Plantations in South Carolina
While it didn’t happen until almost 30 years after the first English-speaking settlement was founded in South Carolina close to present-day Charleston, it was rice that became the first cash crop of the new colony. Lowcountry South Carolina planters found that rice, brought over from Asia, grew well in the inland valley swamps. All over the 1700s the economy of South Carolina was based tremendously on the cultivation of rice. It was the sale of a particular assortment of rice, called Carolina Gold, to England that brought particularly high prices and led to South Carolina becoming one of the richest colonies in America. Today, there are still leftovers of old rice plantations that give a glance into the history of the Palmetto State when rice, and the rice plantation, was king.
South Carolina Historical Rice Plantations
The good news is that there are still historic South Carolina rice plantations that still are present but many are not open to the public. One of the few exceptions is Brookgreen Gardens, close to Murrells Inlet in Georgetown County. Directly in front of U.S. Highway 17 from Huntington Beach State Park, Brookgreen Gardens, which also features some of the best sculptures and art pieces in South Carolina, is made up of the lands of four historic rice plantations. Another exception is Mansfield Plantation in Georgetown (Georgetown County was one of the top rice producing regions in the world in the 1850s). Mansfield Plantation, which is now a bed-and-breakfast, was built in 1768, fifty years after a 500-acre plot was contracted to the Parker family. Today, vestiges of the old rice plantation operation can still be seen for visitors and guests. Mansfield Plantation is also owned and run by a member of the original Parker family.
Even though the number of South Carolina rice plantations once reached the hundreds, most have either been destroyed or are no longer open to the public. Another group of four rice plantations situated in Georgetown County along the Waccamaw River—Arundel, Exchange, Chicora Wood and Arcadia—are now privately owned.
South Carolina Rice Plantation History
The South Carolina planters were, at first, totally ignorant of rice cultivation in the early 1700s. They soon realized the advantage of importing slaves from the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa. The South Carolina rice planters were prepared to pay higher prices for slaves from the "Rice Coast," and slave traders in Africa quickly learned that South Carolina was an particularly profitable market for slaves from those areas.
The South Carolina colonists finally adopted a system of rice cultivation that drew greatly on the labor patterns and technical knowledge of their African slaves. At harvest time the women processed the rice by beating it in large wooden mortars and pestles, and then "fanning" the rice in large round winnowing baskets to divide the grain and chaff. The slaves may also have contributed to the system of sluices, banks, and ditches used on the South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations. West African farmers usually cultivated local varieties of wet rice on the flood plains and dry rice on the hillsides.
