The Oaks Legends

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The adoption of tidal flood irrigation made the land within thirty miles of the coast valuable, while inland rice fields either were abandoned or converted to cotton.  Those who already had coastal land suddenly became much wealthier.

This led to the idolization of absentee planters who spent their time in Charleston where they dabbled in politics or culture, and left the management of their plantations to overseers.

This romanticized view of the Old South persists today in the history of The Oaks, the plantation where Hagar Brown lived after the Civil War.  The Joseph Alston who inherited the plantation in 1784 was five-years-old.  Unlike his grandfather Joseph Allston who lived on the plantation with his mother during his minority, [1] his father, Billy Alston, [2] sent young Joseph to the College of Charleston and Princeton. [3]

Alston returned to Charleston where he qualified for the bar in 1799, when he was 21. [4]  He married the daughter of Aaron Burr on 2 February 1801. [5]  Fifteen days later, Burr was selected as Thomas Jefferson’s vice-president by the Electoral College. [6]  Alston was elected to the South Carolina Assembly the next year, and stayed focused on politics until 1814. [7]

The life of Joseph’s wife has spawned legends.  Theodosia was not well after the birth of their son, and became depressed when the boy died in 1812.  The next year, during the War of 1812, she set sail to visit her father.  The ship disappeared, and the widowed Joseph died in Charleston in 1816. [8]

James Michie, who has conducted archaeological surveys of the property, believes it is significant because it may “contain a wealth of information regarding architecture and the possessions of slaves during the eighteenth century.” [9]  However, he knows he is given research grants because of the interest in Theodosia. [10]

Michie noted Joseph Alston only exists today “in the shadow of his wife.” [11]  What information he could find and deduce suggests the young man was spoiled: he never completed a project, did not graduate from Princeton and did not practice law.  A woman who observed him after he married Theodosia wrote: “report does not speak well of him; it says that he is rich, but he is a great dasher, dissipated, ill-tempered, vain and silly.” [12]

Joseph did not actually inherit The Oaks until 1803.  At that time he and his wife began considering how to renovate the house. [13]  The couple would have spent the growing season in a house they built on the Piedmont near Greenville, South Carolina. [14]  Management of the plantation would have been left to a resident overseer.  Michie uncovered artifacts suggesting a house existed that could have been the man’s home. [15]

What happened to the property after Joseph died in 1816 is not clear.  The next known name is Jose Alston, son of Joseph’s sister Josephine. [16]  If one looks at the family genealogy and the inheritance patterns, there are two possible interim owners.  It could have reverted to Joseph’s father, William Algernon, and from him to his daughter Josephine.

The alternative is it returned to Joseph’s grandfather, Billy, who then devised it to his son John Ashe Alston for the benefit of John’s son Thomas.  Thomas married Josephine.  Thomas was born in 1806, [17] and would have been about 10 years old in 1816.  Josephine was born in 1810 and would have been 6 years old when Joseph died.  She died in 1834, [18] perhaps when Jose was born. [19]  Thomas died in 1835 [20] when he was about 29 years old.

Jose was an orphaned infant when he inherited, so the property would been managed by overseers hired by either by one of his grandfathers, or his great-grandfather.  It was during Jose’s minority that “dramatic expansion of the plantation occurred.” [21]  As mentioned in the post for 23 July 2023, a mill already existed.  The old swamp rice bed was converted to a barge canal that connected with the Waccamaw to move rice down river. [22]

A large slave community appeared on the other side of a “a long, linear earthen embankment.”  Michie discovered “the existing chimney foundations clearly show there were two rows of opposing slave cabins, separated by about 175 feet.”  Physical evidence suggested at least 18 cabins. [23]

By chance we know the name of one overseer in this period.  J. Alston Reynolds said his father, Henry R., “left the oaks plantation on the Waccamaw River in the 1835 and was succeeded by Ralph.” [24]  William Scarborough noted the second generation overseer was an example of men with extraordinary skills.  J. Alston later invented a “machine for planting Rice. [25]

End Notes
1.  The first Joseph of The Oaks is discussed in the post for 23 July 2023.

2.  This Joseph’s father was William Alston.  As mentioned in the post for 23 July 2023, I am using his nickname to keep him separate from other Williams in the family.

3.  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.  14.

4.  Michie.  14.
5.  Michie.  15.

6.  “1800 United States Presidential Election.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 17 July 2023.

7.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  174.

8.  Michie.  11.
9.  Michie.  51.
10.  Michie.  13.
11.  Michie.  13.

12.  Maria Nicholson.  Letter to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin.  Quoted by N. Louise Bailey.  Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Volume IV, 1791 - 1815.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984.  33.  Quoted by Michie.  15.

13.  Michie.  15.
14.  Michie.  17.
15.  Michie.  30, 32, 35, 51.
16.  Jose was named Joseph Alston.
17.  Coggeshall.  174.
18.  Saratoga.  “Thomas Alston.”  Find a Grave website, 16 July 2012.
19.  “Josephine Alston.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.
20.  Coggeshall.  174.
21.  Michie.  51.
22.  Michie.  48.
23.  Michie.  36.

24.  J. Alston Reynolds.  Letter to Robert F. W. Allston, 28 September 1861.  Reprinted by J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; republished by University of South Carolina, 2004.  267-268.  Ralph’s surname was illegible.

25.  William Kauffman Scarborough.  The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South.  Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1984 edition.  159.