Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  Charles had an opportunity to visit with William Capers, the Methodist leader who was doing more than anyone else to organize the extensive Methodist mission work on the plantations of the South Carolina low county. Capers, who was serving the Methodist Church in Columbia, did not like the provincial little town. He said having to live there was “like shutting up a man in a birdcage” and told Charles “that the Devil was the headman in Columbia.” But he encouraged Charles and told him about the ways the Methodists were going about their work and how they were winning the support of some influential planters.33

  Charles also had an opportunity to see the new Presbyterian seminary in Columbia. Modeled after Andover and Princeton, it was designed to have a specific southern mission—“to light up another sun which shall throw still farther west the light of the gospel, to shine upon the pathway of the benighted, and those who have long groped in the dim twilight of unenlightened reason.”34 A local mansion, Ansley Hall, had been purchased for the seminary, and additional buildings were planned for an expanding student body. Charles, perhaps anticipating his deep involvement in the life of the seminary, wrote Mary that “the whole establishment is fine.”35

  While Charles was away in Columbia, Mary was visiting friends and family in Liberty County and showing off son Charlie. It was clear to her that she did not wish to live in Savannah, and she and the baby stayed in the country until early summer 1832. Phoebe was glad to be with Sandy and her children and was no doubt even more reluctant than Mary to return to Savannah. But she was expected to go as Mary’s personal servant, and for the next five months she lived in the city with Charles, Mary, and little Charlie. When Charles was away, Phoebe slept on the floor in Mary’s room and had responsibility for looking after Charlie at night. When she rose from the floor to care for the little white child, she no doubt thought of Clarissa and John, whom she had had to leave in the care of others at Carlawter.36

  In the fall, a short time before they all returned to Liberty County, Phoebe had a conversion experience. “We have reason to bless God,” Charles wrote Betsy in October, “for his merciful visitation of our servant Phoebe. She hopes that she is a Christian and thus far the evidence is very satisfactory, and it has been now more than a month since her conversion.” Charles hoped, if their lives were spared to return to Solitude, “to do the people on the plantation some good.”37

  In a few weeks, they were all back in Liberty County. Shortly thereafter, Phoebe, having already been examined by the session, joined Midway Church with fourteen other slaves and eight whites. With her, making a confession of faith that day, was Mary’s brother John Jones.38 God seemed to be answering the earnest prayers of Charles and Mary and preparing a way for Charles to link at last his Christian duty with his Liberty County home. What was now before them was to establish their own plantation home at Montevideo and for Charles to begin his work as a missionary among those who had as their only home the settlements of Liberty County.

  10

  MONTEVIDEO AND MAYBANK

  Early one morning before Christmas 1832, Charles and Mary left Solitude and rode on horseback to Montevideo. The frost on the fields at Solitude was already beginning to melt, and the crisp morning air held the promise of a beautiful low-country day. They had been dreaming for some time about a place that would be theirs, and as they rode slowly along the sandy road together they knew that the time had finally come for them to begin building a home. Turning off the road that led to Colonel Law’s place, they went down a wagon trail past a small pond with willows and cattails. The pond marked the upper end of the slough that separated Carlawter and Montevideo, and the wagon trail, almost a mile long, held the possibility of becoming an avenue equal to that of the Retreat. Charles and Mary rode to a spot above the North Newport and dismounted where a gradual rise provided a view of the river and a splendid place for a plantation house. Looking around they saw a sweet, never-failing spring and an open field running down to the river’s edge. They talked of their hopes for this place spread before them, for they had been here before and their hearts had already settled on this hillside. The field with its broom straw became in their imaginations a lawn of thick Bermuda grass; and they imagined that over there, away from the river along the edge of the woods, fruit trees and a vegetable garden could be planted, while over toward the house site there was room for a flower garden, for roses, phlox, and verbena, and for arbors with jasmine and Lady Banksias. Where the house would be built they could envision a wide sandy yard with camellias, azaleas, and tea olives under the shade of oaks, and there in the sun was a place for a kitchen garden with beds of thyme and sage, oregano and rosemary.1

  As they looked around them, the site not only captured their imaginations but also evoked something deep within Charles and Mary, something almost ancestral and primitive, although they of course would never have named it such. For them it simply seemed a welcoming place with its open landscape on a gentle rise above a flowing river. On this December morning the site seemed welcoming because of the beauty of the woods, fields, and sky reflected in the dark waters of the river and because the whole scene conveyed a promise of harmony, security, and abundance. Yet as they stood there together Charles and Mary could not have imagined how during the coming years this spot above the river would become home to them, a place of deepening memories and seductive beauty.2

  From the time Joseph had purchased the three adjoining tracts of Carlawter, Montevideo, and Cooper for Charles and Susan and his sister Eliza Robarts, it was clear that if Carlawter was the place for the plantation settlement, Montevideo was the place for a plantation home. But if Montevideo was going to be a working plantation under Charles’s supervision, some family negotiations had to take place. Joseph bought back from Eliza her share in the property and secured for her the Hickory Hill plantation not far from Sunbury. He then gave Eliza’s portion of the three tracts to Mary.3 “Your gift,” Mary wrote her father, “adds another to the numberless proofs I have ever received of your tenderest solicitude for my welfare. To me you have indeed been the best and kindest of earthly parents, and if the warmest affection of your Daughter is any return for all your care and trouble … you have not an ungrateful child.”4

  In the meantime, Charles and his sister Susan agreed that Susan’s slaves would stay at Carlawter under the supervision of Charles and that if in the future there were a division of the land between them, then Susan would get the Cooper tract and Charles the Montevideo tract. In this way the three tracts became available not only as a home for Charles and Mary but also as a working plantation of almost a thousand acres. They took the name of Montevideo and made it the name for the whole plantation, for all three tracts combined, indicating that Carlawter was to be a part of Montevideo under the control and authority of those who lived in the plantation house.5

  Joseph’s generosity and the family’s negotiations were not, of course, without their impact on the settlement at Carlawter. Decisions by white slave owners that seemed reasonable, orderly, and even generous often seemed just the opposite, even disastrous, in the settlements. The purchase of the Hickory Hill plantation for Eliza Robarts meant that her slaves, who had been moved to Carlawter in 1817, were moved—once again—out of the network of family and friends that had been established over of a period of more than sixteen years. In particular, it meant that Lizzy and Robinson would be separated and that Robinson would have to make the long Saturday afternoon trip from Hickory Hill to see his wife and children. To be sure, their older children were now adults—Cato was twenty-four, Cassius twenty-two, and Porter already sixteen—but their youngest child, Adam, was only eight, and Lizzy was getting older and her health was not good. For them Joseph’s gift to Mary was less a sign of generosity and parental affection than simply another indication of the arbitrary character of white power.6

  Work began on the Montevideo plantation house in February 1833. Phoebe’s husband, Sandy, had responsibility for the construction following a sketch outlined by Charles
. Sandy stood in a tradition of slave carpenters (he had been an apprentice to Jacob at Liberty Hall) that combined the carpentry skills of Africa and Europe. He not only knew how to use hammers and saws, augers, gimlets, and chisels, and when to use a jackplane or a fore plane or a joiner plane, he also knew how to solve problems. He knew how to look at a task and figure out how it could be done and done right. Working with him as his apprentices in 1833 were Syphax and Porter. Syphax, who was almost twenty, was already becoming a skilled carpenter, and Porter was demonstrating that he was not only a strong young man but also smart and reliable. Working with them in hauling and digging and sawing and making shingles were other men from the settlement.7

  Sandy built a wharf that ran out into the river not far from the slough that divided Carlawter from Montevideo. Cypress logs had to be cut, trimmed, held in position in the river current, and then pounded down into the river mud with heavy mallets before wide planks could be laid down and attached to them. It was hard and heavy work, especially in February, but the sturdy wharf they built allowed the river schooners and sloops that ran from Savannah to Riceboro to unload nails and building supplies and later to load cotton and rice.8

  The house that was built at Montevideo—it was later significantly enlarged—was a comfortable two-story dwelling, built off the ground in low-country fashion, with a piazza that stretched across the front and faced the river. Over the coming years, the piazza became a special spot for the Jones family and their guests. Its familiar design—drawing on European, African, and Caribbean influences—had evolved over the years in response to the low country’s climate and culture. Its long sloping roof provided shade for the downstairs rooms, and its wide porch was a place to sit and enjoy any cool breeze that might come up from the river. The piazza at Montevideo was a place for visiting, for talking about what was happening in the county, and for remembering old times and old friends. Here Lizzy and Jack and Phoebe and Patience would serve tea in the late afternoon to the whites who persisted, long after most Americans, in keeping the British tea-drinking ceremonies: a tea table would be set with a silver teapot, and around it the Jones family would visit with their guests, drink tea and eat toast or some cake from the kitchen, and follow the etiquette of long-established custom.9

  Over the coming years Charles and Mary would be able, while taking their tea, to look out from the piazza onto a low-country world: they would watch the river flow, hear the night wind in the pines, and see the moon rise above the trees. The piazza provided over the years a good perspective on the changing landscape of Montevideo—a lawn was planted that eventually ran down to the river, gardens were laid out as the couple had dreamed, and orchards were established. And from the piazza Charles and Mary also observed as year followed year the growing order and harmony of a working plantation: they heard in the distance the clank and clang of the plantation’s gins and mills, the thud of rice being pounded in mortars, and the voices of the black men and women who made Montevideo a place of comfort and beauty for all who lived in the plantation house.

  What Charles and Mary heard and saw from their place on the piazza was what they came to identify as home—a particular place, a home place, Montevideo, that was associated at the deepest levels of their being with all those whom they loved and that was embodied in a landscape that evoked joy, gratitude, and wonder. But what they heard and saw with such deep satisfaction was also a social order based on hierarchical assumptions. Montevideo became for Charles and Mary a place of responsibility for those who lived at Carlawter—responsibility for Hamlet and all who rose to work when he sounded the conch-shell horn, for Jack and Phoebe in the house, for Lizzy and Patience in the kitchen, and for Sandy, Syphax, and Porter as they went about their carpentry. They all needed, it seemed from the perspective of the piazza, proper control and management. They all needed their clothing and food supplied, their health attended to, and their religious life instructed and nurtured. Such was the view for Charles and Mary as they drank tea in the late afternoon and looked out over Montevideo. Deep beneath such a view, often hidden in the recesses of their imagination, was a realization that what they were seeing was the source of their wealth.10

  For Sandy, Syphax, and Porter, and for all the others who built Montevideo, the counterpoint to the piazza was the open space before the cabins at Carlawter, where they gathered, winter and summer, around open fires to eat from simple bowls the peas and rice, the corn bread and greens of the settlement. Here around the fires—like the first Old Jupiter and those who had lived at Liberty Hall and Rice Hope—they talked, told stories of Africa and ancestors, sang their spirituals and other songs, did their flirting, warned their children, and whispered the secrets of the settlement. Here, in the secure space of the settlement, they spoke what could not be spoken before whites except in the disguised form of gestures, rumors, folktales, and songs. Here over the years they rehearsed what they wished to say to those who sat on the piazza and would not be able to say—without great danger—until the land shook with a mighty army.11

  Those who sat around the fires also had a view of Montevideo. They too could see the landscape of the low country. By their fires they knew moonrise and starrise, and sometimes they could see day a’ comin’.12 No less than those who sat on the piazza, they could hear the sounds of the river changing with the seasons and the weather—in the spring, when the swamps were flooded and the slough full, they could hear the river rushing by cypress and black gums, and in the fall, or when the summers were dry, they could hear only a quiet, distant murmur creeping up from the dark waters to mingle with the sounds of the plantation during the day and to provide at night the melody for the disparate music of low-country creatures.

  But what they heard and saw from around the fires was also radically different from what was heard and seen from the piazza, and it was in many ways more complex, more deeply ambiguous and conflicted than what was seen and heard over tea. For those who lived at Carlawter, Montevideo was a place of deep oppression, of arbitrary power and claims of superiority. Yet because Montevideo included the settlement at Carlawter within its boundaries, the plantation was also home for them, a place of family and friends, and increasingly, with its cemetery, a place of ancestors. From around the settlement fires, Montevideo could be seen as a place of heavy labor yet a place of beauty created by that labor; a place of boundaries, of harsh limits to their freedom, yet a place whose boundaries provided some protection against an even more hostile world of white violence and power. To be sure, they knew the boundaries of the plantation to be porous, knew that they were penetrated by secret paths that led to neighboring plantations, to hidden gathering points, and to Riceboro, with its access to illicit pleasures. But porous boundaries also meant that the violence and power of a white world could come pouring in upon them, overwhelming whatever protection might be provided by the paternalism of Montevideo.13

  So Montevideo was a place and a landscape that could be—like a painting or a book—seen, read, interpreted in different ways depending upon where one sat and what one remembered. This meant that Montevideo did not evoke one meaning or one image in the minds of those who lived there, but many meanings and many images. It also meant that during the next thirty-five years Montevideo would be contested ground, that there would be a struggle—between those who sat on the piazza and those who sat around the fires at Carlawter—over whose interpretation and whose lengthening memory of this place more accurately reflected the realities of a plantation home.14

  On 17 January 1834, shortly after Mary and Charles had moved into Montevideo, their uncle Andrew Maybank died without issue. “Uncle Maybank” had been especially close to Charles and Susan when they were orphaned. Their mother, Susannah Girardeau Jones, had been the sister of Andrew’s wife, Elizabeth beth Girardeau Maybank; and Andrew’s sister Mary Maybank had been the first wife of Joseph Jones. Thus, while no blood relation to Charles, Susan, or Mary, Andrew regarded them as if they were his own children, and he looked on Laura and Char
les Edward Maxwell as if they were his grandchildren.15 As a young man in South Carolina, Andrew had gone through the humiliating experience of divorcing his first wife. Such an unusual procedure, which required an act of the state legislature, had left him a man of gentle temperament and benevolent disposition. He had returned to Colonel’s Island and the plantation of his father, Colonel Andrew Maybank, and there had risen to the rank of major in the militia and had become a successful planter, owning sixty slaves at the time of his death.16

  A sandy road near Montevideo plantation (author’s collection)

  Andrew Maybank was buried at Midway, where he was a respected member, and the tombstone placed over his grave read: “His Christian life was active and exemplary, and at his death he bequeathed a large portion of his estate to charitable purposes.”17 As is often the case in such circumstances, Maybank’s will was more complex than what was conveyed on his tombstone.

  In the first item of his will, he left cash and stock to the American Tract Society and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Both were benevolent societies closely associated with Andover Theological Seminary, with Lyman Beecher and other evangelical reformers. In the second item, he bequeathed to Laura and Charles Edward twelve slaves and “their issue to them and their heirs forever.”18