Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders before the Bridge 1861–1956 by Thomas C. Barnwell | Emory Shaw Campbell | Carolyn Grant with Christena Bledsoe

Author:Thomas C. Barnwell | Emory Shaw Campbell | Carolyn Grant with Christena Bledsoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blair
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

THE TIMBERMEN COME

THE ALLIGATOR, owned by Charles Simmons, Sr., one of the island’s Gullah businessmen, cut across the water bound for Hilton Head Island, a timber scout from Georgia aboard the dark gray boat.1 The 1950s were roaring in toward Hilton Head like a tidal wave cresting in the Atlantic, threatening to sweep over the island.

In the waning days of 1949, Thorne and Loomis, the largest landowners on Hilton Head, had issued a thunderclap announcement. They would sell eight thousand acres of their land on the south end of the island. In Hinesville, Georgia, a small town forty miles southwest of Savannah, Fred C. Hack heard the news on December 20, 1949, and rushed to the island.

On Hilton Head, Hack saw huge forests with first-growth trees dating back to plantation days and before—trees that had sprung up in deserted cotton fields after the Civil War and Northern-owned cotton efforts ended and trees that had grown in the former small plots of Gullah islanders who had since moved to the north end of the island. The amazing stands of trees filled Hack’s thoughts on his way back to Georgia, but Hilton Head’s twelve-mile pristine white beach running along the Atlantic Ocean dazzled him even more.

Before going to Hilton Head, Hack had told Joseph B. Fraser, Sr., of the Hinesville Lumber Company that he planned to check out the timbering potential on Hilton Head. Now he sought Fraser’s help in buying the Thorne and Loomis land. Fraser and C. C. Stebbins, Hack’s father-in-law, accompanied Hack on a return visit to the island. The quality of the timber and the island’s natural beauty amazed Fraser. They signed an option on the spot for the eight thousand acres at an average of $60 per acre.2

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