2021 quick trips – part 5: “if cotton was king, then rice was queen”

We’ve known about Georgia planters who grew cotton on large plantations, but growing rice along the coast was new for us. On a narrow fringe of land between the saltwater marshes and the pinelands, the rice culture once flourished in Georgia. A visit to the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation gave us the education we didn’t know that we needed. First we’ll walk through the museum and watch a movie, then we’ll go to the house and grounds.

Carved out from the virgin cypress swamps in 1806, this plantation is a reminder of the great rice plantations that blossomed in the Altamaha delta. Only a few of these plantations survived the devastation of the Civil War, and by the turn of the century, almost all were abandoned. While some remnants of dykes and the rice fields still remain, the shadow of the culture of the rice empire can be seen on this plantation.

overview

The property, originally known as the “Broadface Tract,” was purchased in 1806 by William Brailsford who changed the name to Broadfield and began growing rice in the marshlands. William and his wife, Maria Heyward, moved here from Charleston, SC, which had been the center of the southern rice industry at the time. Her brother, Nathaniel Heyward was the largest rice planter of the time: he owned 15 plantations and over 2500 slaves.

These lands along the Altamaha River were suited for growing rice. In a history of this plantation, Victoria Reeves Gunn wrote “the fields produced such a fine quality of grain that according to government record, the superior ‘Broadfield Rice’ on the Charleston market took its name from the Brailsford Plantation.”

In the 1850s, George C. Dent and his wife Ophelia added the name Hofwyl (pronounced hofwill) after the Swiss agricultural school he attended.

William Brailsford constructed the original plantation house on this site in 1807 but I haven’t found out yet what happened to that house. The structure we’ll be visiting was begun around 1851 by George Dent and his wife Ophelia Troup and it was finished prior to the Civil War. Our tour guide told us that it had been used as a hunting lodge. She said the family’s main home was in Darien, just north and a little west of where we are now.

Today’s house is about 1/4 mile walk from the museum through some lovely live oak trees that we’ll see as we walk to the house in the next post.

The plantation plain-style house, built in the 1850s, is typical of many plantation houses of the era. The windows were modified to enhance circulation, and the exterior was renovated in the late 1930s. The property gives an authentic view of family life of the coastal rice planters.

In the 1700s and 1800s, planters and their families fled the malaria-infested marshes during the heat of the summer for more ornate homes in healthier locations. However, the African slaves were thought to be able to withstand the heat, humidity, and malarial environment, so they stayed behind and worked.

From what the tour guide told us, the slaves could get sick from malaria but rarely died. The gene that protected them from the disease carried by mosquitoes is the same one that makes the African-American susceptible to sickle cell anemia. The good and the bad.

The home we’ll visit is furnished with family antiques and heirlooms dating to the 1790s. All furnishing are original to the house and the families who owned it. We’ll get to see the house as Ophelia, the last family member, knew it.

A mile-long loop runs along the edge of the marsh where several overlooks and an observation deck has been built so visitors can see where “Carolina Gold” rice was once grown.

The Civil War, emancipation of the slaves, a flurry of hurricanes in the late 1800s, marauding birds, and competition from rice producers in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas put the east coast rice planters out of business by 1915.

To save the land, the last owners of Hofwyl-Broadfield started a dairy that operated until 1942 when pasteurization was required. The last owner left the property to Georgia as a memorial to all who had lived and worked here. So glad we are able to see this land and give thanks to those who worked it.

rice growers of the 1800s

Rice planters left their plantations between April and October to avoid getting the swamp fevers. Moving to resorts at Clarksville, White Sulphur Springs, or Saratoga in Florida, or to homes in Savannah or on the seashore, the planters and their families enjoyed their time with other families of wealth.

When the planters returned to their plantations for autumn and winter, interaction with other families was much more difficult. They visited each other by boat or horseback, staged boat races, and formed societies where the rice aristocracy could mingle and create a social life out of virtual isolation.

Those planters who showed intellectual interests in finance and particularly in scientific agriculture created the Union Agricultural Society of Darien in 1823.

Growing cotton and growing rice were totally different. Investment in land and machinery for a rice plantation were approximately triple that of a cotton plantation, and more slaves per acre were required. The cotton planter could move west once his soil had eroded, but the rice planters couldn’t leave.

One female author noted “It is a great mistake to suppose that the mistress or master of a large plantation (rice) in Georgia . . . lived in idleness. They were the busiest people I have every known.”

growing the rice

Before Georgia voted to allow slavery in 1749, it had virtually abandoned rice production. Slavery gave growing rice new life at the expense of those who did the work. African slaves were the backbone of the rice empire along Georgia’s coast from 1749-1865 when the Civil War let them free.

Providing the cheap human labor required for commercially cultivating rice, slaves cleared tidal swamps and ditched fields from the Savannah to the St. Marys. Because cultivating rice required so much hand work, the ratio of slaves to land was high along the coast. By 1790 slaves made up 70% of the population.

While slave trade was outlawed in 1808 (we didn’t know this), as late as 1858 slave ships were illegally bringing Angolians, Coramantee, Gambians, and Eboes from Africa to the Georgia coast. Their new “home” was filled with feverish rice swamps, and their lives were filled with mean drudgery, harsh discipline, and isolation.

On the rice coasts, slaves outnumbered whites by more than 2-1. During the summer when the planters and their families retired inland, the slaves were left to themselves. From this relative isolation from European influence, they developed unique cultural forms in their music, dance, and African folk tales. Their Christianity was combined with nature worship, magic, and voodoo. The dialect of the Geechee-Gulah mark the distinctive culture of these rice coast slaves.

Probably because they were left to themselves for such a long time each year, this area really did become home to them. Many stayed after the Civil War because this is where their families were.

Slaves here suffered harsher discipline and poorer working conditions than slaves on cotton plantations. While laboring in yellow-fever-infested water, they leveled and trenched fields, sowed rice, and hoed, reaped, and threshed it. What horrible, back-breaking work.

Here’s what they had to do.

1. prepare the land

2. install floodgates called “trunks”

Just 10 feet closer to the river, slaves constructed the main embankment that rose at least 2 feet above maximum high tide. They then installed floodgates called “trunks” in the embankments to keep out high tides and let out any accumulated water at low tide.

The main trunks, installed in the outside bank to connect the river, or an outside canal leading to the river, were built of timbers strong enough to withstand the pressures of tidal flow. The design was 2 facing doors 15-20 feet apart built on and bolted to a heavy wooden frame foundation. Other trunks were installed in the larger inside banks to control the flow to individual fields.

Later on in this post we’ll see a model system of trunks being used to control the tidal water.

3. sowing the seeds

Tedious hand labor and careful supervision were required during the entire process of growing rice. Seeds were sown early in the spring, followed by a succession of 4 floodings and constant weeding before the rice was ready to harvest in late August or early September.

4. harvesting

Harvesting began in late August or early September and lasted from 6 to 8 weeks. Slaves cut the grain by hand with a rice hook and left it on the stubble for a day to dry.

Then the rice was stacked temporarily in small ricks (can’t find out what these are). When thoroughly cured, it was put away in large stacks about 12-16 feet in diameter made to contain 200-400 bushels each when threshed.

5. field to market

After the rice was cut and moved to dry, the grain needed to be separated from chaff—this is called winnowing. Normally this process was done by hand in a winnowing house that sat high on stilts so the threshed rice could be dropped through a fan on the floor of the house. The grain fell to the ground, and the chaff stayed in the house.

At this point the grain was separated from its double hull by huge multiple mortar and pestle units and grinding stones. Then it was dropped through revolving screens and elevators. Only large landholders could afford to construct these rice mills, so the others used a neighbor’s rice mill or shipped their winnowed rice to a mill in Charleston or Savannah.

6. threshing

In this process the rice seed was removed from the plant. Before these mills were used, threshing was done by hand using hand flairs similar to those used in Biblical times.

model of a “trunk”

family history from 1806 – 1861

In 1806, merchant-planter William Brailsford of Charleston (photo on the right in the previous picture) bought “Broadface,” a tract of tidal swamp along the Altamaha River. Before dying in 1810, he developed a flourishing rice plantation.

Williams’ son-in-law, Dr. James M. Troup, assumed management in 1814 and purchased it in 1834. Several years later he bought an adjoining rice plantation, New Hope.

When Dr. Troup died in 1849, he owned 7300 acres, 357 slaves, and homes in Darien and Baisden’s Bluff. But he died $80,000 in debt and stipulated in his will that his estate couldn’t be divided until all of his debts were paid off. Sounds like a reputable man.

One of Dr. Troup’s daughters, Ophelia, married George C. Dent and named her portion of the plantation West New Hope “Hofwyl” after the Swiss agricultural school her husband had attended. They started construction on the house that stands today on the plantation.

While Georgia planters stood at the pinnacle of the coastal society, but the rice planter’s wealth was deceptive. Rice production required significant investments in land and labor, and often he was forced to mortgage his property to survive until the harvest.

changes after the Civil War

The Civil War changed everything for everyone in the South. Emancipation broke the back of the Carolina-Georgia rice planters, but while the slaves were now free, how would they live? If President Lincoln had lived, his plans would have helped this transition for these men and women. However, his successor reversed all that he had planned and put in place

As less and less of the Altamaha marsh was planted in rice at greater expense, rice producers in other states (Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas) planted more rice using modern machinery that would have been too heavy for the rice fields here. Also, a new strain of rice was introduced from Japan in 1900 that allowed the plantations further west to grow it even cheaper. Hofwyl was one of the last Altahama plantations to grow rice, but that ended in 1915.

When Union warships had appeared off the Georgia coast late in 1861, shadows began to fall over the rice kingdom. George Dent and his 15-year-old son, James, left to serve in the Confederate Army. Ophelia and her children, along with many of their slaves, moved to a refugee settlement in Waycross, inland west of where they had been living. They returned after the war, but the neglect and the intrusion of saltwater had crippled the plantations.

Cheap human labor—slavery—was gone forever. After the war, the Dents gave up large sections of the estate to pay taxes. Matilda Troup saved what she could after the war and later Miriam Cohen Dent saved Hofwyl (1885) and Broadfield (1895) from mortgage, but the plantation never fully recovered. In the 1880s when James Dent took over management of the plantation, Hofwyl-Broadfield’s wealth was gone.

Severe hurricanes and floods in the 1890s ravaged the remaining rice fields. The end came in 1900 when Southwest planters undersold the Rice Coast plantations using the new strain of rice from Japan.

changes at Hofwyl

When James Dent died in 1913, his plantation was still in debt. His son, Gratz, established a dairy that his sisters operated until 1942 when the debt was paid off. (He lived in Darien but often came to visit.)

The dairy barn, the bottling house, and the pay shed remain as reminders of dairying on the marshes. By the time the plantation was out of debt in 1942, the sisters shut operations.

Other famous riders were Laura Ingles Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame, Annie Oakley, and Sybil Luddington who rode to warn of the British coming just like Paul Revere. She rode further and didn’t get caught.

Now that we’ve learned about this family and how they grew rice over the years, let’s walk on over to the house where the family, especially the last 2 sisters, lived.