Pinehurst Tea Plantation – Summerville – Dorchester County

Basic Information

• Location – Summerville, Dorchester County

• Origin of name – ?

• Other names – ?

• Current status – Residential neighborhoods

Timeline

• 1888 – Earliest known date of existence
  
  Dr. Charles Shepard founded the Pinehurst Tea Plantation near the site of Andre Michaux's original tea planting at Middleton Barony. A variety of tea know as Oolong was grown at Pinehurst and won first prize at the 1904 World's Fair. Pinehurst remained prosperous until the death of its owner in 1915. The tea growing at Pinehurst was important however, as cuttings from these plants were taken to propagate the fields of both the American Tea Growing Company and the Charleston Tea Plantation.
  
  
• 1897 – The Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture included an article about Dr. Shepard's successful growing of tea despite the climate not being within normal range of temperature or rainfall for the cultivation of tea (6, p. 196).
  
  

Land

• Number of acres – ?

• Primary crop – Tea

Owners

• Chronological list – Dr. Charles Upham Shepard (?-1915)

Slaves

• Number of slaves – ?

Buildings

• ?

References & Resources

1. School Teacher and Her Students at Pinehurst, Summerville, South Carolina - photo taken circa 1903, click to enlarge - Students from this school provided at least some of the labor needed to pick the tea leaves.
   

2. Postcard entitled Road In Pinehurst Tea Farm

3. Postcard entitled Cottage At Pinehurst Tea Farm

4. Edited by James Calvin Hemphill, Men of Mark in South Carolina - Dr. Charles Upham Shepard

5. Jane Ockershausen, The South Carolina One-Day Trip Book (McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1998)
   
   

6. Information contributed by Abe Keating from the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture 1897, (Government Printing Office: Washington, DC)