Cedar Grove Plantation – Ashley River – Dorchester County

Basic Information

• Location – Ashley River, Dorchester County

  Opposite Middleton Place, northwest of Oatland
  

• Origin of name – ?

• Other names – ?

• Current status – Private

Timeline

• 1696 – Earliest known date of existence

  Granted to Job Bishop

• 1730 – House built probably by Walter Izard

• 1857 – Jane Dickson Bell married William Gildersleeve Vardell. Cedar Grove Plantation was a wedding gift to the couple from Jane's mother and the estate of her father (3).
  

• 1862 – The house burned during the Civil War. The Vardell family moved to Greenville after the loss of their home. William volunteered for the Confederate Army. While in Charleston in 1863, he donated 344 pounds of lead to the war effort from the plantation's window counterweights (3).
  

  The homesite includes remnants of a garden mount. The shapeless pile of bricks indicates the former site of the house. It is also believed Izard developed a grand garden with drainage system (1, p. 26).
  

Land

• Number of acres – 1,770 in 1857 (3)

• Primary crop – ?

Owners

• Alphabetical list – Charles S. Dwight; Isaac Marion Dwight; John Izard Middleton; John Izard; Walter Izard; Thomas P. Lockwood; Henry Middleton; John Parker (1820-1830); Pepper; Francis Turgis (1696); William Gildersleeve and Jane Dickson Bell Vardell (1857-?)
  

Slaves

• Number of slaves – ?

References & Resources

1. A Context For the Study of Lowcountry Gardens - PDF - Michael Trinkley and Debi Hacker, 2007, for the Chicora Foundation.
   

2. 30-15 Plantation File, held by the South Carolina Historical Society
   –  Online Catalog
   

3. Information contributed by Sybil Emrhein while researching on Ancestry.com.