— Entrance to Board House/Cherokee Plantation © Gazie Nagle —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

Basic Information

• Location – Combahee River, Yemassee, St. Bartholomew's Parish, ACE Basin, Colleton County

• Origin of name – Renamed Cherokee in 1930 (after the South's wild Cherokee Rose)
  

• Other names – Blake Place, Cherokee
  

• Current status – Exclusive hunting preserve and golf community, limited to 25 members
  

• Comments – The Jeep Cherokee is named for this plantation. Former owner, Robert Beverly Evans, was the head of American Motors.
  

Timeline

• 1690 – Earliest known date of existence
  

  Part of land grant to Joseph Blake
  

• 1710 – Original house built (named The Boardhouse)
  

  The main house and outbuildings were destroyed by fire during the Civil War.
  

• 1930 – Caroline and W.R. Coe purchased Cherokee from the Blake family.
  

• 1931 – Current house built
  

Land

• Number of acres – 11,000 (1860); 11,000 (1930); approximately 7,000 (present-day)
  

• Primary crop – Rice

• Grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (landscape architect who also designed the Biltmore Estate in Asheville and Central Park in New York City).
  

Owners

• Alphabetical list – Daniel Blake, Joseph Blake, Caroline and W.R. Coe, Robert Beverly Evans, Robert L. Huffines, Jr. (President of Burlington Industries and Director of ABC Television), J. Randolph Updyke, Williams Furniture Company
  

Slaves

• Number of slaves – 559 in 1860 when Board House was still owned by the Blake Family (Contributed by Jillian Olson)
  

Buildings

• ?

Web Resources

• Million-Dollar Grits - 2000 Forbes article gives a glimpse into the exclusive present-day Cherokee Plantation
  

Print Resources

• 30-15 Plantation File, held by the South Carolina Historical Society

• Margaret F. Kemp, Colleton County, South Carolina: A Pictorial History (Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing Company, 1994)
  

• Lucius G. Fishburne, Plantation Notes, St. Bartholomew's Parish, 1960, held by the South Carolina Historical Society
  

• Carolina W. Todd and Sidney Wait, South Carolina: A Day at a Time (Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper Publishing Company, 2008)
  
  

• N. Jane Iseley and William P. Baldwin, Lowcountry Plantations Today (Greensboro, NC: Legacy Publications 2001)
  
  

• Suzanne Cameron Linder, Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of the ACE River Basin - 1860 (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1995), pp. 69-73.
   Order Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of the ACE River Basin - 1860
  

Contact Information

• Cherokee Plantation
  5109 Combahee Road
  Yemassee, SC 29945
  

  Telephone: 843-844-8000