Naturally Kiawah Magazine Volume 41 | Page 11

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 9