Cherry Hill Plantation

Fast Facts:

General Information -

  • Location  - north of Folly Field and Grass Lawn Plantations and south of Pope’s Fish Haul Plantation.    Includes 250 acres of Lot 1 of Bayley’s Barony.
  • Other names - Peeples’ Index notes that it was probably once called Baldwin Plantation.
  • See also Baldwin Plantation

Owners - 

  • Kirk family Island seat until confiscation in 1861.
  • W. D. Brown bought its 400 acres in 1876 for $400, selling one acre each to Deacon’s First Hiltonhead Baptist Church (1916) and Queen’s Chapel A.M.E. Church (1888), land still so held.
  • Heirs Helen Campbell and Fannie Holmes, Brown and wife having been murdered July 3, 1923.
  • Dr. T. E. Oertel bought 51 acres for Osprey Fishing Club on May 30, 1925, sold to Roy Rainey Aug ust 1927.

Land - 400 acres

Maps - 

  • Mosse, "Hilton Head Island 1783, Lot 1"
  • Hack, "Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, before 1861"

Bibliography -

  • Holmgren, Research on Hilton Head Island
  • Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names

Additional Information:

Off Beach City Road, inland from Fish Haul Plantation

"The Kirk name is the most frequently inscribed on the gravestones of Zion Chapel cemetery.... Two Kirk brothers, John and Rollin, were among the Confederates who made successful raids on the Yankee held island in wartime.  There is some indication, but not actual proof, that their residence on Hilton Head was the plantation called Cherry Hill, sold in 1876 to W.D. Brown. The price Brown paid for Cherry Hillwas $400.  He sold one acre each to Negro Baptists and Methodists for their churches. After Brown's murder  (see Holmgren, p.121), the land was sold to Roy Rainey, with the exception of 51 acres owned for a few years by the Osprey Fishing Club. Thorne and Loomis took over from both."

  • Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 129

Area named Brownsville in honor of W.D. Brown who had acquired 400 acres in 1876 from two Confederate brothers, John and Rollin Kirk. The First African Baptist Church, 1863, the oldest existing church on the island, is located here. Queen Chapel AME Church, built around 1892, is also in this area.

  • Grant, Moses, Looking Back, p. 15

Cherry Hill Plantation lay to the north of Folly Field and Grass Lawn Plantations and south of Pope’s Fish Haul Plantation.  It included the 258 acres of Lot 1 of Bayley’s Barony plus additional acreage.  It was probably once called Baldwin Plantation, later becoming the island seat of the Kirk family from whom it was confiscated in 1861.  W.D. Brown bought its 400 acres in 1876 for $400, selling one acre each to Negro Baptists and Methodists for their churches, land still so held.

  • Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 7.