South Carolina’s Progressive Newspaper

WILLTOWN BLUFF (continued)

The cover story in our magazine Sunday on Willtown Bluff probably brought back to a number of South Carolinians many fond memories. For this beautiful spot, far off the beaten tracks, is known to a considerable coterie for one reason or another — so well, in fact that the scene pictured on the cover was promptly recognized without benefit of title.

Hunters and fishermen have “put in” at the ancient public landing, which once was a ferry on the road leading across the mighty Ti-Ti to Fenwick island past still standing ruins of masonry and abandoned island fields.

Others have visited the ancient “country churchyard”, where portions of one or two of the church’s columns stood — certainly until comparatively recent years for facts in the lives of their ancestors.

The house at the bluff, known as Mount Hope, representing an interesting typical architecture with octagonal rooms, was built by Col. Lewis Morris of General Nathaniel Greene’s staff, and his son-in-law Elliott, of the William Elliott family on Pon-Pon — an Indian name signifying “Big Bend.” Those fortunate enough to have visited Mount Hope during the tenancy of the late Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons, when it was for headquarters its management of thousands of acres of rice fields, will remember it as the scene of lavish and easy hospitality and the roaring fires maintained in the octagonal living room which at a distance of several feet would literally “scorch the pants off” if one were not careful.

Owned successively by the Harmons and Arthur Whitney, briefly by Mr. Fritz Simmons’ daughter, Mrs. Donald Alston, it is now the property of Harold Stanley of New York, but has been somewhat changed from its nice intriguing lines.

[The paper’s “Mr. Fritz Simmons” is its own spelling of the family name FitzSimons — Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons Sr., the plantation’s longtime master. “Mrs. Donald Alston” is his daughter Mary Anne FitzSimons (1899–1985), the compiler’s younger sister, who married Donald McKay Allston. Her ownership returned Mount Hope to the FitzSimons family for a short while between the Whitney and Stanley tenures.]

The other old house still standing in the vicinity is the parsonage of the church. Used once as a hunters’ club house it has recently been acquired by a couple who have somewhat restored it and at the same time equipped it for comfortable living.

Standing as it does on the only high bluff on the river for 50 miles it was naturally the center of the former “gold mines” of the Edisto region — the rice fields — which themselves have passed through several changes. The hurricane of 1911, plus the invasion of the sawmills which took the workers, put an end to this great industry, breaking the banks beyond repair, only a few hardy souls, like Governor Heyward and Theodore Ravenel on Cumbahee and Mr. Doar on Santee hanging on for another decade or so.

The fields next became valuable to well-heeled sportsmen as duck preserves and the banks were restored, the trunks replaced, and many a fat mallard fell in the Hope, the Wayne, the Village, Prospect Hill, Springfield, Block Island, Bonny Hall, Jehossee and many others.

During the rice planting era another delicacy was added for summer fare besides the luscious fast-water bass, bream and rockfish — also caught in winter — in the form of rice birds or bobolinks which swarmed the fields in such myriads that the powder bill for the “minders”, who sometimes killed them by the gross, was a considerable item. Cooked in their own natural fat, which made the choicest gravy and served with rice and sweet potatoes they made meals fit for a king.

The falling off of the duck populations caused another decline in values. On some other rice rivers, but not on Pon Pon so far as is known, government grants for drainage and planting grasses encouraged the use of rice fields as pastures.

Now a couple of young Texans are making an ambitious start toward resuming rice planting on a large and mechanized scale, which, if carried out successfully, should return some of the glory as well as the ducks, to these fascinating lands. Thus a cycle would have been completed.