Cultural Resources

Southeast Region

Cultural Resources

Southeast Region

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site

Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina

African Americans

at Snee Farm

African Americans

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site 

African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation, 

Mount Pleasant, South Carolina 

October 2006 

originally prepared September 2001 

by Tyson Gibbs, PhD 

Department of Anthropology 

University of North Texas 

Denton, Texas 
Cultural Resources Division

Southeast Regional Office

National Park Service 

100 Alabama Street, SW 

Atlanta, Georgia 30303 

404.562.3117 

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site

1254 Long Point Road 

Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina 29464 

http://www.nps.gov/chpi

About the cover: This photo, taken in 1996, 

shows Snee Farm’s low country farmhouse, built 

circa 1828. Snee Farm was a working plantation 

under a succession of owners until well into the 

twentieth century. Most of its labor force were 

African Americans, first as slaves imported to 

plant and tend the rice and indigo fields, then

as tenants, sharecroppers, or wage laborers 

after the abolishment of slavery. (Photo 

courtesy of the Southeast Archeological 

Center.) 

This study exists in two formats. A printed version is 

available for study at Charles Pinckney National 

Historic Site, the Southeast Regional Office of the 

National Park Service, and at a variety of other 

repositories. For more widespread access, this study 

also exists in a web-based format through ParkNet, 

the website of the National Park Service. Please visit 

www.nps.gov for more information. 
Contents 

 Acknowledgements.............................................................................................v

 Confidentiality .....................................................................................................v

 Project Background..............................................................................................vi 

 Objectives .............................................................................................................vi 

 Limitations............................................................................................................vii 

 Methods................................................................................................................vii 

Section I: Introduction .........................................................................................................1

Section II: Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.........................................................................4

Section III: African -American Communities in Mount Pleasant.........................................7

Section IV: Snee Farm Owners...............................................................................................10 

Section V: Population............................................................................................................13 

Section VI: Ethnic Origins of Ancestral Population and Relationships 

with Other Racial Groups....................................................................................16 

SectionVII: Domestic life and children’s activities ................................................................20 

Section VIII: Daily work life and relationships with farm owners.........................................23 

Section IV: Foodstuffs.............................................................................................................28 

Section X: Churches and other religious institutions..........................................................29 

Section XI: Health and medicinal practices...........................................................................31 

Section XII: Local crafts and craftsmen ..................................................................................34 

Section XIII: Funerary and burial customs ..............................................................................37 

Section XIV: Waterborne subsistence and commercial activities...........................................39 

Section XV: Summary...............................................................................................................40 

Section XVI: Conclusion ............................................................................................................41 

Section XVII: Sources..................................................................................................................43 

National Park Service iii 
 Figures 

Figure 1: South Carolina Parishes 1770 ........................................................................................... 4 

Figure 2: State of South Carolina .................................................................................................... 5 

Figure 3: Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, 2001 ............................................................................ 6 

Figure 4: Communities surrounding Mount Pleasant .................................................................... 8 

Tables 

Table 1: Snee Farm Census Data 1800 -1880................................................................................... 13 

Table 2: Census Data for Mount Pleasant....................................................................................... 14 

Table 3: African Americans in the town of Mount Pleasant, 1970 - 1990.................................... 14 

Table 4: Historical Highlights Relevant to the Gullah and Other African -Americans................. 17 

Table 5: Snee Farm Employee Occupations .................................................................................... 24 

Table 6: South Carolina Mortalities 1860 - 1890 ............................................................................ 32 

Table 7: Charleston, South Carolina Mortality Rates 1850 - 1880................................................. 32 

African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation iv
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the African American families of Mount Pleasant who allowed us to interview 

their family members. We realize there is a high interest in this area of South Carolina, and that there 

are many reporters, researchers, historians and others poking into your lives. We wish to say your 

tolerance of us is appreciated. 

The Charles Pinckney National Historic Site Park Rangers were also very helpful. Specifically, 

Michael Allen was extremely supportive in providing background research materials and a list of 

names of potential interviewees. And I want to thank Cynthia Porcher who took me on a tour of the 

community, providing me with background. Without this assistance, it would have been difficult to 

start the project. Superintendent John Tucker offered park quarters for the research assistant, making

the project easier to coordinate. 

Ms Antoinette Jackson provided the strength for this project. She conducted most of the interviews, 

provided a wealth of resource materials, performed some of the preliminary data presentation, and 

interacted with members in the community. Her contribution was critical to the completion of this

project. 

Ms Jackie Stanczyk collected data and assisted with major editing of the final report. Her 

contributions cannot be forgotten. 

Ms Courtney Bartlett was instrumental in creating the transcripts, no small feat when a Texas ear 

listens to a South Carolina dialect. 

Ms Beverly Byrd was helpful in conducting some interviews. We thank her for her contribution. 

And it was the funding from Contract Number PS440990154, Ethnography and Indian Affairs Brach, 

Cultural Resources Stewardship, Southeast Regional Office, National Park Service, Atlanta, Georgia, 

that made this study possible. 

Confidentiality 

Real names of interview participants are not used in this report due to our need to protect their 

confidentiality. Our research team and each subject signed the following confidentiality agreement: 

“The University of North Texas and the National Park Service will protect the 

confidentiality of your answers to the extent provided by Law. Only the people 

connected with this project will hear your tapes. The tapes will be kept locked away 

with the researcher and the National Park Service and will not be available for public 

use.” 

National Park Service v 
Project Background 

The National Park Service, through its oral and written history program, has an ambitious mission of 

documenting the life experiences of various populations living around and near Park Service 

properties in the United States. These collections cover a variety of ethnic, geographic, and otherwise 

unique population groups. The Snee Farm project, which focuses on the descendents of slaves and 

other workers at the Snee Farm Plantation in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, is part of the National 

Park Service oral and written history preservation program. 

What makes the Snee Farm project unique is the availability of descendents of persons associated 

with the Snee Farm Plantation at various points over the past 100 years. Many of the descendents of 

the original slaves also at one time worked for owners of the Snee Farm properties. Such continuity of

family connections is one of the interesting features of the workers in many of the South Carolina

plantation properties.

The core mission of the Snee Farm project was to locate former employees and relatives of former 

employees of Snee Farm Plantation, and interview them about their experiences as part of the Snee 

Farm work force. Further, this project sought to describe many of the social –cultural customs of this 

group living in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, in a once predominantly African American 

community. In some instances, project participants’ families have lived in Mount Pleasant for several 

generations. Because of the link between the Africans Americans living in Mount Pleasant and the 

culture of the Gullah people who inhabit this region of coastal South Carolina, many studies are now 

underway to document this unique cultural grouping. 

Objectives

The objectives of this project are several. The first objective is to present a background history of the 

Snee Farm Plantation. The report uses data collected by the National Park Service at Snee Farm and

historical documentation to describe the plantation, owners and general status of the plantation. 

Snee Farm is an important plantation because of its direct linkage to the life of one of the signers of 

the United States Constitution, Charles Pinckney. The National Park Service commissioned several 

reports –archaeological surveys, examinations of the owners, and landscape surveys - to develop a full 

history of the plantation. Several books have already been written about Charles Pinckney and his 

family. 

The second objective is to document the social and cultural experience of African Americans

associated with Snee Farm. The role of slaves at Snee farm has been scantily presented in books about 

Mr. Pinckney. It is clear from historical records that all of the plantations east of the Cooper River had

African American workers supervising the various plantation activities, including foreman, field 

worker and skilled and unskilled laborer. The purpose of this objective is to determine the nature of 

the workers’ social lives in relationship to the Snee Farm Plantation. 

The third objective is to describe the general experiences of workers on the Snee Farm Plantation. It is 

clear that the slaves are not available for questioning regarding their experiences with Snee Farm. 

However, descendents of these African American plantation workers may shed some light on the 

kinds of activities that took place on the farm after the year 1900. This collection of data requires 

interviews with relatives, acquaintances and others associated with Snee Farm. 

The fourth objective is to understand the tasks and working hours of Snee Farm workers and to 

present information about the relationship between plantation owner and African American farm 

African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation vi
worker. Several of the informants describe the relationship between plantation owner and worker as 

one in which the owner treated favorite workers like one of the family. 

The overall objective of the project is to understand the Snee Farm Plantation and its relationship to 

the African American workers who provided the labor force between the years 1900 and 1968. 

Limitations 

Many of the limitations are obvious in a project such as this one. First, there is the problem of locating 

the workers, former workers, relatives of former workers, or those who knew people that worked for 

Snee Farm. Second, unfortunately, the recorded history of African Americans living in small towns 

and on small plantations is sketchy at best. Much of what is known often has to be gleaned from 

records of nearby plantations or larger plantations in the same or similar states. 

Third, many of the smaller plantations, such as Snee Farm, had absentee owners, or the plantation 

may have passed through several different owners. Often these owners did not keep detailed journals 

or records of the activities on the plantations as one might find in the planters’ journals written by 

owners of the larger plantations in the South. Finally, as with any testimony about historical events, 

one must be careful to validate as much as possible, the information gleaned from interviewees.

Methods 

The approach taken in the project involves several components. To gain a general understanding of 

the role of African American plantation workers in South Carolina, historical documents, articles, and 

books were examined for information about slaves, black freedmen, and farm workers during the 18th

and 19th centuries. Census data was gathered from old census track records. Unfortunately, during 

the late 19th century and early 20th century, some population data for towns of Mount Pleasant’s size 

are not available. 

Historical data about the owners of the plantation and the general layout of the plantation was taken 

from documents already prepared for the National Park Service in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, at 

Snee Farm. Other historical information about the plantation was collected from various libraries in 

Charleston, South Carolina; the Mayor’s Office in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; the Mount 

Pleasant Public Library; the Records Room of the Snee Farm Plantation National Park Service Site, in 

Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; various South Carolina newspapers published between 1900 and 

2000; the Willis Library located at the University of North Texas; and the United States National

Archives located in Forth Worth, Texas. 

Oral history was collected from the kind people of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, who granted 

interviews. Individuals were interviewed in Mount Pleasant in their homes by researchers: two 

anthropologists and one local African American resident living in the Mount Pleasant community. 

Other formal and informal interviews were conducted with business owners and other residents of 

Mount Pleasant. 

National Park Service vii

Section I: Introduction 

The Gullah people are African Americans living on the sea islands and eastern United States coast 

from North Carolina to north Florida. The complex history and core of the Gullah culture is located 

on the sea islands and coast of South Carolina, near Charleston. For most of the 17th, 18th, and 19th

centuries, they were slaves on the flourishing rice plantations. According to the records of the Port of 

Charleston, South Carolina, their African origins include Angola (39%), Senegambia (20%), the 

Windward Coast (17%), the Gold Coast (13%), Sierra Leone (6%), and Madagascar, Mozambique, 

and the two Bights (5% combined) (Pollitzer, 1999:43). Although not all historians agree about the 

degree to which African Americans have maintained cultural patterns, one widely held view is that 

they have not. As an example, Singleton (1985) writes, 

Slave archaeology has sought to identify artifact patterns suggestive of an African 

Heritage. After more than 10 years of slave site investigations, however, only a few 

suggestions of an African past have been uncovered. Moreover, it appears that the 

archeological record tends to preserve the assimilative quality of Afro-American life, 

that is, the use of Euro-American artifacts. Such artifacts are more often made from

durable materials (clay, glass, metal) than the perishable materials (plants and animal

fiber, hide, wood) commonly used to fashion African styled objects (p. 8). 

A similar view is expressed by Pollitzer (1999) who, after interviewing respondents from among the 

Gullah people, noted that when asked about their specific origins, most were silent, but one person 

remarked that he thought “the old folks say they come from Africa.” He further states that by 1950,

roads and economic opportunities had begun to alter traditional patterns of behavior, although the 

large majority of the inhabitants were descendants of blacks brought to plantations in previous 

centuries. “Even on an island where it was necessary to take a boat across the waterway to interview 

supposedly isolated people the evidence of change was striking. One elderly man said he had been to 

Savannah many times, had made his ‘best money’ there, and had even been to New York. In many 

cabins, people who had moved to northern cities when they were young, had returned. One young 

man, who had just driven his new automobile to his parents’ house, called from the porch to this

white visitor [Pollitzer] as rain approached, ‘Would you run up the windows of my car for me?’” 

Pollitzer (1999:4) states: 

The succeeding fifty years have seen even more rapid change for the Carolina

coastline. Although the marsh and the dikes of old rice plantation still persist, the 

Carolina coast is vastly different today from what it was at the beginning of this 

century. The natives (Gullah) are regarded by tourists as relics of a bygone era; those 

that remain in the area are often employed as servants with a limited future. The

public schools discourage the use of the Gullah language and teach the goals of a

society geared to production and progress rather than the ideal of equilibrium that 

has long characterized this culture unconcerned with time. 

The Gullah people face a crisis today as the demand for their land and marsh

encroaches upon home and farm and further threatens their way of life. They are ill 

equipped to meet the challenges of a modern era. Their values, born in Africa and 

honed through slavery and oppression, based on harmony with nature and their 

fellow man, contrast with the frantic pace of consumerism of today and deserve to be

more widely known and appreciated. 

Although the early rice planters along the Carolina coast were aware that Africans 

were as diverse as Europeans, they molded them into a cohesive workforce, ignored 

National Park Service 1 
ethnic distinctions, and discouraged native customs. For survival, slaves had to

submerge differences and create a common culture. Later, white historians

homogenized them and constructed stereotypes of the ‘Negro’ that obliterated their 

varied ethnicity ... While many aspects of Gullah life have been reported, no one has 

synthesized this varied information to present a complete and integrated picture. 

Today, the Gullah people are faced with the encroachment of modern development, including 

residential subdivisions, shopping centers, and country club golf courses. As the region surrounding

Charleston and Mount Pleasant continues to grow, the Gullah are struggling to preserve their culture. 

In 2000, one area school, Alston Middle School, received a grant from the South Carolina Humanities 

Council to teach students about the Gullah culture. Music teacher Lorraine White, a descendant of 

Drayton Hall slaves, coordinated the yearlong program. Field trips included Drayton Hall and the 

Avery Institute. Local artists such as Sweetgrass basket makers and professional dancers came to 

Alston to talk with the students. The program was designed to immerse both black and white students 

in the Gullah culture in an effort to promote understanding and acceptance of others (Campbell, 

Lawrence). 

In a July 2000 ceremony the Gullah nation was declared and the Gullah people crowned Marquetta L. 

Goodwine as their queen (Munday). Once a year, there is a Gullah Festival in Beaufort, South

Carolina. Many of the women selling baskets on Highway 17, which runs through Mount Pleasant as

a major north – south highway, are of Gullah Heritage. There is also ample evidence that tourist 

organizations and others seeking to capitalize on this unique culture are exploiting this group. Several 

small tour businesses, operated by people of Gullah descent in Mount Pleasant, promote the Gullah 

heritage for profit. 

The history of African Americans living in Coastal South Carolina communities underscores the 

complex nature of this particular population. This area of the United States is one of the few places in 

which the relationships between slave owner and slave continued beyond the Emancipation 

Proclamation. Many of the African American workers remained in coastal communities, such as 

Snowden, Phillips, Wagner, Martin Point, Parker’s Island, 7-Mile and Hamlin Beach. The former 

slaves found work on the plantations on which they had lived and worked, and often would work for 

several of the plantations within the communities in which they lived. Snee Farm, Boone Hall, Laurel 

Hill and Brickyard are examples of some of the places in which Africans Americans and their 

descendents continued to maintain a relationship with the plantations of their former slave owners. It 

is this unique set of circumstances that has generated the intense interest in studying Africans 

Americans living in this area of South Carolina. The need for examination has increased due to the 

fear that as the growth of the Mount Pleasant area continues many of the unique aspects of this

population will be lost forever. 

In Cainhoy, north of Mount Pleasant in Berkeley County, residents are facing the same heritage and

historic preservation issues (Hardin). Isolated for much of its history, over 10,000 acres of Cainhoy 

have been annexed by the city of Charleston. Highways have been built to enable industrial and 

residential development, and descendents of slaves argue in court over the titles to their property and 

whether to sell or hold their land. 

Two issues are often involved when studying populations that are being phased into high growth 

areas around the world. One issue is that most of the people continue to live their daily lives in the 

face of often overwhelming growth of tourism, housing developments, and economic development. 

There is a limited degree of local resident participation in the preservation efforts of city officials,

state historians, and university academic units that seek to sustain the memory of the past of these 

populations. In the area of the Snee Farm Plantation, where many of the descendents of the former 

slaves still reside, the participation of local people in preservation activities in their communities is 

nevertheless mixed. Although families still hold large gatherings, in which the family members return 

2 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
from all parts of United States, indeed the world, to participate in homecoming celebrations, these 

activities are not the history preservationists seek to save. 

There is, therefore, the second issue of what should be saved, by whom, and for what purpose. Often, 

modernization requires the discarding of the “old ways,” and the assumption of new forms of

behavior patterns. African Americans in the Snee Farm Plantation community have become part of 

the local tourist attraction, producing and selling handicrafts. Much of the production of these wares 

is by the middle-aged and older women (2000-2001, personal observations of the researchers). Few, if 

any, of the children are learning to make the handicrafts of their ancestors. 

This report provides a documentary record of the relationship between African Americans and their

association with the Snee Farm Plantation. It is based upon an examination of historic information,

current data of the communities surrounding Snee Farm Plantation, and interviews with family 

members of persons connected to Snee Farm. 

National Park Service 3 
Section II: Mount Pleasant, South Carolina 

Snee Farm is located in the town of Mount Pleasant, located on the coast of South Carolina just east 

of Charleston. Founded in 1680, Hale (1987) describes the origins of Mount Pleasant, based on

Petrona McIver’s History of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Hale writes that Mount Pleasant grew 

out of the incorporation of several towns. The initial incorporation was in 1837 with the merger of the 

villages of Greenwich and Mount Pleasant into a single town. Three other towns were eventually 

incorporated into Mount Pleasant – Hilliardsville, the Village at Hibben’s Ferry, and Lucasville.

According to Hale, in 1680 a new colony was established at Arbermarle Point on the Ashley River. 

Captain Florence O’Sullivan, the first surveyor general of the Carolinas, was given 2,340 acres of land

on the north shore of the Wando (now Cooper) River. The grant included the barrier-island that now 

bears the O’Sullivan name. The barrier-island was used as an outpost to warn against incursions by sea 

from the Spanish. The Spanish were not the only problem of the early colonists; the Sewees and the 

Wandoes would pillage and destroy crops of the early settlers. 

By the late 1690s, the settlement was successful enough to attract 51 new colonists who arrived in 

1695 and 1696. Each of the new colonists had been granted several hundred acres of land north of 

Shemes (now Shem) Creek. The new colonists were Congregationalists and the entire area would 

eventually be known as Christ Church Parish. Most of the land south of Shem Creek remained in the 

Figure 1: South Carolina Parishes, 1770 

4 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
hands of O’Sullivan’s daughter, and then his granddaughter, until 1690, when portions of it were sold

to a series of owners including John Barksdale, the Hancock family, Peter Villeponteaux, and finally 

Henry Gray. Gray bought the entire tract of land in 1745. 

In 1749, a Charles Towne planter, Jacob Motte, established a plantation after purchasing 56 acres,

which he called Mount Pleasant. Twenty years later, Andrew Hibben established the first ferry 

between Mount Pleasant and Charles Towne, then a successful seaport community of 14,000 people. 

The Village of Hibben’s Ferry was formed, and was followed by Greenwich Village sometime before 

the Revolutionary War. The villages continued to prosper and were joined with Hilliardsville in 1858, 

and Lucasville in 1972, to form the town of Mount Pleasant. 

Since 1970, Mount Pleasant has experienced rapid growth due to both annexations of surrounding

rural communities and commercial and residential development. Along with the development, Mount 

Pleasant has experienced a change in its demographics. The once predominantly black agricultural 

community is now predominantly white with a per capita income of $24,402 (1998). Over 85% of its 

residents have a high school diploma; and almost 40% have a bachelor’s degree of higher (1990). With

an unemployment rate of 3.9% in 1999, more than 70% of Mount Pleasant’s workforce is employed in 

white collar positions, and more than 27% are employed in blue collar jobs. 

Once the primary employer of Mount Pleasant area residents, the original plantation at Snee Farm

was established in 1754 after Colonel Charles Pickney purchased the land from John Savage. It was 

one of several plantations he owned in the Charleston area. 

Figure 2: State of South Carolina showing relationship between Charleston and Mount Pleasant

National Park Service 5 
As the structure of the government of the State of South Carolina has changed, the regional governing 

body of Mount Pleasant has evolved from the original Christ Church Parish. The town of Mount 

Pleasant is now a part of Charleston County. 

Figure 3. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, 2001

6 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section III: African-American Communities in Mount 

Pleasant, South Carolina 

Prior to the Civil War, the majority of the Christ Church Parish residents were African American 

(1860a Population and 1860b Slave Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860). The 

plantations of Mount Pleasant – Boone Hill, Laurel Hill, and Snee Farm – utilized the African 

American slave labor, and the communities of Snowden, Phillips, Parker’s Island, Seven-Mile, and 

Hamlin were products of the plantations. During the late 1800s, after slavery, many African 

Americans became landowners and expanded the communities and neighborhoods beyond the 

original plantation locations. 

According to African Americans currently living in Mount Pleasant, several historic communities can

be identified in the surrounding area. Most were located off Highway 17 North or Rifle Range Road 

and include: Remley’s Point (the modern day name for Scanlonville), Green Hill, Phillips, Parker’s 

Island, Tibwin, Chandler, Ten-Mile, Eight-Mile, Seven-Mile, Snowden, Hamlin, Beehive, Four-Mile, 

Fifteen-Mile, Two-Mile, Twenty-one Mile, Pineland and Awendaw. With the exception of Parker 

Island, all of these original communities are still in existence today. 

Each community had a central church and schoolhouse, and today each is associated with a major

church. Seven-Mile, for example, is associated with the Greater Goodwill African Methodist 

Episcopal Church, and Snowden is associated with Longpoint Baptist Church. 

Many of the African American communities are named for mile markers, which informants said 

indicate the communities’ distance from the center of Mount Pleasant. Newspapers and historical 

documents indicate the mile marker communities were originally established as stagecoach taverns 

along major thoroughfares (Bull). 

For African Americans, the distance to “downtown” Mount Pleasant was important for two reasons. 

One was that the only available high school for black adolescents (Laing High School) was located in 

the central Mount Pleasant area. Second, Grace Memorial Bridge is located in what is now 

“downtown” Mount Pleasant. The bridge was completed in 1929 and provided access to Charleston 

without use of the ferry. Thus, educational opportunities for the children and access to Charleston 

made the markers important symbols to the communities. 

FSaunders taught the students whose parents worked on Snee Farm and the surrounding plantations.

FSaunders said Laing was the only high school in the area at one time for blacks. It was located in 

downtown Mount Pleasant and, “folks not living in the city of Mount Pleasant that wanted to attend 

high school had to arrange a way to get to Laing.” The black school children in the town of Mount 

Pleasant (in general) were a little more accelerated, according to FSaunders, because they had easier 

access to school. “Those that lived out, starting at Two-Mile and beyond, all the way out to Tibwin 

and McClennenville, were at a big disadvantage in that they had to somehow get to Mount Pleasant to 

attend high school. Distance and transportation were significant barriers. Cars were scarce and so

transportation was a big issue.” 

FSaunders said when she was teaching there were students in her classes who had never been to 

Charleston. In Mount Pleasant there were buses that ran from Mount Pleasant to Charleston and to 

Sullivan’s Island. According to FSaunders, the rural students did not have this and as a consequence 

many just grew up where they were and never left their local communities. 

In some communities, people ran truck or bus service in order to get the children to and from school. 

Some families were determined to get their children to school in spite of the obstacles and a few

National Park Service 7 
would board during the week in 

Mount Pleasant. FSaunders said 

many students, however, just 

dropped out after grade school

because they tired of trying to get 

to school. 

Black Ownership 

Because many African Americans

owned land in Mount Pleasant, 

the past can be examined through 

a look at present day land

ownership and kinship ties. Many

of the African Americans living in 

the various communities are deed 

heirs, heirs to land promised by

plantation owners to slaves after 

slavery. Often plantation owners 

would attempt to provide for 

slave families who worked for 

them for many years by making 

provisions in their wills for the 

slaves’ families to own designated 

areas of the land. These 

provisions for the slaves in the 

wills of the plantation owners 

were called “deed heirs.” 

Many other African Americans 

were able to buy land as monies

became available to them. In an 

interview, MGailliard gave the 

following story as an example. 

Her grandmother and great uncle 

would save his earnings and bury 

the money under a tree. When he 

secured his freedom, he took the 

buried money and bought land

with it. He also gave MGailliard’s

grandmother $1.50, which she 

used to purchase the land on 

which she now resides. At that 

time land cost about fifty cents an 

acre. MGailliard’s grandmother 

purchased eighteen acres from a

plantation owner, Mr. Horlbeck, 

who had promised all his slaves 

an acre of ground, forty dollars 

and a mule. At slavery’s end, 

however, he lacked funds to keep 

his promise and sold his land for 

fifty cent an acre. Figure 4. Communities surrounding Mount Pleasant, South Carolina 

8 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
One of the oldest communities in the Mount Pleasant area is Phillips, which one of our respondents, 

HPalmer, described as having been established around 1875 with Black ownership. Prior to its 

establishment as a town, it was a plantation on which African Americans worked as slaves or 

freedmen. HPalmer, 70, who was born and raised in Phillips, said that Phillips was not only one of the 

oldest communities in the area, but that many of the other communities had evolved from it. 

According to him, the Phillips community was, at one point, part of Laurel Hill plantation. He believes 

it was given the name Phillips after a white man from England, to identify its location separately from 

the rest of the Laurel Hill plantation. In the 1800s, Phillips was one of the places set aside for 

habitation by enslaved Africans who were not classified as house servants on the plantations of Snee 

Farm, Boone Hall-Brickyard and Laurel Hill.

The Phillips-Laurel Hill community included Martin Point (now the subdivision Rivertowne) and 

Wagner (now the subdivision Dunes West). HPalmer said that after slavery, all of the land in Phillips 

was donated and later deeded to ex-slaves according to family size, which resulted in families being 

given between 2 and 12 acres each. Phillips remained an all black community until the 1940s when the 

Swinton family sold land to a white family, the Hutchinsons, who built a grocery store in the 

community. Nevertheless, Phillips today is a predominantly African American community. 

Unlike some communities in the southern United States, where former slaves often acquired land as a 

result of sharecropping, most of the persons interviewed indicated that sharecropping was not

practiced to a major degree, if at all, in Mount Pleasant. This contradicts information published by the 

town of Mount Pleasant however; the African Americans interviewed for this project were said they 

did not know of anyone who sharecropped. 

According to MScott, the “average” black person owned property. Others worked and were paid

wages. VManigault agreed and said, “Blacks in the area were very independent.” According to

VManigault, they worked for themselves; they worked for pay and do not have a history of

sharecropping. 

National Park Service 9 
Section IV: Snee Farm Owners 

The critical role of Snee Farm Plantation in the lives of African Americans in the Mount Pleasant area

has been detailed in the previous pages of this report. The ownership of Snee Farm has passed 

through many families since the initial land grant of 500 acres to Richard Butler in 1696. The changes

and notes about the families involved have been described by Susan Hart Vincent (1998) in “Charles 

Pinckney National Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report” published under the auspices of the 

National Park Service. The excellence of that report and the detail it provides make the inclusion of

an abridged version of her account of Snee Farm desirable here: 

Snee Farm (1696-1754) 

In the late 17th century, Richard Butler received a 500-acre land grant in Christ Church Parish. 

“Butler’s Causeway,” a feature found on 18th and 19th century plats, may well have been built by

Butler when Long Point Road was established along the northern boundary of his land (c. 1707). 

Between 1696 and 1730, Butler conveyed the 500-acre parcel to John Givens, who in turn, left it to

Benjamin Law in 1730. The grant was described as a “situate in Berkeley County butting and 

bounding on land of Thomas Boone to the Northeast and upon the land of Mary and Sarah Sims to 

the Southwest.” 

In 1738, John Allen purchased 615 acres of land, including Butler’s original 500-acre grant. A plat 

prepared that year shows only the property boundaries with Captain Thomas Boone’s land to the 

north. No road or structures are shown. In 1744, Allen increased the size of his farm by purchasing 

the 100 acres owned by James and Sarah White (formerly Sarah Sims), consolidating the farm into a 

715-acre tract. 

John Allen died in 1748. His widow, Anne Scott Allen, married John Savage. In 1754, Savage sold the 

Snee Farm tract to Col. Charles Pinckney, a member of the Lowcountry gentry. The origins of the 

word “Snee,” as applied to property, are currently unknown. The Oxford English Dictionary defines 

the term as “bountiful, plenteous.” The term first appears in documents made at the time of the

Pinckney family purchase in 1754. 

Colonel Charles Pinckney (Snee Farm Owner 1754-1782) 

Colonel Charles Pinckney was a wealthy Charleston attorney, public servant, and planter. He was 

born in Charleston but was educated in England, and he kept close economic and social ties with the 

mother country. He acquired Snee Farm in 1754, shortly after his marriage to Francis Brewton. The 

farm was one of three plantations he owned outside of Charleston. Col. Pinckney served as the 

commanding officer of the First Battalion of Charles Towne Militia. However, with the fall of 

Charleston to the British in 1780, he abandoned the American cause and swore loyalty to Britain. By 

so doing, he avoided the destruction of his property. 

Col. Pinckney died in St. Andrew’s Parish in 1782. He was buried at St. Phillip’s Church in Charleston.

Snee Farm appears to have been at its most productive between the years of 1754 and 1790, under the 

ownership of Col. Pinckney and later, his son, Charles Pinckney. 

Charles Pinckney (Snee Farm Owner 1782-1817) 

Charles Pinckney was born in 1757. Like many young men of his status, he was groomed to study law 

in England. However, because of the growing unrest in the colonies, he was encouraged to study at his 

father’s law office in Charleston instead. He concluded his studies in 1779. Shortly after the 

10 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Revolutionary War, Charles Pinckney became immersed in American political endeavors that would 

occupy the next forty years of his life. His most famous accomplishment was the inclusion of more 

that 25 clauses (from his Pinckney Draught) in the final draft of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, 

Pinckney served four terms as Governor of South Carolina and further as Thomas Jefferson’s 

Minister to Spain (1801-1805) 

Because his family visited the property frequently, Charles Pinckney spent part of his youth at Snee 

Farm. He inherited the plantation after his father’s death in 1782. It is not known how often he visited 

the plantation as an adult, but by 1791, his political career was keeping him away for long periods of 

time. Even though Snee Farm was his established country estate, Charles Pinckney owned several 

other plantations in the lowcountry. His other properties included the two plantations of Frankville

and Hopton, situated on both sides of the Congaree River, five miles from Columbia; a Georgetown 

plantation consisting of 560 acres of tidal swamp and 600 acres of high land; a tract of 1200 acres 

called Lynches Creek; Fee Farm on the Ashepoo River; a Haddrell’s Point house called Shell Hall, 

with four acres of land; a house and garden lot on Meeting Street, Charleston; a plantation called 

Wright’s Savannah on the Carolina side of the Savannah River; and a tract of land on the Santee River 

above the canal, including a ferry, called Mount Tacitus. After his marriage to Eleanor Laurens in

1788, the elegant three-storied brick home at 16 Meeting Street in Charleston presumably became his 

principal residence. 

In 1791, during his second term as Governor of South Carolina, Pinckney invited President George 

Washington to Snee Farm as a rest stop on his tour to Charleston. In the letter, the President was 

requested “to make a stage at a little farm of mine in Christ Church ... I must apologize for asking you 

to call at a place so indifferently furnished and where your fare will be entirely that of a farm.” After 

his breakfast at Snee Farm on 2 May 1791, Washington recorded in his diary, “Breakfast at the 

Country seat of Governor Pinckney about 18 miles from our loading place and then came to the ferry 

at Haddrell’s Point.” 

Francis G. Deliesseline (Snee Farm Owner 1817-1828) 

Francis G. Deliesseline was the overseer at Snee Farm for at least seven years before he purchased the

farm from Charles Pinckney’s trustees for $43,380 in 1817. By 1820, Deliesseline owned 25 slaves in

Christ Church Parish. His name appears as a resident of Charleston, suggesting that he did not 

consider Snee Farm his primary home. Some time after 1826, Deliesseline was unable to meet the 

terms of the Snee Farm mortgage, and he and his family abandoned all holdings to his creditors. 

Given Deliesseline’s financial woes, the site must have been in poor condition by this time. The 

property was sold to William Mathews in 1828. 

William Mathews (Snee Farm Owner 1828-1853) 

William Mathews owned considerable property, including five plantations, a ferry on the Cooper 

River, and “my house and lot in Charlotte Street where I now reside.” When he bought Snee Farm in 

1828, he paid $3,150, a significant devaluation of the land holding since the sale to Deliesseline in 

1817. In his last will and testament, Mathews described himself as a planter and made reference to 

certain articles of furniture at Snee Farm. This reference indicates that, although he apparently did 

not reside at the farm, he did spend some time there. Mathews died in 1848, leaving Snee Farm to his 

daughter Susan (wife of Benjamin F. Hunt). Equity court proceedings describe the unfortunate 

condition of Snee Farm by this time: Snee Farm ... Devised to Mrs. Hunt containing about 700 acres

of land and settled by a gang of about forty-eight Negroes, is, as your Orator has been informed, an 

unproductive place: That the testator bought it with the intention of making corn and hay here for the 

use of Milton Ferry; that over and above the provisions used on the place itself, Snee Farm has 

scarcely done more than to furnish bread for the hands at the Ferry, with hay for the work-mules and 

horses at the livery. 

National Park Service 11 
William McCants and Lockwood McCants (Snee Farm Owners 1853-1900) 

William McCants, who identified himself as a planter, purchased Snee Farm in 1853. In addition to 

Snee Farm, he kept a house and lot in Mount Pleasant, and depending on the time of the year, 

probably divided his time between these properties. Probate records indicate that his son, Lockwood 

Allison McCants, inherited the farm in 1859. L. A. McCants owned Snee Farm until 1900. 

Thomas J. Hamlin and Osgood Hamlin (Snee Farm Owners 1900-1936) 

In 1900, Thomas J. Hamlin bought Snee Farm from the McCants estate. The Hamlins grew Sea Island 

cotton at Snee Farm until the 1920s. Osgood Hamlin inherited the farm from his father and managed 

it until 1936. 

Thomas Ewing and Thomas Stone (Snee Farm Owners 1936-1968) 

Thomas Ewing bought Snee Farm in 1936, three years after his daughter, Alexandra Ewing Stone, and 

son-in-law, Thomas Stone, bought Boone Hall, on the north side of Long Point Road. Snee Farm

passed to his daughter and her husband, who moved to the property in 1943. 

Guilds and Joyce Hollowell (Snee Farm Owners 1968-1986) 

The Hollowells purchased the 28 acres of Snee Farm from the Stones in 1968. The property consisted 

of the house complex, the grove, the entrance from Long Point Road, the barn area and part of the 

agricultural fields and avenue. The Hollowells removed the overseer’s house and related structures. 

They added a swimming pool and used the Stone’s library/cottage as a pool and guesthouse. A 

basketball court, located to the east of the residence, was built during this time. The Hollowells 

maintained the Stone’s camellias and azaleas for their own enjoyment. 

C and G Investments (Snee Farm Owners 1986-1988) 

In 1986, the property was sold to C and G Investments for the development of 40 residential lots. 

Initial road grading began but was soon halted when local residents objected to the farm’s 

destruction.

Friends of Historic Snee Farm (Snee Farm Owner 1988-1990) 

Shortly after the property was sold in 1986, private citizens organized a non-profit group, the Friends 

of Historic Snee Farm (Friends), to protect the last remnant of Charles Pinckney’s original Snee Farm. 

This community-based group succeeded in securing congressional action to preserve the site. The 

National Park Service established the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site on 8 September 1988.

With financial assistance from the Friends, the NPS purchased the 28-acre site in 1990. 

The African Americans interviewed for this study indicated that they considered the plantations of

Snee Farm and Boone Hall to be connected. They moved back and forth between the two plantations 

for both work and social activity, and made no major distinction between them. Boone Hall and Snee 

Farm are located across from each other on Longpoint Road. 

12 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section V: Population 

The Slave Population 

During the first Census of the United States, taken in 1790, the total population of the Charleston 

District of South Carolina was reported as 66,985 persons. Although the accuracy of the numbers can

probably be questioned, the slave population of 50,639 was fully seventy-five percent of the entire 

Charleston District population. In the Christ Church Parish, in the area of Mount Pleasant, the total 

population was reported as 2,954 persons. The slave population numbered 2,377, which was eighty

percent of that total. Census lists for the plantations in the Charleston District from 1800 through 

1860 show the fluctuation of slave holdings at Snee Farm Plantation (Table 1). In gathering

information, the attempt was to match the owner of the plantation at the time with the numbers of 

slaves. 

Table 1. Snee Farm Census Data 1800-1880 

Year Owner White 

Males 

White 

Females

Slave 

Males 

Slave 

Females

Total 

Slaves

1800 Charles Pinckney 1 18

1810 Charles Pinckney 1 58

1820 Francis Deliesseline 2 2 5 7 12

1830 William Mathews 29 12 41

1840 William Mathews 24 28 52

1850 William Mathews 21 29 50

1860 L.A. McCants 31 38 69

1870 L.A. McCants 3 4

1880 L.A. McCants 4 4

Source: Population Schedules of the Census of the United States, 1820-1880. Fort Worth: National Archives and Records; 

Microfilm 

After Slavery 

After 1890, the population data are listed as overall data for the town of Mount Pleasant, and the 

division of Mount Pleasant or Christ Church Township. The town of Mount Pleasant is included in 

the figures for Christ Church Township and the Mount Pleasant division (Table 2). 

Unfortunately, during the period between 1870 and 1920, there are no data available on the African

American population in Mount Pleasant. A trend is evident in the percentage of African American

members of the Mount Pleasant area from 1930 to 1990. In 1930, the Christ Church Township 

population was 77% African American. Ten years later, in 1940, the township population had

increased 14%. While there were 61 additional African Americans in 1940, the percentage of African 

Americans in the population actually decreased 8%. In the 1950 census, the African American

population of the town of Mount Pleasant was 44% of the town’s total 1857 citizens. In 1960, African 

Americans were 34% of the total Mount Pleasant division population. 

National Park Service 13 
Table 2. Census Data for Mount Pleasant, South Carolina area 

Census Christ Church Mt. Pleasant Div. Mt. Pleasant Town 

Total AfricanAmerican Total AfricanAmerican Total AfricanAmerican

1890 1,138

1900 6,644 2,252

1910 1,346

1920 1,575

1930 4,541 3,479 1,415

1940 5,165 3,540 1,698

1950 9,225 1,857 812

1960 13,838 4,694 5,115

1970 6,155 794

1980 13,838 991

1990 30,108 2,766

2000 47,609 3,453

Source: Population Schedules of the Census of the United States, 1820-1880. Fort Worth: National Archives and Records; 

Microfilm 

As the population of the town of Mount Pleasant increased from 1970 to 1990, the number of African

Americans also increased, however, the percentage of African Americans in the town decreased, as 

illustrated in Table 3. 

Table 3. African Americans in the town of Mount Pleasant, 1970-1990 

Census Population African-American % African-American 

1970 6,155 794 12.9

1980 13,838 991 7.0

1990 30,108 2,766 9.0

2000 47,609 3,453 7.3

Source: Population Schedules of the Census of the United States, 1820-1880. Fort Worth: National Archives and Records; 

Microfilm 

According to the website for the town of Mount Pleasant, the projections are for a population well 

over 72,000 by the year 2015. This tremendous growth in total population also underscores the shift in 

composition of the population. During the first United States Census of Population in 1790, African

Americans were over 75 percent of the Mount Pleasant population. The latest population data places

the African American population at 7.2 percent of the total Mount Pleasant population. 

Whether due to annexation or development of new residential neighborhoods, the changing

demographics of the Mount Pleasant area has had a profound effect on the African American

residents. New housing subdivisions now exist next to the Snee Farm Plantation and the communities 

14 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
of Phillips and Snowden. The new subdivisions have names such as Snee Farm Country Club, Rice

Planters and SweetGrass shopping center. 

One local sweetgrass basketmaker said, “Years ago we could go in that woods, and we go over to that 

woods now, and they got 2 and 3 million dollar house back there.” 

Many of the new residents of Mount Pleasant are from outside the southern United States, with no 

relationships to south communities or to the area. This is creating tension as formerly established 

patterns of race relations are being altered. 

FSaunders, said, “Back then, people knew each other white and black and looked out for one another. 

The traffic has increased and now it takes a lot more time to get around Mount Pleasant. When 

integration happened there were no major problems in Mount Pleasant because people knew each 

other. It is recent that new folks are entering the community with other names and who are not

familiar with the long-term residents of the community. As such more rifts are occurring.” 

PBrown agreed, “ ... the natural beauty is being destroyed with the building of all the homes and 

housing developments in the area ... change is good, but too much at one time. Now you have all the

white people coming into the area ... moving in. Now there is more traffic but the roads are not built 

to accommodate all the traffic.” PBrown said the development is like a plague sweeping through. He 

believes it will be bad for the people in the area. “It will be tough for the older folks to make the 

change ... the white folks coming in and bringing their bad habit with them and that’s no good.” 

Faced with the pressure of the area’s developers, many African Americans are selling their properties 

for large sums of money. This creates a different tension between those who want to maintain the 

dwindling amount of African American-owned land and those who earn millions of dollars by selling

their land when they see the loss of their land as inevitable (Glanton). 

In their efforts to provide roads to accommodate the increased traffic, Mount Pleasant town officials 

have been found opposition from both long-term community members as well as residents of the new 

subdivisions.

In 1999, residents of Seven-Mile objected to construction of a proposed new U.S. Highway 17 access 

road from U.S. 17 to Hamlin. This followed the 1998 objections of Six-Mile residents to plans to 

widen Rifle Range Road to three lanes. Six-Mile and Seven Mile are historically black communities 

(Quick, 1999). 

Water’s Edge subdivision residents opposed the alignment of U.S. 17 and its impact on the wetlands 

near the subdivision. Sweetgrass subdivision residents also have expressed concern about the 

widening of the U.S. 17 access road (Quick, 1999). 

National Park Service 15 
Section VI: Ethnic Origins of Ancestral Population and 

Relationships with other Racial Groups 

The Charleston area was populated by several different ethnic groups during the 17th, 18th, and 19th

centuries. Before the Europeans arrived on coastal South Carolina, American Indians migrated to the 

region. They developed “a diversified culture of agriculture and semi-sedentary village life” (Vincent 

1998:5). The American Indians used fire as a tool in agriculture and hunting. 

Spain had early settlements along the Carolina coast in the 16th century. However, the early 

settlements failed after several years at San Miguel de Guadalupe in 1526, and Santa Elena, between 

1566 and 1587. 

The English settled the area in 1670 with the establishment of Charles Towne Landing. Many of these 

colonizers were from the West Indian sugar plantations. The English settlers depended on fur trading 

with the local American Indians and production of naval stores (Brockington 1987:12). “White

settlers regarded the large southern Indian population ... as an exploitable resource. They initiated an

aggressive and lucrative trade with the natives for furs and skins, primarily deerskins ... They 

encouraged internecine warfare among various southeastern tribes and between 1700 and 1715 the 

Carolinians themselves fought three Indian wars rooted in commercial competition, colonial

expansion and international rivalry. By selling Indians captured in these wars, several prominent 

Carolinians inaugurated profitable careers as slavers. Some Indian slaves were kept in the Carolinas to

toil with blacks on local plantations (Ferguson 1992:60).”

Christ Church Parish Settlement was established in 1706. By 1716, the local American Indian 

population was reduced drastically by disease and conflicts with the Europeans (Brockington 

1987:13). Naval stores, rice, and indigo production became important industries at the plantations in

the Parish. The other settlers “grazed cattle, hunted to supplement their diet, and produced 

turpentine, rosin, tar, and lumber for the Charleston market” (Vincent 1998:5). 

African Americans were introduced into this population mix as a direct result of the increase in rice 

production. While the use of slaves was not a foreign idea, the rice cultivation technique was changed 

and increased the need for slave labor. In the 1750s, tidal rice cultivation was introduced and the 

plantations favored it over the previous inland swamp rice cultivation. The increased demand for 

slave labor was dependent on the need to divert rivers’ and streams’ tidal waters by digging ditches 

and building dikes, trunks, and canals. South Carolinians preferred people from Senegal, Gambia, and 

Sierra Leone for the labor force because of their intimate knowledge of rice cultivation. 

Africans brought to South Carolina were already accustomed to growing rice for centuries in their 

native homelands. Ferguson (1992:60-61) writes: “With the decline of the native (Indian) population, 

and the continuing success of the rice plantations, the number of imported Africans grew rapidly.

Indian slaves soon became physically and culturally integrated with the larger population of blacks,

and from at least 1720 on, an African American majority prevailed in colonial South Carolina ... The 

chief domestic crops of the colony came from American Indian and African agricultural traditions – 

corn, beans and squash from America; rice, okra and cow peas from Africa ... Besides providing skills 

as cultivators, slaves knew how to build earth walled houses, carve canoes from cypress trees, make 

baskets, gather herbs for healing and turn clay into pots.” 

The slave population in South Carolina, which had doubled by the 1760s, was approximately 100,000

in 1776 (Vincent 1998:6). The last recorded fight with American Indians in Christ Church Parish

occurred in 1751. The parish militia battled raiding northern American Indians about two miles from

the church (Brockington 1987:14). 

16 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Snee Farm and Boone Hall were two of the earliest plantations in Christ Church Parish. The 

plantation system functioned differently in South Carolina than other areas. The plantation usually 

was a working farm and a second home in the country for the Charleston elite. 

“As the primary residents on Snee Farm, and the majority of the population of the low country, 

African Americans played a key role in establishing the unique world of coastal South Carolina” 

(Blythe et al 2000:19). The relative isolation of the large slave populations in the low country rice 

plantations contributed to the slaves retaining elements of a distinctly West African culture. The 

constant flow of new West Africans and the restricted presence of European cultural influence lead to 

a synthesis of cultures. This synthesis of myriad African cultures and European-American traditions 

lead to a unique culture termed Gullah (Blythe et al. 2000:31). A distinct language, also named Gullah,

developed from this culture. It was the commonly used language between the African Americans of 

the U.S. slave era and is still used today in Georgia and South Carolina. The language like the culture is 

a mixture of countless African languages and English. 

Pollitzer describes the Gullah as “genetically less mixed with whites and American Indians than most 

other African Americans. They helped build and survived the forced labors of one of the richest 

plantation regimes in the Americas. Their music, dance, basketry, and other arts are powerful, 

beautiful, and evocative. Their traditional lives contrast tellingly with the modern world encroaching 

on or being embraced by them. Until a generation ago, theirs was the largest overwhelmingly African 

American area of the United States. Moreover, Sullivan’s Island, off Charleston, South Carolina, is 

often called the Ellis Island of Black America.” 

Most of the African Americans interviewed for this project did not identify themselves as 

Gullah/Geechee. It appears they prefer not to be labeled as Gullah, although they are resigned to 

dealing with people that associate them with the Gullah culture. PBrown said people in New Jersey 

used to tease him and call him “Geechee.” He asked them what that meant and they said Geechees 

were people who ate a lot of rice. 

JEllis said he “doesn’t go with the Gullah or Geechee label.” 

Out of curiosity, several people from the African American community of Mount Pleasant did attend 

a National Park Service sponsored Gullah Heritage Resource Meeting in Charleston. 

Their comments were similar to those of RHabersham who said he went to the Gullah heritage 

meeting and felt they were more interested in preserving the culture versus preserving the 

communities as they now exist. RHabersham said he felt more emphasis should be placed on the 

issues of living and surviving in the face of development. 

Table 4. Historical Highlights Relevant to Gullah and Other African Americans (Pollitzer 1999) 

Date Item 

B.C. 

1800 Cowpeas (V.unguiculata) Known in Ghana West Africa 

1500 Rice (O. glaberina) grown in Senegambia and Niger River 

1000 cotton (G. herbaceum) cultivated in West Africa 

500 Terra-cotta heads made at Nok, Nigeria 

400 Ironwork at Nok

A.D. 

700 Kumbi, capital of Ghana, destroyed 

1240 Mali Empire rises 

Ghana Empire begins in West Africa 

1280 Wood carving and bronze casting in Benin 

National Park Service 17 
Date Item 

1502 Corn (Zea mays) brought to Africa from America 

1530 British sail along West African coast 

1576 Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) taken from Africa to Florida 

1624 British take Barbados in West Indies 

1631 British build fort on Gold Coast 

1637 Dutch capture Elmina on Gold Coast 

1655 British take Jamaica 

1663 Charles II grants land to eight Lords Proprietors 

1671 French build fort at Whydah on Slave Coast 

1672 Royal African Company founded 

1674 Lords Proprietors request trade with Spanish for blacks 

1684 First epidemic of malaria in Charles Town 

1685 Rice seed (Oryza sativa) brought to Carolina 

Huguenots come to Carolina 

1690 First Carolina statute dealing solely with slavery 

1694 First Carolina will to bequeath a slave, named Mingo 

1700s Ashanti Kingdom dominates Gold Coast 

1707 Pest house built on Sullivan’s Island 

1706 Blacks exceed whites in Carolina for first time 

1719 Royal African Company contracts to import slaves from Gambia

1729 First mention of Angola in Naval Office Lists 

Basket first mentioned in a will 

1732 South Carolina Gazette published first ad for runaway slave 

1738 Eliza Lucas experiments with growning indigo 

1739 Stono Rebellion

First known use of “Gullah” in print 

1740 Blacks outnumber white two to one 

Comprehensive Negro Act passed

Methodist Preacher George Whitefield visits Savannah 

1743 Drayton Hall built

Rev. Alexander Garden opens schools for blacks 

1744 Quarantine for slaves from Africa required 

Eliza Lucas marries Charles Pinckney, proves indigo can be grown successfully in 

Carolina 

1747 Indigo and cotton exported from Carolina 

First hospital for blacks begun in Charles Town 

1755 Henry Laurens concerned over smallpox in Gambia

1756 Guinea worm noted in slave trade to Charles Town

1778 Alexander Bisset grows sea-island cotton in Georgia 

1787 Jonathan Lucas builds first tidal rice mill in South Carolina 

Foreign slave trade cut off until December 1803 

1790 First Federal Census 

S.C. slave population is 43 percent; U.S. slave population is 18 percent 

William Elliott plants sea-island cotton on Hilton Head 

1791 Slaves revolt in Haiti under Toussaint L’Ouverture

1794 First known reproduction of Gullah dialect in print 

1800 Law passed against manumission of slaves

1808 British and American slave trade prohibited 

18 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Date Item 

British found Sierra Leone, colony for freed slaves 

1822 Denmark Vesey rebellion 

Liberia founded as colony for freed American slaves 

1823 Bishop Wilberforce forms antislavery society 

1829 Daniel Payne, free black, opens school for black children in Charleston 

1834 Law passed against teaching blacks to read and write 

1845 Baptist in nation divide over slavery question 

1849 Porcher reports on Indigenous Medical Plants of South Carolina

1858 Ship Wanderer lands slaves in Georgia 

1861 Guns fire on Fort Sumter 

Federal fleet takes over Port Royal; slaves become “contrabands of war” 

Penn School founded on St. Helena by missionaries 

1862 First black songs published from Port Royal 

1863 Emancipation Proclamation

1864 Sherman issues order appropriating sea islands for freed slaves; soon rescinded in 

Washington

1888 Jones publishes Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast

1895 New Constitution segregates blacks 

1911 Sickle Cell anemia described by Herrick

Severe hurricane wipes out last attempts to grow rice commercially in South 

Carolina 

1912 Lydia Parrish goes to St. Simons Island, records songs 

1919 Elsie Clews Parson goes to St. Helena

Boll weevil destroys 90 percent of sea-island cotton

1930 Bridges built between sea island and mainland 

1942 First survey finds 15 percent sickle cell trait on Sea Islands 

1949 L.D. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect

Neel proves genetics, and Pauling molecular biology, of sickle cell hemoglobin 

Black parents challenge segregate Clarendon County schools 

1950 Land on Hilton Head Island bought for timber 

1957 Esau Jenkins begins school on Johns Island 

1960 Civil rights movement in Greenville and Rock Hill 

DuBose Heyward’s Porgy, performed in Charleston for first time to an integrated 

audience 

Public schools desegrated

1974 Kiawah Island purchased to become a resort 

National Park Service 19 
Section VII: Domestic Life and Children’s Activities 

The slave village at Snee Farm was the slaves’ attempt to recreate their home communities in Africa. 

“Small rectangular houses with steeply pitched roofs and dirt floors are typical of the African 

architectural vocabulary” (Blythe et al. 2000:34). The houses were usually used only for sleeping and 

storage. The plantation owners probably did not know that the relatively inexpensive houses were a 

reminder of the slaves’ African heritage. Both the typical African home and the slave house had 

exterior chimneys. The preparation of food was a communal event and was done outdoors. 

Archaeologists found food preparation sites, disposal areas, and a central cooking hearth at Snee 

Farm near the slave village (Blythe et al. 2000:34). 

Although African Americans constituted a majority of the population until the late 1880s, concerning 

the social life of the African Americans, Taylor (1924; 1969:9-12) wrote: 

Yet, so contradictory is human nature, said a South Carolinian notwithstanding what 

has been said, the Negro is essentially a dandy, loving fine dress and decorations 

above all things. The females particularly are excessively fond of colors, and delight 

to parade on Sundays in the castaway habiliments of their mistresses. The legislatures 

and others in their higher society are first-class swells ... The Negroes of the 

wealthier set naturally imitate all of the social customs of the whites, paying homage 

to the ladies, preventing the females from working, sending children to school, living

in houses, employing servants, supporting a good table, and keeping carriages and 

horses. The lower classes of Negroes also copy, as far as they can, the habits of the 

whites. 

The Negroes had some social privileges. They were freely admitted to the theatres in

Columbia (South Carolina), and to other exhibitions and the like but ample room was 

given to them by the white audiences if the halls were not crowded. In Charleston

and the country towns they did not secure entrance to some of such places, but to 

shows under canvas, such as circuses and magic lantern exhibitions they were 

invariably allowed admission. 

Whites, however, insisted on social ostracism. They would ride on the same seats in 

cars with blacks if the latter were traveling in the capacity of servants or nurses; but 

did not enjoy such contact if the Negroes were posing as equals. After the 

Reconstruction changes, the Negroes were permitted to ride in first-class railway and 

streetcars. 

Some exceptions to this rule were noticed. There was very little distinction made 

among children of the races growing up together and the attachment formed

sometimes continued through girlhood and boyhood, only to be terminated when, as

adults, the one would go socially in one direction and the other in another. Among

Catholics, George Rose did not find such segregation even among adults. Speaking in 

1868, he said “many of the Negroes are Catholics, and though in some of their

churches they have galleries to themselves, yet there is not the broad demarcation 

drawn between them and the white races in the House of their father.” Yet, Edward 

King did not believe in 1871 that there were in the State a half dozen married couples 

with the wife white and the husband black or colored. But, there were three or four 

instances in every county of colored women married to white men. So strong was 

sentiment against such unions that it condemned them to associate with colored 

people and become Negroes in all but color.

20 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Except in baseball clubs, an observer did not find many social associations among 

South Carolina Negroes, a thing which contrasted singularly with zeal which they had 

evinced in connecting themselves with political and religious organizations. The 

Negroes had among themselves social rank and aristocracy ... severe and strictly

discriminated. These distinctions were local so that no generalization could be made 

of the various classes. The gradations were founded principally on official station,

position in the church, possession of money or real estate, former ownership and city

of birth ... They flocked in from the country at the close of the War, deserting the Sea

Islands in large bodies, and produced all the evils of overcrowding at time when the 

white population, who could alone employ and maintain them, were not only thinned 

in numbers, but reduced to poverty and the trade and wealth of the town were 

destroyed. 

Many of the former workers at Snee Farm describe their social life as a series of interactions within 

their own families and with other workers living within the Snee Farm – Boone Hall Plantation 

communities. For example, MGailliard describes how the African Americans would have parties at 

Snee Farm. She stated that the blacks would come from Snee Farm to Boone Hall or vice versa every 

Friday and Saturday. They also celebrated birthday parties, house parties, Christmas and New Year’s 

parties. The blacks would also have Labor Day dances and Fourth of July dances. A bell would ring 

around 5:00 p.m. signaling all the workers to return to their respective plantations. MGaillard, as a 

child, would go to Snee Farm and play with other African Americans living in the Mount Pleasant 

community. 

Many of the workers also described requests from plantation owners for the African Americans to

come by and sing for them. HBrown stated that when Mr. Stone, the last owner of Snee Farm, would 

come home, he would request that some of the workers come by and sing spirituals. According to 

HBrown, Mr. Stone would pay them well for singing. “Ya know back in the late 40s and 50s ... they 

give like five guys $60 or $75. That was a lot of money back then, ya know.” 

MGaillard says that certain African Americans within the community would sing spirituals on a 

regular basis. Her husband and three other men in the community, Messrs. Geman, Jones, and 

Furman, would “go over there and sing for the white people.” 

A key feature of the Mount Pleasant African American community is their continued relationships 

with each other over the past decades. Former residents maintain kinship ties with the relatives who 

have remained in the communities. They often remain in touch with their families by returning for 

special community festivals, funerals of relatives and friends, or important family gatherings. They are 

“there” when friends and relatives need support. There is also a sharing and bonding that occurs 

among the members of a community in raising children. In his interview, for example, HPalmer 

commented that “Everybody had known everybody on Phillips. Everybody was everybody’s 

childrens’ parents. That’s just the way it was and, uh, even the smallest child so as they got large 

enough; everbody knew each other.” 

The supportive relationships of residents included the sharing of their products. One respondent, 

ECoakley said that, “ICoakley use to give away most of his catch. People didn’t really have money and 

so just shared what they had.” There was in the past, and there is now a sense of the survival of the 

entire community. 

Another respondent, JSmalls emphasizes this point, “People in the area had either a plum, apple 

and/or pear tree. And a few people had grapevines. Then people traded and shared with one another. 

There was not much store buying, but people traded and shared with one another. Everybody had a 

cast net, a poor man net, and a net that could be used to catch shrimp or mullet. Every family knitted 

or had their own net.” 

National Park Service 21 
Of course, as in many African American communities, the elders, parents and grandparents are

essential to the collective community memory. The elders on the plantations were no exception. They

played an especially significant role in sharing the knowledge of survival learned from their parents to 

their children, and many of the African Americans in the Mount Pleasant community were raised by 

their grandparents, especially their grandmothers. ECoakley said that her maternal grandmother 

raised her, and that she learned how to work on the farm from her grandparents. They taught her how

to pick pecans, corn, peas and sweet potatoes. Her grandmother, who had been making baskets for 55 

years, had learned the craft from her grandmother. 

22 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section VIII: Daily Work Life and Relationships with Farm 

Owners 

One study of Snee Farm concludes that both rice and indigo were cultivated at the farm during the 

Pinckney era (Blythe et al. 2000). The authors based their conclusion on the occupations of slaves 

listed in the 1787 Snee Farm slave inventory and added that slaves on the plantation probably tended 

to cattle, cut wood and produced naval stores as well. The Africans’ methods and knowledge of rice 

growing were the basis of the region’s rice plantations. The description of work provided in the study

is vivid.

“The hazardous and labor intensive task of preparing and cultivating the rice fields was forced on the 

slaves. They had to work in the mud and heat, and combat insects, snakes, yellow fever, and malaria. 

The coastal landscape had to be physically altered to accommodate the cultivation of rice. When the 

rice was ready to be harvested, it signaled the oncoming of even more work. The rice had to be 

threshed, winnowed, and then milled from the hull. These techniques were also supplied by the 

Africans. When the milling was done, the rice kernels had to be polished” (Blythe et al. 2000). 

Indigo, the other early cash crop of the region required slaves to fulfill the many tasks involved in its 

cultivation. Like the production of rice, it was labor intensive as described here by Doar (1907), “First, 

the indigo seeds were mixed with ashes and lime and planted about one-inch deep every 12 or 15 

inches. About ten days later the seeds would sprout and the plants would grow quickly. The 

maintenance was labor intensive and required constant hoeing. When the indigo matured, it was cut 

and placed into vats. The indigo was then steeped in clear water and fermented until the pigment was 

extracted. The hued water was then transferred to a lower vat and went through a beating process to 

force the pigment to coagulate. After this, lime was added to the vat. When the indigo had settled, it 

was moved to another vat to harden. When the indigo hardened, it would be cut into quarter pound 

lumps to sell.” 

The lowcountry plantations had a unique labor agreement between masters and slaves known as 

“tasking.” Basically, the slaves were assigned a certain amount of work based on skill, age, and 

capacity to finish in a day. When the slave was finished with his or her task, he or she had the rest of 

the day off to do with as they chose. By being able to control some aspect of their day, slaves had a 

certain amount of autonomy. Slaves of both sexes maintained personal gardens. Peas, corn, and

greens were grown in the one-half to two-acre gardens. They also maintained livestock such as 

chickens and pigs. They were allowed to sell any extra foodstuffs they had produced at local markets. 

Luxury items such as alcohol, cloth, tobacco, other food items, and so on were usually obtained with

the excess production. Fishing and hunting were other ways slaves supplemented their diet. These 

tasking plantations have been considered to have a free-labor, capitalistic ethos (Littlefield 1981:63). 

The tasking system is typified by a comparative lack of concern about the private affairs of the 

bondsman, his household social structure, or his material welfare; its preeminent consideration is

business efficiency; and it would result in a relatively greater amount of individual freedom but also an

unequal sex ratio. The more nearly equal sexual distribution, in association with other aspects of the 

paternal system, would encourage reproduction; the less nearly equal sex ratio, in association with 

other aspects of the industrial system, would discourage reproduction. 

The argument here is not that masters were more or less humane in one type of society as opposed to

the other but that they perceived their interests differently and thereby acted in such a way that, in 

one case, the slave received greater physical benefits. This conjunction can clearly be seen in East

Florida, where the British attempted between 1763 and 1783 to establish a plantation colony modeled 

somewhat after that of South Carolina. 

National Park Service 23 
In South Carolina planters estimated that a slave paid for himself within four or five years, so that the 

real profit from his labor came after that span. They looked upon slaves as an investment from which 

the owner could reasonably expect above 16, 20, and 25 percent when rice gave a tolerable price. But, 

for the master to realize this remuneration the slave had to survive. Moreover, the worth of slaves, 

conditioned or native to the country, was more than strictly economic. Although their intrinsic value 

might not be ascertainable, their market price, fortunately, can be. 

“There is archeological evidence that the task system was the predominant labor system employed on

Snee Farm during Charles Pinckney’s tenure” (Blythe et al. 2000:31). This is based on the excavation 

of trash pits, which revealed animal bones and crustacean shells indicating the slaves had some 

control over their diet. The task system was predominant throughout the low country, so one could 

reasonably assume Snee Farm did not go against the grain. 

The Years after Slavery 

The relationships between plantation owners and their African American workers changed little over 

the years after slavery. Many of these African Americans found that after slavery, most had to become

inexpensive labor for plantations like Snee Farm or Boone Hall. Many of the African Americans over 

the age of 70 had at one time or another worked for one of the plantations in Mount Pleasant. In 

talking about the Hamlin Farms, MScott says, “it was truck farming going on. The local people had

their gardens and they would take their products to the city market and sell. Hamlin and the big city 

farmers did truck farming.” 

Truck farming began in the late 1930s when tractor cultivation became possible and lasted through 

the 1960s. The Hamlin farm had at least 500 acres of produce, including snap beans and tomatoes. In 

early years the produce was shipped by boat to the Southern Railroad docks in Charleston and from

Charleston to New York. 

Later the Hamlins’ produce was trucked to Charleston for shipment to New York. MGaillard said, 

“trucks use to come from all different places to pick-up the vegetables from O.D.’s farm.” 

Transportation was difficult for people living in Mount Pleasant. Snee Farm was one of the few places 

at which people could work without having to seek transportation. According to JEllis, even in the 

late 1930s and ‘40s there were few roads and little electricity to most places, so he had to walk to 

work. 

Snee Farm had horse stables, corn mill, cotton gin house and a dairy. Several of the African Americans 

in the community were foremen on Snee Farm – C. Strouder, B. Seabrook, G. Kinsey and E. Kinsey

and family, who worked during the Stone Family ownership of the plantation from 1943-1968. 

From the interviews conducted with former employees, the following list was devised of major 

occupations on Snee Farm: 

Table 5. Snee Farm Employee Occupations 

Occupation Person Description 

Gardner Jesse Ellis, Sr., 1936-37 

Henry Brown

A local nursery planted gardens. Ellis 

managed the gardens year ‘round. 

Foreman Charlie Stroder, Billie Seabrook, Mr. 

Kinsey

Supervised the property for the 

owners and paid the workers 

Firing Furnace Jesse Ellis, Sr. Fired the furnace with coals. 

24 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Occupation Person Description 

Head Man Peter Brown, Aaron Smalls, Ben 

Doctor 

In charge of day-to-day operations of 

the farm. Lived on the farm. 

Cook Annie Huggins, Cecelia Brown Prepared all meals 

Laundress Mariah Simmons Washing and ironing the clothes for 

the owner and family, 2 days/week. 

Maid Maggie Brown Cooper Cleaned the house: dishes, floors, 

bathrooms 

Wood Cutter Cut wood for 6 fireplaces, 40 cords 

per year 

Nanny Cecelia Brown Raised O.D. Hamlin, Jr. 

Midwife Alice Smalls Delivered both black and white 

babies in the community. 

Farm Laborers Henry Brown, Mattie Gaillard, 

Elizabeth Coakley, M. Scott 

Picked pecans, tomatoes, cucumbers, 

and other vegetables. 

JEllis worked on Snee farm for about two years during the mid-1930s. He managed the furnace, fired 

it with coal, and took care of the flower garden. He worked for the Ewing family, owners of Snee 

Farm during the period from 1936 to 1943. The Ewings would stay on the farm during the winter, and 

in the summer they left. JEllis cared for the flowers throughout the year. The Snee Farm foreman 

during the time JEllis worked there was C. Stroder, but later the position was held by B. Seabrook and 

then by the Kinseys. The foreman’s job was to take care of the day to day operations of the farm. At

Snee Farm different people cared for the horses and the corn mill to which many of the African 

Americans living in the community came to grind their corn. 

By JEllis’ account, the Brown family was the last African American family to both live and work on

Snee Farm. The house in which the Browns lived is now a Bed ‘N Breakfast. After Brown’s mother, 

the last Brown family member to live in the house died, it was given back to the Stone family. 

HBrown worked on Snee Farm as a caretaker for the garden during the time that the Stone family 

owned it. He said that he learned how to care for the gardens from his grandfather. HBrown would 

help the Kinsey family with their gardens. His duties included raking leaves, planting flowers, picking 

pecans and milking the cows. HBrown said that when he worked on Snee Farm, corn was grown for

horses and cows. Other plants grown included soybeans, pears, and other fruits and vegetables that 

were sold for local consumption. HBrown said that after school he could pick 200 to 300 pounds of 

pecans in one day. For his work, he received five cents a pound. He made about one dollar a day, and

like everyone else would be paid by the foreman on Fridays. 

HBrown considered his family lucky to be working for the Stone family at the time of his relationship

to Snee Farm. He said that even though the Stone family grew most of the food, they would say to 

him, “you don’t have to buy groceries for your family, when you buy groceries for us, you buy for your 

family too.” The Stone family grew most of the food. HBrown was allowed to fish and hunt on Snee 

Farm. 

MGailliard, who worked at Snee Farm, said that African Americans would often work on both Snee 

Farm and Boone Hall plantations. She picked tomatoes, string beans, corn and spring peas. By her 

account, tomatoes from Snee Farm were shipped to Charleston. From September to December, she

National Park Service 25 
gathered pecans. MGaillard worked for the Hamlin family and like HBrown, would work after 

school. 

The daily schedule at Snee Farm began about 5:00 a.m. with her holding a lantern for her 

grandmother to see by. Breakfast had to be completed before a bell rang at 7:00 a.m. to signal the start 

of work. At noon, the bell would ring to signal dinnertime and at 1:00 p. m., the bell would ring again 

to signal it was time to go back to work. Around 5:00 p.m., the bell would finally ring to signal the end 

of the workday. 

Every afternoon after school, MGailliard would go to Snee Farm to pick cowpeas for a penny a 

pound. Although she could make a dollar picking a hundred pounds, she could never pick that much 

in one afternoon. She also picked cotton and gathered pecans for a penny a pound. Tomato picking,

however, was paid for by the day, usually about sixty cents per day. Thus, if a worker worked five 

days, he or she would get three dollars for picking tomatoes. Picking strawberries, cucumbers, and 

squash was paid by the crate. MGaillard, commenting about the relationship between workers and 

plantation owners, said, “We worked for them and that’s all.” 

Other former workers described similar work activities and pay scales at Snee Farm and other 

plantations in Mount Pleasant such as Boone Hall. ECoakley, who worked for the Hamlin family, 

picked cucumbers, corn, beans, and tomatoes and as a child she picked pecans. Working on the farms 

was all the work that people had available to them, and like other former African Americans workers 

on these Mount Pleasant farms/plantations, she learned how to work on the farm from her 

grandparents. MScott worked for the Stone family on the Snee Farm Plantation during the 1940s, but 

like other African American farm workers, she worked on several plantations in the area. 

MCooper described different experiences. She worked at Snee Farm for almost fifty years as a maid, 

washing and ironing clothes, cleaning the house, preparing tables for meals, washing dishes, and

cleaning the bathrooms. She was paid about $10 week for her work. 

OHamlin, a white interviewee, whose grandfather purchased Snee Farm in the early 1900s, and 

maintained ownership until the mid-1930s, described Snee Farm as many of the African Americans 

who worked there remembered it. His family grew cotton, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn and beans, 

which was one of their main crops. They never planted rice, but did raise pigs, cattle, and hogs for 

sale. The family kept horses and milk cows and made their own cream, buttermilk and curd. They also

had more than 100 chickens whose eggs they sold. The Hamlins had a sawmill, cotton gin, and a corn 

mill, which was used to grind corn for the people who worked on the farm. Corn was fed to the cattle 

and horses, and cotton was used as a cash crop. Most of the vegetables were sold locally in Charleston

and Mount Pleasant, but snap beans were hauled by boat, and then railroad car to New York during 

the 1920s and ‘30s. Fifteen to twenty workers were hired at Snee Farm where almost all of the work 

was accomplished by hand until the late 1930s when tractors came into use. 

According to OHamlin, relationships between his family and the African Americans were friendly. 

“We were practically the only white people in the community at that time in the ‘20s and ‘30s,” 

recalled OHamlin when he discussed the time spent on Snee Farm before his father passed away 

(1914-1931). He had fond memories of Mr. A. Smalls. “He was one of the best colored men I ever 

knew.” Smalls was the headman at Snee Farm when the Hamlins owned it. He mentioned another 

African American employee, J. Gaylord, who would go fishing with him and his father. 

One of the African American families who lived on the farm, PBrown together with his wife and 

daughter, maintained the cows and horses. Foreman A. Smalls lived on the farm with his family, and 

also was a truck driver. 

According to OHamlin, in 1938, they began trucking produce to Charleston. “Then we put it on a

freight car and then you could get it to New York in 24 hours.” 

26 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Although farm products were produced for sale, they were also the basis of the worker families’ diets. 

OHamlin and all the interviewees said rice was not grown for sale on Snee Farm during their tenure. 

Many interviewees had small areas of planted rice for their personal consumption; however, it was 

not produced as a commodity on the farm. 

JSmalls said his house sits on what was once a pond where rice was grown. He grew the rice for his 

own consumption, not for commercial purposes. JSmalls said he put the seed in the pond and when 

the pond was dry, the rice was ready. He also used the water from cooked rice as starch when he 

ironed his shirts. 

National Park Service 27 
Section IX: Foodstuffs 

Rice, beans, peas, corn, chicken, hogs, fish, crustaceans, eggs, squash rinds, animal bones, fish bones,

and crustacean shells were found in refuse pits at Snee Farm (Blythe et al. 2000). Massive quantities of 

colonoware were found near the slave village. Three sizes of colonoware were found which confirms 

the similarity to West African diet. Typically in West Africa, a designated cook to prepare a dish for

the community used the larger colonoware. The medium sized colonoware contained sauces to add 

to the food and the smaller bowls were for individual portions.

Gibbs et al. (1980) have noted, “many historians and anthropologists confirm the presence of a rather 

monotonous core diet for slaves. Another writer (Otto 1975) describes the food allotment as one that 

consisted of ‘seasonal vegetables, some fruit, salt, one peck of corn, and two five pounds of pork per 

week.’ “ In her documentary history of slavery in North America, Rose (1976) speaks of corn, rice and 

peas, and Stampp (1956) is quoted as saying “a peck of cornmeal and three to four pounds of salt pork 

or bacon constituted a weekly allowance. Killion (1973) reported that weekly, for those slaves who 

did not receive their food from a common kitchen, the food allotment consisted of three and one half 

pounds of pork/fatmeat, one peck of cornmeal, flour and black molasses. Sutch (1976) described the 

meal that these foodstuffs provided as adequate for an adult to work like a slave. 

Fogel and Engetrman (1974) have maintained that the traditional view of corn and hogmeat as the 

typical food ration for slaves stems from the incorrect assumption that the lack of reference to other 

foods means that the slave diet was restricted. They note that plantation master and slave narratives 

often made reference to smoked meats, eggs, chickens and vegetables, as were hogs. Genovese (1974) 

believes that slave-holder accounts of the stealing of food by slaves were caused by underfeeding, but 

even when there was no complaint about quantity, the lack of variety was an issue. 

Many of the former Snee Farm workers recall planting rice in the lowland areas of their farms or in 

ponds and growing and harvesting it for their own substinence. They also had their own gardens and 

grew such foods as butter beans, green corn, cucumbers, and peanuts. Almost all of the workers 

remember fishing and gathering oysters, crabs and shrimp to supplement their diets. It appeared that 

every family had at least one net that they made and used for gathering seafood, which appeared to be 

abundant in the Mount Pleasant area. In some instances, plantation owners would share their crops 

with the workers. 

Although MGaillard said that her family did not sell much of anything that they grew or planted, 

others, like WRouse, said that his father had a small garden area and planted vegetables for the family

to eat, to sell, and to give some away. 

Many of the workers also described the enormous amount of sharing that took place among the 

African Americans living on the various plantations in Mount Pleasant and described diets of variety, 

but with rice as the staple food source. One worker said that she ate rice for breakfast, dinner and 

supper. 

28 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section X: Churches and Other Religious Institutions 

Christ Church Parish, defined by the Church Act of 1706, was the local unit of government within the

Charles Towne colony. In 1708, the boundaries of Christ Church Parish were established “as the 

Wando River to the west, Awendaw Creek to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south” 

(Brockington 1987). The church functioned as a public building and a “center for the administration 

of some local government” (Gregorie 1961:5). The first church was built of wood in 1707. It burned in

1725 and a new one was built of bricks by 1726. Through the next 250 years the church’s exterior 

structure survived fires, the Civil War, and shifts in population (Baldwin 1985:33).

Slave owners were not preoccupied with their slaves’ religious lives in the early days of colonial South 

Carolina, but with time this became a priority for the plantation owners. The slaves who converted to 

Christianity selectively chose what parts of the religion they embraced. This phenomenon has been 

documented around the world when indigenous people are presented with Christianity. They 

synthesize the religion with their previous worldview. Thus, Gullah myths typically dealt with

situations the African Americans encountered under slavery but “the majority of the parables 

maintain African structures and motifs” (Blythe et al. 2000:32). For example, it has been suggested that 

four blue beads found in a plantation slave house more than likely had spiritual significance. “Blue 

beads, though poorly understood, were a central religious symbol and imply religious rituals. They 

were used as signs of marriage, as fertility amulets, and to ward off disease” (Blythe et al. 2000:35). 

The heart of the African American community in Mount Pleasant was and is the church. Many of the 

African American community boundaries can be traced to the churches found within these areas. 

Pollitzer (1999) and others trace the roots of Sea Island African American religion to the needs of the 

slaves to maintain a form of worship that was performed in their native homelands and the desires of

the plantation owners to maintain social order among the slaves. He writes, “from the point of view of 

the whites, the veil of ignorance was lifted from spiritual cognizance of the black slaves, their souls 

were saved and they were satisfied with the existing social order. As planters saw it, Christianity for 

blacks represented obedience and duty to the masters, the tightening of the screws of bondage; being

faithful to their owners was equivalent to being faithful to God” (p. 137). 

Today, there are about 15 major churches in the Mount Pleasant community. They include: 

a. Church of Christ 

b. Long Point Missionary Baptist Church (Snowden) 

c. Greater Goodwill AME (7-mile)

d. Olive Branch AME (4-mile)

e. Friendship AME (downtown, Mount Pleasant) 

f. Greater Zion AME (10-mile) 

g. St. John’s AME

h. Garden of Prayer Pentecostal 

i. Seacoast Christian Community Church 

j. All Saints Lutheran 

k. New Hope Baptist (2-mile)

l. Mt. Nebo Baptist Church (Awendaw) 

m. Union Baptist (Awendaw) 

n. First Seewee Missionary Baptist (15-mile) 

o. Bethel AME (McClellanville) 

The property, on which many of the local African American community churches are built, is said to

have been donated for religious purposes by the various plantation owners in Mount Pleasant. 

National Park Service 29 
As an example, Longpoint Missionary Baptist Church was deeded its land by the Stone family, one of 

the owners of Snee Farm between 1943 and 1968, according to HBrown. Another respondent believes 

that most of the Snee Farm workers attended Long Point Baptist, while Africans Americans working 

on the Boone Hall Plantation attended the Greater African American Methodist Episcopal (AME) 

Church. The church is a place for the community to bring together issues having an impact on 

individuals, families, and the community as a whole.

To participate in the African American community in Mount Pleasant one must participate in local 

church activities. Events that might be of significance to the community are presented in the church 

service, and may be “spiritually” evaluated before being acted upon. One pastor commented, “What 

you do and who you are will be known and communicated because the community will talk and the 

primary forum for exchanging community talk is the church.” 

30 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section XI: Health and Medicinal Practices 

In the early and middle nineteenth century, slaves led a marginal existence when their living standards 

were compared to the standards of health care, nutrition, sanitation and housing demanded by 

overseer and slave master. Yet, in spite of this marginal existence, which shows itself quite markedly

in their often inadequate and monotonous diet, slaves were able to work long hours in the field and 

the slave women continued to have a high birth rate. In fact, data indicate that after 1800, the

population growth in the slave community in the lower South could be attributed to the birth of 

children and not attributable to the influx or importation of slaves (Gibbs et al. 1980). 

Stanton (1960) has pointed out that “a major tenet of the institution of slavery was the belief that 

biological differences existed between slaves and whites. Slaves were viewed as a distinct species, 

which were immune to certain diseases, yet inferior biologically and mentally to whites. These real 

and fabricated biological differences offered to the slave owner partial justification for the institution 

of slavery. These beliefs were substantiated in the scientific writings of the 1800s by differences in

slave and white morbidity and mortality statistics and by such observable characteristics as skin color,

hair texture, and facial features.” 

“Given the acknowledged differences, it is surprising that no textbooks on the diseases of blacks were 

written until 1975” (Williams 1975). In the 1800s, there were numerous medical manuals available on 

the medical treatment of slaves. Plantation owners used these manuals to treat themselves, their 

families, and their slaves. A typical and popular book was Simon’s Planter’s Guide and Family Book of 

Medicine published in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849. 

In some of the journals however, physicians of the day agreed on special prescriptions for slaves. For 

example, slaves were thought to be able to withstand less therapeutic blood loss than whites (Savitt 

1978). This was sound advice in light of contemporary data which indicate that as many as 30-40 

percent of first generation slaves would have inherited hemoglobin variants and serum protein 

variants which would have made them less susceptible to malaria, but more prone to anemia (Savitt 

1978:33). Additionally, it is possible that diets low in iron or folic acid could have led to anemia, as

would have hookworm parasitism. 

One of the more deadly fevers during slavery was the mosquito-borne yellow fever. Waring (1976) 

states that yellow fever caused twice the number of deaths in Charleston, South Carolina, between 

1821-1858 as were caused by all other fevers combined. The yellow fever epidemics of 1849 and 1854 

were particularly devastating, but Savitt (1978) cites a number of references indicating that slaves were 

less susceptible to the yellow fever virus than were whites. 

The mortality rate for infants under a year of age was twice as great for slaves as for whites. Data from

Charleston, South Carolina, averaged between the years 1822 and 1848 indicate a mean mortality rate 

of 19.44/100 for black infants compared to 9.24/100 for white infants (figures computed from Waring 

1968:62). Savitt (1978) has compiled a list of leading causes of infant death for the years between 1858 

and 1860. Surprisingly, diarrhea and digestive disorders accounted for a much greater portion of

white infant deaths than slave infant deaths, while the proportions dying from respiratory diseases 

were about the same. Slave infants died at a high rate from whooping cough and perhaps from sudden 

infant death syndrome, which is higher among blacks today. 

Pregnant and lactating women were given reduced workloads and a post-partum rest period of up to 

one month. Plantation records reveal that it was common practice to allow infant nursing three times 

during the workday for the first six months, twice a day for seven to ten months, and once a day at 

mid-day until one year of age. These practices would have given the infant some conferred immunity 

through the mother’s colostrum and milk (Savitt 1978). 

National Park Service 31 
As might be expected, the mortality rate for blacks was considerably higher than that for whites. The 

mortality rate in 1850, from all causes, for example was 178 per 10,000 for blacks as compared to 111 

for whites. Respiratory disease was an important cause of the difference. Surprisingly, the death rate 

for females due to complications in childbirth was significantly lower in blacks than in whites (DeBow 

1855). 

The situation showed little improvement after the Civil War. As Taylor (1924, 1969) has described 

with regard to what happened during Reconstruction: “neither the efficient operation of the

[Freedman’s] Bureau (‘s) medical department nor the charitable service of the Charleston Hospital, 

however, was able to reach the whole mass of suffering freedmen. The latter died in large numbers 

from starvation, the progressive development of malignant disease, inertia, and ignorance. As the 

Negroes became more and more dependent upon themselves, the lack of medical facilities, their 

carelessness in administering remedies, or in following the advice of physicians, the congestion in 

unsanitary quarters and the lack of wholesome food - all of these factors produced among the 

freedmen an appalling number of deaths” (pg. 13-14). 

A comparison of the mortality rates among African Americans for selected years in selected areas 

shows most effectively their plight. 

Table 6. South Carolina Mortalities 1860-1890 

Year Population SC Deaths SC Deaths White Deaths Blacks Black Population

1860 703,708 9,749

1870 705,606 2,346 4,935 415,814

1880 995,577 15,728 5,330 10,524

1890 1,151,149 15,495 10,448 688,934

The ratio of deaths to population was higher among African Americans. Although we cannot be

certain that the mortality rates at Snee Farm were like those in Charleston, the latter are probably our 

best guide. 

Table 7. Charleston, South Carolina Mortality Rates 1850-1880 

Year White Mortality Rates Black Mortality Rates 

1850 18.68 20.98

1870 23.69 41.01

1880 22.01 41.08

1890 21.85 30.32

The mortality rate among Charleston whites in 1880 was lower than the rate for the entire population 

in each of the cities of Savannah, Nashville, Norfolk and New Orleans. The mortality rate among 

Blacks was exceeded only by the rates of the cities of Savannah and New Orleans. The higher death 

rate of the freedmen in South Carolina, considered in the light of that recorded during the slave 

regime, may indicate that the freedmen had not yet developed a self discipline comparable to the 

restraint formerly imposed upon them. 

32 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Very little is given by the former Snee Farm workers on health and medical practices. 

Many of the workers were born on Snee Farm and mentioned midwife Alice Smalls, who delivered 

both black and white babies for the community. PBrown said he and his two brothers and six sisters 

were born on Snee Farm. “We had, all of us was delivered by a midwife.” PBrown said Ms. Smalls

delivered him in 1949. 

JSmalls, 75, remembered Alice Smalls, although he was not related to her. He said she was the midwife 

in the area for as long as he knew her. According to JSmalls, she delivered more white babies than 

black babies. “They would come and get Miss Alice. The white folks called her Auntie Smalls. To the 

white folks, calling a black person Auntie or Uncle was a compliment.” JSmalls said Miss Alice was 

well respected. 

AGerman was a first cousin of Alice Smalls. She remembers her as a midwife, and also said Rebecca

Hugee and Cary Robertson were midwives. 

Most other interviewees indicated that if a health problem did occur, they would use local plants and 

herbs to help cure the problem. Also, many of the health problems were given “to the lord” to be 

taken care of. The sick would be prayed for in the church or in prayer meetings at the sick person’s 

home. 

National Park Service 33 
Section XII: Local Crafts and Craftsmen 

Only in the last twenty or so years has the there been an understanding of the degree to which African 

Americans living in the United States during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries played a vital role in 

the skilled labor industries. The early views of slaves as craftsman are typified by such comments as 

“While African Negroes may have had some experience in the manual arts and crafts, this had little 

direct influence upon American handiwork. The severance of relations with the African continent 

resulted in a loss of these traditions” (Stavisky 1949).

Herkovitts is quoted by Peek (1978) as saying: “It is apparent that the African forms of technology, 

economic life, and political organization had but a slight chance of survival. Utensils, clothing, and 

food were supplied the slaves by their masters, and it is but natural that these should have been what 

was most convenient to procure, least expensive to provide.” Peek adds further that, “Herkovitts 

claimed that the slaves were not allowed leisure time for such activities as carving and that due to the 

repression of their own cultures, there was no demand for such products.” 

However, the idea that there was a total absence of distinctive material culture is not a true picture of 

the social life of a slave. We are now aware of numerous artifacts produced by slaves, among them 

such items as bowls, forks, and spoons made of wood and other examples such as mule collars, 

plaiting baskets, shucking mats, mops, and putting handles (Peek, 1978). The intricate making of 

patchwork quilts demonstrates the degree to which many of the African American women could sew, 

and because many of such quilts were made over generations within families, the obvious conclusion 

is that the techniques for sewing were passed from grandmother, to mother, and to daughter. 

The craftsmanship of slaves was not limited to smaller utilitarian items. An example of that

craftsmanship can be seen in the ironwork on housing in places like Charleston. Clearly, the Africans 

imported into this country had skills that they brought with them. Handicraft skills added an

important dimension to the skills of growing rice and other crops, and all were immediately put to use 

as they arrived at the various plantations on Coastal South Carolina. The key is that the skills of the 

Africans were transformed for use in the American medians in which the various African American

workers were employed. 

During slavery, blacks gradually replaced whites as craftsmen. Peek (1978) and Dover (1960) note that 

surveys across the southern United States in 1865 listed skilled workers. More than 80%, roughly 

100,000, were African Americans. The African American was also perceived as a definite threat to the 

white craftsman working in South Carolina in the middle to late 1880s. Franklin, writing about the 

African American Freedman artisan, says that there was often much opposition due mainly to the fact 

that the use of his skilled trade was in direct competition to the white artisan of the time. Following a 

slave uprising led by Denmark Vesey, a carpenter, a law was passed in Charleston in 1822 that forbid 

black mechanics and artisans to live in the cities. Chase (1978) has provided ample proof of the range 

of skilled African American craftsmen in South Carolina. Based upon the Census of Free Colored 

People in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1856, he listed some 30 occupations with a least one African 

American listed. Included were: 

1. 50 Tailors 

2. 65 Carpenters 

3. 11 Shoemakers 

4. 9 Bricklayers

5. 9 Millwrights

6. 9 Manualmakers 

7. 6 Painters 

8. 4 dressmakers 

9. 6 blacksmiths

10. 3 Mattressmakers 

11. 2 Coopers 

12. 2 Cotton Menders 

13. 2 Shipwrights

14. 2 Locksmiths

34 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
A distinctive trait of the Gullah culture is basket making. The tradition of this craft extends back to 

West African cultures. The baskets made in the South Carolina lowcountry mimic baskets made in the 

Senagambian region of the African continent, and there was little evidence of European or American

Indian influence (Blythe et al. 2000:32). Twining (1978:159, 161-162) provides a good description of 

one of the major craft activities that have survived in Mount Pleasant among the African American 

women. She writes, “The basketry is a distinctive feature of the Sea Island Culture. The foundation of 

the basket made by the African American women can be seen in the stands along Highway 17, which

runs through Mount Pleasant. The women of the Senegambian region of West Africa manufactured 

the sewn coiled baskets, (which are seen in the Mount Pleasant area of South Carolina).” Twining

believes that the baskets were used as utilitarian objects during the era of the plantations. She noted 

that rice farmers used baskets for harvesting nuts and winnowing grain and that they were also used 

to disperse corn or rice on the plantation. 

MGaillard remembers selling baskets when she was a young girl. “When tours came through (Boone 

Hall), we would run over to the big house and sell baskets and sing and dance. We sold the baskets for 

five or ten cents.” 

Basket makers continue to sell their baskets along U.S. Highway 17, which runs through the town of 

Mount Pleasant. For most of the makers, the returns from selling the baskets are not meant to provide 

their total livelihood but rather serve as a supplement to other types of income. In the main, most of 

the stands that line this highway, or the other areas around Charleston, South Carolina, are operated 

by middle aged to older women who have learned the trade from their grandmothers or mothers. 

Several of the former African American workers associated with Snee Farm also make and sell these 

baskets (Twinings 1978). 

Former Snee Farm worker ECoakley has been making Sweetgrass baskets for fifty-five years. She said 

she learned it from her grandparents. “They pass it on and we take it up. Start by makin’ a little knot 

... I don’t know where they learned it, but know I learned it from them.” ECoakley has had her 

Sweetgrass basket stand for forty years. It sits on Highway 17 near the entrance to Brickyard 

Plantation, in front of the house where her parents lived. 

The Sweetgrass baskets of the South Carolina lowcountry have received national attention in tourism 

newspaper articles and magazines for more than 50 years. In newspaper articles and television news 

shows, it has often been said that the basket stands lining U.S. Highway 17 outside Mount Pleasant are 

dwindling and the craft is in danger of disappearing (Hofbauer, Meggett, Quick 1988, Strauss). In 

1997, the State of South Carolina placed an historical marker at the corner of Hamlin Road and 

Highway 17. Purchased by the Christ Church Parish Preservation Society and the Original Sweetgrass 

Marketplace Coalition, the marker reads:

“Sweetgrass Baskets. Coil baskets of native sweetgrass and pine needles sewn with strips of palmetto 

leaf have been displayed for sale on stands along Highway 17 near Mount Pleasant since the 1930s.

This craft, handed down in certain families since the 1700s, originally was used on plantations in rice 

production. Unique to the Lowcountry, it represents one of the oldest West African art forms in 

America. Erected by the Original Sweetgrass Market Place Coalition and the Christ Church Parish 

Preservation Society, 1997.” 

The commercial and residential development of Mount Pleasant has taken its toll on the basket 

makers. As subdivisions take over the wild sweetgrass terrain, the supply needed to weave baskets 

dwindles. Experiments have been conducted to measure the viability of cultivated sweetgrass 

(Strauss). Replacing the sweetgrass will ensure raw materials for weavers; however, maintaining a 

secure marketplace has become a problem. 

National Park Service 35 
According to Meggett, in the late 1970s, there were over 150 basket stands along Highway 17 in 

Mount Pleasant. In 1999, there were less than 40 roadside stands. The basket stands are on public

right of ways along the highways, adjacent to private property. With the development of the private 

property, the basket stands are jeopardized by the increased traffic of heavy trucks at the construction 

sites. Some basket makers have been asked by developers to relocate their stands both temporarily 

and permanently. As early as 1988, local governments have discussed plans for protecting the 

roadside stands during and after development. The proposals included preserving the areas along 

Highway 17 for the basket makers, requiring developers to make provisions for the stands, and 

creating a visible marketplace off the highway for the stands (Quick 1988, 1999). 

It is clear the State of South Carolina and the local governments of the Mount Pleasant area 

understand and value the contributions of the sweetgrass basket makers. Like the Gullah culture, 

efforts are being made to ensure the Sweetgrass basketweaving tradition continues. The Mount

Pleasant Sweetgrass Basketmakers’ Association, the Mount Pleasant Town Council, and other 

organizations are working together in these efforts (Strauss). 

36 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section XIII: Funerary and Burial Customs 

The idea of death was ever present among the slaves. Slavery itself presented many challenges for 

survival including the physical harshness of plantation work itself. The confinement to a particular 

environment and the religious beliefs provided ample opportunities for slaves to consider death as a 

way out of their existence. In spiritual hymns, death is depicted mainly as a way out of the life in 

which the slave found him or herself. Alho (1976) writes that: “generally death is presented as a 

liberating and happy event, the significance of which lies in its being a gateway to another, better 

world.” He offers examples such as “I’m bound’ ter go ter heaven when I dies”; or “I bless de lord I’m 

goin’ die” and “before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, and go home to my lord and be saved” 

(p. 93). Cone also emphasizes the view that many slaves had of the harsh life they were living and 

welcomed death as a passage that would free them. “The black man was shackled in a hostile white 

world without any power to make the white man recognize him as a person. He had to devise means 

of survival. This accounts for the slave’s preoccupation with death. Death was a compelling and ever 

present reality for the slave because of the cheapness with which his life was regarded ... He was 

faced constantly with the imminent threat of death of which the terrible overseer was the symbol; and 

the awareness that he was only chattel property as can be seen in this refrain ‘Death is winter lay his 

cold icy hands on me, Lord. One mornin’ I was walkin’ alone. I heard a voice and I saw no man. Said

go in peace and sin no more. Yo’ sins fo’given an ‘yo’ soul set free’ “ (p. 336). 

There is the widespread belief among African Americans that life must have a proper ending. Sobel 

(1979) has described funeral practices during the antebellum period which often included whites 

preaching at black funerals but not the reverse, even though some blacks had reputations as funeral 

orators, and many established their names through their graveside performances. Formal funerals, he 

writes, “were marks of respect for the dead and status for the living; accordingly they could be

elaborate and expensive affairs. As blacks created formal Christian organizations, burial became one 

of the central tasks.” Blacks had a strong tradition of funeral drama in which the African tradition of 

first and second funerals was merged with white traditions. Although the body might be buried soon

after death, an elaborate second burial or commemoration service was often held later. Sobel also

describes the preparation and interment of the deceased. “At death bodies were laid on cooling 

boards, the women bound in winding sheets and the men in black shrouds; all bodies were attended 

by congregants until burial in a formal setting up ceremony ... The grave was generally dug in an east 

to west direction with the head laid to the west so the dead would not have to turn around when 

Gabriel blew the rising trumpet in the east.” 

Prior to the establishment of local churches and associated gravesites many people were buried on the 

plantation where they lived. Typically whites and blacks were buried in separate graveyards before 

and after the Civil War. Christ Church Cemetery was burial site of Snee Farm and other local

plantation owners; Cooke’s Old Cemetery, the Hamlin family graveyard has a number of people from 

the community buried there including some slaves. In his interview, HBrown commented on burials 

at Snee Farm: “They had people buried on Snee Farm too you know. When, they were building those 

places, they dug up a lot of those graves and brought –um over to Longpoint ... and then took some to 

Olive Branch. And even down here in uh Hobcorn Creek and not just recently in the last eight years 

they dug up a lot of bodies and, and they didn’t dig um all up- too many graves- and a lot of them 

houses sittin’ on grave.”

According to HBrown, those responsible for digging up the graves told the families of those whose 

graves had been dug up after the fact most of the time. He added that when he goes to some of those 

areas to work, he tells people that there are homes sitting on graves. Those he tells are usually 

unaware and surprised to learn this. 

National Park Service 37 
JEllis is a deacon at Long Point Baptist Church, one of the elders of the community, and at 85, is one 

of the oldest. He has a rich historical knowledge of the Snee Farm/Snowden community. The Royal 

family, he said, used to own the property where Long Point is located. When Mr. Stone purchased 

land from the Royal family, the records showed that some of the land had been given to the church. 

Stone worked on making the location of the church official, and in the 1980s Long Point Baptist was

given the deed, the title, and a plat identifying the land where the church now sits. 

JEllis also indicated that he was concerned about where his ancestors were buried and wondered why 

after the founding of the church, they were not buried at the church site. He knew that before there 

was a cemetery at Longpoint Church, people in the community were buried on Snee Farm property, 

in the woods. Consequently, he checked the courthouse records and confirmed that the ‘spot’ was 

given to the church for religious service and burial and as a result a cemetery was put on the church 

grounds. 

Another respondent, HPalmer, described his efforts to work with developers constructing housing 

subdivisions in Parker Island, a former African American plantation community, to minimize the 

destruction of graves by identifying other historically important material remains of the community. 

Parker Island, which was a part of Boone Hall plantation, included Parker’s Wharf where Brickyard is 

and bricks were made by blacks in the area. African Americans did not own the land in Parker Island

but were allowed to live there. Sammy Scott’s old brick barn, with three-inch thick walls from slavery 

time, was still in Parker Island. Sweet grass baskets first started being made in Parker Island according 

to stories told to HPalmer by “old lady Sarah Wydman” who was born during slavery time. According 

to HPalmer, these baskets were originally copied from pottery patterns that the Africans use to make. 

HPalmer would get 10 cents for carrying the baskets from Parker Island to people like Cecilia German 

in Seven-mile and Hamlin who would sell them on the Highway 17N for 50 cents. Pottery made by 

Africans has been found on some of the graves in Parker Island. 

Many of the African-American churches have old gravesites. Unlike Cooke’s Old Field Cemetery and 

Christ Church Cemetery, which are recognized as historically important landmarks in the Mount 

Pleasant community by area docents (community historians and tour guides), African American 

community church cemeteries are not currently recognized in this way. There is a grave marker in 

Longpoint Baptist Church’s cemetery for Bella Smalls (1865-1945). There are also grave markers for 

many of the ancestors of the people described like former worker A. Smalls. There are many grave 

markers to be discovered and much information to be gained about former plantation community 

populations by reading grave markers. 

With few exceptions, blacks and whites were buried in separate cemeteries or sections of cemeteries. 

FSaunders discusses funeral practices and gravesite practices as follows: 

“There is a Mount Pleasant town cemetery. One side is for black folks and one side is for whites. 

Nearly everybody in Mount Pleasant is buried in the town cemetery.” FSaunders’ said her mother and 

father are buried there, and there are tombstones there from the 1700s. There were social 

clubs/societies to which FSaunders’ grandparents belonged. She said her grandfather belonged to the

Brotherhood society, and members of the society would wash the body of a deceased member before

the undertaker took the body. “Then the undertaker could pick the body up.”

38 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section XIV: Waterborne Subsistence and Commercial 

Activities 

During the Mathews era at Snee Farm, 65 acres of reclaimed marshland was used for the cultivation of 

rice. There has been a great deal of speculation about the beginnings of rice cultivation in South 

Carolina, where the first rice came from, when it made its first appearance, and who was most 

responsible for its successful culture. The theory that it was introduced by chance has been 

discredited for some years, and it is clear that the crop was one among many others that the lord’s

proprietors envisioned as a “vendible commodity” for the province at its inception. It is also clear that

many Africans were experienced rice producers and conversely that English colonists in South 

Carolina had some difficulty in cultivating the crop successfully. 

Recent historians have been highly conscious of the fact that the period in which rice became an 

important export commodity coincided with that in which Africans were imported in significant and 

eventually overwhelming numbers. In view of the ignorance of rice cultivation in South Carolina 

undoubtedly could have been more important than commonly realized, particularly because many of

the practices of early production paralleled those in Africa. 

Certainly Carolina rice had a distinctive reputation, is obviously a hybrid, and doubtlessly took time 

and effort to develop. Lest this task appear to have been beyond those who were relatively ignorant 

about rice and lacking in contemporary agricultural technology, a climatologist has recently pointed 

out that most crops have been introduced into new areas not by scientists or other specialists but by

practical men who tackled and solved agrarian conundrums before the problems were properly 

appreciated by authorities. The need to find or develop such a plan could mean that the connection 

between African imports and successful rice culture came about by design rather than by chance. That 

is, Englishmen, from the beginning, could have made a conscious effort to import slaves from those 

regions known to produce rice. 

It is clear, then, that South Carolinians did place a positive emphasis on slaves from rice 

growing regions. It has also been established that before Carolina was settled, Englishmen were aware 

that Africans possessed the technical knowledge to produce this crop and that from the earliest 

period of successful rice production in South Carolina a relationship developed between this region

and rice-growing regions in Africa. Finally, it has been shown that while Englishmen in Carolina had 

no prior experience with rice cultivation and had some difficulty inducing rice to grow, they evinced a 

willingness to avail themselves of the African skills of their bondsmen. The evidence is circumstantial 

but leads to the suggestion that the early connection between South Carolina and Gambia was a 

purposeful one, related to the production of rice. In this regard, Englishmen had everything to learn 

and Africans much to teach. Common sense would have dictated a continued desire for laborers 

familiar with the crop to be produced. In the early years, however, Carolinians may well have gone to 

Gambia as students and brought Africans back as teachers, making the African influence on the 

development of rice cultivation in Carolina a decisive one. 

National Park Service 39 
Section XV: Summary 

Although the records are scant about the activities of slaves, and their descendents, associated with 

the Snee Farm Plantation, there is ample evidence from descriptions of African American workers 

alive today, that the Snee Farm Plantation functioned much the same way as many of the other 

lowcountry plantations. The Snee Farm Plantation survived a succession of owners. The African 

American workers working in the lowcountry had a unique set of circumstances which governed their 

work activities, and distinguished their relationship with the plantation owners. These workers on the 

Coastal South Carolina worked under a task system. 

This task system allowed slaves to negotiate with the plantation owner the completion a particular set 

of jobs, rather than work the usual gangland style from sun-up to sundown as practiced in the upland

country of South Carolina and in most of the other southern states. This system undoubtedly 

influenced the relationship between plantation owner and freed slave after slavery was abolished. 

Many of the African American informants who worked on Snee Farm described working for other 

plantations in the area, Boone Hall or Laurel for example, as time permitted them to do so. 

The Snee Farm produced many different types of vegetables for market, and the Africans American

informants indicated their participation in all aspects of the farm functioning process. Africans

Americans also reported a work schedule that included specific intervals for breakfast, lunch and 

dinner. Pay was also presented as a fee for work produced. 

40 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
Section XVI: Conclusion 

Snee Farm is an important plantation because of its direct linkage to the life Charles Pinckney. It is 

also an important resource for documenting the social and cultural experiences of African Americans 

during and after slavery, and for exploring the relationship between the African Americans associated 

with Snee Farm and the Gullah culture. 

This group of people lived a typical post-slavery existence like families all across the southern United 

States between 1870 and 1960. For the most part, they were rural farmers who spent time growing and 

cultivating their own produce. They spent little on acquired goods.

The African American workers of Snee Farm also are a unique part of the Gullah population. They 

share the Gullah culture, language, crafts, and funeral customs. They also share the biological heritage 

of the Gullah population. 

The African Americans interviewed spoke fondly of Snee Farm, both as the major employer in the 

area during their working years, and as their home. African Americans once constituted the majority 

population during the slavery years and immediately thereafter during the Reconstruction years of the 

South Carolina population. In recent years, the population of African Americans has steadily

declined, while the white population has grown to a clear majority of the people in Mount Pleasant. 

What this means for the African American population is the slow, but progressive shrinkage of their

neighborhoods, the increasing demand for their land by large development corporations, and the 

progressive loss of their culture through the scattering of the various people from their original 

communities. 

African Americans are becoming the minority in their communities in which they were once the 

majority population group. As the older African Americans become less active in their communities 

through death or infirmities brought on by age, the role that such groups played in the promotion of 

the heritage of the community is becoming part of the tourist trade, and less of community 

celebrations. Residents and non-residents of Mount Pleasant, African American and white, have 

rediscovered there is money in Gullah culture. Money is made through tours, selling of sweetgrass 

basket products, and the promotion of books and recorded material. And, there are many academic 

projects underway to “capture” the Mount Pleasant African American culture “before it fades into 

history.” 

Such intense activity in these communities has created a lack of privacy for many of the residents, as

often we felt like intruders in our research efforts. But, it is in many ways, necessary activity in order 

that this important culture is not forgotten. 

National Park Service 41 

Section XVII: Sources 

Snee Farm Documents: Descriptions 

Last Will and Testament of Charles Pinckney II, 1782 

Last Will and Testament of Charles Pinckney III, 1824 

Conveyance in Trust. Charles Pinckney III to Simon Magwood et al. (1816) 

Charleston County Court of Chancery: Equity Bill #47, Charles Pinckney II vs. Daniel D’Oyley (1805). 

[This is an oversized document and is filed separately]. 

Master in Equity Sale to Francis G. Deliesseline (1817) 

Sheriff’s Sale to William Mathews (1828)

McCrady Plats: Descriptions

Plat 6013

Plat 0687

Plat 6071

Plat 2354

Plats 5565 and 6151

Plats 6049, 923, and 5559

Topographical Overlays to Proper Scale (15 chains)

Copy of Letter from E. Milby Burton to Mrs. Thomas Ewing 

Brockington’s “Cultural Resource Study” 

W.S. Elliott, “Charles Pinckney,” from DeBow’s Review 

Oral Interview Summaries (Hollowell, Hamlin, Rutledge) 

Snee Farm Property Chain of Title 

McCrady Plats, 0687; Deeds, 00:687 South Carolina Department of Churches and History 

Gene Waddell 

n.d. Design of the Charles Pinckney House. Unpublished manuscript, pp. 2, 7. Agnes Leland 

Baldwin personal files. 

Mills, Robert 

1862 Statistics of South Carolina Including a View of Natural, Civil, and Military History,

General and Particular. Charleston. p. 460.

Mills B. Lane

1984 Architecture in the Old South. Savannah. Pp. 41-42. 

National Park Service 43 
McCrady Plats, 6049, 5564, 6151. South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

The archeological work done by Brockington and Associates (1987) used the wrong scale 

and hence excavated the wrong site. See Reference Document 15 for an overlay drawn to 

the correct scale. 

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1924 (re-issued 1969) The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction. New York: Russell 

and Russell Publishers. 

Twining, M. 

1978 Harvesting and Heritage: A Comparison of Afro-American and African Basketry. Southern 

Folklore Quarterly: 159-174 

Vincent, Susan Hart 

1998 Charles Pinckney National Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report. Atlanta: National Park 

Service, Southeast Regional Office. 

National Park Service 47 
Waring, J. J.

1967 The History of Medicine in South Carolina, 1825-1900. Charleston, SC Medical 

Association. 

Williams, R. A. ed. 

1975 Textbook of Black Related Diseases. New York: McGraw-Hill. 

United States Census Bureau 

1800 Population Schedules of the Second Census of the United States, 1800. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1958; M32:48:0040). Washington, DC: National

Archives and Records.

1810 Population Schedules of the Second Census of the United States, 1810. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1958; M252:60:0208). Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1820 Population Schedules of the Fourth Census of the United States, 1820. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1958; M33:119:0208). Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1830 Population Schedules of the Fifth Census of the United States, 1830. (Fort Worth: National 

Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1944; M19:170:0238). Washington, DC: National 

Archives and Records.

1840 Population Schedules of the Sixth Census of the United States, 1840. (Fort Worth: National 

Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1967; M704:509:0374). Washington, DC: National 

Archives and Records.

1850 Population Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1964; M432:862:0397). Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1860aPopulation Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1967; M653:1215:0108). Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1860bSlave Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. (Fort Worth: National

Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1967; M653:1232:0272). Washington, DC: National 

Archives and Records.

1870 Population Schedules of the Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1965; M593:1488:0125). Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1880 Population Schedules of the Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1965; T9:1223:78:15:34) Washington, DC: 

National Archives and Records.

1910 Population Schedules of the Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1965; T624:1453:0125). Washington, D.C.:

National Archives and Records.

1920 Population Schedules of the Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (Fort Worth: 

National Archives and Records; Microfilm: 1965; T625:1687:78:1:25). Washington, D.C.: 

National Archives and Records.

48 African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation 
As the nation’s principal conservation agency, 

the Department of the Interior has responsibility 

for most of our nationally owned public lands and 

natural resources. This includes fostering sound 

use of our land and water resources; protecting 

our fish, wildlife, and biological diversity; 

preserving the environmental and cultural values 

of our national parks and historical places; and 

providing for the enjoyment of life through 

outdoor recreation. The department assesses our 

energy and mineral resources and works to ensure 

that their development is in the best interests of all 

our people by encouraging stewardship and citizen 

participation in their care. The department also

has a major responsibility for American Indian

reservation communities and for people who live 

in island territories under U.S. administration. 

NPS D-33 October 2006

National Park Service 49 

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site

1254 Long Point Road 

Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina 29464

www.nps.gov/chpi

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