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Somerset Plantation – Lake Moultrie – Berkeley County
— Somerset Plantation 1939 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC,8-PINOP.V,3-)
Basic Information
— Mantel of Somerset Plantation 1939 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC,8-PINOP.V,3-)
Timeline
— Somerset Plantation Dining Room 1939 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC,8-PINOP.V,3-)
Land
- Number of acres – 84 in 1696; 1,104 in 1704; 725 in 1736; 2,175 by the Cain family (1) (7)
- Primary crop – Cotton (1)
— Interior of Somerset Plantation 1939 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC,8-PINOP.V,3-)
Family Memories
- Special thanks to Frank Cain who shared the final memories of his family's beloved Somerset Plantation via the South Carolina Picture Project Facebook Group:
Yes, my late cousin Henry Ravenel Dwight stood along a higher point of our family seat plantation house in early 1942 as the then impounded mighty Santee River crept toward his feet on a late Winter afternoon. He was a Citadel engineering grad from the class of 1932 who was recently a local officer in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He would soon be in Europe with my late Uncle Frank Cain of Charleston & Cousin Charles Cain of Pinopolis serving in a U.S. uniform.
He was saddened as the water overwhelmed our Somerset property from his vantage point on what is now Somerset Point on Lake Moultrie.
Somerset Plantation alone totaled 2,175 acres. The Cains also held Somerton & Wampee Plantation until "The Flood". I have some of the 1800's bricks from the Somerset steps on my garden courtyard to balance our copper bird bath right now. A couple of the other salvaged Somerset bricks make dandy door stops in my house. We have all of the Somerset furniture divided up amongst the many Cain descendants...including me. Family keepsakes that ain't goin' nowhere but into a Cain descendant's domicile.
A sad loss of a fine home along with many more of those inhabited by our Berkeley French Huguenot families before "The Flood". — Frank Cain, 2016
— Floor Plan of Somerset Plantation 1940 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC,8-PINOP.V,3-)
Slaves
References & Resources
- Somerset Plantation, Cain Family: Click here
- 30-15 Plantation File, held by the South Carolina Historical Society
- J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin's through Berkeley
(Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 1985)
Order Historic Ramblin's through Berkeley
- Claude Henry Neuffer, editor, Names in South Carolina, Volume I through 30 (Columbia, SC: The State Printing Company)
Order Names in South Carolina, Volumes I-XII, 1954-1965
Order Names in South Carolina, Index XIII-XVIII
- Norman S. Walsh, Plantations, Pineland Villages, Pinopolis and Its People
(Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company Publishers, 2007)
Order Plantations, Pineland Villages, Pinopolis and Its People
- Waterman Report of 1939
- Information contributed by descendant Frank Cain.
- Library of Congress
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