Brook Green Legends

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The likely reason for the expansion of The Oaks plantation, mentioned in the post for 30 July 2023, was the introduction of a new variety of rice that increased productivity and profits.  Carolina Gold was developed on Brook Green, the plantation immediately north of The Oaks.  The land had been purchased in 1730 from the Pawleys by William Allston, one son of the immigrant John. [1]  It was inherited by his son, William Junior, and his grandson, Benjamin Junior.

Subsequent ownership details were lost when Georgetown County, South Carolina, papers were destroyed during the Civil War. [2]  The incontestable facts are Benjamin did not own Brook Green when he died in 1809, [3] Joshua John Ward was born on the plantation in 1800, [4] and Robert Francis Withers Allston was born there in 1801. [5]

Legends flourish in the absence of facts.  Susan Lowndes Allston believes her great-grandfather Benjamin [6] lost the land when he signed a note for a friend.  The noble man refused to evade payment because he was a minor when he signed.  Susan summarized the family hagiography: “‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’  So the place went, and Benjamin lived elsewhere.” [7]

She believed the property was purchased “by the Withers brothers, Francis and Robert” [8] and that they rented the fields to Ward, and earlier to his father Joshua Ward, and that they did not buy the plantation until 1847 when Francis died. [9]

Alberta Lachicotte, whose great-grandfather [10] purchased the plantation [11] where Benjamin died, [12] believed the Withers purchased another property from Benjamin in 1800. [13]  She also thought both it and Brook Green then were called Springfield, and that Ward’s son was responsible for the Brook Green name. [14]  He purchased Springfield in 1847, but maintained it as a separate plantation. [15]

Susan thought Benjamin’s wife and Robert Wither’s wife were cousins. [16]  Benjamin’s wife, Charlotte Ann, was the daughter of the first William Allston and sister of the first Joseph of The Oaks.  Another of Benjamin and Charlotte’s sons was named Joseph Waties Allston. [17]  Two of Charlotte’s sisters married sons of William Waties, Junior. [18]

It may be Charlotte’s family worked together to find an appropriate buyer for Brook Green, and may even have bargained to allow the family to stay in their home until they could arrange a move.  Charlotte’s sister Mary’s son, John Waites, married a woman named Ann. [19]  She likely was Nancy Maham who married a John Waties in 1784. [20]  Nancy was the daughter of the Hezekiah Mahem, mentioned in the posts for 13 November 2022 and 20 November 2022.

Hezekiah’s sister Elizabeth married John Cooke. [21]  Their daughter, Elizabeth Cooke, married Charles Weston, [22] the son of Plowden Weston by his first wife. [23]  Plowden owned a plantation north of Brook Green. [24]

Hezekiah’s niece and Nancy Maham Watie’s cousin Elizabeth Cooke married Joshua Ward, after Weston died.  Joshua John’s great-grandson believed Joshua was a successful indigo planter. [25]  George Rogers thought the Wards were merchants and lawyers in Charleston. [26]  It is believed Joshua John acquired Brook Green by 1825. [27]

In 1838, Ward’s overseer, James C. Thompson, noticed part of a rice head that was larger than any other he had seen.  Ward saved the seed, and planted it the next year on the margins of an old field where it was nearly destroyed by standing water and rats.  The following year, he and Thompson planted the seed they’d been able to salvage in a large tub in Thompson’s yard, only to have a slave leave the gate open and a hog eat most of the crop.  They transplanted the survivors, and most of the rice was sterile. [28]

In 1840, they took what had survived the hog and rot, and planted half an acre.  The next year, Ward planted 21 acres at Brook Green, which his factor sold above the market price.  In 1842, Ward tried 400 acres, and the following year planted nothing but the new large grain. [29]

In 1844, Ward made Carolina Gold available commercially. [30]  From then until the civil war, the Brook Green rice “commanded the highest price of any rice on the world market in Paris and London.” [31]

Although, Ward was responsible for the wealth of the Waccamaw neck, he still was treated as a bit of an interloper.  Popular historians prefer to discuss a painter, Washington Allston, who lived briefly at Brook Green [32] and inherited Springfield. [33]  To give Ward respectability, George Rogers named the guests who attended a party he held when his daughter married.  They included Allstons, LaBruces, and Westons. [34]

More important is the memoir of J. Motte Alston, a grandson of Benjamin’s father’s uncle William. [35]  He recalled: “the party was kept up till the ‘wee sma hours’. A regular old-fashioned country dance to the music of sundry country fiddlers.” [36]  One of the musicians, most likely, was the father of Ben Horry, who was interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler in the 1930s. [37]

End Notes
1.  The first two generations of Allstons are discussed in the post for 23 July 2023.

2.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  Brookgreen Waccamaw in the Carolina Low Country.  Charleston, South Carolina: Nelsons’ Southern Printing and Publishing Company, 1956.  24.

3.  J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945.  New edition issued by University of South Carolina of Columbia in 2004.  12.

4.  “Joshua John Ward.”  Wikipedia website.
5.  Daniel C. Littlefield.  “New Introduction.”  ix-xxviii in Easterby.  ix.

6.  “Susan Lowndes Allston Collection.”  Georgetown, South Carolina, County Library website.

7.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  22.
8.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  24.
9.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  27.

10.  Alberta was the daughter of Arthur Herbert Lachicotte, who was the son of Francis William Lachicotte. [38]  Francis was the son of Philip Rossignol Lachucotte.  He fled Santo Domingo in 1792, and worked for an engine and boiler works.  He later ran the rice mill at Dean Hall and, in 1857, the one at Brook Green. [39]

11.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  469.  The plantation was Waverly.

12.  Rogers.  19.

13.  Alberta Morel Lachicotte.  Georgetown Rice Plantations.  Georgetown, South Carolina: Georgetown County Historical Society, 1993 revised edition.  55.

14.  Lachicotte.  58.
15.  Lachicotte.  57.
16.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  27.

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

18.  H. D. Bull.  “The Waties Family of South Carolina.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 45(1):12-22:January 1944.  15.

19.  Bull.  17.
20.  Nancy Maham is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.

21.  John J. Simons III.  “The Early Families of the South Carolina Low County.”  RootsWeb website.

22.  “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.”  History of South Carolina, edited by Yates Snowden and H. G. Cutler.  Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1920.  4:289.

23.  Gurney Thompson.  “Plowden Weston (abt. 1738 - abt. 1827).”  Wiki Tree website, 5 September 2018; last updated 5 May 2023.

24.  “Weston Family Papers.”  Robert Scott Small Library, Special Collections, College of Charleston website.

25.  “Samuel Mortimer Ward, Jr.”  289.
26.  Rogers.  259.

27.  Kathy Kelly, John Califf, and Julie Burr.  “Brookgreen Gardens.”  National Registry of History Places Inventory -- Nomination Form, 4 February 1978.  3.

28.  Joshua John Ward.  Letter to Robert Francis Withers Allston, 16 November 1843.  The Proceedings of the Agricultural Convention and the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina from 1839-1846 inclusive.  Columbia: Summers and Carroll for the State Agricultural Society of South Carolina, 1846.  56-57.  The letter has been reprinted in many places including by Robert Francis Withers Alston, [40] Susan Lowndes Allston, [41] and the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. [42]

29.  Ward.

30.  Ward.  He claimed his 1838 seed was descended from that planted by his great-uncle in 1785, and mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022.

31.  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.  The Rice Paper,  November 2009.

32.  Washington Allston was the step-brother of Benjamin. [43]  Susan Lowndes Allston devotes pages 18-19 and 23-24 to the painter.  She discusses Joseph and Theodosia at The Oaks on page 21.
,
33.  Lachicotte.  56.  She discusses the painter on pages 55-56.  Her discussion of The Oaks, on pages 59-61, only mentions Joseph and Theodosia.  Lachicotte devotes one paragraph to Joshua John Ward on page 58.

34.  Rogers.  269.

35.  Jacob Motte Alston was the son of Thomas Pinckney Alston, [44] shown in the chart in the post for 30 July 2023.  As noted there, Thomas was the son of Billy Alston and his second wife, Mary Brewton Motte, and the grandson of William Allston.  William’s brother John was Benjamin’s grandfather. [45]

36.  Jacob Motte Alston.  Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909, edited by Arney R. Childs.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953.  105.  Quoted by Rogers.  269.

37.  Ben Horry is discussed in the post for 10 September 2023.
38.  “Arthur Herbert Lachicotte.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.
39.  Rogers.  469.

40.  Robert Allston.  "A Memoir of the Introduction and Planting of Rice in South Carolina," 1843, reprinted in several other publications, including James Dunwoody, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, volume 2, 1852.

41.  Susan Lowndes Allston.  29-30.
42.  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation.
43.  Coggeshall.  172.
44.  “Jacob Motte Alston.”  Ancestry website.
45.  Coggeshall.  172-174.