Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The Waccamaw Neck along the northeastern coast of South Carolina extends 60 miles from the North Carolina border to Winyah Bay at Georgetown. [1] The distance Genevieve Willcox Chandler covered when she conducting interview with former slaves for the WPA was measured in distances people could walk to Murrells Inlet where she lived. [2] They mentioned five plantations along the left bank from Richmond Hill to Oatland.
The chart below lists the names and plantations of individuals interviewed by Chandler. As mentioned in the post for 25 December 2022, Hagar Brown is one of the three most likely sources for Chandler’s variant of “Come by Here.”
Land grants still were tightly controlled by the men in England who owned the colony. As mentioned in the post for 8 January 2023, one landgrave, Robert Daniel, was given the 24,000 acre Winyah Barony in 1711, which he promptly sold to another landgrave. Thomas Smith, [4] in turn, sold 1,280 acres to John Crofts [5] and 1,490 acres to Percival Pawley. [6] He retained land around Murrells Inlet.
A descendant believes Crofts was related to John Crofts of Virginia. He was deputy to the naval collector and his wife, Mary, owned land in Charles Town. [7] His son, also John Crofts, was a ship’s captain who married a wealthy woman in Jamaica in 1697. [8] The son of this Crofts, also John, was a Charleston merchant when he bought the land that eventually would be Oatland. [9]
George Pawley arrived in Charles Town in 1685 [10] at age 53. [11] Family tradition thinks his wife somehow was related to Andrew Percivell, [12] who came from England in 1674 [13] as an agent for Anthony Ashley Cooper, [14] one of the original Proprietors. He was a joiner, [15] and his son, Percivell, was a shipwright. Emma Hart believes Percivell bought land because of “the precarious urban economy, and the sorry state of shipbuilding in the province.” [16] His land eventually became Turkey Hill.
Land produced little wealth at the time. Smith was involved with the Indian trade.[17] Pawley began raising cattle, which he was selling by 1717 [18]. Rice was grown in inland swamps until England imposed so many taxes it was not profitable after 1705. [19]
The value of naval stores increased in 1705, when England began paying a bounty. [20] It relied upon longleaf pine trees, [21] which grew in the uplands. [22] Kilns used to extract tar were built on slight elevations, [23] not on shifting landscape of the neck. Most of the research on tar kilns has been done in the Francis Marion National Forest, south of Winyah Bay. Maps show the industry was concentrated along the southwestern boundary and along the Santee River, with little found in the swamps or on the boundary with the coast. [24].
These are not the kinds of lands Smith sold. Crofts and Pawley probably were just accumulating land for its unknown, future value.
The political landscape changed in 1714 when the Hanoverian George I replaced the Stuart Anne on the English throne. Crofts sold the Oatland land to William Branford that year. [25] Little is known about him, although Henry Smith thought his father might be connected to the John Branford who came south from Dorchester, Massachusetts. [26] Branford died in 1717, and the land was deeded to his daughter, Martha Bryan. [27]
1717 was the beginning of a new crisis in South Carolina’s relations with the Proprietors who owned the colony. The men in England were unhappy that they were not receiving their rents, and ordered their governor, Robert Johnson, to rewrite laws in their favor. [28] The next year the Proprietors closed the land office, so no new land could be granted. [29] This led the colonists to ask George I to take over the colony in 1719. [30]
Pawley apparently became friends with John Allston, who arrived in Charleston in 1682 as an apprentice to the merchant James Jones. [31] Seven years later Allston established himself in Saint Johns. [32] Around 1795, he married the widow of a tanner, and fathered six children. [33] When John died in 1719, Pawley executed his will, and his son George married Allston’s daughter Mary. [34] Pawley drowned in 1723, [35] and George inherited the land on Waccamaw Neck. [36]
The economy grew worse when the Crown stopped subsidizing naval stores in 1724, and collapsed in 1727. [37] George moved to the Waccamaw neck that year, and became associated with Smith. [38] His brother Percival was among those who fell into debt, and moved to North Carolina [39] where Smith was living.
The Proprietors responded to the chaos and depression in South Carolina by asking George I to buy them out. [40] Negotiations lasted until late 1729 when Robert Johnson was appointed royal governor. [41] That same year, Samuel Wragg convinced the Parliament to resume paying the bounty for naval stores and allow Charleston to export rice directly to Spain and Portugal. [42]
Johnson proposed creating frontier townships to protect the area around Charleston. [43] One was centered in the north around Winyah Bay, where the Baptist minister, William Screven, had purchased land in 1710. [44] His son, Elisha, laid out Georgetown in 1729. [45] Men moved to the area hoping it would become an official port. [46] One was Mary Allston Pawley’s brother John who purchased Turkey Hill from her husband George’s niece. [47]
Mary’s brother William purchased land upriver from Turkey Hill from Percival in 1730. [48] His wife was Esther LaBruce. Their sister Elizabeth married Esther’s brother Joseph. [49] The immigrant LaBruce had arrived from France in 1687, [50] and was raising hogs and cattle on the Cooper River by 1696. [51] The marriages occurred in 1721. [52] William’s land became The Oaks.
Once rice and naval stores were reestablished as profitable crops, and the land office was reopened in 1732 under the King, [53] men borrowed money to buy slaves [54] knowing they would receive 50 acres for each slave. [55] John Allston received royal grants in 1733 and 1734 for 137, 490, and 700 acres. [56] That would suggest he also was able to purchase three slaves in 1733, ten in early 1734, and another fourteen later the same year. William received royal grants between 1732 and 1737 for 785 acres (for fifteen slaves) and three tracts on Sandy Island. [57] Mary and William’s LaBruce brother-in-law was granted 727 acres north of the Pawley land in 1733. [58]
Johnson tried to ensure the new lands offered by the Crown did not go to speculators, and was successful enough that when Smith laid out a rival town to Georgetown at what became Murrells Inlet, no one was interested. [59] He willed some of the town lots to his children. [60]
The prosperity lasted until a new war with Native Americans broke out in 1739. [61] The best lands on the east side of the Waccamaw had been purchased or claimed by 1734.
Graphics
Base map: “Map of the Pee Dee River Basin in South Carolina.” 15 in An Overview of the Eight Major River Basins on South Carolina. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, 2013.
End Notes
1. Clarke Willcox. “Preface to Historical Sketches.” 1967. 105 in Clarke A. Willcox. Musings of a Hermit. Charleston, South Carolina: Walker, Evans and Cogswell Company, seventh edition, second printing, 1986. iv. The geography is discussed in the post for 1 January 2023.
2. Genevieve is introduced in the post for 15 December 2022. The people she interviewed are introduced in the post for 25 December 2022
3. The Black and and PeeDee rivers parallel the Waccamaw for short distances, then each turns inland.
4. Thomas Smith, son of the original landgrave Thomas Smith, is discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.
5. 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.
6. George C. Rogers. The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002. 1.
7. Harold Cross. “John (Croft) Crosse (abt. 1630 - 1709).” Wiki Tree website, 1 Apr 2021; last updated 24 April 2021. This is John’s father.
8. Harold Cross. “John Crosse (abt. 1670 - 1736).” Wiki Tree website 9 March 2021; last updated 26 August 2022.
9. Harold Cross. “John Croft (bef. 1698 - aft. 1745).” Wiki Tree website, last updated 24 April 2021. This is John’s son.
10. Agnes Leland Baldwin. First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700. Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985. 180.
11. Robert Walden Coggeshall. Ancestors and Kin. Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988. 151.
12. Coggeshall. 152.
13. Baldwin. 183.
14. Coggeshall. 152.
15. Baldwin. 180.
16. Emma Hart. Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. 31.
17. Smith’s business interests are discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.
18. Rogers. 1.
19. Walter Edgar. South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. 138.
20. Edgar. 138.
Grant Snitker, Jason D. Moser, Bobby Southerlin, and Christina Stewart. “Detecting Historic Tar Kilns and Tar Production Sites Using High-resolution, Aerial LiDAR-Derived Digital Elevation Models: Introducing the Tar Kiln Feature Detection Workflow (TKFD) Using Open-Access R and FIJI Software.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 41(103340):2022. 2.
21. Michael A. Harmon and Rodney J. Snedeker. “The Archaeological Record of Tar and Pitch
Production in Coastal Carolina.” 100-122 in Historic Landscapes in South Carolina: Historical
Archaeological Perspectives on the Land and Its People, edited by Linda F. Stine, Lesley M.
Drucker, Martha Zierden, and Christopher Judge. Columbia, South Carolina: Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists, 1993. 145.
Snitker. 2.
22. W. E. McLendon, G. A. Crabb, Earl Carr, and F. S. Welsh. “Soil Survey of Georgetown County, South Carolina.” 513-562 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1911. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1914. 518.
23. Harmon. 153-154.
24. Snitker. 11, 13.
25. “Willbrook Plantation – Pawleys Island – Georgetown County.” South Carolina Plantations website.
26. Henry A. M. Smith. “Old Charles Town and Its Vicinity, Accabee and Wappoo Where Indigo Was First Cultivated, with Some Adjoining Places in Old St. Andrews Parish.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 16(1):1-15:January 1915. 7-8.
27. Nyland. 26.
28. M. Eugene Sirmans. Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966. 120.
29. Sirmans. 123.
30. Sirmans. 129.
31. A. S. Salley. “John Alston.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 6(3):114-116:July 1905. 114.
32. Nyland. 24.
33. Coggeshall. 171. Allston married Elizabeth Turgis, widow of John Harris.
34. Coggeshall. 171.
35. Coggeshall. 152.
36. Coggeshall. 153.
37. Sirmans. 155.
38. Coggeshall. 153.
39. Sirmans. 146. Sirmans only says Percival, so I assume he is referring to the brother of George. Robert Walden Coggeshall says he was a gunsmith. [62]
40. Sirmans. 160.
41. Sirmans. 161.
42. Sirmans. 162. Technically, South Carolina merchants could ship to any port south of Cape Finisterre. [63]
43. Sirmans. 162.
44. Rogers. 17.
45. Rogers. 33.
46. David Duncan Wallace. The History of South Carolina. New York: American Historical Society, 1934. 1:340. Georgetown became a port in 1732. [64]
47. Nyland. 26. Percival Pawley had given the 490 acres that became Turkey Hill to the daughters of his brother John in 1722. [65] One niece died in 1725, [65] and the husband of the other sold the land to Allston. [67]
48. 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.
49. Coggeshall. 171.
50. Baldwin. 153. The original name was LaBrosse de Marboeuf.
51. A. S. Salley, Jr. “Stock Marks Recorded in South Carolina, 1695-1721.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 8(3):126-131:July 1912. 130.
52. Coggeshall. 171, 173.
53. Sirmans. 172.
54. Sirmans. 167.
55. Wallace. 1:331.
56. Nyland. 26.
57. William Alston Sen. Will, 29 January 1743. Transcribed on “Yauhannah Wills.” RootsWeb website.
58. Rogers. 277.
59. Sirmans. 174.
60. Smith and Murrells Inlet will be discusses in a future post.
61. Sirmans. 167. The War of Jenkin’s Ear was part of the War over Austrian Succession.
62. Coggeshall. 152
63. Wallace. 1:324.
64. Rogers. 32.
65. Nyland. 26.
66. Coggeshall. 152. The niece was Ann.
67. Nyland. 26. The niece who married Joseph Allen was Susanna.
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