Laurel Hill Plantation – McClellanville – Charleston County

— Laurel Hill Plantation • National Register of Historic Places, 1984 —

Basic Information

• Location – Harbor River, McClellanville, St. James Santee Parish, Charleston County

  Located at 8913 US 17 North, south of the Town of McClellanville
  

• Origin of name – ?

• Other names – ?

• Current status – House no longer exists; privately owned
  

Timeline

• 1850 – Earliest known date of existence

  Richard Tillia Morrison II purchased land from Joseph Legare.
  

• 1851 – Morrison expanded the place by purchasing 1,000 acres from Samuel B. Jones (3, p. 266).
  

• 1852 – Morrison built a house on the property to replace the existing one which was in ruins.
  

• 1853 – Morrison purchased 688 acres from Richard Withers Shackelford to expand his property even further (3, p. 266).
  

• 1853 – House built (1, p. 3)
  

  Morrison constructed a one-and-one-half story frame house (1, p. 3).
  

• ? – During the Civil War, to make money, Morrison made salt from the seawater at Laurel Hill. Several other planters in the area did the same thing (3, p. 239).
  

• 1870s – Morrison divided Laurel Hill Plantation into equal parts and gave the pieces to the nine children from his first marriage to Eliza Venning (1, p. 3).
  

• 1950 – The plantation was sold out of the Morrison family.
  

• 1983 – The house was moved to a marsh site on Doe Hall Plantation for restoration by Dr. Richard Leland Morrison III and his wife Jackie. It was destroyed September 21, 1989 by Hurricane Hugo (3, p. 268).
  

• ? – Dr. Morrison and his wife, Jackie, began a bed and breakfast on the property.
  

• Circa 2018 – The bed and breakfast was no longer operating.
  

Land

• Number of acres – ?

• Primary crop – Rice, cotton, timber (2, p. 86)

Slaves

• Number of slaves – David Constantineau shares, "There is a small village library [in McClellanville] with a log of the names of the slaves and a list of purchases they made from the store the owner ran. There are 144 names in the log." (4)
  

References & Resources

1. National Register of Historic Places
   – Nomination form - PDF - submitted in 1984
   – Photographs, architectural overview
   

2. William P. Baldwin, Jr., Plantations of the Low Country; South Carolina, 1697-1865 (Greensboro, NC: Legacy Publications, 1987)
    Order Plantations of the Low Country; South Carolina, 1697-1865
   

3. Anne Baker Leland Bridges and Roy Williams III, St. James Santee, Plantation Parish: History and Records, 1685-1925 (Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Company, 1997)
    Order St. James Santee, Plantation Parish: History and Records, 1685-1925
   

4. Information contributed by David Constantineau.