True Blue Plantation – Pawleys Island – Georgetown County

Basic Information

• Location – Waccamaw River, Pawleys Island, All Saints Waccamaw Parish, Georgetown County

  Original plantation lands were located northwest of US 17 in the vicinity of True Blue community.
  

• Origin of name – Possibly named after the indigo planted on the land (1, p. 120)
  

• Other names – ?

• Current status – Residential development and golf course

Timeline

• 1711 – Earliest known date of existence (1, p. 119)
  

  Anthony Shorey received a grant of 500 acres on the Waccamaw River (1, p. 119).
  

• ? – Anthony Shorey Jr. inherited the property from his father (1, p. 119).
  

• ? – Anthony Shorey Jr. gave the property to his sister Ann Shorey Pawley (1, p. 119).
  

• ? – Ann Shorey Pawley gave the property to her son George Pawley (1, p. 119).
  

• ? – Alexander Skene received a grant of 1,370 acres. Skene quickly transferred his grant to George Pawley (1, p. 119).
  

• 1734 – George Pawley received another grant, this one for 500 acres. Forty years later the property was resurveyed and it was determined to actually be 845 acres (1, p. 119).
  

• ? – House built

• 1773 – George Pawley died leaving a detailed will. In it, he carefully divided his vast property among his children. Eldest son, Percival Pawley, inherited True Blue Plantation where he was already living (1, pp. 119-120).
  

• 1787 – Percival Pawley passed away leaving True Blue Plantation to John Pawley, his eldest son by his second marriage (1, p. 120).
  

• 1825 – John Pawley's daughter, Mary Allston Pawley married Peter William Fraser. True Blue Plantation was part of Mary's marriage settlement (1, p. 120).
  

• 1840 – Peter Fraser's father Hugh died in 1837. Hugh's large estate landed in the Georgetown Court of Equity for distribution among the heirs. In 1840, the court ordered Fraser's property be sold in order for equal distributions to be made. Peter and Mary Fraser sold True Blue Plantation in order to be able to purchase Hugh Fraser's Enfield Plantation (1, p. 120).
  

• Circa 1840 – Thomas Pinckney Alston purchase True Blue from Peter and Mary Fraser (1, p. 121).
  

• 1858 – Thomas Pinckney Alston sold True Blue Plantation to Plowden Charles Jennet Weston (1, p. 122) (4, p. 258).
  

• 1864 – Plowden C.J. Weston passed away leaving his entire estate to wife Emily. Emily Frances Esdaile Weston wished to return to her homeland of England after her husband's death. Per her late husband's request, Emily conveyed his entire estate to Plowden Weston's cousin William St. Julien Mazyck. In return, Mazyck was to pay Emily an annuity of £420 per year for the remainder of her life. Mysteriously, this transfer did not include the deed to True Blue (1, p. 122) (5) (6).
  

• 1865 – George C. Fox, as agent of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, was sent to Georgetown County to to seize abandoned plantations and manage them. True Blue fell under Fox's management and was noted as belonging to the estate of Plowden Weston. Rice was grown at the plantation by freedmen with half the proceeds going to the federal government and the other half to the freedmen. This same year, many planters were seeking pardons from President Johnson in order to regain their plantations. William St. Julien Mazyck, as heir to the estate of Plowden Weston, did this on behalf of True Blue (4, p. 425).
  

• 1897 – Oliver Brightman Skinner bought True Blue from the Georgetown County Master in Equity (1, p. 122).
  

• 1920 – Oliver Brightman Skinner sold the plantation. True Blue subsequently was owned by a line of short-term owners including Arthur Lachicotte, Allen Graham, and Walter S Griffin (1, p. 122).
  

• 1934 – MacMillan C King purchased the property (1, p. 122).
  

• 1939 – King sold the tract to Will A Freeman, Richard T Edwards, and J Archie Sasser (1, p. 122).
  

• Circa late 1980s – Heritage Plantation Incorporated developed the property into a golf course and residential housing development (1, p. 122).
  

Land

• Number of acres – 500 in 1711; 1,323 in 1824 (1)

• Primary crop – Rice and possibly indigo (1, p. 120) (4, p. 253)
  

Slaves

• Number of slaves – 65 in 1824 (1, p. 120)

  We are actively seeking information on the slaves who lived and worked at this plantation. If you find a resource that might help, please fill out this form. Thank you.
  

Personal Reflections

In January 2017, Brenda Porter was kind enough to share her memories of True Blue Plantation:

I married into a family that lived and vacationed there. My ex-husband's maternal grandmother was the caretaker for the plantation in the 1970s, but it could have been longer. We would stay in the plantation house on the bank of the intra-coastal waterway, which I was told was built in the 1850s after a fire destroyed the original house.

There was a hunting cottage that was visited by duck hunters. Sometimes they would bring the ducks they had shot to us for dinner. They were very good, as they lived mostly on wild rice, which had been the major crop of the plantation. There was a small pond to the side of the house, where alligators would occasionally come from the river to stay for a while near the house, so geese were used as watchdogs so we could tell if there the alligators were coming out of the water.

The house was not insulated well and each time a storm would bring lightning, we had to go to the living room as the blue lightning would travel from appliance to appliance through the kitchen. There were above ground graves back in the woods off the main dirt road going from Highway 17 back to the plantation house. I don't remember the names but the rubbings I did showed them to be dated back to 1806.

References & Resources

1. Suzanne Cameron Linder and Marta Leslie Thacker, Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of Georgetown County and the Santee River (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2001)
    Order Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of Georgetown County and the Santee River

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

3. Katherine H. Richardson, Pawleys Island Historically Speaking (Pawleys Island, SC: Pawleys Island Civic Association, 1995)
    Order Pawleys Island Historically Speaking

4. George C. Rogers, Jr., The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina (Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Company, 1990)
    Order The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina

5. Plowden CJ Weston Estate File

6. Indenture between Emily F Weston and William St Julien Mazyck