From Slavery to Freedom

Late 19th - 20th-Century

Due to the decline of the rice economy in Charleston, there were approximately 30 enslaved people at Drayton Hall in 1860. It is possible that some of these people abandoned Drayton Hall for a chance at freedom in Beaufort, South Carolina as Beaufort was behind Federal lines. Research suggests that at least one enslaved man from Drayton Hall may have joined the Federal army; such a position would have allowed his family to live in safety within Union camps.

Emancipation: a Free African-American Community

This drawing of the Bowens house was developed as a result of archaeological investigations and oral history interviews with Richmond Bowens, who lived in the house during his childhood in the 1910s. The house is typical of Lowcountry tenant houses and of the houses occupied by members of the African-American community that developed in the late 1800s through the early 1900s at Drayton Hall.

With the end of the Civil War came emancipation and the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which formally bestowed citizenship upon freed slaves; at that time the community of enslaved people of African descent became a community of free African Americans. While many left to seek opportunities elsewhere, many chose to stay near what was familiar despite its association with slavery. By 1870, several African American families were again living at Drayton Hall. Many of the men were employed in phosphate mining, while others such as Caesar Bowens, who served as a caretaker, worked for the Drayton family.

By 1900, a small community-including the Haynes family, the Johnson family, the Bowens family, and Ms. Nanny Notes, who may have been born into slavery at Drayton Hall — had emerged with Drayton Hall's main drive as its axis. A road called "Wire Road" intersected the drive and formed the main street of this community. Almost a dozen small frame houses surrounded by swept yards and vegetable gardens were located here along with several outbuildings, stores, and a stop for the train that ran along a narrow gauge railroad built as part of the phosphate mining operations. Another store was located along the Ashley River.

Many of these families began to move away by the 1930s. The Great Depression meant fewer jobs in the area, and many African Americans looked to Northern cities for new opportunities. By the 1940s, many of the houses along the drive had been abandoned. Eventually, only the caretaker's cottage was occupied. Tom and Sadie Burns lived in that cottage in the forties and fifties, and a caretaker was employed until Ms. Charlotta Drayton's death in 1969. After her death, the last African American left the property.