Description

Three restored slave cabins remain from Hamilton Plantation on St. Simons Island. The Cassina Garden Club restored two of the cabins with stucco walls and with authentic artifacts to illustrate the lives of slaves. Each cabin has a fireplace in the center, which acted as a divider to create two rooms for two families.

History

Hamilton Plantation, started around 1793 by James Hamilton, was located on Gascoigne Bluff, overlooking Frederica River and the site of Georgia’s first naval base. The plantation burned in 1890 and was replaced by a lumber mill. By 1950 the Methodist Church had purchased much of the land for their retreat, Epworth By the Sea (including one of the cabins), and the Cassina Garden Club became stewards for the other two cabins. 

Location 

GPS: N 31°10.238 and W 81°24.430

Address: 1000 Arthur J. Moore Drive, St. Simons Island, GA 31522 

Accessibility: Operated by the Cassina Garden Club, the two cabins are open to the public during June-August on Wednesday mornings from 10:00am to noon, during the club’s special events, and by request from groups visiting the island (see the club’s website at www.cassinagardenclub.org).

Description

The crumbling walls of Hampton Point Plantation have been incorporated into a subdivision at the northern end of St. Simons Island. One ruin sits in the woods between two houses, while on the other side of the street, the tabby forms part of the front fence of a house.

History
 
Although there are more impressive tabby ruins, in its day Hampton Point Plantation, established in 1774, was host to illustrious personages. Hampton Point was one of several plantations owned by Major Pierce Butler, a signer of the Constitution and an original member of the U.S. Senate. He invited Aaron Burr to his plantation in 1804 after Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Butler's grandson and namesake inherited the property and married the famous English actress, Fanny Kemble. At Hampton Point and other Butler plantations, Kemble witnessed the horrors of slavery, which inspired her to write the influential abolitionist text, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839. She describes tabby in the journal: oysters form a substantial part of the slaves' diet, and slaves keep the shells to make their huts of tabby, which is "an agglomeration of a kind very solid and durable for such building purposes." Because of his financial problems, Kemble's ex-husband in 1859 sold his slaves in an episode dubbed "The Weeping Time" because so many families were broken apart. The plantation burned in 1871.
(Sources of information include Kemble's Diary and the New Georgia Encyclopedia.)

Location

GPS: N 31°17.513 and W 81°20.380

Address: Hampton Point Drive, St. Simons Island, GA 31522. Take Lawrence Rd. to Hampton Point Drive and continue to the northernmost part of the island.

Accessibility: The ruins are located on private property in a subdivision, but you can see the ruins from your car on both sides of the road.

Description

Sams Plantation on Dataw Island, SC, is an extensive complex of tabby ruins including the sprawling plantation house, kitchen chimney, dairy/cold room, barn/stable, blade house, slave quarters, chapel, and cemetery.

History

William Sams purchased Dataw Island in 1783 and began construction of a tabby plantation devoted to sea island cotton. His son, B. B. Sams, inherited the plantation in 1808 and expanded it to include approximately 15 tabby buildings. Not only was this a large plantation that included its own chapel and cemetery, but it was also unusual in that nearly all the structures were built of tabby. Sams died in 1855, and the federal government took over the island in 1863 because of overdue taxes. A fire destroyed the plantation in 1876. In 1983 Alcoa began construction of a residential community on the island. Alcoa and island residents formed the Dataw Historic Foundation committed to the preservation of the Sams Plantation Complex Tabby Ruins.

Update: William A. Riski of Dataw Island reports that an excavation conducted in March 2018 next to the chimney has unearthed tabby dating from the 1700s. Studies are underway to determine the function of these early tabby remnants. 

Location

GPS: N 32°25.927 and W 80°34.991

Address: 100 Dataw Club Rd., Dataw Island, SC 29920 (The ruins are in the vicinity of the clubhouse, golf course, and tennis courts.)

Accessibility: Dataw Island is a private gated community. (We had reservations at a restaurant on the island, so the guard checked us in and allowed us on the island.)

For more information, see the Dataw Historic Foundation.