Magnolia Plantation
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Magnolia Plantation, located 13 miles (21 km) north of Charleston, South Carolina was founded in 1676 on the Ashley River and is one of the oldest plantations in the south. Incredibly, the plantation is still under the control of the Drayton family after 15 generations.
Originally a rice plantation, Magnolia became known for its gardens after the Reverend John Grimke Drayton inherited the property in the 1840s. According to legend, he built the gardens to lure his bride south from her native Philadelphia. Dripping with pink and red azalea flowers and framed by live oak trees, the gardens of Magnolia on the Ashley were quite well known in the Antebellum period, and were photographed by Mathew Brady, who would later become famous for his photographs of the American Civil War. Another visitor to Magnolia in this period was John James Audubon for whom Magnolia's Audubon Swamp Garden is named.
During the Civil War, Percival Drayton achieved fame as an officer of the United States Navy, at one point involved in an engagement against Port Royal, South Carolina, whose troops were commanded by his brother, Thomas.
The Union troops of General Sherman burned the plantation house in 1864 during their march to Charleston and Savannah. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Reverend Drayton was forced to open the gardens as a tourist attraction. So, in 1870, Magnolia Plantation became the first man-made tourist attraction in the United States. As such, some of the notable visitors to Magnolia included Henry Ford, George Gershwin, Eleanor Roosevelt and Orson Welles.
Today, Magnolia Plantation is a thriving tourist attraction with a restored plantation house, slave cabins and a slavery history tour, a nature train, a marsh boat tour, a wildlife area, a petting zoo and, of course, seventy acres (28 ha) of gardens.
External links
- The Magnolia Plantation website (http://www.magnoliaplantation.com/)