War's End

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Wars rarely end as scheduled with peace plans in place.  They stop when something unexpected occurs on the battlefield.

Sherman took Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, 1865, while Charleston was taken that day by Quincy Adams Gillmore. [1]  Eight days later, on February 25, Allen K. Noyes took control of Georgetown at the lower end of the Waccamaw River.  On March 1, Colored units were stationed there. [2]

As troops moved north with Sherman, they informed slaves or slave owners.  Georgia Horry recalled that “Mr. Carmichael sent by the state.  Go to Brookgreen, Longwood, Watsaw.  Tell everting surrender.  Go to any located place.” [3]

Up country, where the Wards had taken their slaves, Ellen Godfrey told Genevieve Willcox Chandler: “Yankee officer come. ‘Where Mahams Ward and John J. Woodward?  Come to tell ’em take dese people out the dirt camp!” [4]

In many places, the immediate response of freed people was to break into the food stores and appropriate clothing and other plantation property.

Ward’s slaves were not near their plantations.  Godfrey recalled their problem was returning home.  “Put we in flat.  Carry back!  Put food and chillum in flat.  We been walk.” [5]  Going up “Three flat carry two hundred head o’ people and all they things.” [6]  On the return, “Three flat gone round wid all the vittles.” [7]

At night they camped where women cooked food for the next day.  By then it was December, with “snow on ground.” [8] Cook fires provided heat.

She remembered it was “easier coming home.  Current helped.  Going up against the current, only poles and cant hooks—tedious going.” [9]

All was not well, for at least one person died on the journey.  “Mother Molly die on flat.  Bury she right to Longwood grave-yard.” [10]

If one only read the accounts of white women like Elizabeth Blyth Weston, niece of Robert Francis Withers Allston, [11] freed slaves were uncontrollable.  She wrote Allston’s wife on 17 March 1865 that Robert’s third cousin, Martha Pyatt, [12] “went at once to George Town leaving everything Toney having not a change of clothes for her infant and I hear has not a servant.  Her house was given up to the Negroes at once.” [13]  Her plantations were north and south of Ward’s Brook Green. [14]

Weston added that Joshua John Ward’s sister “is anxious to go to Poplar Hill but her people refuse to move her.” [15]   Catherine Jones Ward had married Joseph Percival La Bruce, who died in 1827. [16]  One of their sons, Joshua Ward La Bruce, owned land on Sandy Island, [17] which lay across the Waccamaw River from Turkey Hill, The Oaks, Brook Green, and Richmond Hill.

Even Ben Horry recalled that, “after Freedom,” the wife of Joshua, son of Joshua John Ward, “Miss Bessie gone to she house in Charleston.” [18]

More objectively, revenge was more measured and according to African-based views of justice.

Ben recalls one driver at Brook Green manipulated job assignments to force himself on women.

“If one them drive want you (want big frame gal like you Lillie!) They give you task you CAN’T DO.  You getting this beating not for you task—for you flesh!” [19]

He continued: “The worst thing I members was the colored oberseer.  He was the one straight from Africa.  He the boss over all the mens and womens and if omans don’t do all he say, he lay task on ’em they ain’t able to do.  My mother won’t do all he say.  When he say, ‘You go barn and stay till I come,’ she ain’t do dem.  So he have it in for my mother and lay task on ’em she ain’t able to do.  Then for punishment my mother is take to the barn and strapped down on thing called the Pony.  Hands spread like this and strapped to the floor and all two both feet been tie like this.  And she been give twenty five to fifty lashes till the blood flow.” [20]

It is not clear if this slave actually was born in Africa.  The United States Census for 1860 only reported foreign birthplaces for free Blacks.  The legal trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in 1808, fifty-two years before the beginning of the Civil War.  The overseer could have been imported illegally, or plantation-born slaves may have used the term “African” as a pejorative for individuals who did not conform to the mores of local slave communities.

Ben’s relative, Miss Georgie, remembered the overseer’s name was Paris, and that he betrayed his owners to the Yankees. [21]  The Wards had buried their valuables [22] and “he go and show Yankee all dem ting!” [23]

She added:

“Ole Miss git order to have him kill and don’t harm none!  She ain’t one to see him tru all that thousand head o’ nigger for get ‘em.” [24]

Chandler noted that she had been “told that the cruel negro overseer was shot down after Freedom–blood still on ground (according to Uncle Ben) because he led Yankees to where silver, etc., was buried.” [25]  She added this was one incident she heard “from other old livers.” [26]

However, Ben did not connect it with theft.  He still recalled the wrong done his parents.  His mother was a “natural nuss for white people” [28] and Ben’s father was the driver. [29]  Still, “MY OWN DADDY DERE couldn’t move!  Couldn’t venture dat ober-sheer!  Everybody can’t go to boss folks!  Some kin talk it to Miss Bess.  Everybody don’t see Miss Bess.  Kin see the blood of dat over-sheer fuss year atter Freedom; and he blood there today!” [30]

End Notes
1.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  416.

2.  Rogers.  418–419.

3.  Georgie, statement provided by Ben Horry.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:237.

4.  Ellen Godfrey, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:118–127 in Slave Narratives.  2:121.  Godfrey was a slave on Longwood, owned by Maham Ward.  John J. Woodward may be Maham’s brother Joshua Ward.  Their father, Joshua John Ward, owned many plantations when he died in 1853.  Union soldiers got their information from slaves.  The family is discussed in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

5.  Godfrey.  2:121.
6.  Godfrey.  2:122.
7.  Godfrey.  2:121.
8.  Godfrey.  2:121.
9.  Godfrey.  2:121.
10.  Godfrey.  2:121.

11.  Robert Francis Withers Allston is discussed in the post for 6 August 2023.

12.  Martha Pyatt was the third cousin of Robert.  He was the grandson of John Allston’s son William; she was the granddaughter of John’s son Josias. [30]

13.  Elizabeth.  Letter to Adele Petigru Alston, widow of Robert Francis Withers Allston, 17 March 1865.  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.  206.

14.  On the eve of the Civil War, Pyatt owned 213 slaves on three plantations.  Turkey Hill and Oatland were south of The Oaks, which was immediate south of Joshua Ward’s Brook Green.  Richmond Hill was farther north on the Waccamaw. [31]

15.  Elizabeth.  Quoted by Easterby.  207.

16.  Saratoga.  “Catherine Jones ‘Mamma’ Ward LaBruce.”  Find a Grave website, 5 September 2008.

17.  “Oak Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

18.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:219–236 in Slave Narratives.  2:234.  He is mentioned in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

19.  Ben Horry.  2:223.  Lillie Knox, who was present at the interview, worked for Chandler.  For more on Knox, see the post for 25 December 2022.

20.  Ben Horry.  2:228.

21.  Georgie.  2:236.  For more on their relationship, see the post for 10 September 2023.

22.  Ben Horry.  2:225.
23.  Georgie.  2:236.
24.  Georgie.  2:236.
25.  Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:225 in Slave Narratives.
26.  Chandler.  2:225.
27.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

28.  Ben Horry.  2:226.  There may have been a rivalry underlying this incident.  On plantations, overseers directed drivers who directed other slaves.  Paris may have been jealous of Horry’s father, or Horry’s father may not have been as submissive as Paris would have liked.

29.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

30.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  172.

31.  Charles Joyner.  Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  Map on page 17, which is “based on map compiled by Henry A. M. Smith, May, 1923, in SCHM, 14 (1913), ff. p. 74.”  SCHM is the South Carolina Historical Magazine.

Waccamaw Civil War

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The Civil War on South Carolina’s Waccamaw Neck accelerated the unification of plantation cultures into a local one that had been occurring whenever slaves from one locale met those from another. [1]  It began as soon as the state seceded from the Union on December 20, 1861. [2]

On December 30, South Carolina’s governor asked the area to erect “batteries to protect and defend the entrance to Winyah Bay and Santee River.” [3]  Welcome Bees told Genevieve Willcox Chandler that he had “gone to make a battery to Little River and to Charleston and to Florence.” [4]  The carpenter lived at Oatland, which was owned by Martha Allston Pyatt [5] and was located south of Brook Green on the Waccamaw River. [6]

At the same time, the governor was asking for military volunteers. [7]  The state’s Tenth Regiment elected Arthur Middleton Manigault its colonel. [8]  The company defending the Waccamaw Neck was commanded by Thomas West Daggett [9]  Below him was Captain Joshua Ward.  His younger brother, Mayham Ward. was first lieutenant and his youngest brother, Benjamin Huger Ward, was second lieutenant. [10]

Georgie remembered that her father, Define Horry, “have to go.  Have to go ditch and all and tend his subshun.” [11]  As mentioned in the post for 10 September 2023, Georgie appears to be the sister of Ben Horry, who lived on Joshua Ward’s Brook Green plantation.

Late in 1861, on November 11, Union forces took control of Port Royal, including Saint Helena Island in southern South Carolina.  Management of the abandoned plantations and slaves was given over to missionaries from the North, like Laura Matilda Towne and Harriet Ware. [12]

Once the United States navy had a Southern port, it began patrolling the coast.  In December, it stationed two vessels off the mouth of Winyah Bay. [13]  Manigault warned planters in January, 1862, they should prepare to move their slaves inland with provisions for a year. [14]

The need to act became acute on April 14 when Robert E. Lee ordered the movement of South Carolina’s regiments [15] to Richmond to defend the Confederacy. [16]  Manigault left Winyah Bay on March 28, leaving Ward’s local troops to defend the area [17]  As soon as the troops were gone, slaves began fleeing to Union ships. [18]

Willcox did not interview any slaves who fled, for the obvious reason they did not return after the war’s end.  Gabe Lance recalled: “Some my people run away from Sandy Islant.  Go Oaks sea-shore and Magnolia Beach and take row-boat and gone out and join with the Yankee.  Dem crowd never didn’t come back.” [19]

The Oaks [20] was the home of Hagar Brown’s parents.  At nearby Brook Green, Georgie said “Time o’ the war the colored people hear ‘bout Yankee.  Not a one eber understand to run way and go to Yankee boat from WE plantation.” [21]

On May 22, Union boats sailed ten miles up the Waccamaw River where they seized rice and accepted slaves. [22]  They learned more about the plantations and the loyalties of the owners from those who fled. [23]  On June 30, they sailed thirty miles up the river, [24] on July 21 destroyed salt works run by Joshua Ward, and on July 29 targeted the plantation of John D. Magill, who was reported to be an “unkind” master. [25]  By the end of the month, the Navy had 1,700 run-away slaves. [26]

After the first foray in May, 1862, the Union commander reported: “The rebels are just now very much frightened, and are leaving their plantations in every direction, driving their slaves before them to the pine woods.” [27]

Horry told Chandler that: “Two Yankee gun boats come up Waccamaw River!  Come by us Plantation.  One stop to Sandy Island, Montarena landing.  One gone Watsaw (Wachesaw landing).  Old Marsh Josh and all the white buckra gone to Marlboro county to hide from Yankee.  Gon up Waccamaw river and up Pee Dee river, to Marlboro county, in a boat by name Pilot Boy.  Take Colonel Ward and all the Cap’n to hide from gun boat til peace declare.” [28]

Once they had time, planters moved their slaves on flat boats down the Waccamaw to the bay, then up the Pee Dee river.  Sabe Rutledge, who lived on the Ark Plantation [29] north of Murrells Inlet, told Chandler: “Flat boat full up gone down Waccamaw.  Uncle Andrew Aunt the one got his eye shot out (by patrollers) took ’em to camp on North Island.  Never so much a button and pin in my life!  Small-pox in camp.  Had to leave ’em.” [30]

Horry recalled Ward had agents “take all the people from Brookgreen and Springfield—and carry dem to Marlboro” county. [31]  Similarly, Georgie recalled: “They put you in the flat and put you over there.  When they tink Yankee comin’ you take to Sandhole Crick for hide.”  She added: “De Ward didn’t lose nothin’.  They move out the plantation.  Col. Ward took ’em in a flat to Mulbro.” [32]

Ellen Godfrey, who lived on Ward’s Longwood plantation, said it was “Flat ’em up to Marlboro!  (All the slaves)  Ten days or two weeks going.  PeeDee bridge, stop!  Go in gentlemen barn!  Turn duh bridge.  Been dere a week.  Had to go and look the louse on we.  Three hundred head o’ people been dere.  Couldn’t pull we clothes off.  (On flat.)  Boat named Riprey.  Woman confine on boat.” [33]

Hagar Brown was born during the journey.  “Ma say they on flat going to islant (island), see cloud, pray God send rain!” [34]  Her cousin-in-law, Louisa Brown, gave more details: “My husband mother have baby on the flat going to Marion and he Auntie Cinda have a baby on that flat.” [35]

Chandler asked about the trip, but not about life in makeshift camps.  Godfrey did tell her: “Get to Marlboro where they gwine.  Put in wagon.  Carry to the street.  Major Drake Plantation.” [36]  She added, they had a “dirt camp to hide we from Yankee.  Have a Street Row of house.”  She indicated she continued to weave there. [37]

Marlboro County is on the border between South and North Carolina. [38]  Zachariah Alford Drake [39] had land near the Scots settlement of Blenheim where he raised corn, mules, sheep, and hogs. [40]

The movement of slaves, with their owners and overseers, into Marlboro County probably benefitted the landowners whose sons, like Zachariah Jordan Drake, [41] were among the thousand men sent to the front. [42]  Slaves owned by Joshua Ward and Thomas Pinckney Alston [43] had to have stayed there for more than two years, from the time of flight until Union troops liberated them on their march north at war’s end.

One guesses the displaced slaves learned more skills because they had to have had to grow their own food in a different environment.  One suspects slaves from different plantations owned by Ward mingled more, which would have contributed to the developing common culture.

While the slaves were sequestered in Marlboro County, Murrells Inlet was converted into a port by blockaders who were kept from Charleston and the mouth of the Winyah Bay.  They attracted more attention from the Union navy. [44]

By late November of 1864, Joshua Ward had resigned from the Confederate Army and moved to England.  Mayham was left in command of the local troops. [45]  He soon joined his wife and children in the North. [46]

End Notes
1.  This is discussed in the posts for 3 September 2023 and 10 September 2023.

2.  “South Carolina in the American Civil War.”  Wikipedia website; accessed 14 September 2023.

3.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County, South Carolina, Historical Society, 2002.  388.

4.  Welcome Bees, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  1–10 in Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  8.

5.  Coming Through.  1.

6.  Charles Joyner.  Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  Map on page 17.

7.  Rogers.  387, 389, 391.
8.  Rogers.  390–391.
9.  Rogers.  389.

10.  Rogers.  392.  Rogers assumed the “Wards provided the necessary equipment and provisions.”

11.  Georgie, statement provided by Ben Horry.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:236.

12.  Saint Helena Island is mentioned in the posts for 20 September 2018, 25 September 2018, and 27 September 2018.

13.  Rogers.  394.
14.  Rogers.  396.
15.  “Robert E. Lee, Day-by-Day.”  Lee Family Archive website.

16.  Benjamin F. Cooling.  “The Civil War; 1862.”  184–208 in American Military History.  Washington, DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 1989.  221.

17.  Rogers.  397.
18.  Rogers.  399.

19.  Gabe Lance, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  274–275 in Coming Through.  275.

20.  The Oaks is discussed in the posts for 23 July 2023 and 30 July 2023.
21.  Georgie.  2:237.
22.  Rogers.  400.
23.  Rogers.  398–399, 402.
24.  Rogers.  401.
25.  Rogers.  402.
26.  Rogers.  399.
27.  George A. Prentiss, quoted by Rogers.  402–403.

28.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chander.  2:219–236 in Slave Narratives.  2:227.

29.  Slave Narratives.  4:49.

30.  Sabe Rutledge, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  4:59–70 in Slave Narratives.  4:51.  North Island is in Winyah Bay. [47]

31.  Horry.  2:233–234.
32.  Georgie.  2:237.

33.  Ellen Godfrey, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chander.  2:118–127 in Slave Narratives.  2:119.

34.  Hagar Brown, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  In Slave Narratives, volume 1, no pages in on-line edition.

35.  Louisa Brown, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  In Slave Narratives, volume 1, no pages in on-line edition.

36.  Godfrey.  2:119.
37.  Godfrey.  2:120.

38.  “Marlboro County, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.

39.  KesterDV.  “MAJ Zachariah Alford Drake.”  Find a Grave website, 8 June 2013.  His wife, Sophia Alford, was the mother of Agenora Drake, who married James Alexander Peterkin. [48]  Their son, William George Peterkin, married Chandler’s daughter. [49]  Zachariah’s second wife was Susan A. Peterkin.

40.  J. A. W. Thomas.  A History of Marlboro County with Traditions and Sketches of Numerous Families.  Atlanta, Georgia: The Foote and Davies Company, 1897.  192.

41.  KesterDV.  “CPT Zachariah Jordan Drake.”  Find a Grave website, 9 June 2013.

42.  William Light Kinney, Jr.  “Marlboro County.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 8 June 2016; last updated 11 August 2022.

43.  Jose Allston, mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, lived on The Oaks plantation around 1854.  When he died in 1855, it reverted to his maternal grandfather, William Algernon Allston.  He died in 1860 and The Oaks fell to his half-brother, Thomas Pinckney Allston. [50]

44.  Rogers.  408, 410.
45.  Rogers.  414.
46.  Rogers.  426.
47.  Rogers.  Map on inside back cover.

48.  Herman Ruple Durr.  “Agenora Drake Peterkin.”  Find a Grave website, 12 July 2009.

49.  Herman Ruple Durr.  “William George Peterkin Sr.”  Find a Grave website, 12 July 2009.

50.  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.  12.

Waccamaw Slave Life

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The quality of life of slaves on the Waccamaw Neck depended, in part, on the prosperity of their masters.  They were more likely to be sold when their owners died or were in debt.  Indebtedness, in turn, was related to both personal character and international markets.  Men had problems when prices for rice fell.

According to Peter Coclanis, prices were relatively stable from the late 1810s through the early 1830s, with a severe dip in the middle 1830s. [1]  Planters had limited resources: the supply of available land was limited by the action of the tides.  Once individuals had converted all their swamps into rice fields, there was no more.  Likewise, once the trans-Atlantic slave trade closed, the only source for new labor was internal increases.

The one element planters could control was the quality of their seed.  As mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, Joshua John Ward planted 400 acres of his Carolina Gold in 1842, and all his fields in 1843.  The larger grains gave him an edge over his neighbors, until 1844 when he made the seed available to them.  From that time, the prices paid for South Carolina rice rose according to Coclanis.

Rather than invest his profits in a grander house or social life in Charleston, as many of his contemporaries did, Ward purchased their plantations.  By 1850, he owned six along the Waccamaw River: his original Brook Green; Prospect Hill [2] and Alderly [3] which he acquired from the family of Benjamin Huger; Orzanita which came from John Izard Middleton, Jr.; [4] Longwood [5] and Springfield. [6]

Little has been published about Ward, beyond his ownership of plantations and the fact his estate owned 1,130 slaves in 1860. [7]  It is not known how many slaves came with each plantation, or how many were on any one.  Ward owned other land that would have used captive labor.

What we do know about slave life on Ward’s land comes from Ben Horry, [8] whose father was a driver at Brook Green.  He was born in 1854, [9] a year after Ward died [10] and his son, Joshua Ward, inherited the plantation.

The Wards used the standard form of labor organization on their plantations with drivers answerable to overseers.  Joshua John was using an overseer at Brook Green even before he began buying plantations. [11]  One reason his son used overseers was he spent his summers on the French Broad in the mountains to avoid malaria. [12]

Horry had few good words for the overseers.  He described them as the “worst kind of ‘White trash’—respected less by negroes than by whites.” [13]

Apart from class, he attributed their behavior to economic insecurity.  “White oberseer a little different for one reason!  White obersheer want to hols hid job.  Nigger obersheer don’t care too much.  He know he going stay on plantation anyhow.” [14]  He added, “Them things different when my father been make the head man.” [15]

While slaves lived in quarters on particular plantations, Horry suggested the younger Ward moved slaves from place to place as needed.  Horry recalled: “Left Brookgreen go Watsaw; left Watsaw done Longwood.  Plant ALL DEM plantation.  I work there.  Cut rice there.” [16]  This did not disrupt families, and contributed to the culture that shared along the Waccamaw that was suggested in the post for 3 September 2023.

Horry told Genevieve Willcox Chandler about three tasks he remembered.  Depending on the season, he was expected to break up or mash half an acre in a day, dig ten compasses, or cut rice on half an acre. [17]  These all were jobs that required physical strength, rather than special knowledge.  He also recalled the way some drivers manipulated the task system.  “If one them driver want you [. . .] they give you task you CAN’T DO.  You getting this beating not for you task—for you flesh.” [18]

No one was spared.  Horry’s mother was a nurse.  He remembered seeing a long gash on her. [19]  “I stay there look wid DESE HERE (eyes)!  Want to know one thing—MY OWN DADDY DERE couldn’t move!  Couldn’t venture dat over-sheer!  (Colored overseer)  Everybody can’t go to boss folks! [. . .]  Some kin talk it to Miss Bess.  Everybody don’t see Miss Bess.” [20]

Some of Horry’s father’s status on Brook Green came from his musical talents.  He and his two brothers “were Colonel Ward’s musicanier.  Make music for his dater and the white folks to dance.  Great fiddlers, drummers.  Each one could play fiddle, beat drum, blow fife.  All three were treat with the same education.” [21]

It sometimes is difficult to place Horry’s memories into a chronological framework.  Joshua John was called the Colonel, and so Horry would not have known about the dance first hand.  Georgie, who appears to have been Horry’s sister, echoed what became family tradition.  She recalled her Daddy “wuz a kind of musicianer for the Ward fambly. [22]

What is clear from Horry’s recollections is that slave children not only were taught to work at a young age, but to perform.  Joshua and Bess Ward returned from their summer in the mountains with fabric for new clothes for the slaves.

“Sund’y come we have to go to the Big House for Marse Josh to see how the clothes fit.  And him and Miss Bess made us run races to see who run the fastest.  That the happiest time I members when I wuz a boy to Brookgreen.” [23]

End Notes
1.  Peter A. Coclanis.  “Distant Thunder: The Creation of a World Market in Rice and the Transformations It Wrought.”  The American Historical Review 98(4):1050–1078:October 1993.  Charts on pages 1073 and 1075.

2.  “Prospect Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

3.  “Alderly Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

4.  “Oryzantia Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

5.  “Longwood Plantation – Murrells Inlet – Horry County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

6.  Description of “Journal of Joshua John Ward plantations, 1831-1869.”  South Carolina Historical Society website.

7.  Tom Blake.  “Georgetown County, South Carolina: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census.”  Ancestry website.

8.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  219–236 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:226.

9.  Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories Collected by Genevieve W. Chandler, edited by Kincaid Mills, Genevieve C. Peterkin, and Aaron McCollough.  Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008.  88.

10.  Patti Yourko Burns.  “Col Joshua John Ward.”  Find a Grave website, 27 March 2009; last updated by Daniel L.

11.  See post for 6 August 2023 on the role of his overseer in selecting Carolina Gold rice.

12.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
13.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
14.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.
15.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:228.

16.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.  Wacheshaw and Longwood were enough north that the rice may have ripened a few days later than on plantations farther south along the river.

17.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.
18.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.
19.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:223.

20.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:224.  Joshua Ward was married to Elizabeth Ryan Mortimer. [24]

21.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:226.  The post for 6 August 2023 includes a description of a dance sponsored by Joshua John Ward where the elder Horry may have played.

22.  Georgie.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives.  2:237.  Provided by Ben Horry.
23.  Horry, interviewed by Chandler.  2:227.
24.  “Joshua Ward.”  Mormon’s Family Search website.

Assembling Slave Communities on the Waccamaw

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Land and slaves were treated as items that could be inherited or sold separately.  While the status of slaves as chattel was inherent in the slave trade, its legal basis was established in 1677 when a representative of the Royal African Company [1] sued a Barbados planter for unpaid debts.

The planter, Penny, argued slaves were equivalent to villeins in Medieval English law who were tied to land and could not be separated from it.  The court sided with the merchant, Thomas Butts. [2]

Thus, when Benjamin Allston made a will before his death in 1811, he gave his working plantation to his oldest son, Joseph Waties, [3] and Matanzas [4] to his other sons, Robert Francis Withers and William Washington.  His wife, Charlotte Anne, moved there with the two young boys to manage the land, and repay her husband’s debts in 1819. [5]

Separately, Benjamin allocated 18 slaves to particular heirs, and decreed the other 126 should be divided between his heirs, who included his wife, three sons, and three daughters. [6]  This left Joseph with a plantation with insufficient manpower, and forced all but 107 of the Waverly slaves to be moved to new locations.

Waverly’s land originally was part of a grant made by George I to Thomas Hepworth in 1711. [7]  It lay north of the Hobcow Barony claimed by one of the colony’s proprietor’s, John Carteret, [8] and south of the one given to a landgrave, Robert Daniel, the same year. [9]  Like the other land grants it was a reward for services.  Hepworth was a lawyer who had served as clerk to the House of Commons Assembly. [10]

Hepworth’s son sold an undeveloped tract on Wahocca Bluff to Percival Pawley in 1737.  He was the son of the Percival mentioned in the post for 8 January 2023 who bought the land from the owner of Daniel’s claim, Thomas Smith.  He, in turn, sold it to his brother George in 1743. [11]  George was the one developed the Wachoker Plantation. [12]  At that time, most of the slaves were coming from modern Sénégal-Gambia and Sierra Leone. [13]

George and Mary’s son William died in 1776, and the land was divided into two plantations for his daughters.  The one who inherited Washington’s Valley was married to Josias William Allston, [14] the grandson of the Josias Alston who moved to North Carolina. [15]  All that’s known bout about the daughter who received Montpelier is that she married her sister’s brother. [16]

Nothing is known about the condition of the plantations or their slaves after the British ravaged so much during the American Revolution.  William’s son-in-law could have done little to rebuild Montpelier, since the slave trade was closed until 1801.  Then, slaves began coming from Kongo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast of modern Ghana. [17]

Benjamin Allston bought Montpelier in 1807 and renamed it Waverly. [18]  That was the year the slave trade closed again, and any new slaves either were purchased from neighbors or were offspring of existing slave women.

His other plantation, Matanzas, was on the Peedee river and apparently had been purchased as speculation. [19]  It not only was undeveloped but mortgaged. [20]  His widow hired some of her sons’ slaves out to others. [21]  This exposed them to slaves from other plantations.

When William died in 1823, Robert and Joseph each inherited half his share of Matanzas. [22]  No mention is made of the fate of his slaves.  Some may have been taken back to Waverly by Joseph.

Robert’s mother died in 1824, and he received seven of her slaves. [23]  The disposition of the others is not mentioned.  If any went to her daughters, then they may have rejoined ones moved from Waverly in 1819.

To begin developing Matanzas as a plantation, Robert purchased nine more slaves from his mother’s estate who joined the 33 slaves living on the Peedee land.  Then, in 1828, he bought 34 individuals from the estate of Robert Francis Withers. [24]  This doubled the population of his slave quarters with people who may have had different traditions.  Whether the group adapted or changed the community ethos depended on whether it contained strong or charismatic individuals.

In 1836, Robert sold eight of the Waverly slaves to Joseph’s wife, Mary Allan. [25]  They returned to Matanzas, when she could not pay him.  This probably was related to Joseph’s death in 1837.  He was in debt, and Robert sold fifty-one slaves who left Waverly for other plantations. [26]

The sales of slaves when owners died was not unusual in rice country when men died young.  Benjamin was 43, William was 19, and Joseph 36. [27]

The separation of slaves and land, and the early deaths of plantation owners created a situation that was different from that found in Georgia where Pierce Butler’s slaves were kept on his island plantation for several generations, and created their own Gullah dialect. [28]  Likewise, William Francis Allen found slaves on different plantations on Saint Helena Island during the Civil War each had distinctive ways of speaking. [29]

Along the Waccamaw Neck a more generalized culture could develop.  When Robert started planting on Matanzas, he began with slaves who shared the culture of the slave quarters on Waverly.  When he purchased slaves elsewhere, those men and women were forced to adapt to the existing mores of the Peedee land.

Likewise, when he sold Joseph’s slaves, the Waverly culture was both dispersed with each individual, and altered by mingling on new plantations.  However, those buyers were local men.  Robert made clear, he wasn’t trying to get the highest prices, but was trying to keep “rice” slaves in the area, so people who grew rice did not have to pay higher “cotton” slave prices. [30]  As a consequence, he did most of his trades within his area. [31]

This created an environment where the local patterns of speech became standardized within the region.  Likewise, religious practices would have undergone the same sort of sifting and selection to create something with unique traits along the Waccamaw river.  When slaves returned to Waverly, even for short periods, they brought with them slightly modified variants of the home plantation’s culture.

The trend toward homogenization was abetted by overseers, who often spent little time at any one plantation, but moved from one to another, taking their expectations of slave behavior with them.  Harold Easterby found the names of seven men who served at Waverly, [32] and eight at Manzanos. [33]  Some were dismissed for their cruelty; [34] at least one was described as a bad man at another plantation where he worked. [35]

Like many planters, Robert prided himself for not selling any of his slaves, until the Civil War.  However, Easterby noted he did try to sell some to his sister-in-law and later sold four to the miller at Waverly in the 1850s. [36]  Robert overlooked the disruptions he caused by buying slaves from other plantations.

End Notes
1.  The Royal African Company was controlled by Charles I through his brother James.  It had been established as the Royal Adventurers into Africa in 1660, [37] and was reorganized in 1672 as the RAC.  Five of the owners also were proprietors of South Carolina: John Berkeley, George Carteret, John Colleton, Anthony Ashley Cooper, and William Craven. [38]  The company is mentioned in post for 10 January 2019.

2.  Holly Brewer.  “‘Twelve Judges in Scarlet’ The Seventeenth-Century Contest over a Common Law of Slavery for England and its Empire.”  Penn Legal History Consortium, 3 October 2012.  Republished on Social Science Research Network website.  Only last names appeared in legal records.  Brewer was able to identify Butts, but there were several possible Penny planters on Barbados.

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.  19.

4.  I am using names used at the time; Matanzas was renamed Chicora Woods in 1853. [39]

5.  Easterby.  19–20.  As mentioned in the post for 6 August 2023, Charlotte Ann Allston was an Allston cousin before she married an Allston.

6.  Easterby.  28.

7.  Susan A. Scheno.  “Ricefields: Our Historical Legacy.”  Ricefields website.  7.  None of the individuals who could have mentioned “Come by Here” to Genevieve Willcox Chandler was associated with Waverly.  I am using it as an example of a Waccamaw Neck plantation because its slave population is well documented.

8.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “The Baronies of South Carolina.  Part X. Hobcow Barony.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 14(2):61-80:April 1913.  62.

9.  Daniel’s purchase and his quick resale to another landgrave, Thomas Smith, are discussed in the post for 8 January 2023.

10.  Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey.  Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977.  2:313–314.

11.  Scheno.  7.

12.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  153.

13.  This information is from the post for 10 March 2019.
14.  Scheno.  8.

15.  Josias Alston was the son of John Allston and grandson of the immigrant John Allston. [40]  He inherited Turkey Hill, which he sold in 1772 to his cousin Joseph Allston, the son of his father’s brother William. [41]  Rowena Nyland said that “the reason Josias sold his inheritance is unknown.  He relocated in the Little River area on the North/South Carolina border on lands which his will suggests he obtained from Joseph Allston.” [42]

16.  Scheno.  8.
17.  This information is from the post for 10 March 2019.
18.  Scheno.  8.
19.  Easterby.  19–20.
20.  Easterby.  20.
21.  Easterby.  19.
22.  Easterby.  28.
23.  Easterby.  28.
24.  Easterby.  28.

25.  Easterby.  29.  She was the sister of Robert M. Allan, a Charleston cotton factor. [43]

26.  Easterby.  29.

27.  Coggeshall.  172–173.  Ages are calculated from birth and death dates and may be off by a year.

28.  Lillian F. Sinclair.  “My Recollections of Darien in the Late Seventies and Eighties.  66–68 in Buddy Sullivan.  High Water on the Bar.  Darien, Georgia: Darien Development Authority, 2009.  67.  “These Butler Negroes were a race apart.  The never, until years after the war, mingled with other Negroes.  They were not allowed to do so by Pierce Butler and, after his death, kept to their tradition.  They had a peculiar lingo which one had to be familiar with before one could understand it.”

29.  William Francis Allen.  “Introduction.”  The Slave Songs of the United States.  Edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867.  xxiv.  “The different plantations have their own peculiarities, and adepts profess to be able to determine by speech of a negro what part of the island he belongs to, or even, in some cases, his plantation.  I can myself vouch for the marked peculiarities of one plantation from which I had scholars, and which are hardly more than a mile distant from another which lacked these peculiarities.”

30.  Easterby.  30.

31.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  329.

32.  Easterby.  23–26.  Mr. Sessions, John Oliver, Gabriel L. Ellis, George C. Gotea, Benjamin A. Tillman, G. Savage Smith, and Thomas Hemingway.

33.  Easterby.  23–26.  Neighbor, James Hull, Daniel P. Avant, Thomas Sanders, Gabriel L. Ellis, J. A. Hemingway, William B. Millican, and Jessse Belflowers.

34.  Easterby.  24–25.  Avant and Ellis.
35.  Easterby.  25.  Ellis.
36.  Easterby.  29.
37.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  198.
38.  Thomas.  201.
39.  Easterby.  19–20.
40.  Coggeshall.  172.

41.  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.  30–31.

42.  Nyland.  32.
43.  Easterby.  66.

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.

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.

The Oaks - The First Generations

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The northern part of the Waccamaw Neck owned by Percival Pawley was deeded in the 1730s to members of the Allston, LaBruce, and Pawley families who had met when their fathers were immigrants in Charleston.  They were the ones who broke the large grants into ones suitable for plantations.

As mentioned in the post for 16 July 2023, William, the son of the immigrant, bought 1,129 acres from George Pawley in 1730.  In his 1743 will, he referred to it as “the tract of land I now live on with my dwelling house.” [1]  He made no mention of agriculture, but said he had “twelve hefers and twelve steers of the stock on Sandy Island.”  [2]

The inference is that he grew food on his land and raised cattle on the island for income.  This is reinforced by the fact that he held at least 5,322 acres and six lots in Georgetown, but only 35 slaves.  It seems he invested his profits in land, because he had no need for many slaves.

William had married when he was 23 years old. [3]  At the time he wrote his will 23 years later he had six living daughters, three sons, one granddaughter and a pregnant wife. [4]  Only the oldest daughter was married; his oldest son and next daughter had reached the age of maturity as defined in the his will. [5]

The boys were given land that could be developed, while the five unmarried girls were asked to split two tracts among themselves.  His son William, who was 20 years old, received 920 acres that his father had purchased elsewhere on the Waccamaw Neck.  He split the original Pawley land between his two other sons, Joseph, age 11, and John, age 4.  Joseph received the part where Hagar Brown lived after the Civil War. [6]

William appointed four men to oversee his estate: his son William; his brother John; the husband of his sister Elizabeth, Joseph LaBruce, and the husband of LaBruce’s sister, William Poole. [7]  John [8] and Poole died in 1750, [9] which left the management of Joseph’s land to his brother William and uncle Joseph.

Joseph took ownership in 1756,  one year after he married. [10]  He soon built a new house since his mother and younger siblings would still have been in his William’s home.  In 1769, he bought land downriver, closer to Georgetown from John Huger.  Huger just had purchased the 775 acres from the estate of Robert Pawley, [11] who was married to Joseph’s sister Frances, then 30 years old. [12]  Joseph may have let her continue living there.

Later that year, Joseph bought 280 acres to the north.  At the time, his oldest son Billy was fifteen years old. [13]  His younger one, Thomas, was five. [14]

Three years later, in 1770, he bought George Smith’s Castaway Plantation to the south of Robert Pawley’s land.  It had 300 acres. [15]  No mention is made of the crops at this time, although indigo had been the primary one along the lower Waccamaw until the 1760s. [16]  The men who had been active growers included Thomas Lynch and Archibald Johnston. [17]  Lynch was married to Joseph’s sister Elizabeth; Johnston was the husband of Joseph’s sister Esther. [18]

Joseph bought more land in 1772.  Again, the investment combined personal interests with those of the extended family.  This time the land was the Turkey Hill plantation directly south of The Oaks.  The land originally had been claimed by his father’s brother Joseph who willed it to his son Josias. [19]  Rowena Nyland said: “The reason Josias sold his inheritance is unknown.  He relocated in the Little River area on the North/South Carolina border on lands which his will suggests he obtained from Joseph Allston.” [20]

At the same time, Joseph probably acquired the property south of Turkey Hill which became known as Oatland.  Nyland said the documentary trail ended when Joseph’s Uncle Joseph willed the land to his son, Samuel. [21]  Nothing is known about him, and Nyland surmises Oatland may have come into the hands of his brother Josias. [22]

By 1773, he owned five plantations each with a hundred slaves.  A northern visitor declared “his plantation, negores, gardens, etc., are in the best order of any I have seen!” [23]  Unfortunately, Josiah Quincy was a city boy who only mentioned Joseph grew grapes. [24]

James Michie surveyed the site in 1993, and found the evidence that slave cabins were built on “lower elevations around the swamp.” [25]  This implies Joseph was growing rice with swamp irrigation. [26]  Swamps apparently had some structural limitations that led planters to develop separate plantations rather than amalgamate their land holdings.  The fact Joseph claimed to have 100 slaves per plantation suggests he also view of an ideal ratio of slaves to land. [27]

Joseph died in 1784 at age 51. [28]   He left northern part of Robert Pawley’s land to Billy, who soon after bought the Clifton plantation to the north.  He left the southern part [29] and Turkey Hill to his other son, [30] with the priviso that his widow, the former Charlotte Rothmahler, [31] live there until a home could be built for her at Oatland. [32]

He left The Oaks to his son Billy’s son Joseph, then age five. [33]   Michie did not indicate who supervised the plantation in the interregnum when rice growing was revolutionized.  The post for 16 January 2019 mentioned the popularization of tidal irrigation by Nathaniel Heyward in 1787.

The same year, 1787, Jonathan Lucas built the first workable rice mill to speed the preparation of the grain for market.  His first customers included John Bowman and Billy Alston. [34]  Alston, of course, was Joseph’s father, while Bowman’s wife was the granddaughter of Josephs’s great-aunt Elizabeth. [35]
    
As Michie discovered, the plantation was reconfigured for tidal irrigation and the slave quarters were moved [36]  The mill at The Oaks appears on a 1825 map. [27]  Little remains: the iron parts were removed during World War II, and the bricks from the chimney were reused for a beachfront house. [28]  For some period, rice may have been taken down the Waccamaw to Billy’s mill.

End Notes
1.  William Allston Senr.  Will, 29 January 1743.  Transcribed on “Yauhannah Wills.”  RootsWeb website.

2.  Allston.  The map in the post for 16 July 2023 shows the location of Sandy Island.

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

4.  Joseph A. Groves.  The Alstons and Allstons of North and South Carolina.  Atlanta, Georgia: The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, 1901.  68.  Thomas was born in 1744 and died unmarried.

5.  The age of maturity for boys was 18, the age for girls was 17 or when they married.

6.  Allston.  Hagar Brown is mentioned in the posts for 25 December 2022 and 17 July 2023.

7.  Allston.  William Poole was a Georgetown merchant [39] who married Hannah [40] DeMarboeuf. [41]

8.  Coggeshall.  172.

9.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  60.

10.  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.

11.  “Prospect Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

12.  Coggeshall.  173.  Robert was the son of the Percival Pawley who, according to the post for 17 July 2023, moved to North Carolina.

13.  Joseph’s son William was known as King Billy of Clifton.  He changed the spelling of his last name to Alston. [42]  I’m using the nickname to make it easier to keep track of members of a family that repeated given names in each generation.


14.  Given the large gap in ages, it’s possible there had been others who were girls who did not inherit or children who did not survive.

15.  “Prospect Hill.”
16.   Rogers.  53.
17.   Rogers.  88.
18.  Coggeshall.  173.

19.  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.  30.

20.  Nyland.  32.
21.  Nyland.  31.
22.  Nyland.  34.

23.  “Journal of John Quincy, Junior, 1773.”  Massachusetts Historical Society.  Proceedings 44:453:1915–1916.  Quoted by Rogers.  99.

24.  Quincy was involved with the Sons of Liberty in Boston in the period leading to the American Revolution.  He went south in 1773 to encourage support for the coming revolution. [43]

25.  Michie.  28.
26.  Swamp grown rice is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

27.  The concept of an optimal size developed in Barbados and is discussed in the post for 23 January 2022.

28.  Coggeshall.  173.
29.  “Prospect Hill.”
30.  Nyland.  32.
31.  Coggeshall.  173.
32.  Nyland.  34.
33.  Michie.  11.

34.  Lucas, James Jonathan.  Letter dated 20 April 1904 reprinted by The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, volume 32, 1904.

35.  Elizabeth Allston married Thomas Lynch.  She was the granddaughter of the immigrant Allston, sister of his sons William and Joseph, and great-aunt of Joseph’s grandson Joseph.  Their granddaughter Sabina Lynch married Bowman.

36.  Michie.  30.

37.  Lesley M. Drucker.  A Cultural Resources Inventory of Selected Areas of The Oaks and Laurel Hill Plantations, Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: Carolina Archaeological Services, 1980.  70.  Her source was Robert Mills.  Atlas Of The State Of South Carolina.  Baltimore, Maryland: F. Lucas Jr, 1825.  Reprinted by Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr. as Mill’s Atlas: Atlas of the State of South Carolina, 1825.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1980.  Georgetown District.  Cited by Michie.  48.

38.  Michie.  48.
39.  Rogers.  60.

40.  Sonya Suzann Beckenbach Manderson.  “James Coachman.”  Page of Beckenbach Simons genealogy on RootsWeb website.

41.  “Joseph de Marbeuf La Bruce, 1705 - 1751.”  My Heritage website.
42.  Coggeshall.  174.
43.  “ Josiah Quincy II.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 14 July 2023.

Waccamaw Claims

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.”

Roads did not exist in 1700, and rivers were the only means of transportation.  The value of land increased the shorter the distance to a port.  The Waccamaw was one of three rivers that emptied into Winyah Bay, and the only one that did not provide access to the interior. [3]  Land near the bay along all the rivers was the first to be claimed.

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.

Waccamaw Neck - Thomas Smith, Junior

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
The first man to treat the Waccamaw Neck as a land speculator was Thomas Smith, son of the governor discussed in the post for 11 September 2022.  The younger Thomas Smith had been born in England before his father emigrated. [1]

The older Smith married the widow of Johan van Aerssen in 1688, and became a wealthy man when she died in 1689.  The younger Smith wed Anna Cornelia VanMyddagh the next year [2] when he was twenty-one years old.  She had been part of the group recruited by Aerssen. [3]

When the elder Smith died in 1694, his son inherited Medway plantation, but the landgrave title went to Joseph Blake.  David Wallace believed Smith elevated Blake, so the man could follow him as governor. [4]  Blake served until the Quaker proprietor, John Archdale, arrived in 1695. [5]

Archdale retained Blake as his deputy, and Blake resumed office in 1696 when Archdale returned to England. [6]  This is the first time Smith was elected to the Commons House of Assembly. [7]

Two years later, the proprietors rewarded Blake with the share in the colony that they had taken from John Berkeley, because he had not paid his quota. [8]  This is probably when Blake restored the landgrave title to the twenty-nine-year-old Smith, for this is when he begins to appear more often in the public record.  That year, he and his younger brother George, were granted wharves in Charles Town adjacent to the lot George [9] had inherited from their father. [10]

When Blake died in 1700, the English Civil War was reignited.  The differences in religion had subsided, while the political divisions between those who supported the proprietors and those who did not continued.  Smith Senior and Blake were part of the first group.  James Moore represented the second faction.  Moore replaced Blake as governor.  His primary interest was making money. [11]

Smith sold his ancestral plantation in 1701 to Edward Hyrne.  It then contained 2,550 acres, of which 200 had been cleared and fenced.  It showed signs of neglect because the fences needed repairing.  Medway apparently still produced dried meat, for Hyrne said he received “150 Head of Cattle, 4 horses,” and one young native slave. [12]

At some time, Smith bought the plantation amassed by John Yeaman’s widow from Moore, [13] who had married Yeaman’s step-daughter.  There’s no evidence it had begun growing rice, or was producing any other crop.  It’s primary attraction may have been its proximity to Charles Town.

Moore’s elected position as governor was supported by one proprietor, John Grenville, who died in 1701.  His son, also John, was described by Alexander Hewat “as an inflexible bigot for the High-church.” [14]  Anglicans in England had become disillusioned with William I because he tolerated Scotland’s Presbyterians. [15]  They wanted to eliminate an exemption in the Corporation Act of 1661 that allowed dissenters to hold office if they took communion in the Church of England once a year. [16]

They realized the ascension of Anne to the throne in 1702 was their last opportunity before the Hanovers arrived.  Charles II had removed Anne from her parents’ Roman Catholic home and had her raised by Anglicans.  She supported the Occasional Conformity in 1703, [17] which would bar Dissenters from holding office.  It passed the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords. [18]

That same year, 1703, the proprietors replaced Moore with Nathaniel Johnson.  Eugene Sirmans concluded that “from the time he took office he aimed at the establishment of the Church of England.” [19]  He immediately dissolved the Assembly.  Anglicans in Berkeley County dominated the election. [20]  Smith was not part of the Assembly again until 1706. [21]

In 1704, Johnson called an emergency meeting of the recessed Assembly, and before the Dissenters could arrive, the Anglicans present passed the Exclusion Act that disenfranchised them.  Then Johnson pushed though another law that established the Church of England, and proposed dividing the colony into seven parishes. [22]

Smith led protests against Johnson’s action, and was arrested. [23]  Many Dissenters considered leaving South Carolina for Pennsylvania, [24] and others agreed to send Joseph Boone to England to confront the proprietors.  Grenville had seniority, and overrode Archdale and Anthony Ashley Cooper’s grandson, Maurice Ashley. [25]

Boone then talked to the House of Lords, who agreed Johnson’s act was antithetical to current laws, and recommend Anne intervene, which she did. [26]  Johnson responded with a modified Establishment Act. [27]

Smith returned to the Assembly in 1707, where he was elected speaker. [28]  He made his brother, George, the colony’s treasurer. [29]  Grenville died in December, [30] and the more temperate William Craven became the senior Proprietor. [31]

Johnson retaliated by arresting the leader of the Dissenters, Thomas Nairne, and abolishing the Assembly again.  He forced through the division of the colony into parishes, with most of them in the Anglican Berkeley County. [32]

The reorganized proprietors removed Johnson, and appointed Edward Tynte as governor. [33]  He died in 1710, and was replaced by Robert Gibbes who secured his election with a bribe.  [34]  The South Carolina government ceased to function. [35]

In this unsettled period,  Robert Daniel claimed 24,000 acres as landgrave along the Waccamaw river on 18 June 1711. [36]  He had been a supporter of Moore [37]  and Johnson. [38]  Even so, he sold the entire claim to Smith the next day. [39]  Smith then sold 1,490 acres to Percival Pawley on 10 September 1711. [40]

One may wonder why men who opposed each other over the exclusion of non-Anglicans from power would work together.  The answer may be that religion was a proxy for other battles.  Sirmans wrote that around 1700, South Carolina had 2,000 dissenters, 1,800 Anglicans, and 400 Huguenots. [41]  While Dissenters cared about their faith, many of the Anglicans were indifferent and treated Sunday as a “day of rest and Pleasure.” [42]  Their opposition was to having religious observation forced on them, and later paying taxes to support the church. [43]

Nairne was a dissident Anglican [44] whose primary interest was regulating the slave trade. [45]  Moore, Daniel, and Smith wanted nothing to inhibit their pursuit of profit.

Soon after Smith purchased the swampy frontier lands on the Waccamaw, the local Indians sent men with John Barnwell against the Tuscaroras in North Carolina in December 1911.  They returned with captives to sell. [46]

Meanwhile in Britain, Parliament finally passed the Occasional Conformity Act in December 1711.  This kept Dissenters from holding public office in England, but allowed Presbyterians to serve in Scotland as required by the 1707 Act of Union. [47]  The Proprietors sent the brother of William Craven over as governor, [48] and Nairne persuaded his followers to accept what could not be changed. [49]

Smith remained unreconciled with the colony.  His wife had died in 1710, [50] and, in 1713, he married Hyne’s daughter. [51]  The couple moved to his new land grant on the Cape Fear river just north of the border of South Carolina with North Carolina [52] where he defied the colony’s rules on trade with Native Americans. [53]

End Notes
1.  John Britton Boney, David Parker, and Michelle Brooks.  “Thomas Smith II (abt. 1664 - 1738).”  Wiki Tree website, 7 February 2010, last updated 11 September 2022.

2.  Boney, Smith.

3.  John Britton Boney, Mary Carpenter, and Michelle Brooks.  “Anna Cornelia (VanMyddagh) Smith (abt. 1670 - abt. 1710).”  Wiki Tree website, 21 March 2011, last updated 4 October 2022.  Nothing more has been uncovered about her.  Andrew Johnson and Carolyn Arena discovered Aerssen was not a religious refugee, but from a well connected family that planned to invest in Suriname. [54]  Aert Theuniszen Middagh of Utrecht was a founder of Brooklyn in New Amsterdam in 1660. [55]

4.  David Duncan Wallace.  The History of South Carolina.  New York: American Historical Society, 1934.  1:129.

5.  Archdale had purchased William Berkeley’s share from his widow. [56]

6.  “Governors of South Carolina 1670–2021.”  South Carolina State House website; original work by A. S. Salley, Jr.

7.  Boney, Smith.

8.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  269.

9.  George had gone to Scotland to study medicine, but had returned.  He was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 1668. [57]

10.  A. S. Salley, Jr.  “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina.”  Bulletin of the Historical Commission of South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: State Company, 1919.  Bulletin 6.  22.

11.  M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  82.

12.  Edward Hyrne.  Letter to his brother-in-law, 1701.  Quoted by Michael J. Heitzler.  Goose Creek.  Volume One: Planters, Politicians and Patriots.  Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2005.  239.  His source was Virginia Christian Beach.  Medway.  Charleston, South Carolina: Wyrick and Company, 1996.  10.

13.  Heitzler. 160.  While a great-granddaughter believed the transfer occurred around 1693, [58] her knowledge of this period was much embroidered by tradition.  Henry Smith found a possible document that suggests Smith owned the land by 1704, and left it that the transfer occurred sometime between 1693 and 1704. [60]

14.  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 3, section “Lord Granville palatine.”  The senior Grenville was made Earl of Bath by Charles II after the earl during the English Civil War died without leaving an heir. [62]  The younger was Lord Granville.

15.  Hewatt.  Volume 1, chapter 3, section “Lord Granville palatine.”
16.  “Occasional Conformity Act 1711.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 25 October 2022.
17.  “Anne, Queen of Great Britain.”  Wikipedia website.
18.  Wikipedia, Conformity.
19.  Sirmans.  87.
20.  Sirmans.  87.
21.  Boney, Smith.
22.  Sirmans.  87.
23.  Wallace.  182.

24.  Hewatt.  Volume 1, chapter 3, section “The petition of Dissenters to the House of Lords.”

25.  Sirmans.  88.  Anthony Ashley Cooper included religious toleration in the constitution for the colony in wrote with his secretary, John Locke. [63]

26.  Sirmans.  88-89.
27.  Sirmans.  89.
28.  Wallace.  186.

29.  Ryan Matthew McRae.  “Dr. George Smith.”  Geni website, last updated 30 April 2022.

30.  J. D. Lewis.  “John Grenville, 1st Baron Granville of Potheridge.”  Carolana website, accessed 29 October 2022.

31.  Sirmans.  93.
32.  Sirmans.  93.
33.  Sirmans.  95.
34.  Wallace.  188.
35.  Sirmans.  96.

36.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “The Baronies of South Carolina: VI. Winyah Barony.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 13(1):3-20:January 1912.  5.

37.  Smith, Winyah.  4.
38.  Smith, Winyah.  5.
39.  Smith, Winyah.  5.

40.  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.  26.

41.  Sirmans.  77.

42.  Missionary for the Anglican’s Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.  Quoted by Sirmans.  77.

43.  Sirmans.  93.
44.  Sirmans.  81.
45.  Sirmans.  89-90.

46.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  10.

47.  Wikipedia, Conformity.
48.  Governors.
49.  Sirmans.  93.
50.  Boney, VanMyddagh.

51.  Mabel L. Webber.  “Hyrne Family.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 22(4):101-118:October 1921.  105.

52.  J. D. Lewis.  “A History of Brunswick Town, North Carolina.”  Carolana website, accessed 31 October 2022.  All of Hyrne’s children were born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, according to entries posted to the Wiki Tree website.

53.  Alan Gallay.  The Indian Slave Trade.  New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2002.  322-323.

54.  D. Andrew Johnson and Carolyn Arena.  “Building Dutch Suriname in English Carolina: Aristocratic Networks, Native Enslavement, and Plantation Provisioning in the Seventeenth-Century Americas.”  Journal of Southern History 86:(1):37-74:February 2020.

55.  “Aert Theuniszen Middagh.”  Geni website, 26 April 2022.
56.  McCrady.  270.
57.  McRae.

58.  Elizabeth Anne Poyas as the Octogenarian Lady, of Charleston, S. C.  The Olden Time of Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: Courtenay and Company, 1855.  19.  She was descended from Smith’s son Henry by his second wife, and was buried at Yeaman’s Hall. [59]

59.  Find a Grave entries for Elizabeth Ann Scott Poyas, her mother Harriett Smith Scott, her grandfather Henry Smith, and her great-grandfather.
 
60.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “Charleston and Charleston Neck: The Original Grantees and the Settlements along the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 19:(1):3-76:January 1918.  69-70.  On the Smith side, he is descended from Robert Smith, who migrated as an Anglican minister in 1757. [61]

61.  Find a Grave entries for “Henry Augustus Middleton Smith” < “John Julius Pringle Smith” < “Robert Smith Jr.” < “Rev Robert Smith.”

62.  “Earl of Bath.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 29 October 2022.
63.  Sirmans.  14.