Boone Hall Plantation, SC

 

Driveway entering Boone Hall Plantation

Boone Hall Plantation

When you travel throughout the south, you will find nuggets of a long-ago lifestyle that is not only historical, but also breathtaking in splendor, beauty and charm. Boone Hall is one of those nuggets that sends you back through time to a controversial time of struggle, filled with history that reminds us that not all is good in the world, but it can be if we open our eyes and hearts to those around us.

Boone Hall is one of the last surviving working plantations that dates back to 1790 in the lush countryside of the Mount Pleasant historical district of Charleston, South Carolina. If you look it up on the internet, you’ll find that it’s still producing crops, even after 320 years. The most amazing thing is it is open to the public for a small fee for tours of the property. Worth every penny in this travelers’ heart and mind.

While the crops produced at Boone Hall have changed over the years and so have the owners. The history of the original owners is a colorful one. The original owners were ancestors of one of our founding fathers, Edward Rutledge and John Rutledge who received the property as a wedding gift from Elizabeth Patey’s father when she married John Boone. The property has a great history besides being related to founding fathers, John Boone although elected to and removed twice to the Colonial Grand Council in 1680 was allegedly connected to illegal trafficking of enslaved native Americans, connection with pirates and concealed stolen goods. Now to me as an author the connection with pirates sparked a few story ideas in my mind, that can be woven into a novel one day, but more on that later.

After the death of Elizabeth and John, their son Thomas took ownership and passed it on to his son, John. After John’s death his widow Sarah Gibbes Boone sold the property to Thomas Vardell in 1811. The property was to much for Vardell so he sold it to a couple of property developers named Henry and John Horlbeck to include all property, buildings and even the slaves living on the property. Throughout the 19^th century, the Horlbeck brothers instructed their slaves to create bricks in order to facilitate the expansion of homes throughout the Charleston area along the Ashley River, The Horlbeck’s also used the talent of their slaves to build parks, buildings and public spaces throughout the Charleston area. Their slaves were self-taught skills to include carpentry, geometry, math and design and can be seen in the very facades of many of the buildings throughout the Charleston area. Absolute beauty within the architecture surrounding the area.

When a visitor looks around Boone Hall Plantation, the first thing they look upon is the driveway leading up to the house that is lined by an Avenue of Oak trees that were planted by hand in 1843. Not far from the driveway is an orchard filled with Pecan trees that were also planted by hand and today is one of the main crops on the plantation. Have you ever had pecan pralines; they were probably made by using pecans grown at Boone Hall? In 1842 a year before the Oaks were planted, the children of Henry Horlbeck transferred the property interests over to his four sons, Henry, Daniel, Edward and John to include all buildings, brick kiln, stables and remaining slave who lived on the 1442 acres making up Boone Hall. The family continued to own the property until 1935 when a Canadian by the name of Thomas Stone bought the property from the Remainder of the Horlbeck estate. This was also the height of the colonial revival period in architecture in the United States. The original house which was built of wood was torn down and the current brick home was built.  The Stones were also instrumental in using new technology to enhance the plantation when they built the electrical plant to help create power using the tides of the Ashley River to bring electricity to the plantation. By 1940 the Stones sold the property to Prince Dimitri Jorjadze and his socialite wife, Audrey Emery. Dimitri was a Georgian Prince. Prince Dimitri was an avid horse competitor who owned hundreds of thoroughbreds. However, five   years later he sold the property to a Dr. Henry Deas who ten years later sold the property to the current owners The McRea’s. In 1956 the McRea’s opened the house up to visitors to help support the property financially. Thanks to the McRea’s the property is now on the historical society’s National Register of Historic Places.

As you can see the plantation has an amazing history worthy of visiting and learning more about. The back field of the property was turned into a scene from Iraq for the television show Army Wives. The property was also used in many other north and South (1985 & 1986), Alex Haley’s Queen (1993), Scarlett (1994), the Notebook (2004) and a documentary titled, The Price of Freedom in 2004.

Slave Quarters at  Boone Hall 

Today the plantation has been reduced from it’s 1442 acres to only 738 acres that comprise of wetlands, creeks and ponds, not to mention the crop fields of pecans, peaches, strawberries and other seasonal crops. The plantation holds two beautiful gardens in front of the house that is a gardener’s delight, outbuildings such as the slave quarters that once housed the slave workers on the plantation to the free sharecroppers and that are perfectly preserved and maintained so that we can learn how they lived on the plantation. The cotton process building is no longer working, and the equipment has been removed due to damage to the building during a hurricane. Just like Mount Vernon and other notable plantations or historical farms along the east coast, Boone Hall Plantation is perfectly preserved and open for private events such as weddings. However, due to social discourse being promoted throughout the country by political hacks, Boone Hall has come under controversial banter and potential destruction of not only our own history, good or bad, but also the demise of beautiful settings for romantic wedding venues. Bridal couple choose places like Boone Hall for it’s beauty and romantic setting to enhance their love and admiration for each other, not for the history of the location. The history comes with any location, even the local civic hall in the middle of town. If you don’t think the civic hall doesn’t come with some sort of scandal, you’re seriously mistaken. Those who condemn historical places and plantations due to their scandalous history are pure idiots and should be shut away in an insane asylum. Reynolds and Lively chose the location due to it’s beauty, but after their wedding being coerced into condemning the site during the rise of minority rights protests throughout 2020 they joined in with the bandwagon of other celebrities who saw this as a way of boosting their visibility in the media and social media to condemn the venue due to their once having slaves on the property. Celebrities who use history to help boost their failing stardom should be thrown to the wolves for not having good agents or public relation support to keep their name fresh and alive, but who have to resort to jumping on the social media gravy train to bring their name before the viewing public are pathetic. No wonder I never watch any of their movies or television shows, they must be that bad of actors. Accordingly, I stand with the owners of Boone Hall Plantation in their decision not to shut down their event rentals for weddings, because this is part of their business to keep the plantation open and alive for generations to come.

 

Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, journalist. business professional, and creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a Masters in Criminology and a BS in Business Management who stepped out of the loop for a while, but who is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel, photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.