A Tale of Two Plantation Tours
Standing on the ground of Butler Island, just south of Darien, Georgia last week is something that I will not soon forget. There is simply no substitute to experiencing the landscape for yourself to begin to understand the scale of rice cultivation in the low country before the Civil War and the horrors of slavery.
In 1838, Pierce Mease Butler traveled to the plantation with his wife and British actress Fanny Kemble. She chronicled her time there and eventually divorced her husband, in part, over their disagreements about slavery.
But as much as I savoured the moment on site, the lack of any serious interpretation left me wanting more. As I drove further south to Simons Island I decided to stop off at Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation, which is operated by the state of Georgia. Like Butler Plantation, this site also sits along the Altamaha River. The plantation was built in 1807 as a large rice producer with over seven thousand acres of land and more than 350 West African slaves, mostly from Senegal and Sierre Leone.
I had high hopes as I walked into the visitor center. The short film had some serious problems, but the exhibits offered a pretty good overview of operations on the plantation. The book selection was also surprisingly good. I picked up a copy of Mart A. Stewart’s book, What Nature Suffers to Groe: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920.
As I emerged from a beautiful path, lined with live oaks, dripping with spanish moss, I came upon an interpretive marker that focused on the lives of the enslaved.
Then I entered the house.
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