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As you walk Boone Hall Plantation's oak avenue you walk into history.
The Plantation was part of a series of land grants from South Carolina's Lords Proprietors to Major John Boone, the earliest grant dating from 1681. As cotton became king of Southern agriculture, Boone Hall, a cotton plantation spread over thousands of acres, became a giant of the Low Country's plantation culture.
The Horlbeck family followed the Boone family in Boone Hall Plantation's history. Two Horlbeck brothers, John and Henry, established one of the first, and the largest, commercial pecan groves here. Some of the trees planted by the Horlbecks still flourish on Boone Hall Plantation, producing pecans in commercial quantities. The Horlbeck family also made brick and tile on the plantation. Their work is seen in the main house, in the nine original slave cabins and in the plantation's other brick buildings. It can also be seen in some of Charleston's oldest brick buildings.
Visitors come to Boone Hall Plantation to catch a glimpse of a way of life that is only a memory, of a time when the South lived by agriculture alone and the great plantations were the back bone of the agrarian economy.
However, Boone Hall Plantation is more than a repository for memories, or a museum for the relics of a bygone era. Today the plantation thrives, producing commercial crops and sponsoring events that entertain and benefit visitors and residents of the area. The Plantation is unique among the remaining Low Country plantations in that it remains commercially productive. Pecans are still produced but brick and tile have been replaced by diversified agriculture.
Visit Boone Hall Plantation's Official Site
Photos courtesy of Charleston Post Card Company ©
