The Last to Leave

By Sheri Brown Posted on History

 In the year 1671, the Council of Province ordered a town to be established on James Island, South Carolina. The town, McLeod's Plantation (not called McLeod's at that time), became a part of James Island around 1696.  

The property was first owned by Morris Morgan in 1696 and had about 617 acres. There were no formal buildings on the property except for a few slave quarters. Dual residency existed, and most plantation owners had homes elsewhere, usually in Charleston. From the colonial period well into the 20th century, most of James Island consisted of blacks. Around 1720, St Andrews Parish records reported around 215 white taxpayers and nearly 2,500 slaves.  

The slaves were left to oversee and cultivate the property. The owners’ dual residency allowed the slaves to practice and perpetuate many African traditions, cultures and languages. For example, sweeping the yard to keep the snakes away is still a common practice in some of the rural areas of the low country. The Gullah language, which combined English words and West African grammar and pronunciation, survived and can still be heard today among friends and families, young and old, primarily in the Charleston and Beaufort areas.  

Other African customs survived. The practice of root medicine, brought by the slaves from Africa, is still used by many blacks and whites locally. (Benin, West Africa, is still known for its practice of root medicine and witchcraft.) Root medicine was used for both benign and ill ends, but greedy practitioners eventually gave it a reputation that was more bad than good. Those practitioners who used their knowledge of root medicine for good were not feared and would today be called "herbalists."  

Where cotton wasn’t king  

The main activity on the island was the raising of beef, which gave the plantations there a different financial advantage when everyone else in the South was struggling with cotton. Cotton and rice were planted here but not on the large scale they were at other plantations. The slaves at McLeod's Plantation, who were from West Africa’s Gambia River region, were expert horseman and cattle herders. Many historians consider them to have been America's first cowboys.  

The waters surrounding James Island were major modes of transportation, and the Africans were highly prized for their skills as boatmen. The job was an especially prestigious one among them since it gave slaves a measure of independence in their comings and goings. Indigo was also a major crop at the plantation, but the process of changing the indigo plant into the blue dye made the slaves sick and many died of cancer.  

Not much is known about McLeod's Plantation during the early colonial period. After Morris Morgan in 1696, the land was deeded as a Royal Grant to one Captain David Davis in 1703, who then sold the land to William Wilkins in 1706.  

In 1741, Wilkins sold the property to Samuel Perronneau. It is believed that Perroneau was the only one to have cultivated the property. None of the previous owners, including Perronneau, ever lived on the property, although they had slaves living there. In 1770, 250 acres were either sold or given to Edward Lightwood II, Perronneau's son-in-law. It was Lightwood who built the first main house and outbuildings. The house was approached from the south by an alley of oaks that extended northward to Wappo Creek.  

Lightwood was a "broker" in slave trading and owned 53 slaves. His daughter married William McKinzie Parker I in 1796. When Parker's mother-in-law died, he purchased the estate. Parker was involved in the slave trade industry and owned several vessels. Like Perronneau and Lightwood, Parker also worked the plantation.  

In 1851, the plantation was sold to William Wallace McLeod. By this time, the property had increased to 914 acres of land and 779 acres of marsh. McLeod built the present house around 1854-56. Exactly what happened to the Lightwood house is unknown. Speculations are that it was either destroyed or pulled down.  

74 slaves just before the Civil War  

Around 1860, McLeod owned approximately 74 slaves and 23 slave cabins that were located around the plantation. The five remaining 20' x 12' wooden slave cabins, the dairy, and the kitchen building are believed to date from the Lightwood/Parker period (1770-1850). The old slave bell, used to call in the slaves from the field, still hangs from the giant oak tree near the "big" house.  

William Wallace McLeod served in the Civil War and moved his family to Greenwood, South Carolina. He left Steven Forrest, a slave, in charge of the plantation. McLeod died in the war in 1864. Shortly after, Mrs. McLeod died, leaving a son, still in his teens, and two young daughters as owners of the plantation. During the war the house fell to the Federals. The house was used as a Union Army headquarters and as a hospital for the black soldiers attached to units of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiment.  

After the war, the house was headquarters for the Freedmen's Bureau. Freed slaves from all over the island pitched pine bough shelters and camped on the plantation in order to be within easy reach of their free rations and "their 40 acres and a mule." Unlike other parts of the South, tenancy was preferred to share cropping. It gave the black farmers freedom from white exploitation and the hope of accumulating money to purchase their own land. This plan proved to be very successful for local blacks well into the years after slavery.  

McLeod Jr. Arrived back at his father's home in 1879 after Congress failed to pass Sherman's "Field Order #15" (the “40 acres and a mule” concept). It was said that McLeod Jr. was forced to apply for an escort of Union soldiers to lead him through a crowd of angry blacks who were thronging around the house, bitter at the prospect they would receive no land. 

After greedy carpetbaggers dismantled the Freedmen's Office, black families continued to maintain quarters in each room of the house. They took possessions, and used the house as they chose, with no regard for owners or property. McLeod later was able to establish ownership and evict them.  

In 1895, Dr. Bert J. Wilder, who had been a surgeon for the Union Army, visited Charleston and told McLeod that the drawing room of the house served as his operating room for the black soldiers of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments. Those who died were buried in the slave graveyard. (A site behind the fire station near the James Island Bridge).  

Willis Ellis McLeod, who was born in 1885, became owner of the property in 1918 and lived there until his death in 1990 at the age of 105. The McLeods continued to sell and rent properties to blacks long after the war. The slave quarters, which date back to the Lightwood/Parker period, are some of the oldest original wooden slaves quarter in the south. African Americans continued to occupy these slave quarters until around 1990 (not a misprint). Of all the plantations in the South, the blacks at McLeod were, literally, the "last to leave."  

The plantation is now owned by the Historic Charleston Foundation. The Foundation is planning to open the plantation to the public in the near future.