Clearing swamps, harvesting forests: Trees and the making of plantation landscape in the colonial South Carolina Lowcountry

Agricultural History

Volumn 81, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 381-406

  Edelson, S Max ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL HISTORY; AGRICULTURAL LAND; COLONIALISM; PLANTATION; SLAVERY;

NORTH AMERICA; SOUTH CAROLINA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 34547594513     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3098/ah.2007.81.3.381     Document Type: Article

References (126)

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2. Nicholas Carteret, "Mr. Carteret's Relations of their Planting at Ashley River '70" in Narratives of Early Carolina, 119-20.
3. Timothy Silver, A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in the South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 147, 189, 197.
4. Mart A. Stewart, "What Nature Suffers to Groe": Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996);
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10. Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), xv;
11. Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh, Robert Cole's World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991);
12. T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985);
13. James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994);
14. Paul G. E. Clemens, The Atlantic Economy and Colonial Maryland's Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980);
15. Joyce E. Chaplin, An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
16. S. Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
17. Ibid.
18. On "culture hearths" and the Carolina Lowcountry, see, D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographic Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 52-53, 172-90.
19. On oaks in early modern English culture, see, Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1995), 153-74;
20. see, also, Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983), chap. 5.
21. John Ogilby, America: Being the Latest, and Most Accurate Description of the New World (London: John Ogilby, 1671), 205-206 at Early English Books Online, http://eebo.chadwyck.com (hereafter cited as EEBO);
22. T. A., "Carolina; or a Description of the Present State of that Country, and the Natural Excellencies Thereof" (1682), in Historical Collections of South Carolina, ed. B. R. Carroll, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836), 2:65;
23. John Stewart, "Letters from John Stewart to William Dunlop," South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 32 (Apr. 1931): 86-87.
24. William Owen to Lord Ashley, Sept. 15, 1670, in The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina (1897; repr., Charleston: Tempus, 2000), 201;
25. Gentleman of Elvas, A Relation of the Invasion and Conquest of Florida by the Spaniards Under the Command of Fernando de Soto (London: John Lawrence, 1686), 71 at "Early Encounters in North America," http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/EENA/.
26. "An Old Letter" (c. 1671), in Shaftesbury Papers, 308-309;
27. Samuel Wilson, "An Account of the Province of Carolina, in America" (1682), in Historical Collections of South Carolina, 2:27-28;
28. Silver, A New Face on the Countryside, 61.
29. Joan Thirsk, ed., The English Rural Landscape (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 27, 52, 74, 123, 133-34, 148-49;
30. Nuala Zahedieh, "New World Resources and the Expansion of England's Merchant Marine, 1660-1775," paper presented at the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Atlantic History, Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 8-13, 2005;
31. E. P. Thompson. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (new York: Pantheon Books, 1975).
32. Thomas Nairne, "Letter from South Carolina," in Selling a New World: Two Colonial South Carolina Promotional Pamphlets, ed. Jack P. Greene (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 66;
33. Wm. Dunlop to James Montgomerie, n.d. (c. 1687), Letters from William Dunlop, Papers of the Lords Proprietors in the Malmsbury Collection, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC; "Proposals by Mr. Peter Purry, of Newfchatel" in Historical Collections of South Carolina, 2:131;
34. Richard Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica with the Other Isles and Territories in America to which the English are Related ... (London, 1678), 69, EEBO;
35. T. A., "Carolina," 2:69;
36. Ogilby, America, 205, EEBO;
37. "An Old Letter," 308;
38. Maurice Mathews to Lord Ashley, Aug. 30, 1671, Shaftesbury Papers, 333.
39. "An Old Letter," 308;
40. Maurice Mathews to Lord Ashley, Aug. 30, 1671, 335;
41. Sandford, "Relation of a Voyage," 100, 102-103;
42. William Hilton, "Relation of a Discovery," in Narratives of Early Carolina, 44;
43. Carteret, "Mr. Carteret's Relations," 119-20.
44. William Sayle and Council to Lords Proprietors, 1670, in Shaftesbury Papers, 175;
45. Ogilby, America, 207, EEBO;
46. Sandford, "Relation of a Voyage, 102-103;
47. Robert Ferguson, The Present State of Carolina with Advice to the Settlers Present State (London: John Bringhurst, 1682), 11, EEBO.
48. John Bartram, "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765, to April 10, 1766," in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 33:1 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1942), 15n;
49. John Drayton, A View of South Carolina As Respects her Natural and Civil Concerns (Charleston: W. P. Young, 1802), 7n, 8-9.
50. George Ogilvie, Carolina; Or, the Planter (1776), reprinted in The Southern Literary Journal, special issue (1986): 7;
51. William Gerard De Brahm, "Philosophico-Historico-Hydrogeography of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida" (c. 1772), in Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina, ed. Plowden Charles Jennett Weston (London: np, 1856), 173-76.
52. Wilson, "Account of the Province," 2:28;
53. Grove, Green Imperialism, 276-77;
54. John Norris, "Profitable Advice for Rice and Poor" (1712), in Selling a New World, 90-91, 102;
55. Aaron M. Shatzman, Servants into Planters: The Origin of an American Image: Land Acquisition and Status Mobility in Seventeenth-Century South Carolina (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989), 45, 51-52, 115, 131;
56. John Solomon Otto, "Livestock-Raising in Early South Carolina, 1670-1700: Prelude to the Rice Plantation Economy," Agricultural History 61 (Fall 1987): 21;
57. and, see, Peter A. Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 58-63.
58. Nairne, "A Letter from South Carolina," 62-63;
59. Norris, "Profitable Advice," 96-97.
60. Ogilvie, Carolina; Or, the Planter, 59-60;
61. Henry Laurens to John Bartram, Charleston, SC, Aug. 9, 1766, The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777, ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992), 671;
62. James Glen, "A Description of South Carolina" (1761), in Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions, ed. Chapman J. Milling (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1951), 17-18;
63. Eliabeth Hyrne to Burrell Massingberd, c. 1702, "Hyrne Family Letters, 1701-10," in The Colonial South Carolina Scene: Contemporary Views, 1697-1774, ed. H. Roy Merrens (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), 19.
64. Stephen Daniels, "The Political Iconography of Woodland in Later Georgian England," in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, ed. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 51;
65. Norris, "Profitable Advice," 105;
66. Mark Catesby, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands ..., 2 vols. (London: Printed for B. White, 1771), 1;ii, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, http://www.gale.com/ EighteenthCentury/ (hereafter cited as ECCO).
67. Queries from the Lords of Trade About Carolina, Aug. 10, 1720 (typescript), William R. Coe Papers, Folder 2, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as SCHS);
68. H. Roy Merrens, Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 85-90;
69. M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 155, 162;
70. Lawrence Lee, The Lower Cape Fear in Colonial Days (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 97-99;
71. Alexander Hewit, "An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia" (1779), in Historical Collections, 1:172-74.
72. See, also, Silver, A New Face on the Countryside, 120-26.
73. Bradford J. Wood, This Remote Part of the World: Regional Formation in Lower Cape Fear, North Carolina, 1725-1775 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 179-82, 186-87;
74. Robert B. Outland III, Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), chap. 1.
75. Johann Martin Bolzius, "Reliable Answer to Some Submitted Questions Concerning the Land Carolina," ed. and trans. Klaus G. Loewald, et al., William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., vol. 14 (Apr. 1957): 233, 247, 257; Hutson to James Hamilton, May 1, 1777, Richard Hutson Letterbook, SCHS.
76. De Brahm, "Philosophico-Historico-Hydrogeography," 197-98;
77. see, also, Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 108-14.
78. Joseph Clay? to _, Dec. 6, 1785?, Edward Telfair Papers, William R. Perkins Library, Special Collections, Duke University, Durham, NC;
79. Jean Pierre Purry, "Memorial of ... Carolina" (1731), in Tracts and Other Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America ..., comp. Peter Force (Washington, DC: P. Force, 1836), 1:§11:7;
80. Harry J. Carman, ed., American Husbandry (1775; repr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 343-44;
81. S. Max Edelson, "Affiliation Without Affinity: Skilled Slaves in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina," in Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of South Carolina's Plantation Society, ed. Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 217-55.
82. Bolzius, "Reliable Answer to Some Submitted Questions," 244, 258;
83. J. F. D. Smyth, A Tour of the United States of America, 2 vols. (Dublin: np, 1784), 2:49;
84. Wilson, "Account of the Province," 2:24;
85. Josiah Smith Jr. to John Smith Jr., Jan. 12, 1773, Josiah Smith Letterbook, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC;
86. Laurens to John Knight and Thomas Mears, Feb. 24, 1764, in The Papers of Henry Laurens, ed. Philip M. Hamer, et al., 16 vols. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968-2003), 4:184.
87. See, also, Martha Zierden, "The Urban Landscape in South Carolina," in Carolina's Historical Landscapes: Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Linda F. Stine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 168;
88. Henry Laurens to John McQueen, Charleston, SC, Sept. 10, 1785, in Laurens Papers, 16:593.
89. South-Carolina Gazette, Mar. 20, 1762; Nov. 15, 1735; Feb. 7, 1771 in South Carolina Newspapers Microfilm Series, 1732-1782 (Charleston: Charleston Library Society, 1956);
90. Bolzius, "Reliable Answer to Some Submitted Questions," 258;
91. Laurens to Benjamin Smith, Nov. 30, 1762, in Laurens Papers, 3:177-78;
92. Laurens to Stephen Miller, Feb. 24, 1763, Laurens Papers, 3:268.
93. S. Max Edelson, "The Nature of Slavery: Environmental Disorder and Slave Agency in Colonial South Carolina," in Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America, ed. Robert Olwell and Alan Tully (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), chap. 1;
94. Drayton, View of South-Carolina, 20;
95. George Ogilvie to Pegie Ogilvie, June 25, 1774, in "The Letters of George Ogilvie," ed. David S. Shields, The Southern Literary Journal, special issue (1986): 118-19.
96. John Farquharson to Gabriel Manigault, June 24, 1789, Manigualt Family Papers, South Carolina Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC; Advertisement of Stephen Carter, South-Carolina Gazette, Feb. 28, 1774, 11;
97. Dell Upton, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 206-207;
98. G. S. S., "Sketches of the South Santee," in The Old South, ed. Mark M. Smith (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), 20.
99. On English precedents for the oak alley, see, Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 207-208, 217-18.
100. On antebellum transplanting, see, William P. Baldwin Jr., ed., Plantations of the Low Country: South Carolina 1697-1865 (Greensboro, NC: Legacy Publications, 1985), 12, 77;
101. see, also, Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), xxiii.
102. William Bohun to Mary Bohun Baker and Elizabeth Bohun Garandeau, Aug. 9, 1735, Baker Family Correspondence, Folder 3, Record No. 11/537/3, SCHS;
103. Joyce E. Chaplin, "Mark Catesby, A Skeptical Newtonian in America," in Empire's Nature: Mark Catesby's New World Vision, ed. Amy R. W. Meyers and Margaret Beck Pritchard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 81-82.
104. Carl Sauer, "The Settlement of the Humid East," in Climate and Man: Yearbook of Agriculture, 1941, USDA (Washington, DC: GPO, 1941), 159;
105. Norris, "Profitable Advice," 89;
106. Gent, "Carolina," 2:66;
107. Alfred F. Young, "Liberty Tree: Made in America?" paper presented to the Newberry Library Seminar in Early American History, Chicago, Ill., Sept. 25, 2003;
108. Laurens Papers, 6:123.
109. Louisa Susannah Wells, The Journal of a Voyage from Charlestown, SC, to London (1779; repr., New York: New York Historical Society, 1906), 2;
110. David Ramsay, The History of the Revolution of South-Carolina ..., 2 vols. (Trenton, NJ: Isaac Collins, 1785), 1:141, 148, Early American Imprints Series I, Archive of Americana, Readex Digital, infoweb.newsbank.com (hereafter Early American Imprint Series I);
111. John S. Pancake, This Destructive War: The British Campaign in the Carolinas, 1780-1782 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985), 20-24;
112. John Tobler, The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack, For the Year of our Lord 1778 ... (Charlestown: Robert Wells and Son, 1777), Early American Imprints Series I;
113. The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1778, 2nd ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1781), 169, ECCO.
114. The palmetto was added to the South Carolina state flag in 1861. Peter H. Wood, "'It was a Negro Taught Them,' a New Look at African Labor in Early South Carolina," Journal of Asian and African Studies 9 (1974): 164.
115. Wood, "'It was a Negro Taught Them,'" 162, 164;
116. Ferguson, Uncommon Ground, 66, 74-75, 80;
117. Ramsay, History of the Revolution of South-Carolina, 1:143;
118. Pelatiah Webster, "Journal of a Visit to Charleston, 1765," in Colonial South Carolina Scene, 224.
119. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 231;
120. Josiah Smith Jr. to James Poyas, Jan. 10, 1776, Josiah Smith Jr. Letterbook. On this raid, see, Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves, & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 239n.
121. De Brahm, "Philosophico-Historico-Hydrogeography," 197-98. On the pace of land clearing, see, also, Carr, Menard, and Walsh, Robert Cole's World, 37.
122. This conservative estimate of non-corn acreage under cultivation is from Robert M. Weir, Colonial South Carolina: A History (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1983), 172.
123. Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 117;
124. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
125. Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 219;
126. Bolzius, "Reliable Answer to Some Submitted Questions," 246.