The Stoney-Baynard Ruins

The Story of the Ruins

In 1776, Captain John Stoney (1757-1821) bought the 1000 acres known as Braddock's Point Plantation from Beaufort merchant John Mark Verdier and, around 1793, began building the mansion house whose ruins you see today.

His son, Captain James Stoney (1772-1827) who inherited the property, left it at his death to Dr. George Mosse Stoney who gave it to his eldest son (better known as "Saucy Jack") in 1838. Only two years later, "Saucy Jack", according to one of the colorful local legends, lost the house and land in an all-night poker game. The winner: William Eddings Baynard, a wealthy planter from Edisto Island who already owned two island plantations.

Baynard was a highly successful planter of the world-famous Sea Island Cotton which he grew at Braddock's Point as well as his other holdings. He and his wife Catherine raised four children here at the "big house" and it was here that he died in 1849 at the early age of 49.

When the Union forces invaded Hilton Head Island in 1861, the Baynards evacuated the property. During the Civil War, the house was used by Union troops and according to oldtimer's stories, it was burned by a Confederate raiding party. It took the Baynard family 15 years to regain Braddock's Point by paying $500 in back taxes to the federal government. However, they never again lived at Braddock's Point.

Stoney-Baynard Hall

As you approach by the path from the street, you are facing the rear of the house...its largest remaining wall portions. The rectangular foundation measures 40 feet wide by 46 feet long (1,840 square feet, total), but there is a reason to believe the structures overall dimensions exceeded the above figures. A spacious porch or piazza would have been added to the front entrance of the house or perhaps to its entire perimeter, dramatically increasing the size of the building. Note the large square holes which held the sturdy beams needed to support the porch. Baynards home faced the marsh to catch the cool breezes blowing from nearby Calibogue Sound. Along the massive central hallways, floor-length windows would have adorned the walls on each floor to ensure the cross-ventilation so necessary to comfort in the South. You are welcome to walk in the low opening (it was not a doorway) to the cellar and its adjoining rooms, but duck your head!

Tabby

Look closely at the wall surface here. These remaining portions of the Stoney-Baynard home exemplify a masonry technique called tabby which was popular in the Low Country during the 18th and 19th centuries. Tabby was produced by first burning crushed oyster shells to make lime and then mixing this substance with sand, whole shells and water. When it dried, tabby formed good, sturdy cement suitable for foundations and walls.

A Close Up View of Tabby

Tabby cement was poured between a series of deep two-foot forms...much as modern-day concrete...upon which were placed regularly spaced round ties. Notice the circular holes in the walls. These reveal the original location of the ties. Large joists underlying the first floor (built 8 feet above the ground) were embedded directly in the tabby, leaving the rectangular depressions at your eye level. Tabby went out of favor after the Civil War. The technique lost out to a popular superstition that only masonry buildings were healthy sleeping places.

Sea Island Cotton

The tabby outlines of two small buildings east of the "big house" may represent storehouses for William Baynard's cotton. A half-century before his time, an enterprising planter named William Elliot produced South Carolina's first successful crop of Sea Island Cotton right here on Hilton Head Island. An experimental strain which had been imported from Barbados, this new hybrid was tall, black-seeded and had a long, silvery fiber well-suited for making fine laces and muslins. The improved staple was welcomed by the English market, and there was an immediate world demand for Sea Island Cotton. In 1828, these quality fibers commanded a top price of $2 per pound. By careful seed selection and by using saltmarsh muck and oyster shells as fertilizer, Island planters like William Baynard ensured the continuing success of Sea Island Cotton and realized great profits for themselves. Since the plant could best prosper in the light, sandy soil and subtropic climate of the Sea Islands, Hilton Head Island became a major producer of this long-staple cotton.

Cotton Cultivation

Now overgrown with a century of vegetation, in plantation days, this high ridge (23 feet above sea level) would have been lined with a manicured live oak "avenue", affording a clear view to the nearby cotton fields. The growing season for Sea Island Cotton lasted from March to September. When the bolls burst in autumn, women and children began to harvest the crop. But long-staple cotton was more difficult to pick than the upland variety, and picking progressed slowly. Slaves were expected to pick 75 pounds of cotton each day. The blacks whose labor supported the grand lifestyle of the Baynards lived in small, poorly constructed houses about a mile from this site. Their settlement, now largely destroyed by development, consisted of two rows of houses forming "Slave Row" or "Street." Although they greatly outnumbered the white residents on Hilton Head Island, the details of their daily lives are poorly understood and almost never recorded in historical documents.

The Tabby Block

For years the Tabby Block was a mystery, but it is a mystery no longer. A recent discovery has shown that the lone block of tabby at the opposite end of the ridge from Stoney-Baynard Hall originally supported a chimney. The worn area in the center represents the hearth, eroded by years of hot fires which gradually deteriorated the tabby. The ledge at the base of this block provided support for a floor joist, indicating the floor of the structure was raised several feet above the ground level. Not as large or imposing as the Big House...this structure may represent an earlier house or perhaps the dwelling of an overseer. Only further archaeological research will provide the answer to this and the many other mysteries which surround these two centuries-old plantation ruins.