THE DRAYTONS OF DRAYTON HALL LAND, KINSHIP TIES, AND THE BRITISH ATLANTIC WORLD (2024)

This paper examines the Drayton family, starting with their immigration to Barbados from Great Britain in the late seventeenth century. After only two years, Thomas Drayton Jr. left Barbados for Carolina for better opportunities, which included land grants. Initially, he was only granted 150 acres, but he became friends on his voyage to Carolina with Stephen Fox, who was traveling with his wife Phillis and daughter Ann. He also brought some enslaved individuals and received a much larger land grant than Drayton. Eventually, Thomas Drayton Jr. established kinship ties with the Foxes when he married Ann. He began to acquire more land and enslaved laborers, significantly improving his position in Charlestown society. In addition to cultivating rice, Drayton and Stephen Fox began raising cattle and swine for exportation to Barbados and naval stores to Great Britain. Thomas Drayton Jr. and Ann Drayton had four children. The youngest child, John, and the most successful, became a wealthy rice planter and amassed large tracts of land. In 1747, he constructed Drayton Hall, one of the finest examples of Georgian-Palladian architecture in British North America. He became a member of the Charleston Plantocracy and established kinship ties with the Middleton family and other wealthy members. This work analyzes the importance of rice as Carolina's main staple crop and the importation of enslaved Africans to work large rice plantations and herd cattle. The Revolutionary War did not destroy Drayton Hall, but the British ravaged the landscape in an attempt to flee from the British in 1779, along with his fourth wife, seventeen-year-old Rebecca Perry, and their young children. John Drayton died at Strawberry Ferry in a ramshackle inn. Eventually, his second son, Dr. Charles Drayton, acquired Drayton Hall and redesigned the landscape into a Ferme Ornee or Ornamental Farm. As a result of John Drayton's four marriages, his children and grandchildren became engaged in several lawsuits. While a successful rice planter, Dr. Drayton lost much of his wealth and property. Continuing the tradition of kinship ties, he married Hester Middleton of Middleton Place and had four children together. She died in childbirth while delivering their fourth child, Charles Drayton II. Dr. Drayton never remarried despite his diminished wealth, and it is conjectured he may have had an enslaved mistress. His Father, John, at one point in his life, may have also had an enslaved mistress, and there is evidence his nephew John Drayton fathered two male slaves with his mistress. Henry Grimke of Magnolia Plantation, a cousin of Charles, had an enslaved mistress named Nancy Weston, who he did not attempt to hide their relationship or their children. Dr. Drayton died in 1820, and his son Charles Drayton II was left with very little wealth and only Drayton Hall and the Drayton's enslaved people. He was forced to sell some enslaved laborers, and attempts to grow rice and other staples on a plantation in coastal Georgia were a failure. Drayton Hall remained in the family but was used mainly to increase provisions and livestock to feed the Drayton family and their remaining enslaved individuals. Drayton Hall survived the Civil War, and the Draytons began mining phosphate on much of the land, which proved profitable. The Draytons regained their wealth and built a house on the Battery in Charleston. Charlotta Drayton was the last Drayton in the mid-twentieth century to live occasionally at Drayton Hall. When she died, the Drayton family could not maintain Drayton Hall, and it was sold to the National Trust for Historic Preservation with the stipulation that it was never to be touched. It was to remain precisely as John Drayton left it when he died in 1779.

Within the House of Bondage: Constructing and Negotiating the Plantation Landscape in the British Atlantic World, 1670-1820

2017

An Amazing Aptness for Learning Trades:" The Role of Enslaved Craftsmen in Charleston Cabinetmaking Shops

2017

East Branch of the Cooper River, 1780-1820: Panopticism and Mobility

2018

The Drayton's of Drayton Hall, A Literature Review

In this section of the study, a critical review of the plethora of literature available on South Carolina and Barbados and specifically exploring the issues of rice, sugar, slaves and land is presented. This paper is divided into various subsections depending on the chronological order of events in Barbados, South Carolina and Charlestown. The initial section explores the history of Barbados and sugar farming in this Island; sugar was the staple crop in Barbadian history of agriculture. The focus of this part of the literature review is primarily on Barbados between 1627 and 1685. The next section of the paper investigates the introduction of rice in South Carolina and settlement in this region from 1663 and 1720. In this section, arguments in the current literature on who introduced rice in South Carolina, the introduction of tidal irrigation for rice farming and the use of slaves as the primary source of labor in the cultivation of rice will also be reviewed. The third part of this review will focus on the Planter Widows and Agency in South Carolina in the 18th Century. The English Legal Law and Feme Coverture. According to the previously mentioned, when a woman married, all her possessions (property and money) went into her husband’s name. On the other hand, women who remained widows gained consummate control over her property and money. Literature by Phillip D. Curtin, Phillip Morgan, David Richardson, E. G. Peter Wood, Daniel Littlefield, Judith Carney and David Eltis will be used in developing the above sections of the review. The fourth section of the literature review will explore existing literature on South Carolina’s history from 1740 to 1784. This period witnessed the growth of Plantocracy and the change of rice cultivation from Inland to Tidal cultivation. Max Edelson’s “Plantation Enterprises in Colonial South Carolina” is a major resource in this section of the review. The next section is an exploration of South Carolina after the Revolutionary War. A major highlight in this section is the destruction of Charlestown during the war and the consequent reconstruction of the town and the plantations in the years 1784 to 1794. The influence of Andre Michaux, a horticulturalist from 1794 to 1800 forms the basis for the next section of the study. Botany and Horticulture in Charlestown is the major focus of this next section. The final part of this review explores Charlestown in the years 1800 -1820. During this period, the most eminent events include the economic decline of the town as a result of decline in rice production. Within this review, the author also explores the founding of Charlestown and the Fundamental constitutions for the town

Preliminary Identification of African-Style Rouletted Colonoware in the Colonial South Carolina Lowcountry

Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 2020

Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans, is a crucial source for exploring the formation and materialization of colonial identities. Yet, the origins and ethnic associations of this enigmatic colonial potting tradition have long been debated. Recent ethnographic studies of African ceramic traditions have led to our reexamination of a surface treatment lately identified on colonoware vessels in South Carolina. Our analysis focuses on colonoware sherds from two eighteenth-century sites in Charleston as well as an additional unprovenienced vessel from the Horry County Museum. Through experimental replication and cross-regional comparison, this paper argues that the application of “folded strip rouletting” on colonoware in South Carolina is related to contemporaneous decorative techniques practiced in West and northern Central Africa. The sherds analyzed in this article thus represent the first clear published example of a decorative African potting technique identified in the colonial United States.

The forming and fracturing of families on a South Carolina rice plantation, 1812–1865

The History of the Family

For Refuge and Resilience: The Storm Towers of the Santee Delta

Arris, 2018

The Santee storm towers were a resilience strategy of early nineteenth-century rice planters of the Carolina Lowcountry. Constructed sometime after a devastating hurricane in 1822, these cylindrical masonry towers with conical roofs were designed to protect the enslaved workforce living in the rice fields during tropical systems. More than altruistic, the planters' motives were economic. The storm towers were a manifestation of the desire to protect assets of labor and infrastructure in Lowcountry plantation culture; without the labor of enslaved Africans, planters lacked the vehicles to their Rice Kingdom wealth. This article details recent architectural research on the Santee Towers, explores their construction, and contextualizes them as materializations of environmental hazard planning in the British Atlantic world.

Emergence and Evolution of Carolina’s Colonial Cattle Economy

Emergence and Evolution of Carolina’s Colonial Cattle Economy, 2022

This interdisciplinary study explores the origins and transformation of Carolina’s colonial animal economy related to urban Charleston and the surrounding rural production centers. The publication highlights the influence of cattle, fires, timbering, rice cultivation, demographic changes, and commodity trade on South Carolina’s cultural and physical landscapes between 1670 and the 1820s. The objective is to understand how Charleston’s animal economy changes in relation with broader cultural, environmental, and technological transformations.

A Brief and True Account of the History of South Carolina Plantation Archaeology and the Archaeologists Who Practice It

2013

This paper’s genesis is the perception that archaeologists’ communal memory of the early days of South Carolina plantation archaeology is fading, incomplete or at times overly judgmental. In order to combat this loss, some of the projects, processes and theoretical orientations that affected South Carolina’s plantation studies are explored. Examples of influential forces are the growth of Cultural Research Management (CRM), burgeoning museum and university programs in historical archaeology, and initially the Tricentennial and Bicentennial. Early references have been searched, including much of the "grey literature" and archaeologists and administrators in academia, government and private industry have been interviewed. Interview topics include early theoretical perspectives and how they relate to field and laboratory methods. Statistical methods have not been used in this study; results are interpretive and qualitative rather than quantitative. Instead, examples have been...

“‘Nothing but Death before my Eyes’: Mending Broken Spirits and Repairing Defensive Walls in Colonial Charleston,” Atlantic Studies 12, no. 4 (2015): 457–81.

This article examines how hurricanes shaped the English settlement in South Carolina. Similar to other settlements in the Anglo-Atlantic, colonists encountered many risks and dangers. However, settlers residing in colonies where hurricanes routinely happened faced even greater risks and volatility because the storms occurred with little warning and were capable of causing widespread economic destruction, social chaos, and loss of life. This article argues that in the wake of the hurricanes that struck South Carolina in 1752, colonial authorities were afforded an opportunity to recast Charleston’s urban landscape. The destruction the storms caused to the colony was dramatic and horrifying. The most troubling issue for colonial officials was the damage hurricanes caused to Charleston’s fortifications. The defensive works throughout the town and colony were a fundamental component that shaped the colony’s development and English imperialism in the circum-Caribbean. It further argues that as colonial authorities began to rebuild the defensive walls and fortifications in Charleston, the unexpected arrival of a thousand Acadian refugees provided a valuable labor resource that both taxed charitable coffers and aided in the transformation of the urban landscape. The rebuilding of Charleston’s fortifications illustrates how colonists responded to the destructive forces of hurricanes while further demonstrating the uncertainty of living in the Anglo- Atlantic, where hundreds of war-torn refugees could arrive as suddenly as hurricanes.