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.