Basic Information

• Location – Eastern branch of the Cooper River, Huger, St. Thomas and St. Denis Parish, Berkeley County

  Located off SC 41 on Cainhoy Road

• Origin of name – Jonah Lynch named the plantation after the ship,The Blessing, upon which he immigrated to Carolina.
  

• Other names – Mattesaw

• Current status – Privately owned

Timeline

• 1682 – Earliest known date of existence

  Jonah Lynch received a grant for 780 acres (Neuffer, bk. 1, vol. 12, p. 24).
  

  He called his property Blessing after the ship that brought him to the new colonies (Irving, p. 135).
  

• ? – The Blessing was divided up into three plantations: Cherry Hill, Cedar Hill, and the Blessing.
  

• ? – Henry Laurens purchased the Blessing and then proceeded to purchase Cherry Hill and Cedar Hill (Irving, p. 136).
  

  While in the possession of the Laurens family the plantations were once again divided.
  

• 1834 – James Poyas and his wife Charlotte Bentham purchased the plantation.
  

  They built a two-and-a-half-story rectangular frame plantation house (National Register, p. 14).
  

• 1860 – By this time all three plantations were owned by William James Ball.
  

• 1865 – The three plantations were once again sold separately.
  

• 1927 – The Wellington Corporation purchased all three plantations. A year later they sold them to T. Ferdinand Wilcox, Esq. and Edward Roesler, Esq. (Irving, p. 136).
  

  The new owners repaired the house built by James Poyas (National Register, p. 14).
  

• ? – 188 acres of the Blessing were put under the protection of the Lowcountry Open Land Trust.
  

Land

• Number of acres – 631 in 1786

• Blessing Plantation Rice Fields
  

• Blessing Plantation Steam Engine

• African-American Cemetery

• Primary crop – Rice

Owners

• Alphabetical list – William James Ball; Henry Laurens; Jonah Lynch; James Poyas; Wellington Corporation; T. Ferdinand Wilcox, Esq. and Edward Roesler, Esq.
  

Slaves

• Number of slaves – ?

Buildings

• Blessing Plantation House
  

Web Resources

• National Register of Historic Places
  – Nomination Form - submitted in 2002 - requires Adobe Reader
  – Photographs, architectural overview
  

• Blessing Plantation Rice Mill - p. 31

Print Resources

• Initial references: 1, 5

• William P. Baldwin, Jr., Plantations of the Low Country (Greensboro, NC: Legacy Publications, 1987).
  

• J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin's Through Berkeley (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 1985).
  

• John B. Irving, A Day on Cooper River (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 1969).
  

• Claude Henry Neuffer (editor), Names in South Carolina, 1943-1983 (Columbia, SC: The State Printing Company).