Architecture has been defined as "the gift of one generation to the next." In the South Carolina Low Country the gift is a particularly precious one-a rich treasure of buildings that not only charm us with their graceful beauty, but offer us a glimpse into a vanished world of prosperous plantations and provincial aristocracy.

Classic photo-and-text survey of extant plantation homes, churches and chapels built between 1686 and 1878 along South Carolina coastal plain. Detailed photographs, fascinating history, distinguishing characteristics of Medway, Middleburg, Exeter, Crowfield, Hampton, The Rocks, Lowndes' Grove, 48 other structures.

From trusted to tainted, an examination of the shifting perceived reputation of overseers of enslaved people during the eighteenth century. In the antebellum southern United States, major landowners typically hired overseers to manage their plantations. In addition to cultivating crops, managing slaves, and dispensing punishment, overseers were expected to maximize profits through increased productivity—often achieved through violence and cruelty. In Masters of Violence, Tristan Stubbs offers the first book-length examination of the overseers—from recruitment and dismissal to their relationships with landowners and enslaved people, as well as their changing reputations, which devolved from reliable to untrustworthy and incompetent. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, slave owners regarded overseers as reliable enforcers of authority; by the end of the century, particularly after the American Revolution, plantation owners viewed them as incompetent and morally degenerate, as well as a threat to their power. Through a careful reading of plantation records, diaries, contemporary newspaper articles, and many other sources, Stubbs uncovers the ideological shift responsible for tarnishing overseers’ reputations. In this book, Stubbs argues that this shift in opinion grew out of far-reaching ideological and structural transformations to slave societies in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia throughout the Revolutionary era. Seeking to portray slavery as positive and yet simultaneously distance themselves from it, plantation owners blamed overseers as incompetent managers and vilified them as violent brutalizers of enslaved people. “A solid work of scholarship, and even specialists in the field of colonial slavery will derive considerable benefit from reading it.” —Journal of Southern History “A major achievement, restoring the issue of class to societies riven by racial conflict.” —Trevor Burnard, University of Melbourne “Based on a detailed reading of overseers’ letters and diaries, plantation journals, employer’s letters, and newspapers, Tristan Stubbs has traced the evolution of the position of the overseer from the colonial planter’s partner to his most despised employee. This deeply researched volume helps to reframe our understanding of class in the colonial and antebellum South.” —Tim Lockley, University of Warwick

Examines the creation of 'sporting plantations' in the South Carolina lowcountry during the first four decades of the twentieth century.

In the early 1930s Chlotilde R. Martin of Beaufort, South Carolina, wrote a series of articles for the Charleston News and Courier documenting the social and economic transformation of the lowcountry coast as an influx of wealthy northerners began buying scores of old local plantations. Her articles combined the name-dropping chatter of the lowcountry social register with reflections on the tension between past and present in the old rice and cotton kingdoms of South Carolina. Edited by Robert B. Cuthbert and Stephen G. Hoffius, Northern Money, Southern Land collects Martin's articles and augments them with photographs and historical annotations to carry their stories forward to the present day. As Martin recounted, the new owners of these coastal properties ranked among the most successful businessmen in the country and included members of the Doubleday, Du Pont, Hutton, Kress, Whitney, Guggenheim, and Vanderbilt families. Among the later owners are media magnate Ted Turner and boxer Joe Frazier. The plantation houses they bought and the homes they built are some of the most important architectural structures in the Palmetto State--although many are rarely seen by the public. In some fifty articles drawn from interviews with property owners and visits to their newly acquired lands, Martin described almost eighty estates covering some three hundred thousand acres of Beaufort, Jasper, Hampton, Colleton, and Berkeley counties. Martin's lively sketches included stories of wealthy young playboys who brought Broadway showgirls down for decadent parties, tales of the first nudist colony in America, and exchanges with African American farmhands who wanted to travel to New York to see their employers' primary homes, which they had been assured were piled high with gold and silver. In the process, Martin painted a fascinating landscape of a southern coastline changing hands and on the verge of dramatic redevelopment. Her tales, here updated by Cuthbert and Hoffius, will bring modern readers onto many little-known plantations in the southern part of South Carolina and provide a wealth of knowledge about the history of vexing tensions between development and conservation that remain a defining aspect of lowcountry life.

Classic photo-and-text survey of 55 extant plantation homes, churches, chapels built between 1686 and 1878. History, distinguishing characteristics, detailed photos.