The Middleton Place Privy House: An Archaeological View of Nineteenth Century Plantation Life
Helen Woolford Haskell
9781465657626
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The land that now comprises Middleton Place lies in one of the earliest areas inhabited by Englishmen in South Carolina. In 1674, just four years after the first colonists settled at Charles Town, Lord Proprietor Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper granted lands for settlement along the lower reaches of the Ashley River. Among these was the site of Middleton Place, deeded in 1675 to Jacob Waight. Waight apparently forfeited his claim to the tract, and in 1700, it was granted to Richard Godfrey, who sold it in 1729 to John Williams, a wealthy landowner and justice of the peace. The land passed into Middleton hands in 1741, when John Williams’ daughter Mary married Henry Middleton, the second son of former provincial governor Arthur Middleton. Henry and his two brothers were the third generation of Middletons in South Carolina. Their grandfather, Edward Middleton, had arrived in the colony in 1678 as part of the great influx of Barbadian Englishmen who made up more than half of Charles Town’s early immigrants. Like many other Barbadians, Edward settled along Goose Creek, north of Charleston. His plantations there, along with estates in Barbados and England, passed to his son Arthur in 1685. Arthur also inherited a prominent position in Carolina society, and with it, an active role in the political life of the colony. Edward had served as Lords Proprietors’ deputy and assistant justice in his few years’ stay in Goose Creek, but Arthur, who held more than a dozen public offices, was the Middleton who established the tradition of political leadership that was to distinguish his family for four generations. Probably the most significant of Arthur’s achievements was his role in the overthrow of the Lords Proprietor. The eight British noblemen theoretically owned and managed all of the Carolinas, but in later years, they adopted policies that their colonists saw as inimical to survival in the American wilds. Following the Lords Proprietors’ failure to provide military aid during the bloody Yamasee Indian uprising of 1715-1717, Arthur Middleton led a convention that in 1719 persuaded the king to remove the Lords Proprietor. Later, as president of the Ruling Council, he served as governor of the province until the arrival of a governor appointed by the king.
