Submitted by FHMaster on Sun, 03/28/2021 - 16:55

Also called Gardiner's
Marshland Road, Indigo Run Plantation area

"A large plantation of 1424 acres on the north side of Broad Creek, bounded east by Marshlands and Sandy Hill, west by Otter Hole and north by Pineland Tract and Hanahan's, was referred to in confiscation reports as Gardner's.  It was very probably the home of Charles Davant, murdered at Two Oaks in Revolutionary War days, but a part was referred to as Col. Garden's in a boundary listing of 1795.  Since it was sold by the Federal government to the Sea Island Cotton Company it was not redeemable by Gardner heirs.  The United States Cotton Company then bought it and sold it to J.L. Dimmock who sold some of it to Negroes and most of it to W.L. Hurley.  March Gardner did make some claims for land and his son Gabriel P. Gardner, postmaster, 1882-86, bought part of Fish Haul. Gabriel's wife Susan and daughter Sarah kept the land, but granddaughter Eugenia Gardner Heyward let it be sold for delinquent taxes.  Roy Rainey picked it up and sold it to Thorne and Loomis."

  • Holmgren,  Virginia  C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 127

"A group of investors styling themselves "The Sea Island Company" bought Gardner's...... In an old record book found in a building at Otter Hole we can read their inventory for 1866:

Gardner's: 
550 acres arable land (cotton)- $100 per acre
874 acres timber land - 55 per acre
1 mansion - 4,000
25 freedmen's houses - 7,500
1 cotton drying arbour - 500
1 horse barn, very large - 3,000

Also listed: hog pen, beehives, plows, seed, clothing, tools, tobacco, brooms, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop, etc. for a total of nearly 300 items."

  • Holmgren, p. 108

"The Gardners actually got none of their former plantation but did manage to buy land nearby."

  • Holmgren, p. 112

c. 1900    "...W.L. Hurley of New Jersey....moved in on a grand scale (Otter Hole)....they soon added.....Gardner's to their estate to total 1700 acres."

  • Holmgren, p. 120

c. 1920  "...families on Gardner included Aiken, Stafford, Riley, Williams, Houston, Young, Singleton, Allston, Mitchell." The Aikens came around 1900 and may have acquired some of the Gardner tract then from either Dimmock or Hurley.

  • Grant, Moses, Looking Back, p. 14, 15

James Stoney purchased Lots 15 - 18 from Bayley's Baroney eventually forming Gardner and Marshland Plantations. States that Gardner was purchased by Benjamin F. Skinner for $1,075. 

  • Trinkley, Chicora Research Contribution 78, Archaeological Survey of a Portion of Indigo Run Plantation, Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina
Location
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
State
Status
Unknown