee.  London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1900.  This Robert was John’s brother.

6.  For instance, Harriott Horry Ravenel wrote in 1906: “Yeamans was the son of an alderman of Bristol who had suffered death for his fidelity to the crown.  He himself had warmly supported the royal cause in Barbados, already a thriving colony.” [43]  She is discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

7.  John Andrew Doyle.  “Yeamans, Sir John.”  63:307–308 in Dictionary of National Biography.  Edited by Sidney Lee.  London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1900.

8.  “Bristol in the English Civil War.”  Wikipedia website.

9.  Wm. Jas. Rivers.  A Sketch of the History of South Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: McCarter and Company, 1856.  81,108.  Rivers was born in Charleston in 1822 into a family impoverished by the death of his father.  He had published his history by the time the Civil War broke out. [44]  Recently the manuscript for a novel he wrote after the war has been published.  Eunice [45] includes scenes of young women being saved from rape by Union soldiers, and freed slaves. [46]

10.  Doyle.  Most recently, Eugene Sirmans says “he fought in the royalist army during the English Civil Wars and attained the rank of major.” [47]  He has a footnote that covers half a paragraph, and may or may not refer to this.  I suspect he used Doyle, but since it was a standard reference, he did not feel the need to note it in a commercial publication.

11.  Oliver.  185.  His source was “Colonel Calender 484 and 494.”

12.  Shirley Carter Hughson.  “Yeamans Family.”  Gloucestershire Notes and Queries 5:431–432:1894.  432.  This probably was the source for Doyle, who in turn was the source for Alston Read in 1910.  The last added the date 1664, without attribution. [48]

13.  Oliver.  185.
14.  Williams.

15.  P. F. Campbell.  “Editor’s Note” for E. M. Shilstone.  “Nicholas Plantation and Some of Its Associations.”  The article appeared in The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 9:120+:1942 and was reprinted by Campbell in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.  55.

16.  Shilstone, reprint, 50, and Campbell, 55.
17.  Doyle.

18.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  5.  McCrady is discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

19.  N. Darnell Davis.  Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados.  Georgetown, British Guiana: Argosy Press, 1887.  His history is discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.

20.  Thomas Modyford is discussed in the posts for 6 February 2022, 3 April 2022, and 10 April 2022.  Alexander Hewat thought: “the violence of the preceding times, which had deprived Sir John of his father, had also injured him in his private fortune, he embarked for the island of Barbadoes, at that time in a flourishing condition, to hide his poverty from his acquaintance in England, and endeavour to acquire a fortune suitable to his dignity.” [49]  Hewat moved to the colony in 1763 as a Presbyterian minister, and was expelled in 1777 for remaining loyal to the British monarch during the American Revolution. [50]  He published his history when he was back in England.

21.  Williams.  His source was their wills.  Eric Nye calculates 200 pounds is worth 45,368,42 in today’s dollars. [51]  A quick look at current Barbados prices for vacant land suggests that would purchase half an acre.

22.  Robert Yeamans, born in April 1617, was 26 and a merchant when he was admitted in 1643. [52]  George Yeamans, born in 1626, was 21 and a merchant when he was admitted in 1647. [53]

23.  The process for supporters of Charles I clearing their names and resuming ownership of their properties is discussed in the post 10 April 2022.  The item for John Yeamans simply says “and hath paid.” [54]  The same language was used with others granted the same status, and carries no special meaning.

24.  Davis.  On Berringer’s support for Willoughby, 153; on Berringer’s place on council, 219.  Willoughby is discussed in the posts for 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022.

25.  Campbell.  56.
26.  Shilstone, reprint.  50.
27.  Campbell.  55.

28.  M. Alston Read.  “Notes on Some Colonial Governors of South Carolina and Their Families.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 11(2):107–122:April 1910.

“house where in I now dwell, along wth; with all ye Landes belonging thereunto Cont: about forty five acres, bounding ye Lands of Hen: Mills Esqr:, Thomas Merricke Esqr: & the Landes of Lt Coll Berringer dyed seized.” [55]

“two pcells of land containing twenty acres ten acres in each the one I bought of Phelps bounding on Mrs Sandiford, & on Thomas Jones the oth’ bought of James Mastrs and Henry Jones bounding on Mrs Gray, my brothr ffostr, and on Robt Clifton.” [56]

29.  Shilstone, reprint.  50.
30.  Campbell.  57.
31.  Shilstone, reprint.  51.
32.  “John Yeamans.”  Wikipedia website.
33.  Campbell.  56.
34.  Shilstone, reprint, 50, and Campbell, 57.
35.  Campbell.  59.
36.  Shilstone, reprint.  51.

37.  Waldron is discussed in the posts for 3 April 2022, 10 April 2022, and 17 April 2022.

38.  Campbell.  56.  Shilstone simply said “Yeamans had by this time also become a Councillor and held a position in the island of such importance that he may have prevented the holding of an inquiry into the circumstances of the Cavalier’s death.” [57]

39.  “List of governors of Barbados.”  Wikipedia website.

40.  William Lord Willoughby.  Letter to “authorities in London,” July 1668.  Quoted by Campbell.  59.

41.  I have not found the original of the excerpt.  This version is from J. D. Lewis’ website on North Carolina history. [58]  Brian Landers included some of the same quotations in his 2009 history of imperialism, but with no footnote.  He simply called it the “tourist version.” [59]

42.  David Ramsey.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  2:215–216.

43.  Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel.  Charleston, the Place and the People.  New York: Macmillan, 1906.

44.  “William James Rivers.”  Wikipedia website.

45.  William James Rivers.  Eunice: A Tale of Reconstruction Times in South Carolina.  Edited by Tara Courtney McKinney.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.

46.  Thomas J. Brown.  Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.  132–133.

47.  M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  28.

48.  Read.  110.

49.  Alexander Hewatt.  An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia.  London: A. Donaldson, 1779.  Volume 1, chapter 2, section “Sir John Yeamans arrives at Carolina.”

50.  “Alexander Hewat.”  Wikipedia website.

51.  Eric Nye. “Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Conversion of Currency.”  University of Wyoming website.

52.  Patrick McGrath.  Merchants and Merchandise in Seventeenth-Century Bristol.  Bristol, England: Bristol Record Society, 1955.  30, item 116.  His source was the Burgess Book 1607–1651 in the Bristol Record Office.

53.  McGrath.  31, item 117.
54.  McGrath.  31, item 118.
55.  Read.  112.
56.  Read.  115.
57.  Shilstone, reprint.  50–51.
58.  J. D. Lewis.  “Sir John Yeamans.”  Carolana website, 2007.

59.  Brian Landers.  Empires Apart. A History of American and Russian Imperialism.  New York: Pegasus Books, 2009.  59–60.

South Carolina’s Legendary Past as Seen by South Carolinians

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Barbados holds a special place in the popular history of South Carolina.  Those who cannot claim ties to the Huguenots, like to believe their families once were planters on the island.  Kinloch Bull suggests the conceit arose at the turn of the twentieth century. [1]

This was the period when the nation’s population was expanding with immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and established citizens were asserting their superiority.  The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded in 1890, [2] the social register of the top 400 families in New York in 1892, [3] and, of course, the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1894. [4]

In 1897, Edward McCrady’s state history noted the first settlers were “adventurers uninfluenced by any religious or political motives.”  This changed in 1678 when one of the proprietors, Anthony Ashley Cooper, “caused an emigration from England to Carolina of a class generally superior in character and morals to any that had come, excepting only the Barbadian planters and the French Protestants.” [5]  Among the Barbadians he mentioned were Arthur and Edward Middleton, and Benjamin and Robert Gibbes. [6]

McCrady had represented Charleston in the state legislature, and been active in disenfranchising African Americans in the state in the 1880s.  He began writing his history after he retired in 1890. [7]  During that period, in 1895, the state rewrote its constitution to exclude Blacks from civic life. [8]  The view of the state’s history changed.

Harriott Horry Ravenel emphasized the planters in 1906 when she noted “John Yeamans came from Barbados” [9] and that “by his advice and influence many rich planters from Barbados and other West Indian Islands came to Province.” [10]  She mentioned William and Arthur Middleton as early settlers in a list that included migrants from all embarkation points. [11]

Having the right ancestors had become important.  The Mayflower Society was established in 1897, [12] and the Order of the First Families of Virginia would come in 1912. [13]   She was a charter member of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina, when it was founded in 1895. [14]

The planters were not just rich, but slave owners.  Ravenel said Yeamans brought “with him negroes accustomed to the agriculture of the islands and to labour under tropical suns.  By so doing he decided the institutions and conditions of Carolina for all future time.” [15]

The last sentence quietly absolved the generations of South Carolinians who followed from any blame in owning slaves.  It was part of the colony from the start.  During the Civil War, she moved her household from Charleston to Columbia when her husband, St. Julien Ravenel, was assigned there. She told the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1898 that it had included her mother, six children, “my white nurse, Mrs. Collins, and a number of servants.” [16]

John Thomas expanded her list in 1930.  After listing those who came early, he added others who were “eminent in South Carolina history.”  He used McCrady to list Arthur and Edward Middleton, [17] and Benjamin and Robert Gibbes. [18]  He suggested they were more important than other settlers because they were “a colonial society fully developed” and “brought with them customs and precedents upon which that of South Carolina was formed.  The social order in Barbados was based upon African slavery.  Those who came from to South Carolina from Barbados brought their slaves with them.” [19]

Like Ravenel, he was passing responsibility for the Confederacy onto ancestors, not their descendants who chose, generation after generation, to perpetuate it.  And, perhaps that was his experience.  His father had headed a military academy in Columbia that drew him into service when Thomas was three years old. [20]  It was his grandfather who made the decision.  John Peyre Thomas was a physician in Columbia, South Carolina, when he bought land in 1836 that became the Mount Hope Plantation.  He could have maintained his residence in the city. [21] Their immigrant ancestor, Samuel Thomas, had arrived in 1702 as a minister. Thomas’ tie to Barbados was through his wife, who was a descended from Robert Gibbes. [22]

These individuals were as accurate as they could be, given what was known when they were writing.  Some conclusions were based on McCrady and some came from family traditions.  Jack Leland said “two of his most valued possessions came from Barbados, and they had been brought from Barbados in 1685, fifteen years after the founding of the South Carolina colony.”  They were a gift from an aunt. [23]

His father’s immigrant ancestor was less important.  Henry Leland landed in Massachusetts in 1652. [24]  Jack’s great-grandfather, Aaron Whitney Leland, moved to Charleston in 1808 where he became a Presbyterian preacher. [25]  Unlike Ravenel, Jack wasn’t shy of calling a slave a slave. [26]  He said his family purchased a plantation in 1832. [27]

After World War II, scholars begin digging into archives to verify details.  In 1946, Arthur Chandler documented migration from Barbados that began in the 1650s when former indentured servants could not buy land, and would not work for wages for others. [28]  Officials on the island began to see them as equivalent to the landless people before the English Civil War who had been displaced. [29]  They did not see it as a labor relations problem.  Instead of asking how they could retain their experience white workers, they replaced them with slaves who could not protest their harsh treatment. [30]

The first emigration was to other Caribbean islands.  This was mentioned in the post for 23 January 2022.  Many were recruited by Oliver Cromwell to fight the Spanish, and ended up seizing Jamaica. [31]  Jamaica remained the primary attraction for poor Barbadians.

After several abortive experiments, South Carolina became a safe destination after 1670.  Chandler notes planters took out land grants, then sent an agent to clear the land.  Some were future settlers, but many were merchants who stayed in Barbados.  Most of the laborers were indentured servants. [32]  Most of the known slaves were personal servants. [33]

It was only in the late 1670s, when peace returned to the Caribbean after years of war between England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, that planters considered moving.  They were the ones who were able to claim large numbers of acres based on the number of slaves they promised to move.  This exodus ended in 1682. [34]

Chandler’s article had little effect at the time because it was published in a Barbados journal that few libraries in the United States would have received.  Further, if this Chandler is the one who became an important business historian in the 1960s, he was then only a first-year graduate student. [35]  It became more available when it was reprinted in 1986.  I don’t know about the original, but the later edition has no footnotes or bibliography.

The first person to seriously examine South Carolina documents was Agnes Leland Baldwin.  She was descended from another of Aaron Whitney Leland’s sons. [36]  She and her husband ran a real estate agency that specialized in plantation properties. [37]  It appears her title searches led to her research on individuals.  In 1969, she published a list of settlers who arrived between 1671 and 1675. [38]  She expanded it in 1985 to cover 1670 to 1700. [39]  It is the second which is easily available.

Some “arrived from Barbados,” but for many who came, nothing more was known than their names.  Further, she warned a name did not mean a settler.  Lists of land grants did not mean individuals actually migrated.  The primary sources also included those who stayed temporarily, and some like merchants who had close ties but never lived in the colony. [40]  She listed both Arthur and Edward Middleton, and Robert Gibbes from land grants listed in 1678.  The last “imported several ‘servants and slaves’.” [41]  She did not include William Middleton or Benjamin Gibbes.

Peter Campbell noted many individuals traced their ancestors back to manifests of ships coming from Barbados.  He went through the archives in Barbados, and found many of these attributions were based on assumptions that sailing from the island was the same as having a plantation there.  Instead, he said, ships leaving England went to the island, not the colony.  Many spent only a short time in the port city before taking another ship to South Carolina. [42]

Thus, Arthur Middleton was a merchant and slave trader in Barbados, not a planter.  Edward may have come from England to oversee Arthur’s investments.  Campbell said he “came out from England and stayed only briefly in Barbados.” [43]  Some Gibbes were in Barbados by 1635.  However, Robert is only assumed to have gone to Barbados, and then South Carolina.  He does not appear much in the record as living in Carolina until 1684 when he was a sheriff. [44]

End Notes
1.  Kinloch Bull.  “Barbadian Settlers in Early Carolina: Historigraphical Notes.”  The South Carolina Historical Magazine 96(4):329–339:October 1995.  I used his article as my guide to histories of South Carolina.

2.  “Daughters of the American Revolution.”  Wikipedia website.
3.  “The Four Hundred (Gilded Age).”  Wikipedia website.
4.  “United Daughters of the Confederacy.”  Wikipedia website.

5.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  191.  The first Huguenots came to South Carolina in 1680 and 1685. [45]

6.  McCrady.  327.

7.  Alexia Jones Helsley.  “McCrady, Edward Jr.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 8 June 2016; last updated 20 October 2016.

8.  Michael Trinkley.  “African-American Legal and Political Life During Jim Crow.”  South Carolina Information Highway website, managed by Kerri Fitts and Robin Welch.

9.  Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel.  Charleston, the Place and the People.  New York: Macmillan, 1906..  7.
10.  Ravenel, Charleston.  7–8.
11.  Ravenel, Charleston.  16.
12.  “Mayflower Society.”  Wikipedia website.
13.  “Order of the First Families of Virginia.”  Wikipedia website.

14.  “List of Members, April 17, 1901.”  Huguenot Society of South Carolina Transactions 15:1908.  Her information is on page 69; the founding date is on the cover.  Her daughter-in-law, Bernice Ravenel, and her grandson, Herbert Ravenel Sass, were members of Charleston’s Society for the Preservation of Spirituals.  They are mentioned in the post for 6 January 2019.

15.  Ravenel, Charleston.  7.

16.  Harriott H. Ravenel.  “When Columbia South Carolina Burned.”  Speech to the Daughters of the Confederacy, 12 March 1898.  Transcribed on Access Genealogy website.  This is one example of people moving Gullah-speaking slaves to the area around Columbia during the war that was mentioned in the post for 15 August 2021.

17.  Jno. P. Thomas, Jr.  “The Barbadians in Early South Carolina.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 31(2):75–92:April 1930.  88.

18.  Thomas.  89.
19.  Thomas.  89.

20.  “John Peyre Thomas Sr.”  Wikipedia website.  He wrote a history of the college.

21.  “Mount Hope Plantation – Ridgeway – Fairfield County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.  Nothing is known about its crops or slave population.  Presumably it grew cotton.

22.  Robert Gibbes > William Gibbes > William Gibbes > William Hasell Gibbes > Robert Gibbes > Mary Caroline Gibbes

Mary Caroline is Thomas’ wife.

23.  Jack Leland.  Interviewed by V. S. Naipaul.  A Turn in the South.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.  23.

24.  Sherman Leland.  The Leland Magazine.  Boston: Wier and White, 1850.  9.
25.  Sherman Leland.  244–246.

26.  Jack Leland.  Interviewed by Naipaul.  91.  “My family owned slaves.  I think they were very kind masters.  Some years ago I interviewed some of the former slaves—they are all dead now—who had lived on my family’s places.  And they were very complimentary on the way they were treated.  Slavery was wrong.  I can’t make any brief for that.  But it existed.  It was used to build the agrarian economy we had, and it was a fairly good, workable institution.”

27.  Jack Leland.  Interviewed by Nailpaul.  He grew up on Walnut Plantation, which is located between Mount Pleasant and McClennanville on the coast north of Charleston. [46]

28.  Alfred D. Chandler.  “The Expansion of Barbados.”  The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 8:106+:1946.  Reprinted by P. F. Campbell.  61–89 in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.

29.  The post for 23 January 2022 discusses the treatment of white, indentured servants in Barbados.

30.  Conditions in England are discussed in the post for 27 November 2021.
31.  Chandler, reprint.  67.
32.  Chandler, reprint.  84.

33.  Chandler, reprint.  85.  Peter Wood searched records to find more details of slaves who were brought to South Carolina in the early years.  He began by noting facts were hard to find.  The ones he could locate seem to support Chandler’s guess.  Wood said one ship captain, Henry Brayne, brought one slave, three servants, and an overseer from Virginia in 1670. [47]  The governor’s son, William Sayle, brought his father three servants and three slaves from Bermuda in 1670. [48]  The one settler who came from Barbados, Bernard Schenckingh, left one slave when he died in 1692. [49]

34.  Chandler.  87–88.

35.  “Alfred D. Chandler Jr.”  Harvard University website.  His first major publication was Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1962.  In 1946, he was studying Southern history at the University of North Carolina.  He discovered sociology that year, and transferred to Harvard.

36.  Aaron Whitney Leland > James Hibben Leland > Hibben Leland > Rutledge Baker Leland > Agnes Reynolds Leland

She married William Plews Baldwin, Jr.

37.  “Agnes Leland Baldwin.”  Mayer Funeral Home, Georgetown, South Carolina, website, 2011.

38.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1680.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1969.

39.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.

40.  Baldwin, 1985.  x.
41.  Baldwin, 1985.  100.
42.  P. F. Campbell.  Some Early Barbadian History.  Barbados, 1993.  151–152.
43.  Campbell.  151–152.
44.  “Robert Gibbes.”  Preservation Society of Charleston website.
45.  “Huguenot History.”  Huguenot Society of South Carolina website.
46.  Jack Leland.  Interviewed by Naipaul.  110, 112–113.

47.  Peter H. Wood.  Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carlina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion.  New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974.  21.

48.  Wood.  21.
49.  Wood.  31.