Tales from Brookgreen Page 9

  Another visit presented a series of equally daunting obstacles at each turn but we managed to overcome them all and accomplish the most wonderful recordings of any of his visits, in my mind. We made some of these recordings in Murrells Inlet but we made some of these special recordings in a very special location. Today Brookgreen Gardens includes part of this unique place called Sandy Island.

  Now Sandy Island isn’t really on the Waccamaw Neck but it borders it. Here in Georgetown County, the Waccamaw River runs pretty much straight from north to south, parallel to the seacoast and only three or four miles inland, until it empties into Winyah Bay off Georgetown. The Waccamaw Neck is that strip of land between the Waccamaw River and the ocean.

  Well, about a mile farther inland from of the Waccamaw River, another river also runs north to south parallel to the Waccamaw River and also flows into Winyah Bay near Georgetown. This is the Pee Dee River. Along the whole length of where these two rivers run parallel to each other, little cross-streams connect the two rivers. The Waccamaw is a little lower than the Pee Dee so these little cross-streams drain water from the Pee Dee into the Waccamaw River all the way along. These two rivers are about the same size when they enter Georgetown County from the north but by the time they get to Winyah Bay, the Waccamaw is huge, more than a mile across, while the Pee Dee is pretty small, even though the Black River joins it just before it gets to the bay.

  The cross-streams divide the swampy, sandy land between the two rivers into islands, the biggest of which is Sandy Island. A good-sized cross-stream called Bull Creek (you remember, part of the Confederate trade routes) borders Sandy Island on its north end and a medium sized cross-stream called Thoroughfare Creek borders it on its south end. Of course, the Waccamaw borders it on the east side and the Pee Dee on the west side.

  Sandy Island was always prime rice growing country. In fact, nine different rice plantations developed there, but most of the planters who owned them lived on the Waccamaw Neck or in Georgetown or Charleston. Sandy Island was isolated even in those days. Most slaves on Sandy Island were descendants of Africans who had been brought over in the 1700s. Very few slaves left Sandy Island and very few came from the outside in later years. The Gullah language and culture developed among slaves there until Gullah came to be the primary language spoken on Sandy Island, as on many plantations in the Lowcountry.

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  Yet Another Historical Digression:

  Miss Genevieve discusses The Gullah Language

  Nobody can tell you for sure how the Gullah language developed but people who have studied it do have some idea about its history and this is how they explain it.

  Slaves brought to South Carolina came from different parts of West Africa. Each African area and tribal group had its own language and customs. When slaves arrived on Lowcountry plantations, communication was a big challenge. Slaves and planters spoke different languages and often fellow slaves even spoke different languages yet all had to understand each other well enough to live and work together.

  A pidgin language developed that contained words and grammatical structures from English and from various African languages. Planters and overseers kept speaking English and slaves kept speaking their own various languages but each also learned to speak the pidgin language, called Gullah, to communicate with each other. People who study languages tell me that at this stage Gullah was a pidgin language because no one spoke it as his native language but those speaking different languages used it to communicate with each other. Some people think the name Gullah came from the word Angola, which was the homeland of many of the slaves.

  As new generations of slaves were born in the Lowcountry, these children grew up speaking Gullah as their native language. Gullah became a creole language, which is one whose words and grammar are a combination of different languages but one which is now the native language of a group of people, in this case, the descendants of the slaves brought from Africa.

  Planters and other whites continued to speak English, of course, but also spoke Gullah to communicate with their workers. Planters and their families often learned Gullah as children from nurses and other household servants who helped raise them.

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  Miss Genevieve continued her story …

  On Sandy Island before the War Between the States, Dr. Edward Heriot’s Mont Arena Plantation, where the main river landing was located, became the center of activity. Dr. Heriot’s friend, Captain Thomas Petigru, planted nearby Pipedown Plantation. Unlike most other men who owned plantations on Sandy Island, Dr. Heriot and Captain Petigru and their families actually lived there on their plantations.

  Shortly before the War, Captain Petigru died. His widow moved away and no longer wanted to operate Pipedown Plantation. She began looking for a buyer for the plantation and contacted several large landowners in the area but none was interested.

  Pipedown slaves grew worried. They feared the Petigru family would abandon the plantation and send their slaves off to auction, separating them from their home and from each other.

  So Sandy Island slaves took matters into their own hands in one of the few ways permitted to them by the laws of that time. In quite an unusual step, and one that demonstrated a unique level of independence and initiative, Pipedown slaves met together to select a new master for themselves! They discussed what they knew about each planter under consideration: the clothing, food, medical services, and religious opportunities he provided for his slaves; the type of overseers he hired; the disciplinary measures he used; and his history of buying and selling off slaves.

  After much discussion, Pipedown slaves settled on Governor Robert Francis Withers Allston, who already owned lands on the Pee Dee River, to become their new master. Governor Allston was the son of Benjamin Allston who had inherited Brookgreen Plantation from his father, Gentleman Billy Allston, the Revolutionary War guerrilla fighter who married Rachel Moore, later Rachel Moore Allston Flagg. (Remember, I told you that all these stories, like all these families, are connected. Ask me about Governor Allston’s three given names sometime. They have an interesting story behind them that also forms a part of the history of Brookgreen.) Anyway, the Pipedown slaves all agreed that Governor Allston would make the best new master.

  The next step was to convince Governor Allston! The Widow Petigru had already offered Pipedown and its slaves to Governor Allston but he had turned her down saying that he already owned more than enough land and slaves. (As it turned out, he was right, but that’s another story.) So Sandy Islanders had quite a task ahead of them.

  The community met again and selected Phillip Washington, the Pipedown Driver, to carry their request to Governor Allston. They chose Phillip Washington because he was intelligent and better educated than many of the other slaves. He was also well spoken and a leader respected by both his fellow slaves and by white planters.

  The trip to Governor Allston was arranged. There Phillip Washington pleaded the case of the Pipedown slaves so eloquently that Governor Allston changed his mind, agreed to purchase Pipedown, and soon did so! The slaves of Pipedown had accomplished their goal. They had kept their community together and acquired themselves a new master of their own choosing.

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  The War caused disruptions on Sandy Island, as elsewhere, but very few slaves, or later, former slaves, left their homes there. For decades after Freedom, Sandy Islanders maintained an isolated and independent community. They raised their own food and sold or traded rice for other necessities. The people of Sandy Island also preserved their Gullah culture and language like almost no other community. They kept their own customs and beliefs as well as their Gullah language long into the Twentieth Century.

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  One Last Historical Digression:

  Miss Genevieve discusses Phillip Washington, Community Organizer

  Phillip Washington was one of the few freed slaves who left Sandy Island after the War. Although he was reluctant to leave his family and the home he loved, he was eager to e
xplore new opportunities open to him as a free man. He moved to Georgetown where Federal occupation in the years following the War allowed former slaves possibilities for advancement in business and politics.

  Phillip Washington became quite successful in business and even purchased a home on Front Street in the wealthiest section of Georgetown.

  Racial tensions ran high however, and when occupying Federal forces finally left in 1877, whites regained their former power. They moved rapidly to undo opportunities former slaves had enjoyed during the previous ten years.

  The native Sandy Islander quickly recognized the changing political and economic realities. He realized that he and others like him could no longer prosper in white society but he soon hit upon an alternative plan. He determined to found an independent self-sufficient community of former slaves back on his beloved Sandy Island.

  Phillip Washington sold his house in Georgetown and moved back home to Sandy Island where he began establishing his community. First of all, he purchased a few acres of Mont Arena land and organized residents there to build a church, which soon became the spiritual and political center of the community. It remains so today. Next, he rented neighboring abandoned rice fields from struggling absentee planters and hired out-of-work former slaves to raise a rice crop. Fortunately the harvest was successful.

  Phillip Washington used profits from that first rice crop and the rest of the proceeds from the sale of his house in Georgetown to purchase all of Mont Arena Plantation. With this as its base, his community of organized and resourceful former slaves on Sandy Island continued to thrive and prosper growing rice, even after Phillip Washington died around the turn of the century.

  Early in the Twentieth Century, wealthy Yankees began buying up former rice plantations for hunting preserves, including other plantations on Sandy Island. After some negotiations, the Northern owners agreed to let Sandy Islanders raise rice on their newly acquired island preserves without paying rent. It was good for the duck hunting.

  Sandy Island remains isolated to this day. There are still alligators there and strange plants like the insect-eating Venus Flytrap. Rare little Red-cockaded Woodpeckers still nest in hollows of ancient long leaf pines. Some even say that huge red-headed Ivory-billed Woodpeckers still live there although they are extinct most places. No white people have lived on Sandy Island, I imagine, since the last Heriot family members left shortly after the War.

  Prince Washington, grandson of Phillip Washington, has become a community leader and now, in the middle of the Twentieth Century, is encouraging some modernization. School children have started riding a ferry across the river to come to school here on the mainland. Many of the adults have started commuting off the island to day jobs at Brookgreen Gardens or Pawley’s Island or even at Myrtle Beach, especially as the tourist industry has grown, but they still don’t have electricity or telephones on the island. It remains a unique place.

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  Miss Genevieve continued her story …

  Over the many years that I have been visiting Sandy Island, I have gotten to know some of the islanders. One of the most interesting was Aunt Hagar Brown who lived here on the Waccamaw Neck but had close ties to Sandy Island. Aunt Hagar became one of my best and most enthusiastic informants when I was recording former slave narratives for the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s.

  When I told Mr. Lomax about Aunt Hagar and other Sandy Islanders, he was as excited as I was about making recordings of them telling their stories and singing their songs. Mr. Lomax and I corresponded several times about making sure Aunt Hagar and her people were available when he came to Murrells Inlet on his next recording trip. I assured him that I would have them ready to record.

  My first obstacle, not entirely unexpected, was to get Aunt Hagar and the others to agree to meet and talk to Mr. Lomax. They talked readily to me about their life and their community but they weren’t too sure they would have anything to say to this stranger. Outsiders, especially white men, and most especially white men from the government, rarely meant good news for Sandy Islanders.

  Another obstacle to overcome with the Sandy Islanders was the idea of having their music and stories recorded. Most had heard music played from phonographs but some regarded these phonographs and phonograph records as instruments of the Devil. The whole idea of talking or singing into a record-making machine sounded suspicious to more than one.

  After a good bit of talk on my part they finally agreed to meet Mr. Lomax but would make no promises from there on. I imagined that he would quickly make them feel comfortable and that everything would work out just fine. So I hadn’t given the situation much more thought until a few days before Mr. Lomax was scheduled to arrive. Then I suddenly realized that I hadn’t really thought through the logistics of getting Aunt Hagar, the Sandy Islanders, Mr. Lomax, and his equipment all together in the same place to make his recordings.

  When I did start to consider this, my first thought was to have Aunt Hagar’s people come over to the Hermitage for the day where we had electricity and could make our recordings with no trouble. That seemed like an easy and simple plan but Aunt Hagar soon put a stop to that notion. As much as she would like to please me and Mr. Lomax from Washington, her people had their own busy lives to tend to on Sandy Island and weren’t about to pick up and leave them for anyone, especially under these strange circumstances!

  What to do about this obstacle? The answer again seemed simple. We would just go over to Sandy Island to do the recording! After all, Mr. Lomax had batteries just so that he could record in places like that with no electricity.

  Getting to Sandy Island was always easier said than done however. No roads ever connected Sandy Island to anyplace, and they still don’t. The only way to get to Sandy Island is by boat.

  Visiting Sandy Island usually took some hard rowing, even going and coming with the tide, whether from Wachesaw Landing or from the landing at Brookgreen. It had always been easy enough to find someone to take me though, but what was easy for me alone was not so easy when we needed to carry several people and several hundred pounds of recording equipment and batteries over the water. This was becoming quite an expedition!

  Rowboats were easy to find but none of them was big enough and sturdy enough for our job. If Mr. Lomax had come during duck hunting season, there would have been no difficulty at all. Yankee sportsmen up and down the river, like Mr. Kimbel at Wachesaw Plantation, had big comfortable cabin cruisers to take them out to hunting locations along the river. I’m sure they would have given us a ride. But it was summer and the boats were all stored away and most of the sportsmen had gone back up North. None of the workboats at Brookgreen Gardens was available either. Of course, there were several big powerful boats at docks in the saltwater creeks at Murrells Inlet but no easy way to get them around into the river.

  I worried and fretted day and night over this obstacle. Mr. Lomax was already on his way to Murrells Inlet. Would I have to disappoint him? Finally, through a friend of Mr. Kimbel we were able to find some people down in Georgetown who thought it would make a lovely outing to bring their cabin cruiser upriver to Wachesaw Landing, spend a few nights at Murrells Inlet with friends, and transport us, our party, and our equipment over to Sandy Island for the day. What a relief! I could keep my promise to Mr. Lomax to record the Sandy Islanders!

  By this point, I was just waiting for the next obstacle to pop up. Yet everything went smoothly once Mr. Lomax arrived. I’m not sure Mr. Lomax had realized we would need to transport everything to Sandy Island by boat. And I know he was surprised when an oxcart met us at Mont Arena Landing to carry the recording machine, the records, the batteries, and our whole party up through the deeply rutted sand to Mont Arena Church where we set up the equipment. But he acted like it was the most natural thing in the world, traveling like this to get his recordings.

  And the sessions with Aunt Hagar and the Sandy Islanders went beautifully. Mr. Lomax’s friendly and informal ways were always quick to put people
at ease. Once Aunt Hagar started talking, she went on and on. Others readily joined in, giving him much more than he had disks to record. He was able to record Aunt Hagar’s stories about The Flagg Flood, some of her old-time songs from childhood, and answers to his inquiries about Sandy Island customs. His question about why door and window frames were painted blue (“To keep the evil spirits away!”) even got her started on stories about haunts and hags and other supernatural creatures. Others added different songs and stories.

  It was an extremely successful recording session and a perfectly delightful day for all of us. I don’t think Mr. Lomax ever knew how much worry and effort I had put into making it happen. He just believed I could produce whatever he needed with a snap of my fingers, which was a good feeling for me.

  So somewhere, stored away in the Library of Congress with all the books ever printed in the United States, are the songs and stories of Aunt Hagar and her Sandy Island community, saved forever, just like we heard them that day on our Great Sandy Island Expedition. Maybe someday you will hear them too.

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  Thank you for reading my book.

  I hope you enjoyed it.

  If you did, please recommend it to your friends, and please consider writing a favorable review to post on the website where you bought this book or on book review websites. I thank you, in advance, and appreciate your sharing these Lowcountry stories with others.

  ~ Do you know others who love the Carolina Lowcountry? ~

  Give them copies of this book, available in most ebook formats and in paperback.

  Visit our website for more Lowcountry stories, and for information about our other books:

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  About the Author

  Charles Town blacksmith William Green purchased his first land near that new Carolina settlement in 1695. His descendents have continued to live and thrive in the Carolina Lowcountry for more than three hundred years.

  Lynn Michelsohn, one of William Green’s ninth-generation granddaughters, was born not too far away in Durham, North Carolina. She grew up steeped in Lowcountry stories, as well as in the black mud of its tidal marshes. Her heart remains among the moss-draped live oaks lining the saltwater creeks of South Carolina’s Waccamaw Neck. Now, she and her husband have two sons who love the Lowcountry almost as much as she does.