Reliving the Lowcountry’s Golden Age

To hear Zella Mae Wilt, the silver-haired volunteer at the Rice Museum, tell it, the Civil War happened only yesterday. And with all the sweet grace of Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bee, Zella Mae was now politely referring to it as “the late unpleasantness.”

As an Ohioan and a descendant of Union Army soldiers, I appreciated her polite hospitality. Even more, I appreciated her time and effort: I was the only visitor in the upstairs of the 1842 Greek Revival Old Market Building, and I was still getting the complete $5 tour. That was good because there are lots of fascinating things to be told about this small, unpretentious town of 10,000 that makes regular appearances on lists of America’s most charming small towns.

“Back in 1850,” Zella Mae explained with obvious pride, “Georgetown County accounted for half of the rice production in the U.S.--more than 1 million pounds. And at an average price of 32 cents a pound, that made some people very, very wealthy. In fact, Georgetown was the wealthiest city in the state, and South Carolina was the wealthiest state in the country--except for Massachusetts.” She hesitated before the next line: “Of course, this was all made possible only by slave labor, and that came to a screeching halt after the late unpleasantness.”

Now schooled in polite Southern conversation, I refrained from pointing out the even more recent unpleasantness: the ongoing NAACP boycott of South Carolina because of its refusal to remove the Confederate battle flag from state property. If you come looking for remnants of the Old South, you shouldn’t be surprised to find them.

My wife, Stacie, our 2 1/2-year-old twin daughters, their nanny and I had found Georgetown, which is thick with such remnants, almost by accident in May. We wanted a beach vacation in the historically evocative South but without shelling out big bucks at the gated resort islands south of Charleston.

So nearby Pawleys Island, which prides itself on being “arrogantly shabby,” got the nod, and Georgetown became our second base. At 14 miles away, it was the farthest we would wander from our four-bedroom rented beach house over the next week.

It turned out to be an enlightened choice. Not only is Pawleys Island one of America’s oldest beach resorts, established in the 1790s, but its strict no-rise edifice complex makes it the only place in the Myrtle Beach area where you can watch the sun rise over the green Atlantic from your back porch and set over the brown-black tidal estuary from your front porch. And we had all of Georgetown County to explore.

Founded in the early 1700s by the scions of well-connected English families from Charleston, Georgetown, both city and county, was named for King George II. For the next 30 years, Georgetown was true blue in name and deed: Its original cash crop, indigo, was essential for the dyes for royal and navy blue. But when the Colonies revolted against those same bluebloods, the dye trade dried up.

Georgetown’s first reconstruction was therefore purely economic. According to local legend, rice had been introduced to South Carolina in 1685, when an itinerant ship captain from Madagascar paid for repairs with a bag of seed rice. Whatever its origins, the confluence of five rivers--the Black, Pee Dee, Waccamaw, Santee and Sampit--and the 4-foot tidal surge at Winyah Bay made the appropriately nicknamed Lowcountry ideal for cultivating “Carolina gold.”

Ideal, that is, if you overlooked 46,000 acres of thick cypress cover. The narrator of the 15-minute video shown in the Rice Museum annex equated the task of clearing the land with the building of the Pyramids. The work was done by slaves brought specifically from Senegal and Gambia for their rice-cultivation skills, and it benefited only a dozen extended families, the owners of Georgetown’s 150 rice plantations. Nowhere in the antebellum South was the numerical discrepancy between white owners and slaves more pronounced: In 1850, Georgetown County’s population was 85% black. On Georgetown’s streets, shaded by live oaks, it was apparent how easy life had been for the landed gentry. A total of 63 homes in the town’s 40-block historic district are on the National Register of Historic Places. Among the most impressive 18th century manors--and one of the few open to the public--is the white, porticoed Kaminski House, named for the Polish-born merchant who supplied lumber and hardware to rebuild Georgetown after the Civil War. Built in 1760 with a commanding view of the Sampit River, the house is now a museum laden with 17th and 18th century furnishings.

The Rice Paddy Restaurant, a converted Victorian in vibrant coral and rich brown wood, is redolent of Georgetown’s golden age, especially if you order their old-time rice purleau (pilaf).

The next morning, our effort to see how the privileged few lived led Stacie and me to Cap’n Rod and his Lowcountry Plantation Tour, a three-hour pontoon boat trip through the littoral heart of the county. We weren’t the only ones looking for Cap’n Rod: His crew had lost track of him too, and offered to refund our $40 if he didn’t show. But show he did. And show he gave, keeping the flat, reedy waterscape from getting boring with a flowing commentary of history and remembrances.

It took Cap’n Rod’s experienced eye to pick out the remnants of the feeder canals and leveed trunk docks that once defined the rice fields along the suitably named Black River. Only the most trustworthy slaves were allowed to tend these fluvial gateways, for once breached by salt water, a rice field took two years to cleanse itself.

Our first float-by sighting was of Whitehall Plantation, where President John Quincy Adams’ minister to Mexico, Joel Poinsett, began the commercial cultivation of the red-leafed plant that he had brought from Mexico and then named after himself. One chimney is all that remains of the house, which was burned by the Union Army in 1863 in retaliation for a sneak attack.

Because of thick foliage and their location on high ground, fleeting glimpses were all we got of other former plantations, all but one in private hands.

With so much water everywhere, it is only natural that Georgetown County supports a diverse fishing industry, and Murrells Inlet, a sheltered waterfront community, is the self-proclaimed seafood capital of South Carolina.

The saleswoman at Harrelson’s Fish Market recommended the grouper, pan-fried with butter and paprika. And it was as good as promised, especially when accompanied by the crashing of the surf beneath our back porch and chased by a generous slice of pecan pie from Georgetown’s Kudzu Bakery. Even old Percival Pawley himself, the original (1711) land grantee, would have been pleased.

The Pawleys were among Georgetown’s plutocrats, and their “island” came into prominence in the 1790s, when they discovered that steady offshore breezes kept malaria-carrying mosquitoes at bay. It wouldn’t be until 100 years later, however, that Pawley Island’s other claim to fame, the knotless rope hammock, was invented.

The following morning, while the rest of my family took to the water, I made my way to Mansfield Plantation, now a B&B.; A two-mile unpaved driveway leads to a vintage slice of the Old South: two rows of whitewashed slave cabins and a 200-year-old allee of billowing live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. If Mansfield Plantation looks just like a movie set, that is because scenes in “The Patriot” were filmed here, even though the original manor house wasn’t built until 1812.

“It took them two months of preparation for what turned out to be only four days of filming,” said innkeeper Sally Smith Cahalan as she swatted away another aggressive deer fly during a tour of the grounds.

Alas, traces are all that are visible of Mansfield Plantation’s heyday. In an abandoned field is the county’s last surviving winnowing house--a foursquare whitewashed wood structure from whose elevated floor rice was swept so the wind could separate the kernels from the husks.

It was Mansfield’s slave cabins that were refurbished to house the servants of Philadelphia investment banking mogul Col. Robert L. Montgomery, who used to fly his boardroom buddies here in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

What happened to Mansfield Plantation after the Civil War was typical. By substituting sharecroppers for slaves, most managed to limp into the 20th century only to be undone by a series of hurricanes that flooded the fields with salt water. The last commercial rice crop in Georgetown County was harvested in the 1930s.

The Great Depression opened the floodgates of opportunity to a second wave of Yankees, this time industrialists who came not to conquer and subjugate but to acquire and retire. Northern capitalists--Tom Yawkey, late owner of the Boston Red Sox; and Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Mellons--bought vast tracts of then overgrown plantations.

For dinner, my wife and I headed back to Murrells Inlet, but this time to walk the plank, the waterfront boardwalk that links half a dozen seafood restaurants on the inlet side of the road. We selected the outdoor patio at Captain Dave’s Dockside, where Stacie went for the catch of the day (grilled red snapper), while I chose the spicy shrimp and grits and local ale.

A day on the beach and a trip to Myrtle Beach left us with only one day to see Georgetown’s two other antebellum showcases. The first, Hopsewee Plantation, was the home of the Thomas Lynches, senior and junior, both of whom were to sign the Declaration of Independence, although the elder died before he had the chance.

Serendipitously, we had saved the best for last: Hampton Plantation, built on the banks of the Santee River in the 1750s by the Horry (pronounced OR-ry) family. In the late 1700s, the four-story whitewashed wood manor was the home of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who produced the state’s first indigo crop--at the age of 16. Among her many distinguished guests was George Washington, who advised against cutting down the live oak that blocked the front view of the house. The oak still stands.

One hundred and fifty years later, Clark Gable came to soak up local color for an upcoming role. While there he saw 7-year-old Will Alston climb inside and begin rocking the pivoting metal-frame bell that announced quitting time to the sharecroppers. It became the opening scene in “Gone With the Wind.”

Naturally, Rhett Butler, the fictional blockade runner and South Carolina native, is much revered in Georgetown, a port he would have known well.

And naturally I politely refrained from observing that Clark Gable was a Yankee from Ohio. It only would have ruined it--for all of us.

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Guidebook: Lowcountry Lowdown

Getting there: Delta, United, Continental, US Airways and Northwest offer connecting service from LAX to Charleston, which is 59 miles south of Georgetown. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $337.

Where to stay: Mansfield Plantation Bed & Breakfast Inn, 1776 Mansfield Road; (800) 355-3223, www.bbonline.com/sc/mansfield. This pet-friendly B&B; is a restored rice plantation. Doubles $115 or $135.

To stay on the beach at Pawleys Island, try the historic Sea View Inn, 414 Myrtle Ave.; (843) 237-

4253, fax (843) 237-7909, www.seaviewinn.net. Doubles $190-$250, with all meals.

To rent our house, we contacted the Lachicotte Co., 11 North Causeway, Suite B, Pawleys Island; (800) 422-4777, www.lachicotte.com.

Where to eat: Captain Dave’s Dockside, 4037 Business Highway 17, Murrells Inlet; (843) 651-5850. Entrees $13-$25.

Rice Paddy Restaurant, 732 Front St., Georgetown; (843) 546-2021. Try the rice purleau. Entrees $19-$25.

Oliver’s Lodge Restaurant, 4204 Business Highway 17, Murrells Inlet; (843) 651-2963. The restaurant, which dates from 1910, has seafood entrees from $9-$15.

There’s nothing fancy about these two barbecue places--food is served on paper plates, and seating is family style. But the pork is tangy and the prices are as sweet as the iced tea ($5-$6). Unfortunately their hours are limited.

Hog Heaven Barbecue, 7147 Ocean Highway, Pawleys Island; (843) 237-7444.

Lowcountry Barbecue, Highway 701 North, Georgetown; (843) 527-2697.

Tours: Cap’n Rod’s Lowcountry Plantation Tours, 705B Front St.; (843) 477-0287, www.lowcountrytours.com. Rates: $20 for adults, $15 for children.

For more information: Georgetown County Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 2068, Pawleys Island, SC 29585; (866) 368-TOUR (368-8687), www.visitgeorgetowncountysc.com.

South Carolina Parks, Recreation and Tourism, 1205 Pendleton St., Columbia, SC 29201; (888) SC-SMILE (727-6453), (803) 734-0138, fax (803) 734-0138, www.discoversouthcarolina.com.

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Marshall S. Berdan is a freelance writer in Alexandria, Va.