The Thicket Sugar Mill and Rum Distillery Ruins

5/4/2015

The Thicket (Photo by Barbara Stevenson)

Description

Four standing ruins, along with rubble on the ground, are the remnants of William Carnochan’s sugar mill and rum distillery.

History

According to a historical marker close by, The Thicket was operating in the early 1800s and was destroyed by a hurricane in 1824.

Location

GPS: N 31°25.759 and W 81°23.042

Address: Old Cane Mill Drive, Darien GA 31305

Accessibility: The ruins are located in a private gated community on Tolomato Island. A historical marker describing the ruins stands at the entrance to the Tolomato Causeway. From the causeway, turn right onto Old Cane Mill Drive at the Sugar Mill subdivision gated entrance. On the day we went, the gates were open to allow visitors to enter. We could see the ruins on the left from our car.

4 Comments

Harriet Langford

9/18/2019 08:52:40 am

These ruins were slave cabins for the Sugar Mill and Rum Distillery whose ruins run along the creek further south. You may be able to obtain permission to visit that area too!

Barbara Stevenson

9/18/2019 10:53:21 am

Thank you for this information, Harriet. Thanks also for the excellent work you do at the Ashantilly Center.

Philip Sikora

7/17/2022 07:07:19 pm

Nice. Thanks.
The ruins located here are of slave quarters and the working buildings – consisting of a sugar mill, boiling room, curing room, and distillery - of Georgia’s first rum distillery. These tabby construction buildings were constructed in 1816 by William Carnochan echoing similar structures of Thomas Spalding. By 1817, Carnochan was advertising his rum in Savannah as being as good a product as rum produced in Jamaica.

William Carnochan was born in Scotland in 1774 or ’75 and from at least 1801-07 was an overseer at a plantation in Jamaica where they produced sugar cane and rum, along with livestock. There is a ship’s record of him landing in Savannah in 1812. Because of the high tariffs on importing sugar cane and rum, he must have seen an opportunity and acted upon it.

Carnochan continued his operations until the hurricane of 1824, with waters rising 10-12’ over the land, destroyed his buildings. He died the following year and is buried in Old Mill Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

When the slaves that worked and lived in The Thicket were freed after the Civil War, they moved ½ mile west and formed the community of Carneghan (or Carnegan), a deliberate aberration of the Carnochan name. Their ancestors were buried in a graveyard that was plowed under in the 1880s by the current owner of The Thicket. In a 1937 interview with a former slave, he noted that there were still bad feelings about that incident.

Barbara Stevenson

7/21/2022 09:54:59 am

Very interesting! Thank you for the detailed historical information, Philip!

The Thicket Sugar Mill and Rum Distillery Ruins

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