On Hilton Head Island: 38BUl166

General Information -

• Location - plantation stretching from Skull Creek to Jarvis Creek and from Cotton Hope to Jenkins Island

• Other names - Stoney

Owners - 

• Captain John Gascoigne apparently purchased part of the original Bayley’s Barony William Eden.

• William Eden.

• Benjamin Guerard, new Governor of South Carolina, who also leased Lot 19 and parts of Lots 18 and 22, per 1783 Moose Survey.

• Captain Jack Stoney soon thereafter purchased the property (prior to 1827) and his family held it until confiscation.

• R. C. McIntire redeemed part on Apr. 7, 1876; also part by Henry and Alfred Hudson and some Negroes.

• Resold to F. R. Klem in 1885 by McIntire heirs, who resells in small plots.
  • Roy Rainey buys from Simon Grant heirs, 1928.

• Thorne and Loomis.

• Hudsons kept most of their acreage.

Land - 350 acres

Maps -

      Mosse, "Hilton Head Island, 1783"
      Hack, "Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, before 1861"

Bibliography -

      Holmgren, Research on Hilton Head Island, 1956-ca. 1975
      Holmgren, Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle
      Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names

Additonal Information:

38BU1166,  38BU63

Also known as Stoney's Place

In the post-Revolutionary period the Stoneys were the largest landowners on the island, owning 5,115 acres including 350-acre Fairfield.

• Peeples, Tales of Ante Bellum Hilton Head Families, p. 4

Property was owned by Joseph Stoney at the time of the Civil War. There is mention of Federal troops being stationed at the plantation. In 1862 a survey map shows a main house, orchards, slave row and support buildings. In 1867 the plantation consisted of a mansion, quarters, and a school house on 350 acres of cultivated land, 150 acres of extra cleared land and 500 acres of woodland.  150 people lived there. The slave row overlies prehistoric deposits 38BU63 and is recommended for National Register of Historic Places.   

• Chicora Series 13, Archaeological Testing of Six Sites on Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina, p. 32 (Source materials listed in survey)

The 38BU1166 site covers an area of about 4.4 acres. The site integrity is high and is recommended for the National Register. Part of this is private property.

• Chicora Series 13, p. 73

Rev. Thomas Howard, a preacher and teacher under The Port Royal Experiment, was assigned to Hilton Head.  He and Mr. Strong, who was to oversee the farming, were assigned to the Widow Stoney's House, which would be Fairfield Plantation on Skull Creek......two officers of a  Pennsylvania regiment were already established.  Letters by another teacher describe the house.  "The plantation houses are all built of hard pine, which is handsome on the floors, but the rest of the woodwork is painted....The walls are always left white....clapboards are unknown, but hard pine boards a foot or more wide are put on in the same manner and everything outside is whitewashed.  The place is very attractive looking, with grape vines and honeysuckle, and pinewoods near.  The house is raised high from the ground, as all are here, and boarded loosely underneath. The rooms are twelve feet high and the lower story more than twelve feet from the ground.  Some rooms are eighteen feet square....There's a circle of orange trees 'round the house and roses in abundance, but no grass.  The quarters are a fourth of a mile from the house and a praise house stands near them." Howard makes mention of the Rose of Sharon bushes growing almost as high as trees about the extensive grounds and the wild blackberries that grew everywhere.

• Holmberg, Sea Island Chronicle, p. 100

"After confiscation part of Fairfield was bought by Henry and Alfred Hudson and inherited by James B. Hudson who was appointed Postmaster in 1923.  At the same time (1876) several negroes bought small plots and the balance of 350 acres went to R.C. McIntyre for $350.  His heirs sold it to F.R. Klem for $2,000 in 1885.  The McDonald Wilkins Company of Savannah leased the cotton fields from 1913 to 1932.  (The partners in this concern were M.D. Batchelder, William Keyserling, and G.W. Wilkins.) Rainey picked up almost all of the land not owned by the Hudsons, who still live here, and sold it to Thorne and Loomis.  

• Holmgren, p. 133

In 1895 McIntyre's heirs sold part of  Fairfield to a New Englander, W.P. Clyde. (Does this mean they did not sell all of holding in 1885?)

• Holmgren, p. 119, 132

"James B. Hudson, who owned part of Fairfield"...was one of two men on the island who made seafood packing a business.  This was in the early 1900's.

• Holmgren, p. 121

The 350-acre plantation, stretching from Skull Creek to Jarvis Creek and from Cotton Hope to Jenkins Island, was apparently part of the original Bayley’s Barony, sold first to Captain John Gascoigne and once owned by William Eden.  In the 1783 survey by Dr. Mosse it was held by Benjamin Guerard, the new governor of South Carolina.  Soon thereafter it was purchased by Captain Jack Stoney whose family held it after confiscation.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 13