Yaughan Plantation 38BK75

Overview

In 1979, Soil Systems Inc. embarked on a groundbreaking project resulting in the earliest and most extensively excavated slave-related sites in the southeast. Project Investigators Pat Garrow and Tom Wheaton headed mitigation fieldwork in advance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cooper River Rediversion Canal Project. The archaeological component, known as The Cooper River Historic Sites Investigation, included surface collection, metal detector survey, mechanical stripping, and excavation, and focused most intensively on three sites containing slave quarters: 38BK75 and 38BK76 both located on Yaughan Plantation; and 38BK245, located on Curriboo Plantation.

The sites, located on former rice and indigo plantations, contained evidence of twenty-nine structures including domestic slave quarters, an overseer’s house, and several plantation outbuildings. In addition to evidence of both trench earthfast structures and later post-in-ground structures, the sites contained an unprecedented amount of colonoware, low-fired earthenware pottery produced locally. The importance of the sites was thus well established, and in 2010 A Save America’s Treasures Grant was awarded to the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) and DAACS, allowing for the digitization, cataloging and re-analysis of all materials recovered from them.

The site with the latest occupation, 38BK75, is located between Lake Moultrie and the Santee River near the town of St. Stephens, South Carolina in Berkeley County. Initially discovered by Brockington during an earlier survey, he described the site as a heavy concentration of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century artifacts in an open field, including a heavy concentration of colonoware (Brockington 1980:45-47; Wheaton et al 1983: 57). He recommended further testing and mitigation which subsequently resulted in the extensive 1979 fieldwork resulting in the identification of multiple slave dwellings belonging to the Yaughan plantation, an indigo and rice plantation owned by Huguenots (Wheaton et al. 1983:15-16; Wheaton and Garrow 1985: 242). Historical documentation indicates 38BK75 was occupied from the 1780s to the 1820s (Wheaton and Garrow 1985:244).

The remains of five identified structures and two possible ones, the majority of which were post-in-ground, were excavated at 38BK75 (Wheaton et al. 1983:98). A 40-ft block was placed around a feature discovered during testing, in order to further investigate any related structures. Block excavation revealed two post structures, one with an extensive floor midden that was investigated, underneath of which revealed an earlier trench structure that was not excavated due to time constraints. The block excavation also contained the only site at Yaughan with an identifiable hearth (Wheaton et al. 1983:118). Colonoware comprised forty percent of the entire artifact assemblage (Wheaton and Garrow 1985:248).

Documentary evidence

38BK76 is the earlier of two Yaughan plantation sites excavated as part of archaeological mitigation. The earliest reference to Yaughan Plantation dates from 1737. The 650 acre tract conveyed by Richard Allen to Edward Thomas, “known by the name of Yaughan”, was part of a larger, 1200 acre tract. Thomas left this property to his son Samuel, who in turn sold it and the adjacent 596 acre property to Isaac Cordes in 1742. The two tracts became known as Yaughan Plantation and by 1745, the inventory of Isaac Cordes’ estate lists cattle, sheep, hogs, horses and some household goods at “Youshan” (Inventory of Isaac Cordes, 9 August 1745, cited in Wheaton et al. 1983:76).

The chain of plantation ownership continues from Isaac to his son John, who died in 1756. John Cordes left his real estate equally divided between his two sons, John and Thomas, who were children at the time of his death. A cousin, Samuel Cordes, became their guardian in 1756, and Yaughan appears to have functioned primarily as an indigo plantation under the daily supervision of a series of overseers (Account Book, Estate John Cordes, 1764-1798, cited in Wheaton et al. 1983:76). John Cordes attained his majority in 1768, and although local tradition states that he inherited all of his father’s property by law of primogeniture (cited in Wheaton et al. 1983:76), John Cordes clearly continued to administer Yaughan Plantation on behalf of his brother Thomas (Account Book, Estate of John Cordes,1764-1798, cited in Wheaton et al. 1983:76). In 1773, Thomas Cordes formally accepted his share of his father’s estate from his uncle, and his brother John confirmed his title by deeding him half of their father’s estate in what appears to have been a straw-man transaction. Thomas Cordes had already begun to participate in local parish affairs, and, thus, he had probably begun to reside at least part of the year at Yaughan. Although he took an active role in the Revolutionary War, his name appears periodically in parish records through the 1770s. He married in 1784, and records of various neighbors in the post-war years indicate that he bought indigo and rice seed. Evidently he was seeking to revive the plantation’s prewar functions despite changes in the indigo market, which put the American grown commodity at a severe disadvantage. He and his family continued to live at the plantation until his death in 1809.

Thomas’s widow left the property divided equally among her children when she died in 1826, and ten years later, her three daughters sold their interest in Yaughan to Solomon Clarke.  Historic records indicate it is unlikely that Clarke spent a great amount of time at Yaughan. In 1850, he sold the property to J.W. Thurston, who began to subdivide the property in 1857. The separate parcels changed hands several times over the next century and tended generally to decrease in size (Wheaton et al. 1983:88).

Excavation history, procedure, and methods

38BK75 was partially excavated through a combination of hand-excavated blocks and machine-stripping (Wheaton et al. 1983:244). Testing at 38BK75 started with surface collection and metal detector survey across a 50’ grid. Sixteen test units were then placed across the area (Wheaton et al. 1983:57). A 40’ x 40’ block, divided into ten foot units with 6-inch baulks, was excavated (Wheaton et al. 1983:92). A clay floor (F05) was discovered in this block during unit excavation and was consequently divided into 2 by 2 ft sections and excavated separately. Additionally, Feature 33, a possible floor or cellar scatter located north of the excavation block, was trenched (see DAACS site map) because complete excavation was not possible due to time constraints.

Following the surface collection and block excavations, the entire site was mechanically stripped of topsoil to approximately one to two inches of subsoil then shovel shaved to fully expose features for mapping (Wheaton et al. 1983:93). After an area was mapped, all of the major features were wholly or partially excavated depending on time constraints. Drawings, photographs, and soil samples were taken of each feature excavated.

Hand-excavated units

All hand-excavated units located in the block at Yaughan 75 were dug using natural stratigraphy. All soil was dry screened through 1/4 inch mesh.  Soil samples were taken at each level from representative units across the block.

Summary of research and analysis

Several structures were revealed at 38BK75. Two structures were located in the block excavation: B1, B2; Structure C was located a distance from B1 and B2, to the northeast. An additional structure, referred to by excavators by it location “in dirt road,” was located a further distance to the northeast of C and was only excavated through mechanical stripping.

Structures B1, B2 and C  were post-in-ground constructed, the largest of which was Structure B, comprised of two parallel and slightly-offset posthole buildings (B1 & B2) (Wheaton et al. 1983:104). The shape and size of the two structures was nearly identical, suggesting they were possibly built at the same time

Structure 75B2 had a floor midden/scatter (DAACS feature F05). It was originally thought to be trash scatter and was excavated in 10 by 10 ft quadrats making up the block excavation which revealed  a line of postholes. After the discovery that F05 was most likely a floor surface, the remaining portion was gridded into two-foot squares and excavated. This excavation exposed the remaining postholes of 75B2 as well as the faint outlines of a third, earlier post-in-trench building that was mapped but not excavated. Due to the lack of postmolds visible in the trenches, it was assumed that the posts of 75B2 directly replaced the posts that had been in the trenches (Wheaton et al. 1983:113). A hearth, the only one located at Yaughan Plantation, was located just to the north of Structure 75B1 (DAACS feature F25) (Wheaton et al. 1983:118). In addition, several pits located in the block excavation area around Structures B1 and B2 (e.g. F02, F27, F29) are interpreted as secondary trash pits and evidence suggests they were initially clay extraction pits associated with the structures (see Chronology page).

Structure 75C, likely a square structure, was located in a mechanically stripped area north of the Structure B1/B2 block excavation. Due to its small size and posthole construction, it was hypothesized to be a shed rather than a domestic structure. No postholes at Structure C were excavated but a test trench was excavated through F33, a related trash pit (Wheaton et al. 1983:123). The structure located in the dirt road northeast of Structure C and excavated by mechanical stripping was identified as a trench-constructed structure, wherein a trench was dug, posts were placed down the centerline, then the trench was refilled (Wheaton et al. 1983:102). It does not appear to have been excavated beyond mechanical stripping so there do not appear to be any contexts associated with this structure in DAACS.