The introduction of slavery to Georgia in 1749 laid the foundation for the plantation system that would anchor her way of life for generations. But Georgia, as envisioned by Oglethorpe and the Trust, was to be a society of small yeoman farmers rather than landed gentry. Consequently, Georgia planters still formed relatively small plots, and even those who acquired large grants lacked the means and the capital to develop the full potential of their holdings.

The coastal planters of South Carolina, however, with the advantage of almost a century of slave labor and no restrictions on land ownership, had developed a network of prosperous rice plantations. But as the soil began to show signs of depletion, the Carolinas looked to the potential rice-growing region in coastal Georgia for room to expand.

The Avenue of Oaks, Retreat Plantation

One such interested planter was Major Pierce Butler of Charleston who purchased 1,700 acres on the northern end of St. Simons Island in 1774. With the interruption of the Revolution, he did not begin to settle the estate until 1793. So it was not until the last decade of the Eighteenth Century that St. Simons Island began the transition into the era of the great plantations.

Pierce Butler came to America as an officer in the British Army. He resigned his commission prior to the Revolution and became an ardent supporter of the American cause. In 1771, he married Mary Middleton of a prominent Charleston family, and acquired a fortune in the process. Butler was active in politics, representing South Carolina in Congress, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and for several terms in the Senate. In his later years, he was described as "a handsome widower . . . maintaining an elegant establishment in Philadelphia who affected to be a democrat and carefully selected his associates from the aristocracy; a South Carolinian with a reverence for wealth."

Butler eventually owned three tracts in Georgia: the rice plantations of Butler Island and Woodville in the Altamaha Delta, and the estate on St. Simons Island which he called Hampton, the name retained from Oglethorpe's day when a lookout post was located there. It was at Hampton that Butler grew hundreds of acres of sea island cotton - and he brought hundreds of slaves from South Carolina to work the fields. The slaves at Hampton would eventually number almost a thousand, and the plantation would be recognized as one of the largest in the South.

St. Simons Plantations

He was by far the wealthiest planter to settle on St. Simons, and the result of his large investment at Hampton was soon evident. After several years, the plantation complex included the main house with kitchen and storeroom, an overseer's house with a separate kitchen, a smokehouse, poultry house, washhouse, cotton barn, corn house, horse mill, two store houses, the hospital, stable and six duplex slave cabins, and other slave settlements built near the fields. By 1813 the main house had ten rooms on the ground floor with seven chimneys and possibly a second floor. This large house, which served as Butler's only home in Georgia, was destroyed by a hurricane in 1824. The Butler family probably used the overseer's house for their infrequent visits in the following years.

Major Butler ran his plantation with military precision. He was a stern disciplinarian, and maintained strict control over his slaves. He didn't permit them to associate with the blacks from other plantations, nor did he allow them to attend church services for the island slaves on Sunday afternoon. Under his autocratic rule, Hampton was virtually self-sufficient. Most items of necessity, such as shoes, clothing, furniture and tools were manufactured on the plantation.

As an absentee landlord, Butler had to depend heavily on his overseers, but the capable men he chose, together with his acute business sense, made Hampton an extremely profitable cotton plantation. Up until 1835, the profits were as high as $50,000 per year - far above the norm. Interestingly, Butler attempted to sell his Georgia holdings beginning in 1809, but found no buyers who would meet his price.

Although an infrequent visitor himself, Major Butler often extended the hospitality of Hampton to his friends. One of his most famous guests was Vice President Aaron Burr, who, after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, sought refuge in the South where dueling was understood, if not tolerated. Burr had served with Butler in the Senate and took advantage of his old friend's invitation, staying at Hampton for a month in 1804. His letters to his daughter Theodosia written during his stay extol the graciousness of life on St. Simons.

Over three decades later, another visitor had a different view. Fanny Kemble, the beautiful English actress who had married the Major's grandson and namesake, visited Hampton and Butler Island in 1839. In her diary, Fanny paid eloquent tribute to St. Simons, but also recorded her indignation and shock at the reality of slavery. She later divorced Butler and returned to England to resume her career on the stage. Her diary was published in 1863, and gave impetus to the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic.

Both Burr and Kemble delighted in the companionship of John Couper, the master of Cannon's Point, which shared the northern tip of St. Simons with Hampton. Separated by Jones Creek, the two sea island cotton estates were settled within just a few years of one another.

The first large planter to live permanently on St. Simons, Couper left Scotland at sixteen "for the good of his native land," as he often put it, to seek his fortune in America. He became an apprentice to the Savannah branch of a Scottish mercantile firm and moved to Florida during the Revolution with his loyalist employers. After the war, he became a successful merchant in the once-thriving but now extinct coastal town of Sunbury, where he married Rebecca Maxwell in 1792. The following year Couper and his business partner, James Hamilton, began purchasing scattered tracts of land on St. Simons Island.

In 1796, Couper moved his family to St. Simons to live in a modest one and one-half story cottage built by Daniel Cannon, a carpenter of old Frederica. In 1804, the Coupers moved into a handsome mansion: the ground floor was built of tabby with the wooden upper story-and-one-half painted white with green blinds. Broad steps led up to a wide piazza that surrounded the second story and provided a magnificent view of the Hampton River and the distant marshes.

John Couper's interest in horticulture was reflected in the beautiful grounds of Cannon's Point. Shrubs, trees and flowers of every description grew in profusion alongside groves of lemons, oranges and Persian date palms. At the request of President Jefferson, Couper imported from France two hundred olive trees, which soon yielded oil of a superior quality.

The Coupers were gracious hosts, and Cannon's Point was rarely without visitors. It was not unusual for guests to stay weeks or even months: one young couple came to spend their honeymoon on the plantation and stayed until the birth of their second child! Also contributing to the pleasures of a Cannon's Point visit were the legendary skills of the slave cook Sans Foix, who had no equal on the Georgia coast.

As a planter, Couper earned the respect of his peers through his experiments with various seeds of sea island cotton that improved its yield. He fulfilled the responsibilities of public service as a member of the Georgia legislature and a delegate to the state constitutional convention. When the need arose for a lighthouse on the southern end of St. Simons, Couper sold the tract on which it stands today to the United States government for the sum of one dollar.

But the accomplishments of the master of Cannon's Point were all secondary to the man himself. John Couper was an individual of uncommon courtesy, a sharp intellect, a quick wit and a genuine love of life that he shared with all who knew him. The tall, red-haired Scotsman could laugh at adversity as readily as a well-told story and was never guilty of taking himself too seriously.

James Hamilton, on the other hand, was as pragmatic as Couper was gregarious. The two had left Scotland together and became business partners in Georgia. Hamilton settled on the southwestern portion of St. Simons and gave the plantation his own name. The main house, of simple colonial design with a shuttered veranda and latticed foundations, overlooked a wide lawn that sloped down to the Frederica River.

The Hamilton property included Gascoigne Bluff, where Captain John Barry of the fledgling United States Navy supervised the shipping of live oak timber felled on St. Simons Island in 1794 for the construction of the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides. And it was from the Hamilton wharf located here that most of St. Simons' sea island cotton was shipped to northern and European markets.

Hamilton's business interests were not restricted to St. Simons, and he was often away from his island home. In his travels, he sent John Couper seeds and plants from all over the world to test their adaptability on St. Simons Island. Hamilton took an active interest, however, in island affairs, and his plantation was noted for its efficiency and productivity. Eventually, Hamilton accumulated a fortune from his cotton fields, and retired to Philadelphia to pursue his northern business interests. At his death in 1829, his estate was said to be worth more than a million dollars. The other planters of St. Simons would not be so fortunate.

Lying adjacent to Hamilton Plantation on the southern tip of the island was a tract originally settled by James Spalding. In 1804, Major William Page, a South Carolinian who had managed the Hampton estate for Pierce Butler until a permanent overseer could be engaged, was impressed with its potential. Page bought the old Spalding property, named it Retreat, and moved his family into the small cottage that overlooked St. Simons Sound and Jekyll Island.

Retreat Plantation

Their only child, Anna, was a lovely girl whose hand was won by Thomas Butler King, a young lawyer from Massachusetts. The couple inherited Retreat Plantation at the death of Anna's parents in 1827. King became an accomplished lawyer and planter, but his main interests revolved around politics. He spent much of his time in Washington as a six-term congressman or traveling throughout the country promoting his business ventures. One of the earliest proponents of the transcontinental railroad, he helped organize the effort for the Brunswick/Altamaha Canal, and was appointed Collector of the Port of San Francisco. For one three-year period, he didn't come home at all; even so, he did manage to get back often enough to father ten children. With her husband's extensive travels, the task of raising the family and running the plantation fell upon Anna's most capable shoulders.

The Kings intended to erect a fine mansion at the end of the avenue of oaks that Anna had planted in 1848, but the right time never quite arrived to build it, and they continued to live in the little cottage of hand-hewn timbers with shuttered veranda and gabled roof. Anna's gardens surrounded the house, and she refused to grow any flower that did not possess a pleasing fragrance, calling them "plants without souls." She nurtured as many as ninety-six varieties of roses, among the other flowering plants, and in the springtime it was said that sailors approaching St. Simons could smell Retreat Plantation a dozen miles from shore. John James Audubon paid homage to Retreat when, en route to St. Augustine, his ship put in at St. Simons to escape a storm. He was entertained by Thomas Butler King at Retreat, of which he wrote, " . . . I was fain to think that I had landed on some one of those fairy islands said to have existed in the Golden Age."

Thus, in just more than a decade, these four great plantations - Hampton and Cannon's Point at the north of the island and Hamilton and Retreat to the south - formed the cornerstones of a way of life that endured for three-quarters of a century. Their number soon increased to more than a dozen, and thriving cotton plantations occupied the length and breadth of St. Simons.

On the western side of the island, the Hazzard brothers, sons of a South Carolina Revolutionary War veteran who had settled on St. Simons in the early 1800s, developed the plantations of West Point and Pike's Bluff. Just below Frederica on Dunbar Creek was Orange Grove Plantation, the home of Major Samuel Wright who moved to St. Simons from Savannah after the Revolutionary War.

The Road to Cannon's Point

On the seaward side of the island just below Cannon's Point were two small estates called Long View and Lawrence, occupied by friends and family of John Couper. Below Lawrence was Oatlands Plantation, the summer home of Dr. Robert Grant, a South Carolinian who also owned a prosperous rice plantation on the Altamaha Delta.

Sinclair Plantation took its name from its original owner, Archibald Sinclair, a tithingman of Frederica. The property changed hands often over the years, and the plantation house served as a meeting place for the Sinclair Club, the scene of many a gala affair. Sinclair at one time was occupied by Captain Alexander Wylly, a former British officer who later built a home on the site of the colonial Salzburger settlement, or German Village as it was called. His plantation of over a thousand acres became known simply as "The Village." In 1838, Wylly's youngest son, John, was killed in a boundary dispute by Dr. Thomas Hazzard of Pike's Bluff Plantation. Wylly's grave in the Christ Church burying ground is marked by a broken pediment, symbolic of his tragic death in the prime of life.

James Gould of Massachusetts came to Georgia in the late Eighteenth Century to survey live oak timber for the government and established a lumber business on the St. Marys River. He settled on St. Simons and built the lighthouse, activated in 1811, and became its keeper. The following year, Gould purchased a nine hundred-acre tract known as New St. Clair that bridged the island from the Black Banks River to Dunbar Creek. His spacious tabby home surrounded by rose gardens was appropriately known as Rosemount. He later bought six hundred acres, confiscated from a Loyalist after the Revolution, which lay along the Black Banks River. The tabby home he built here was called Black Banks, and eventually became the home of his son Horace.

Occupying most of the southeast portion of the island was Kelvin Grove. Its over sixteen hundred acres included the site of Bloody Marsh battlefield, near which stood a beautiful three-story house with a widow's walk that looked out over the ocean. The tract was settled in the 1790s by Thomas Cater, and developed into a prominent estate by South Carolinian James Postell, who married into the Cater family.

Slave Cabin, Hamilton Plantation

In the interior of the island adjacent to Kelvin Grove, the descendants of Captain Raymond Demere, who fought at Bloody Marsh, occupied Mulberry Plantation. They also maintained Demere's old home, Harrington, just outside the walls of Frederica.

These planters of St. Simons were diverse in their backgrounds and varied in their interests; being men of wide experience, they were as intrigued by the affairs of the world as by those of their own island. The society they created was a blend of "Old World courtesy and refinement, intermixed with a democratic simplicity." Although great wealth remained elusive to most of them, their way of life was characterized by unbounded hospitality and generosity. A newspaper article of the day noted, "If the health of the St. Simons planters should keep pace with their hospitality they will each see their hundredth year."

Although relatively isolated on their island, the planters kept abreast of the times with trips to fashionable vacation spots, and sojourns abroad were not uncommon. The young men were usually educated at northern universities, while their sisters were tutored at home and then, more often than not, sent to finishing schools in Savannah or Charleston. Marriages between island families were the norm, and few born to island life chose to leave it.

By 1807, the island's population was sufficient to require a permanent place of worship. Christ Church was established, the second-oldest Episcopal Church in Georgia, and the State legislature granted to it one hundred acres near Frederica. But it was not until 1820 that a simple, little white wooden chapel was built under the oaks near the town walls of Frederica. For the next forty years the island families traveled up or down Frederica Road every Sunday to worship at Christ Church.

As life on St. Simons matured, however, it grew totally dependent upon that Sovereign of the South - King Cotton - or, specifically, "sea island cotton", as it became known. This special strain was introduced to St. Simons in 1786 by Colonel Roger Kelsall, who sent his former business associate, James Spalding, seeds of the Anguilla cotton from the Bahamas. This sea island cotton quickly adapted and thrived on the coastal islands of Georgia. It brought much higher prices than the short staple variety grown inland, and was used for only the finest cloth and lace.

Vagaries of the weather and fluctuating cotton prices made the financial status of an island planter anything but certain. Long staple cotton prices ranged from twenty to fifty cents per pound, with depressed periods in 1806-15, 1826-34 and 1840-50. With production costs estimated to average $75 per 350-pound bag of sea island cotton, losses were substantial during those depressed years.

Slave Cabin, Hamilton Plantation

There was not better example of the uncertainty of the financial status of a cotton planter than John Couper of Cannon's Point. In 1804 his entire cotton crop was destroyed by a hurricane with over a $100,000 loss. In 1814, British soldiers stole sixty slaves valued at over $15,000, forcing him to replace them on credit at approximately $450 each. In 1824, his cotton crop was again destroyed by a hurricane with a $90,000 loss, and the following year his entire crop was destroyed by caterpillars. In 1827, Couper was forced into bankruptcy, selling most of his lands to his partner James Hamilton for $174,712, retaining only his Cannon's Point home.

The individual responsible during good years and bad for getting the best cotton price for an island planter was the "cotton factor." Most of them operated out of Charleston or Savannah, and acted as a banker, extended credit, paid bills, and often bought supplies for the plantation. They applied a commission of two and one-half percent for their services, and interest on loans was usually eight percent. These factors often exercised tremendous control over the affairs of the plantations through liens on the property, and few planters were not in their debt.

But the foundation of the plantation system was made up of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy - the slaves. The cultivation of sea island cotton was labor intensive, and the planters were often outnumbered by their black charges as much as twenty to one. The slaves lived in cabins made of wood or tabby that were often duplexes large enough to accommodate two families. The use of tabby had been discontinued in Georgia after 1762 until its revitalization by the coastal planters. Thomas Spalding, influenced by the ruins of Frederica, reintroduced tabby in 1805 with the construction of his home on Sapelo Island. Other planters followed his example, and tabby construction in the home of both master and slave thrived until the Civil War.

The slaves' diet consisted, for the most part, of corn meal and fat meat provided by the planters. This was supplemented by vegetables grown in their own gardens, which they could eat or sell, and their vegetable money was often used to buy whiskey, tobacco and patent medicine. Much of their free time was spent fishing and trapping small game, activities that varied the monotony of their fare.

Their clothing was generally issued twice a year, with special gifts, such as kerchiefs or cloth, given at Christmas time. Most of the discarded clothing of the planter's family eventually made its way to the slaves' quarters. Despite the paucity of their existence, however, archaeological evidence from John Couper's plantation indicates that the slaves of Cannon's Point, and perhaps the other plantations as well, lived on a material level equal to or surpassing the rural white farm workers of the day.

The slaves of St. Simons were assigned work in the fields by the task system. Each field hand was given a portion of the field for which he was responsible, or a "task," usually about a quarter of an acre. Those with less stamina were assigned three-quarter tasks, half-tasks, or other fractions according to their ability. From January to March, the slaves manured the fields, pulled down old beds and set out new ones with hoes and plows. In April the seeds were planted; during the next few months the fields were thinned, hoed and then weeded six to eight times before being topped. Picking began in late August, and by early November the cotton was cleaned with roller gins, a process that lasted the rest of the year.

Slaves were supervised in their work by white overseers, who occupied an intermediate social status along with tradesmen and farmers and landless whites. Many planters couldn't afford an overseer - his salary and expenses could run from 10% to 20% of the plantation's income - and a black foreman called a "driver" was used instead.

Slave Hospital, Retreat Plantation

The typical workday for a field hand began at dawn with a break in the field for breakfast about nine. The day's work was often completed by noon. Very seldom did the slaves have to work beyond three in the afternoon; after that, they day was their own - unless they were being punished for some infraction of a plantation rule. As punishment, a slave might be forced to keep Frederica Road in good repair, to dig stumps out of a field, or to clean up around the slaves' quarters. The lash was rarely used as a form of punishment; when it was employed, it was usually the black driver who applied the blows.

Perhaps the most poignant aspect of slave life on the island was the heartache endured by a slave if he fell in love with a woman who lived on another plantation. Normally, marriage between slaves on different plantations was prohibited; when an exception was made, a slave was said to have a "broad wife" - not referring to her possibly excessive girth, but indicating he had to go abroad on weekends to visit her plantation.

Slavery flourished on St. Simons from 1749 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In 1798, the State Legislature prohibited the direct acquisition of slaves from Africa, relying instead on the natural increase of those already in Georgia. Rather than eliminating importation, however, the edict gave rise to a slave smuggling trade along the isolated coastal islands. Tradition has it that slaves were brought ashore on the banks of the Dunbar Creek at a spot known today as Ebos Landing. The leader of the Ebos - a proud and noble tribe of Nigeria - led his people into the waters of the creek where they drowned themselves rather than submit to slavery. For many years, the blacks on St. Simons refused to go fishing in that portion of Dunbar Creek because they believed it was haunted by the spirits of those Ebo tribesmen.

If slavery was responsible for the emergence of the great plantations of St. Simons, so it was for their demise. The culture anchored by sea island cotton, slavery and the character of the planters who shaped it didn't survive beyond its third generation.

When the Civil War came to St. Simons, the island proved to be in a strategic location. It could supply food for soldiers, serve as a base for raiders and blockade-runners and command the entrance to Brunswick Harbor. Consequently, in January of 1861, Governor Brown ordered the Jackson Artillery from Macon to occupy St. Simons Island. But after several months at Frederica, the garrison duty was so dull they asked to be removed. When the Southern coastline was blockaded by the Federal fleet, 1,500 Georgia troops manned batteries at the south end of the island, near old Fort St. Simons, as well as strong fortifications on the northern end strengthened by five batteries. There was much social interaction between Confederate officers and islanders, particularly with the King family of Retreat Plantation, on whose property the fort was built.

Slave Hospital, Retreat Plantation

The enthusiasm of those early days of the war soon dispersed when Robert E. Lee ordered the evacuation of St. Simons. The Confederate troops were sent north to defend Savannah; the planters, their families and most of the slaves went inland to seek refuge from the invading Yankees. As they departed, the Confederates destroyed the lighthouse, lest it become a navigational aid to the Union blockading fleet.

Federal warships soon patrolled the coastal waters, and the U.S. Navy assumed jurisdiction of St. Simons Island. Over five hundred contrabands, or freed slaves, were settled at Retreat Plantation and Gascoigne Bluff. Negro troops under white officers were stationed on the island; during their occupation, the plantations were ransacked and Christ Church defiled.

In 1863, Captain Miles Hazzard, of the 4th Georgia Cavalry, led nine Confederate soldiers on a reconnaissance mission on St. Simons Island. Much to his anger, Hazzard found that his family's graves at Christ Church had been desecrated. He wrote a note to the Federal commander and placed it on a stick planted in the middle of the road in front of the church. The note was forwarded to the Federal commanding officer, and said, in part: " . . . let me tell you, Sir, that beside these graves I swear by heaven to avenge their desecration. If it is honorable for you to disturb the dead, I shall consider it an honor and will make it my ambition to disturb your living." Never again were the graves molested.

The Federal forces were eventually ordered back to South Carolina, and the contraband colony was disbanded. During the latter half of the war, little or no activity occurred on St. Simons. Then, after mid-1864, many ex-slaves drifted back to their former plantations, as did their former owners when the guns fell silent.

James Gould 1772-1852

The young men of St. Simons acquitted themselves honorably in the conflict. The four King brothers of Retreat Plantation participated in over a hundred engagements. But some St. Simons soldiers paid a dear price. Henry Lord King fell at the Battle of Fredericksburg. His body was borne home by his faithful servant, Neptune, to rest in the Christ Church burying ground. Of the five grandsons of John Couper, two died in Virginia; only one survived unscathed.

When the planters returned, they were greeted by utter desolation. The fields were overgrown, most of their homes were uninhabitable, and ex-slaves claimed the land under eighteen federal land grants. It took several years for the land titles to be restored to the island families.

In the years just after the war, many St. Simons blacks settled in the center of the island along Frederica Road and eastward to the marsh. They called their community "Harrington," after the old Demere homestead nearby; descendants of those former slaves still live there today.

Meanwhile, the planters tried to resurrect their old estates, but it was not to be. Freed slaves were unaccustomed to working for wages, and the planters had little money or access to credit to pay them. One by one, the great plantations were abandoned. Families that were determined to remain on St. Simons were left with little but the legacy of their past.

Next

Back to the Table of Contents