Double oak avenue | Photo via the Preservation Society of Charleston
To type: Jehossee Island – a uninhabited, unoccupied + undisturbed old one Rice planting located in Rio edisto. The area has the potential to contribute to the modern understanding of rice cultivation before the Civil War in Lowcountry.
THE Charleston Preservation Society is currently working with others to document Jehossee Island and secure funding for the stabilization + preservation in structures at risk on earth.
History behind the earth
- One of the most productive rice plantations in the south with one of the largest enslaved populations
- Prominent planter families owned more than 4,000 acres in the 18th and 19th centuries
- Ownership of Drayton Family between 1776-1824
- Governor William Aiken Jr. started ownership in 1830
Rice Production
- It had large canals, fields, curbs, dikes, rice trunks + a brick chimney
- It counted on the work of 700-1,200 people enslaved between the 1830s and 1860s
- The site included 84 wooden houses, a church, a hospital, a store and more
What is still standing today
- Ruin of the chimney used for rice cultivation
- 1830s supervisor’s house
- Portions of brick foundations of old buildings
- Most of the landscape remains unchanged
THE US Fishing and Wildlife Service now own Jehossee Island, and here it is potential for study of resources above + below ground in the land. Learn more about the story and ways to help sustain and protect the historic island on here.