Following the Revolution, the Vanderhorsts worked to
return their plantation to its former state. In 1801, they built
a new house to replace the one destroyed by the British. That
house, much restored, can still be seen on the Island today.
Around the same time, Mary Gibbes Middleton, the heiress
to the western half of the island, married James Shoolbred,
the British consul to the Carolinas. Within a few years, the
Shoolbreds and Vanderhorsts were at odds, quarreling over the
possession of oyster beds which the Vanherhorsts had been
using. After the Shoolbreds filed suit, a court-ordered survey
upheld the Vanderhorsts’ ownership of the disputed land.
The beginning of the nineteenth century brought
prosperity to Kiawah with the introduction of cotton as a
cash crop. During the Civil War, the Union Army created a
camp on Kiawah and used it for sending men and supplies to
surrounding areas. Union troops scribbled graffiti on the walls
of the Vanderhorst house, which otherwise survived without
much damage. In contrast, retreating Confederates destroyed
the former Shoolbred home and all of its outbuildings.
Though the Vanderhorst plantation escaped mostly
unscathed, the family’s finances did not - Arnold Vanderhorst
IV invested $34,500 in Confederate war bonds, a decision that
strapped the family financially for many years to come.
In January 1865, with the War nearing an end, General
Sherman issued a special field order reserving for freedmen
land confiscated by the federal government on the Sea Islands
WINTER/SPRING 2019 • VOLUME 41
and nearby coast of South Carolina and Georgia, including
Kiawah. Each family was to receive 40 acres of land. By
the summer of 1865, however, President Andrew Johnson
restored this land to the slaveholders from whom it had been
confiscated. On Kiawah, as throughout the South, the freedmen
were forced to seek the only work they could find. For many,
that meant returning as sharecroppers to the plantations from
which they had come under unfavorable terms.
One freedman, Quash Stevens, remained on Kiawah during
the Civil War and for several decades after that. He was the
mixed-race half-brother of Arnoldus Vanderhorst IV and the
overseer of the Vanderhorst plantation. Stevens ran the property
profitably for many years until he obtained his own plantation.
In 1901, he and his son purchased the 891-acre plantation,
Seven Oaks, located in Johns Island on the Stono River.
Before Stevens’ departure, the Vanderhorst family had
acquired all of Kiawah Island. The family’s ownership
continued until 1950 when they sold it to businessman
C.C. Royal for $125,000. In 1975, Royal sold the Island to
subsidiaries of the Kuwait Investment Company, and Kiawah
entered its “modern era.”
Memories of its long history remain alive on Kiawah today.
The Vanderhorst house, the Rhett’s Bluff graves of James
and Elizabeth Shoolbred as well as street names such as
Governor’s Drive, Shoolbred Court, and Raynor Lane help
us remember those early days of Kiawah. NK
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