page_title: William Aiken Jr.
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: William Aiken Jr. / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Harriett Lowndes Aiken 1812–1892
context_page_description: William Aiken Jr. was the 61st governor of South Carolina, serving from 1844 to 1846. He also served in the state legislature and the United States House of Representatives, running unsuccessfully for speaker of the House in 1856 in "the longest and most contentious Speaker election in House history."
  Aiken was one of the state's wealthiest citizens, owner of the largest rice plantation in the state — Jehossee Island — with over 700 enslaved Blacks on 1,500 acres under cultivation, almost twice the acreage of the next largest plantation. By 1860, Aiken owned the entire Jehossee Island, and the plantation produced 1.5 million pounds of rice in addition to sweet potatoes and corn — in the middle of the 19th century, rice was king in South Carolina — of the 10 largest cash crops in 1850, seven were rice, two cotton and one sugar. After the Civil War, the plantation regained its preeminence, producing 1.2 million pounds of rice. Today, descendants of the Aiken family, the Maybanks, still own part of the island, having sold the remainder in 1992 to the U.S. as part of the ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge.
context_section_description: Aiken was married to Harriet Lowndes Aiken.  He was a successful businessman and planter and lived in Charleston, South Carolina. Aiken's first cousin, D. Wyatt Aiken served as a Confederate States Army officer and five-term U.S. Congressman. Aiken died at Flat Rock, NC, September 6, 1887, and was interred in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C. His house, the Aiken-Rhett House, is part of the Historic Charleston foundation.
caption: Harriet Lowndes Aiken
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