Oldfield Plantation – Hopkins – Richland County

Basic Information

• Location – Hopkins, Richland County

  Lower Richland Blvd, near present day Lower Richland High School
  

• Origin of name – Slaves called it this because the plantation's first house was built in an "old field" (2, p. 8).
  

• Other names – Cabin Branch, Old Field

• Current status – ?

Timeline

• ? – Earliest known date of existence
  

  John Hopkins received a land grant (3, p. 159)
  

• 1770 – House built (2, p. 8)
  

  John Hopkins built a log cabin on the upper part of his Cabin Branch Plantation which became known from that time on as Oldfield. Over the years, a total of five houses would be built at Oldfield (2, p. 8)
  

• 1798 – Dr. James Hopkins built a small, frame house at Oldfield (2, p. 15)
  

• 1805 – Dr. James Hopkins built an elaborate mansion on Oldfield near the original cabin. This was the third house constructed on the property (2, p. 15)
  

• 1844 – Dr. James Hopkins died leaving his daughter, Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, as the sole heir of his estate. Keziah also inherited Brevard Place Plantation from her father and made her home there (2, p. 18).
  

• 1865 – The mansion at Oldfield was the first one to be set ablaze by Union troops in Lower Richland County. The small frame house built in 1798 survived (2, p. 23)
  

• 2008 – Theodore Hopkins was scheduled to begin cultivation trials of Carolina Gold Rice at Oldfield Plantation (6)
  

Land

• Number of acres – ?

• Primary crop – ?

Slaves

• Number of slaves – 209 in 1860 (2, p. 21)
  

Buildings

• ?

References & Resources

1. 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
   

2. Information contributed by Margaret M. R. Eastman, who discovered this information while researching her family, from:
   Virginia Meynard, The History of Lower Richland County and Its Early Planters, (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 2010)
   

3. John Hammond Moore, Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740-1990 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992)
   
   

4. Photo of Old Field Plantation Steps, Richland Library

5. Descendants of slave Ned Edward (Deacon) Middleton I

6. The Rice Paper - September 2007