Early Hilton Head Names & Places

The headland fronting on the Atlantic Ocean near the line between Leamington and Shipyard Plantations is designated on most of the old maps of Hilton Head as Bass Head, apparently honoring the well known perch-like fish so esteemed for food and frequently caught here.  It has no other recorded name.

• Peeples, Robert E. H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 2

38BU1164 – (Spanish Wells Plantation)

Battery Holbrook was constructed by Confederate forces as an artillery redoubt in the Spanish Wells vicinity on Calibogue Sound. General Order #139, Headquarters, Department of the South, Hilton Head, dated September 26, 1864, officially designated the redoubt as Battery Holbrook in honor of First Lieutenant Henry Holbrook, Third Rhode Island Volunteer Artillery, who was killed August 21, 1863, in action on Morris Island.

• South Carolina Institute of A & A original listing 

The devastating hurricane of 1893 claimed an estimated 2000 lives on St. Helena’s and Hilton Head Islands and has ever since been referred to as “The Big Blow”.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.3.

Because of the necessity for controlling the movement of valuable cattle and other livestock, the public road between the various plantations was blocked by heavy wooden gates which swung on iron hinges.  Travelers on horseback or on foot opened the gate just wide enough to pass through then closed it behind them.  Coaches and buggies required someone to open the gate across the entire road and then close it behind the vehicle.  Big Gate was the strategic site near the head of Broad Creek and the island’s Chapel of Ease, separating Folly Field and Marshlands Plantations. It was here that the Revolutionary War hero, Charles Davant, and his riding companion, John Andrews, were ambushed by the Royal Militia.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 3

 –  38BU1160

South Sea Pines Drive
Sea Pines Plantation
Also see Stoney-Baynard Plantation

Located on the southern most promontory of Hilton Head at the junction of Calibogue Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, the “point” was named for David Cutler Braddock, captain of South Carolina’s provincial galley “Beaufort” from 1742 to 1746, which was stationed in the cove now bearing his name. Captain Braddock left SC provincial service in 1746 and moved to the Savannah area where he served two terms in the Georgia Colonial Assembly and was a highly successful privateer.

• J. G. Braddock, Sr., descendant

In mid-1861, a Confederate earthwork fort was constructed at Braddock Point in anticipation of a Union invasion from the sea.  The guns and soldiers were transferred to Fort Beauregard on Bay Point at the beginning of the siege of Fort Walker on November 7, 1861.

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 50

“It (Braddock Point)  was a relatively weak battery of three 24-pounders and one 10-inch columbiad.  The force from it, under the command of Captain Stuart, was sent by steamer to reinforce Bay Point.”

• Carse,  Robert, Hilton Head Island in the Civil War: Department of the South, p. 13

“Other Ninth Volunteers under Captain H. M. Stuart manned the guns at Braddock Point, another officer who had known the island since childhood.”

• Holmgren, p. 83

A map Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Before 1861, shows the point as Braddock’s (Calibogue) Point.

• Holmgren, opposite p. 106

David Cutler Braddock lent his name both to the promontory at the junction of Calibogue Sound and the Atlantic Ocean and to the 1000 acre Braddock Point Plantation which was composed of Lots 46 and 47 of Bailey’s Barony on the Mosse Survey described as “lands formerly leased by John Gamble and James Gray”.  Lot 46 of 397 acres was bought April 20, 1785 for 600 pounds by John Mark Verdier from owner Peter Bayley.  It was purchased by the Stoney family who held it until 1845 when it was acquired by William Eddings Baynard.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 5.

William Gerhard DeBrahm, German surveyor-cartographer, interim Surveyor General of South Carolina, Surveyor General of the Southern District of North America, presented his two-volume report to King George III in 1773.  Entitled “Report of the General Survey of the Southern District of North America”, it was the first scientific survey of present day South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.  The point of land between Calibogue Sound and Broad Creek honors his memory.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development). p.5.

At the point where Chaplin, Folly Field and Marshlands Plantations meet is the head of a wide and impressive tidal estuary known as Broad Creek.  It runs roughly parallel to the Atlantic Ocean and empties into Calibogue Sound at the southern end of Long Island.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 5

Off Beach City Road
Also see Cherry Hill Plantation, Sand Hill Plantation, Churches and Cemeteries

This seems to have been part of either Cherry Hill Plantation or Sand Hill Plantation located off what is today Beach City Road with Cherry Hill being directly inland from Fish Haul Plantation and Sand Hill immediately to the west of Cherry Hill.  A map depicting the island before 1861  shows a Praise House on Cherry Hill land.  The oldest existing church on the island, the First African Baptist Church, established in 1863, is located near here as is Queen Chapel AME Church, established around 1892. Area named in honor of owner, W.D. Brown who had acquired 400 acres in 1876 from two Confederate brothers, John and Rollin Kirk.  First African Baptist Church is located there.

• Grant, Moses, Looking Back, p. 15

Off the tip of Bram’s Point between Broad Creek and Calibogue Sound lies a small island, inaccessible at high tide.  As a refuge for the white tail deer it early acquired the name Buck Island.  Bram’s Point was called Buck Point.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.6.

The deep channel between Hilton Head and Daufuskie Islands has long been known as Calibogue Sound, the word ‘calibogue’ being much like the Creek Indian word for ‘deep spring’, ‘calaobe’.  It has variously been spelled Calibogie, Caleboco, etc., probably referring to the fresh water spring or well on the bluff overlooking the Sound.

• Peeples, Robert E. H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 6

– 38BU79/1151

Also see Mitchelville.

This area includes a portion of Mitchelville and all of Camp Baird; recommend addition of South Locus which includes four areas of concern:

Western corner – Civil War Remains

Disturbed Prehistoric Shell Midden

Postbellum Domestic Locus

Eastern Domestic Locus, possibly related to Mitchelville

• Brockington, An Archaeological Survey of the 29 Acre Palmetto Headlands Phase V Tract, Beaufort County, South Carolina, p. 25

The island south of Hilton Head is known by its Indian name of Dawfuskie Island, variously spelled D’Awfoskee, Daufuskie, etc.; the deep channel between the two islands is designated as Dawfuskie River and as Dawfuskie Sound on several early maps.  It is now called Calibogue Sound.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.11

The promontory in Elliott’s Myrtle Bank Plantation overlooking Port Royal Sound has long been designated Dolphin Head, honoring the dolphin who continue to abound in the sound.  One early cartographer chose to designate it Balinclough Head.

• Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.11

For many decades during the colonial, Revolutionary, ante bellum and subsequent eras, one of the principal docks and landing places for Hilton Head was on the western side of  Jenkins Island on Calibogue Sound.  A public road led across Jenkins Island, through Fairfield to join other island roads. The site is so marked on many maps.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 14

A small tidal creek, noted for its fine flounders, shrimp and crabs, drains Chaplin Plantation directly into the Atlantic Ocean, cutting through the sand dunes and across the sandy beach. During the 1893 hurricane it is reported that ocean waves flooded Fish Creek, spilling wildly into Broad Creek and cutting the island asunder.

• Peeples, An Index of Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.15.

The chief island public roads from Ferry Point Landing to Coggins Point and from Seabrook Landing via Zion Chapel to Braddock’s Point crossed where sand hill and Cherry Hill Plantations touched.  On the northeast corner stood the Negro Methodist Church; on the northwest corner stood W.T. Brown’s general store, which also housed the island post office, with living quarters of the Browns on the floor above.  This was the island chief crossroads in 1923 when the Browns were murdered and their store burned.  The road to Seabrook Landing no longer exists, the crossroad is now Highway 334; Four Corners is practically lost.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 17

As early as the 1775 Sayre and Bennett map the triangular shaped area from Braddock’s Point to Scarborough Head and extending outward into the Atlantic approximately 15 miles to a point roughly halfway between those headlands, was designated Gaskin Bank.  It represents a vast underwater bank which effectively mitigates the violence of oceanic storms and protects the island’s wide sandy beaches from erosion.  Gaskin is apparently a simplification of Gascoigne (pronounced “gas’-co-ny), for Captain John Gascoigne.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.19

A favorite nesting place of the island’s still prolific herons was long appropriately known as Heron Pond.  It lay parallel with the main public road on the south side of Broad Creek, between the road and the ocean, south of  Pope Avenue on Point Comfort Plantation.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 21

38BU1159

Palmetto Dunes Plantation, Leamington 

The Federal government retained sufficient acreage of confiscated Leamington Plantation to erect a lighthouse and two lighthouse keepers cottages in 1861.  On nearby Broad Creek, where Leamington and Shipyard Plantations met, a dock was built in order to land supplies for the maintenance of the lighthouse and for the World War II Camp McDougel.  The dock burned and the keeper’s cottages have been relocated to Harbour Town.

• South Carolina Institute of A & A original listing

Hilton Head Lighthouse was placed at Bass Head Beach now part of Palmetto Dunes.  When the two lighthouse keepers’ cottages were moved to Harbour Town in the 1960’s, they were cut in half to facilitate moving.  When reconstructed five feet were added to the length of each one.  They are the two buildings facing directly onto Lighthouse Road. In 1999 a sign was placed in front of the left building stating it had come from other than Hilton Head.

• Carter, Eddie, Sea Pines Architectural Review Board, interview

“…in World War II when U.S. Marines were stationed here.  There were new gun emplacements on the ocean shore near Bass Head and the Leamington lighthouse with barracks nearby.  The base was often known as Camp Dilling because it was on the former Dilling property, but according to the Department of Military History its title was Camp McDougal.  This camp was used by the U.S. Coast Guard through 1943 when it was garrisoned by a Marine caretaking unit, then abandoned.”

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 131 

In 1939 the Marines had a rest camp and the Coast Guard patrolled the beach area.  There were two big guns – Loud Lucy and Big Betsy – 250 feet up on hill behind the beach – now underwater.

• Oral History Tapes, 1989, Benny Hudson

“Hilton Head opened its dog training camp in 1942.”

• Bishop, Eleanor C., Prints in the Sand, pgs. 37-38

There was a government telephone at the light house.

• A Delightful Southern Home and Game Preserve

A lighthouse was first proposed for the island in 1854 but it was1863 before two lights were built by Union troops, a small forward light and a larger rear light.  The larger one was blown down in 1869.   The current tower was built and lit in the summer of 1881 and served into the 1930s.   The brown tower is 90 feet high with 112 steps to the top.  A number of tales and legends are told of the light and of the ‘blue lady’.

• Kagerer, Rudy, A Guidebook to Lighthouses in S.C., GA., and FL’s East Coast. p. 20

Camp McDougal (Camp Dilling) a Marine artillery range for the nearby Parris Island Training Base, was chosen to be the center for training men, dogs and horses for the southeastern seaboard patrol.  The Army Remount Service at Front Royal, Virginia, provided the horses.  Every week 600 recruits reported and 600 were shipped out to patrol areas. The men were taught to ride (if necessary), to care for their horses and to do beach patrol work.  The dog training center opened in December 1942 and the dogs were used along the southeastern coast, especially in resort areas for patrol duty.

• Bishop, Eleanor C., Prints In the Sand, The US Coast Guard Beach Patrol During W.W. II, p. 37-38

Camp Dilling was named for a retired Army officer who owned the land.  Story has it he suddenly put it up for sale after the death of a friend in a hunting accident. Captain Dilling was from Winston Salem, N.C. Known as the Hilton Head Agricultural Club (44 members from North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee) the property was used as a hunting preserve.  In 1917, Charley Willingham from Chattanooga discovered the Dilling Hunting Preserve and lodge.  The original purpose of the Hilton Head Agricultural Club was to raise long staple cotton.   The boll weevil arrived with their first crop putting an end to the project.   The group then turned to the preservation of and propagation of wildlife and the area became known as the “Deer Capital of the Eastern Seaboard”.   Willingham was a descendent of the Stoney family from island history.

• Chattanooga Free Press, December 3, 10, 17, 1964

Spanish maps antedating 1663 generally designate the entire island as Isla De Los Osos – Island of the Bears.  No other name could have been given by the Indians when the first Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 22

Like Melchisedec, Jarvis enters history without known antecedents or descendants. Yet tradition insists that “a man named Jarvis” was found dead (drowned? murdered?) on a small island in Crooked Creek which runs along the northern boundary of Honey Horn Plantation and empties into Calibogue Sound. Thenceforth, Crooked Creek has been Jarvis Creek; a man had to die in order to achieve immortality.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.22

The area around the head of Old House (Muddy) Creek became known as Jonesville after a family of Negroes of that name secured the property and settled there following the 1861 confiscation.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.23

The underwater sand bar, exposed at low tide, which extends outward into the Atlantic from the northeastern corner of Hilton Head, has long been designated Joyner Bank in honor of Sea Captain John Joiner who died March 9, 1796 at his plantation near Beaufort.  He had moved to Carolina from Frederica, Georgia in 1750 and was in command of a scout boat from 1754 until the boats were no longer necessary at which time he became a planter.  St. Helena’s Parish Register records that his wife Phebe (from England) died of ‘poison’ in July 1754 and that he married in January 1755 Anne, daughter of Captain Richard and Anne Wigg; she predeceased him by two days.  Although he had several sons and daughters, he left only one grandchild, John Joyner Smith, by a daughter Margaret who married Archibold Smith in 1789 and died in 1795.  John Joyner Smith married in 1813 Mary Gibbes Barnwell, eldest daughter of Col. Edward Barnwell, and built a magnificent home on the bay which remains one of Beaufort’s treasurers; they died childless.  A map drawn by James Cook in 1766 notes that it was “approved by Mr. Joiner (sic), twenty years a pilot in that place”.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p 23

Estall Laurence is revealed by the 1783 Mosse Survey to have been a planter of some magnitude, operating a total of six plantations with more than 1600 acres. He laid out the road from the main north-south island public road on the south side of Broad Creek to the Atlantic, separating Port Comfort and Possum Point Plantations. Laurence’s Path, now Pope Avenue, has become the island’s main business thoroughfare (1972). 

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 24.

LAWTON CREEK – The tidal creek wandering around the north end of Long Island, now Calibogue Cay, and back to the Lawton residence on Calibogia Plantation is still known as Lawton Creek.  It empties northward into Broad Creek.

LAWTON POND – Lawton Pond was a vast rice field lake traversed by Lawton Avenue at one point and is marked as such on several maps.  It has since been mostly drained in the magnificent alteration of the topography which has taken place during the development of Sea Pines Plantation, the Plantation Club now looking out over what was Lawton Pond. 

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.25.

The federal government retained enough acreage of confiscated Leamington on which to erect a lighthouse in 1881.  On Broad Creek, at the point where Shipyard and Leamington met, a dock was built in order to land supplies for the maintenance of the lighthouse and for World War II Camp McDougal which flourished only briefly. The dock has since burned..

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 25

The long, narrow island lying along the southern shore of Broad Creek as it empties into Calibogue Sound was called Long Island as early as the 1783 Mosse Survey, being part of Lots 43 and 44 of Bayley’s Barony.  The name has now been changed to Calibogue Cay.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 25

c. 1790  “…built just beyond the muster house” which was adjacent to Zion Chapel of Ease on the main road “was the Masonic Lodge.   Masonry had been a part of Carolina life since the organization of the Solomon Lodge Number One in Charleston in 1735, and a Scottish rite group would be organized at the turn of the century.  William Drayton was Grand Master of the Fraternal Order of South Carolina Ancient York Masons when he died in 1790.   Other families on the island must have been members also, and although it seems surprising to find a lodge building in such a small and scattered community, evidently islanders used and enjoyed it.”

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 64

A Masonic Lodge was organized and a building erected between the public road and Broad Creek on the northern edge of Leamington Plantation.  Captain John Stoney was Master of the Lodge for many years until his accidental death in 1821.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 26.

General Information – 

• Location – bluff overlooking Calibogie Sound from Old House Creek to Buck Point
• Called Mongin’s Buff in 1775 Sayre and Bennett Map

Owners – By 1790 the Mongins had sold this property, now Spanish Wells Plantation, to Thomas Baynard

Bibliography –         

• Holmgren, Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle
• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names

Additional Information:

In 1725 David Mongin and his younger brother, Francis, at the behest of their French Huguenot father who later died of torture when he refused to renounce his faith, hired a fishing boat and fled across the English Channel from France and thence to London.  In Soho Square on September 4, 1726 David Mongin married Persille Dair who died August 6, 1747 and was buried in Westminster Abbey Cemetery beside four of their children.  The same month David Mongin and his two surviving children sailed from Liverpool, arriving in New Jersey November 10, proceeded to Princeton, then overland to South Carolina where David had a 680 acre grant for land at Purysburg in Granville County.  He chose instead to accept acreage north of Daufuskie Island which he named Walnut Grove Plantation and returned to Princeton to marry on December 23, 1749 Elizabeth, the 15 year old daughter of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).  They had four children born at Walnut Grove Plantation (now part of Palmetto Bluff across the May River from Bluffton) before her death December 8, 1759.  David married a third time in 1765 in Charles Town where he died November 23, 1770 at the age of eighty, being buried in St. Michael’s Churchyard.

David’s eldest son, David John Mongin, born in London March 4, 1739, was a member of the Bloody Legion which avenged the death of Charles Davant in 1781, as was his son, John David Mongin (1763-1833) of Walnut Grove and Daufuskie.  The 1775 Sayer and Bennett Map shows the vast bluff overlooking Calibogie Sound from Old House Creek to Buck Point with the name Mongin’s Bluff.  By 1790 the Mongins had sold this property, now Spanish Wells Plantation, to Thomas Baynard.  However, Daniel Mongin and his bride settled elsewhere on Hilton Head in 1798 and were still planting here in 1820 according to the census.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 28

Grant refers to watching the dancing at Odd Fellows Hall.

• Grant, Moses, Looking Back, p. 16

Johnny White – the United Order of Odd Fellows looked after its members and their families.

• Oral History Tapes, 1992

Old House Creek is the tidal creek stretching eastward from Calibogue Sound along the northern edge of Spanish Wells and Muddy Creek Plantations, separating them from Honey Horn Plantation.  It is also called Muddy Creek and Sandy Creek.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 30

This densely wooded swamp on Lawton’s Calibogia Plantation is now lost as well as densely inhabited, but formerly was marked on island maps for many decades.  It did not denominate the site of any elderly female’s indiscretion but was probably the site of an old woman who liked her own company and chose to live alone in the woods.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 30.

Also known as Lookout Island, Mackey’s Island 

Colonel Mackey bought the island closest to the northwest corner of Hilton Head and the water between it and the main island became known as Mackey’s Creek.  The small island was known as Mackey’s Island until it became Pinckney’s Island.  “Apparently it was an old Indian stronghold, for the words ‘Ruins of Indian Fort’ are marked on the northern tip of the Island on a map drawn by Captain John Gascoigne, who bought land from Bayley’s Barony in 1729.” 

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 42

“The islands along the inland waterway were situated on the “super highway” of that era. Lookout Island as the Indians called Pinckney Island, was a land grant to the Osbourne family, and Mackey, an Indian trader, got the island when he married their daughter.  In 1734, Charles Pinckney bought the island Lookout from the Mackeys…and remained in the family until sold to Mrs. Ellen Keyser Bruce in 1937.”

“During the last twenty-four years of his life when he lived there in the fall and spring months, Charles cared for the plantation as his most cherished possession and exciting adventure of all until he died in 1825.”

• Powell, Mary Pinckney, Over Home, The Heritage of Pinckneys of Pinckney Colony, p. 35

In 1862 a detachment of sixty men from Company H of the Third New Hampshire Volunteer Regiment under Lt. Joseph C. Wiggins was sent to set up pickets on Pinckney Island. Company headquarters were in the main house called ‘The Point’ on a bluff where the Broad River and Skull Creek joined.  Discipline was very sloppy.

On the night of August 20th Captain Stephen Elliott of the Beaufort Artillery Company led two detachments of men ashore, surprising the Federal soldiers and taking the entire group prisoner.

• Carse, Robert, Hilton Head in the Civil War, Department of the South, p. 89

Issue of Island Packet, February 8, 1973:  Pinckney Island to be preserved as a coastal wilderness.  Edward Starr, Jr. has given his half of the island to the Natural Land Trust, Inc..   James M. Barker has agreed to leave his 4000 acres to the Federal Bureau of Sports, Fisheries and Wildlife.  Sea Pines Plantation (Charles Fraser) is to act as custodial of the Barker land.

• Daniels, Jonathan, The Gentlemanly Serpent and Other Columns from a Newspaperman in Paradise, p. 392

Early Indian sites from about 7000 BC with extensive Indian occupation from 400 BC to 1000AD.   Evidence of both French and Spanish on Pinckney Island. In 1707 a scout boat was stationed at south end of island with a small fortification on the north end to watch for the Spanish. 

Evidence of rice fields on both sides of island in early 1700’s.

See Mackey in Individuals. Mackey’s widow married William Osbourne; sold island to Charles Pinckney in 1734. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney inherited island in 1758; see Pinckney in Individuals. Seems to have been three plantations – the Point, the Old Place and the Crescent.  The Point had a two story home with extensive ornamental gardens developed by Charles Cotesworth. These were destroyed by a hurricane in 1824. 

Daughter, Harriott, inherited island in 1825 and managed the plantations and their 349 slaves until about 1860.  She died in 1866 and the land was confiscated for back taxes of $310.   Land was leased until heirs regained it in 1869.

In August of 1862 forces of the Beaufort Artillery and 11th Infantry CSA captured Company H, 3rd Regular New Hampshire Volunteers stationed on the eastern end of the island.

Former slaves continued to live on and farm the land.  In 1862 the freed blacks were being drafted for military service; five graves on the island have markers showing they served with the 21st Company, US Infantry.

Heirs never rebuilt the home or lived on the island.  Cotton was raised by black tenant farmers until the boll weevil killed the crops.   

In 1937 heirs sold the property to James Bruce,  New York sportsman and millionaire.  His wife maintained the property as a game preserve.  He used it as a private hunting preserve.   In 1954 Edward Starr and James Barker became co-owners, eventually becoming sole owners of the island.   In 1975 Barker deeded his half of the island to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be used exclusively as a wildlife refuge and as a nature preserve for aesthetic and conservation purposes.  Refuge was established.  In 1982 Pinckney Island was opened for public visits. 

• Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, Department of the Interior, July 1990

Coastal Discovery Museum Docent Notes

On maps of the late 1600’s the island is called Lookout Island. On Bayley’s Barony map of 1725 it is called Mackey’s  Island. It had been granted to Indian trader, Col. Alexander Mackey, in 1708.   One map shows ruins of an Indian fort on the island.

In 1734 Col. Charles Pinckney aquired the island and in 1758 his son, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, inherited the three plantations on the island – Old Place, Crescent and The Place – where Sea Island cotton was raised.   In 1818 President James Monroe was entertained there.  The plantations were destroyed during the Union occupation.  

In 1937 descendents sold the island to Mr. James Bruce and his wife, Ellen Keyser, of Baltimore who was Ambassador to Argentina and first director of  America’s Mutual Defense Assistance Program in 1949 and 1950.   His brother David Bruce – Ambassador to the Court of St. James – shared the property. They leased the ‘shooting’ to General Robert E. Wood, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company.

In 1955 Wood, James Barker, Edward Starr, Jr. and another man bought the island.

• Inglesby, Edith, Islander Magazine, May 1967

Also see Fish Haul Plantation

William Drayton and his wife Mary were owners of 1100  acres, 400 of which were the pine barrens or pineland tract to the northwest of Fish Haul Creek Plantation.  They bought it shortly after 1856 from Daniel Jenkins and Harriett Pinckney.

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 126

Also see Coggins Point and Fort Sherman

“…Port Royal.  From then on all official reports referred to Port Royal, rather than Hilton Head, and many people thought they were two different places, especially since Port Royal was already the name of the island on which Beaufort was located.”

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 96

“Almost in its entirety, Squire William Pope’s Coggins Point Plantation became “the town”, Port Royal, South Carolina, with civilian Joseph H. Sears, publisher and owner of the weekly newspaper, The New South, as postmaster.”

• Peeples, Robert, Islander Magazine, April 1976, p. 25

“It was a Union enclave established by the Federal invaders in the War Between the States, and its population (including runaway slaves) mushroomed to 50,000 and more, making it during its short existence a metropolis of the South. 

For a city created to serve as a supply base for Union ships blockading Southern ports, a better site than Hilton Head Island would have been hard to find.   The Yankees hurriedly established their Department of the South on the island, which bordered on one of the world’s best natural harbors – Port Royal Sound.”

• Smith, Loran, South Carolina Illustrated, November 1970, “Makeshift Metropolis”

In 1562 a white sailed ship filled with French Huguenot colonists and commanded by Jean Ribaut, nosed between St. Helena’s Island and the bold headland which more than a century later would first be called Hilton Head, into the capacious mouth of Broad River and promptly christened it Port Royale “because of the largeness and fairness thereof.”  The name has endured.  Many books have been written to recount its history; many more will be.  Hilton Head itself was known officially as “Port Royal, South Carolina” during the federal occupation, 1861-1872.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.34.

In the interest of historical accuracy it must be pointed out that the original Spanish discovery by Pedro de Quexos on August 18, 1521 of the “punta” or ‘cabo’, the point or cape, of St. Helena was truly Hilton Head itself, rather than the island presently known as St. Helena’s.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.35

The promontory approximately one mile south of Hilton Head has been designated on various maps since 1735 as Scarborough Head; it marks the point where Port Royal Sound and the Atlantic Ocean meet.  Like the name Hilton Head, Scarborough Head does not derive from any settler or plantation family, but rather from things nautical.  It was named for H.M.S. Scarborough, a man-of-war, which patrolled the Carolina coast as early as February 1726 when records show that “a young Gentleman belonging to the Scarborough Man of War” was buried in St. Andrew’s Parish.  The ships officers were still using Scarborough Head as a land mark as late as November 1758 when Governor Lyttelton wrote from Charles Towne, “Captain (Isaac) Colcock arrived here the 2nd Instant in the Scarborough Man of War. The name persists.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p.35

The northwestern corner of the island, at the juncture of Skull Creek and Port Royal Sound, is designated Scull Point on many maps, Elizabeth Point on at least one map and Bobbs Island on most.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 36

One of the most frequently used landing places on Hilton Head from its discovery to the 1956 building of the James F. Byrnes Crossing, was a bluff on Skull Creek.  Boats rowed or sailed southward from Charleston and Beaufort found here a safe, sheltered landing, protected from the gales of the open water of Port Royal Sound. It eventually came to be on the dividing line between Seabrook and Myrtle Bank Plantations and from it public roads branched out to every point on the island. If it had a name prior to Seabrook’s purchase of the site, it is not now known.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 36

The small island at the juncture of Skull Creek and Port royal Sound has occasionally been called Skull Island. The name Bobbs Island, probably its earliest designation, has prevailed.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 38

As early as 1783 the small island between Long Island and the main body of Hilton Head was designated Snake Island, doubtlessly because it was low, little used by humans and consequently highly infested with reptiles. In its entirety it lay within Lot 44 of Bayley’s Barony, later Calibogia Plantation.  In its present commercialization, the name has been euphemistically altered to Deer Island although there are few deer or snakes there any longer.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 38

Jenkins Island Plantation House stood beside a deep-water dock on  Skull Creek, the regular landing place for the steamboats plying the run from Savannah to Beaufort to Charleston.  This landing site was restored and expanded to serve the State Highway Department’s ferry service until its termination in 1956 with the opening of the James F. Byrnes Crossing.  It should not be confused with Ferry Point Landing on the Calibogue Sound side of Jenkins Island.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 38

The Talbird family letter, written by the Rev. Henry Talbird (1811-1890) to his cousin, Col. Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson (who was a brother in law of President Abraham Lincoln), tells the romantic story of Henry Talbird, son of Sir John Talbot, Lord Mayor of Dublin, who was lost as a small boy while visiting an uncle in London, brought to South Carolina by Captain Haylton where he eventually married in 1750 Mrs. Mary Doherty, widow of a young subaltern.  They were parents of two daughters and four sons, one of whom, Revolutionary War Capt. John Talbird, was given a plantation on Skull Creek by his father who had received it from the Crown in part payment for building the first Tybee Lighthouse of bricks made on his Whale Branch Plantation.  Capt. John Talbird married Mary Jane Ladson, daughter of a neighboring planter, who eventually inherited her father’s, as well as her grandfather Conyers’ plantation; he also bought John’s Island which by 1783 was already known as Talbird’s Island. Their son, Henry Talbird, was born on Skull Creek on October 19, 1781, the day Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in Virginia; he had an extensive library and a “chemical laboratory” in which he enjoyed working, according to his son, the Rev. Henry Talbird, who was also born on the Hilton Head Island plantation. Captain John Talbird’s daughter, Ann, marries Dr. Samuel Fyler (1782-1821). Talbird’s Island was sold to Isaac Rippon Jenkins.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 40

Alexander Trench and his wife Hester arrived in Carolina from Dublin, Ireland circa 1720, settling in Beaufort, for Trench was agent for John Bayley, son and heir of Landgrave John Bayley.  By June 1729 when he sold Captain John Gascoigne a 500 acre plantation, he described it as “in St. Helena Parish, Granville County, part of an island commonly known by the name of Trench’s Island”. Captain Gascoigne’s own 1750 map, based on his 1729 survey of the area, labeled Hilton Head “Trench’s Island” and French maps dutifully translated it “Isle de Tranchees”. Trench’s wife Hester died before 1729 when he made his will leaving his estate to their son Frederick, with his own brother, Counselor Frederick Trench of Dublin, as Administrator.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 41

Approximately one-half mile south of Four Corners a road branched easterly across Folly Field and Grass Lawn to Springfield and Coggins Point Plantations.  On its north side a cemetery was established for the Union soldiers who died here 1861-1872. After the establishment of the National Cemetery in Beaufort, all of these remains were re-interred there. Island blacks continue to use it for a resting place for their dead. The name persists.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 42

There was an era when the now threatened with extinction Whooping Crane nested regularly in the vast swamp stretching across Pope’s Pine Land and Fish Haul Plantations and draining into Port Royal Sound.  It remains a rookery with many species of our fine-feathered friends.  But no longer is the whoop of the Whooping Crane heard on Hilton Head.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 43.