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Thomas Barnwell poses in the window of an 18th-century tabby he’s preserved on his family’s property on Hilton Head Island.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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The walls of Thomas Barnwell’s tabby, constructed of lime, oyster shells and sand, were recently dated to the late 18th century.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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Thomas Barnwell has been working for years to preserve a tabby structure that sits on land purchased by his father in the 1930s.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
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A fourth-generation Hilton Head Islander, Thomas Barnwell works with neighbors and others to preserve Gullah history and promote education about it. He co-authored a book, Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge, with Emory Shaw Campbell and Carolyn Grant “to make people aware of the deep history that exists.
Photo by Matthew Franklin Carter
The tourists who visited Hilton Head Island before 1950 were a different sort from those who visit the luxury resort island today. And understandably so. No bridge connected the island to the mainland, and no Palmetto Electric Cooperative power lines connected its residents to the electrical grid.
Thomas Barnwell remembers. He can think back over his 89 years to recall boyhood memories of visitors coming by his family’s farm to see the ruins of a tabby structure that had been there as long as anyone knew. There, in the Gullah community known as Squire Pope, his father would even allow those visitors to take pieces of the eroding lime, oyster shell and sand walls as souvenirs.
Barnwell’s father, Thomas Barnwell Sr., purchased the land in the 1930s. By that time, the tabby was in ruins and served as a shelter for the Barnwell family’s farm animals. The Barnwells grew sweet potatoes, okra, watermelons and a host of other vegetables. It was an era when seemingly everyone on the island knew everyone else. There were so few vehicles, Barnwell could identify which of his neighbors was driving by the sound of the engine.
“It was a good life,” he says. “Fishing, farming, swimming. We were always doing something. People were kind, no-nonsense.”
More than 75 years later, growth and development have transformed Hilton Head Island from an isolated community into a prized gem of South Carolina’s tourism industry. Where livestock once roamed free and the coastal forest was thick, paved roads and roundabouts now connect restaurants and shopping plazas to beaches, resorts and gated communities.
Yet Barnwell and the tabby on his property remain after all these years. The fourth-generation native is working with his neighbors and others in Hilton Head to preserve what is left of the life he knew before the bridge first connected the island to the rest of South Carolina’s Lowcountry in 1956.
Barnwell has spent considerable time and money restoring the tabby, with hopes of turning the ancient structure into a gathering point where students and other visitors can learn about the history of the island and its people.
Archeologists and historians recently dated the tabby to the late 18th century, making it the oldest standing structure on Hilton Head Island.
The fact that the tabby remains in the hands of a descendent of formerly enslaved people makes its preservation and exhibition an urgent matter, Barnwell says.
“We have been here for a long time, and our history has been overlooked,” says Barnwell. “If the Gullah culture is to be preserved, protected and prolonged, then we need the archaeological component to be able to educate the general public of the value of our historical points, to willingly share our part of history that is gradually going away.”
Gullah roots
Gullah refers to people in southern coastal regions whose ancestors came to the Americas on slave ships from West and Central African territories. They share a creole culture with elements derived from their African homelands, with a unique language and dialect, art and community life. On Hilton Head Island, the Gullah culture thrived with the establishment of Mitchelville, the first self-governing community of former slaves in the country.
During the Civil War, after the Union Army captured the South Carolina sea islands at the Battle of Port Royal, plantation owners and the wealthy left the island and more than 10,000 of the enslaved persons on it. In what was known as the Port Royal Experiment, Northern charities helped the formerly enslaved people become self-sufficient and acquire property. The main population center on the north end of the island was called Mitchelville, named after Union General Ormsby Mitchel, who oversaw its beginning.
Barnwell’s ancestors, great-grandparents Ceasar and Mariah Jones, had been enslaved on Rose Hill plantation in Bluffton. With their daughters in tow, the Joneses escaped by boat across the May River to Mitchelville. Eventually, they would become important figures in the community. Two generations later, Barnwell Sr. purchased plots that had been a part of Cotton Hope plantation prior to the Civil War. On that land was the tabby structure that his son, Barnwell Jr., is now working to preserve.
Unearthing history
Dr. Kim Cavanagh was a part of the team of archaeologists, historians and students that has been unearthing the tabby’s secrets for the past six years.
“I’m really excited to be able to help bring some of this history to light and correct misinformed local legend,” says Cavanagh. “To help create a tourist narrative that involves the actual people is really exciting.”
Based on archival research, more than 800 cataloged artifacts they found and luminescence dating (geological testing that can determine how long ago mineral grains were exposed to light), the team is confident that the tabby was constructed before the Revolutionary War and was one of the island’s earliest dwellings.
It served as the primary residence for the Henry Ladson family on the Mahrabuoy Plantation, which grew indigo as its main crop. While there is no confirming evidence that the tabby was a two-story dwelling, they found no evidence of other nearby dwellings from that period, suggesting that some of the plantation’s enslaved people lived on the ground floor, with the Ladson family on a second floor. Based on historical precedent, the tabby most likely would have been built with enslaved labor.
Cavanagh, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, also researches tourism-based economies and their impact on the local community. She says Hilton Head’s deeply rooted and distinct Gullah history has not been fully capitalized, as have the island’s beaches, golf courses and resort hotels.
“Study after study shows that history and culture tourists spend more money locally and that it actually gets to the local people,” says Cavanagh, who worked with Barnwell on the tabby restoration. “The tabby is a pinpoint to tell a wider story. Promoting more of the cultural and historical identity of the island can have a greater economic impact on the people that live there, not just the corporations that own the hotels.”
Preservation with development
As Hilton Head Island transformed from a place occupied almost exclusively by descendants of slaves to a popular destination for beachgoers, golfers and conference attendees, Barnwell and other community leaders have worked to preserve the home that early residents made there for generations.
One challenge has been protecting and preserving land, a priority for native islanders amid the island’s rapid growth.
Barnwell has helped local families secure their land by clearing titles, writing wills and making sure taxes are paid. He also has advocated for affordable housing and developed property for local residential and commercial use.
“Change came and much of it was good,” says Barnwell. “But looking back, it would have been better to have bridged the gaps. Some people made out alright, and some were taken advantage of in the transition toward the future. It is still painful for some families at this very moment.”
Some of those stories are told in Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge, a book Barnwell co-authoredwith fellow Gullah descendants Emory Shaw Campbell and Palmetto Electric trustee Carolyn Grant. The book primarily chronicles the island’s Gullah people from 1861–1956, from enslavement to creating a thriving liberated community, through the setbacks and struggles of Reconstruction and isolation, and to the beginning of a new era for all of Hilton Head, including the descendants of its early residents.
“A lot of the people coming here don’t know that (history),” says Barnwell. “The book was written to make people aware of the deep history that exists.”
That’s also why he has spent the last 15 years restoring and researching the Barnwell Tabby. He brought in one of the world’s foremost tabby specialists to reconstruct the four walls while retaining the structure’s architectural integrity. Now that its historical importance has been scientifically confirmed, Barnwell wants to make sure it stays in his family and remains accessible to anyone who wants to learn about the history of the island.
“I would hope that all of our children, grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will be able to have control of this for education and economic purposes,” says Barnwell. “I hope that it will make people fully aware of Hilton Head as a place that has historical significance and value.”