Hometown History: The Silver Bluffs

JACKSON, S.C. (WJBF)- For decades the Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary has been a wildlife refuge in Jackson. But that property has seen centuries of fascinating history.

Kim Vickers explores the background of the Silver Bluffs in this month’s hometown History.

The Silver Bluffs may have seen Europeans before any other part of the CSRA.

It’s said that a famous Spanish explorer visited the Silver Bluff area as he traveled up the Savannah River in what he believed to be a new world.

Hernando de Soto was a Spanish Conquistador who is believed to have led the first European expedition through what is now the South Eastern United States.

“He had come through the Florida area and come up through the Carolinas at the time, and this is all very unknown, unclaimed territory. And so, he’s negotiated with Native American tribes for supplies. He’s relying upon them for guidance to different areas of exploration,” said Lauren Virgo, Executive Director at the Aiken County Historical Museum.

Virgo tells NewsChannel 6 that the legend says that de Soto stopped at the silver bluffs because they sparkled in the sunlight. He believed there was silver or gold there- but he was wrong.

“A lot of that is pyrite or mica glinting kind of– or glinting in the area,” Virgo said.

Brandon Heitkamp is the manager at the Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary. He said the legend contributed to the bluff’s name.

“They came through and they saw the mica shining in the left side. They thought it was silver. It’s one of the ways it got its name,” he explained.

When de Soto arrived, legend claims he was greeted warmly by a Cufitachiqui queen.

“And the Queen had luxurious pearls, supposedly had some gold. Things, of course, that Hernando de Soto was very interested in, especially taking back to the Spanish government,” explained Virgo.

De Soto, not being known for his kindness, responded to the queen’s generosity by taking more gold and pearls from the tribe’s graves. But that wasn’t enough for him.

“They kidnapped her and said, ‘Take us to the gold. Take us to the silver.’ Well, she didn’t get to be queen for no reason,” laughed Heitkamp. “She was a very wise woman, very smart, and she led them up about 80 miles away, up near Clemson and got them turned around and then  slipped off and came home. When she was far enough from home that she knew they wouldn’t backtrack, she came back and ruled her people.”

De Soto moved on from there. While this is a popular legend, many historians disagree if Silver Bluff was actually where it all happened.

“There’s some new scholarship that says that maybe he didn’t cross near Beech Island, Silver Bluff area. Maybe he crossed a little bit higher up. And there’s also some debate that maybe the Cufitachiqui were actually closer to the Saluda River, Congaree River near Columbia,” said Virgo.

The Silver Bluffs were a popular trading site for native tribes for a very long time.

“They would meet, and even if their languages didn’t align perfectly, they could say, ‘I’ll meet you on the biggest bluff on the biggest river and we’ll trade. And this was a very easy place to key on back when there were no roads and no subdivisions and no firefighters and, you know, just foot traffic and river traffic,” Heitkamp said.

In the 16th century, George Galphin, an Irishman, came to America and found a job working for a trading company. He was extremely successful and in the 1750’s he acquired about 400 acres of land at Silver Bluff, which he established as a trading post and his home.

Galphin had a Creek (Native-American) wife and became well respected among the tribes, learning their language and trading with them.

“He ended up being a millionaire of his time. He was owner, at one point, of tens of thousands of acres in Georgia and South Carolina,” Heitkamp explained.

In the 1760’s, Galphin began to develop Silver Bluff into a plantation, which he continued to do until the start of the American Revolution.

He also continued to trade with the Native Americans and had a massive store of goods at his trading post.

When the American Revolution was coming to the South, Galphin didn’t want anything to do with it. But soon it became clear he would have to pick a side.

“It’s a big gamble, especially when you’re talking about as much wealth as George Galphin had. He had a lot to lose and a lot that he wanted to give to his family because again, he’s in his later age as the American Revolution is approaching,” said Virgo. “So he had a lot to think about, not only himself, but his legacy and his family to take care of. He ultimately did decide to go with the Patriots side.”

Because of his relationship with the Creeks, Galphin was appointed “Indian Commissioner.” He transformed his plantation into a base to maintain old and start new alliances with the native Americans. Many of those tribes didn’t want to fight for either side, which was good enough for Galphin.

“And was actually instrumental in keeping the Creek Indians from siding with the British during the American Revolutionary War. And they say, we could have fought the British or the native tribes, but not both at the same time. So, I don’t know if we would have been speaking the Queen’s English or what, but he was one of the people who helped us not lose,” Heitkamp smiled.

Galphin’s plantation was renamed Fort Galphin. Soon Loyalists, who sided with the British, heard about the large store of goods at Fort Galphin and raided it. Galphin sent his family away to keep them safe and stayed to protect his property.

British forces took control in 1779.

“When the Patriot cause is coming through South Carolina, this was a major battleground during the American Revolution in South Carolina. And a lot of…even though they may seem like small skirmishes…led to big points of victory in the American Revolution cause,” explained Virgo. “And one of those was at Fort Galphin. Now, when the British owned it, they changed it from Fort Galphin to Fort Dreadnought, which I just think instills a lot of fear.”

The British took Galphin prisoner. He remained a prisoner in his own home until his death in December of 1780.

Before long the Patriots took the fort back.

“It’s interesting that ‘Light Horse’ Harry Lee took a troop of Patriots to this area and actually attacked Fort Dreadnought and reclaimed it, renamed it, of course, Fort Galphin, and then went on to the Augusta battle, which was a major siege in 1781, in May, which was a point of victory for the Patriot cause,” Virgo said.

As a plantation owner in the South, George Galphin used enslaved labor to run it. Galphin allowed those he enslaved to worship as they chose, without his supervision, which was unusual for the time.

“He would let them practice their own religion. That’s not a thing that was typically done. They, in most plantation settings,  would have to hide that and do it among themselves. But he encouraged them to embrace their religious beliefs and would let people come and talk to them,” said Heitkamp.

“But we do know that George Galvin was a gentleman who did allow for his enslaved individuals to have sort of these meetings and these gatherings and to allow these traveling preachers to come on to his plantation lands and preach to the enslaved people,” Virgo added.

During and after the war, Galphin’s enslaved people were freed and the Silver Bluff Plantation Church split up. Some went to Savannah where they founded First African Baptist Church. Some only traveled as far as Augusta, where they started Springfield Baptist Church. And some stayed in the area and continued Silver Bluff Baptist Church.

These churches all claim to be THE oldest in the nation but they can all trace their roots back to the same place.

“A lot of the earliest African-American,  historically black churches can trace their history back to that concept, to that belief that they should be able to practice religion and do their own thing,” Heitkamp said.

After Galphin’s death, his property changed hands over the next 40 years.

In 1822, Christopher Fitzsimmons bought it. Just three years later he died and his daughter, Catherine, inherited it. When she married James Henry Hammond in 1831, he took ownership.

“He owned at the time, through her and through marriage, three different plantations, one of them, which was Silver Bluff Plantation. Eventually, through marriage and purchase, James Henry Hammond would acquire around 14,000 acres of plantation lands and around 300 enslaved individuals worked in those plantations,” Virgo explained.

Hammond began his efforts to increase production at Silver Bluff. When he took ownership of the land in 1831 it was worth $36,100, more than $1.3 million today. By 1840, it was worth $59,500, $2.15 million today.

To make the swampy Carolina Bay on Silver Bluff farmable, he used enslaved labor to dig a grid of ditches to drain them.

“And they all drained downhill and they would plunge all that -held water- that stuff that would have been captured through a ditch and it went out into House Lake and then into the Savannah River,” Heitkamp said. “So they just dug until they got to a creek, a river system, and then all the water would drain and you were left with that fertile soil. So they’d farm it.”

Hammond would go on to have a career in politics, becoming a congressman, U.S. senator and Governor of South Carolina.

But scandal followed him.

He was accused of sexually assaulting his nieces by their father Wade Hampton II. He was also exceptionally violent towards his enslaved laborers.

“He was very cruel towards the enslaved individuals who were on his plantations. I remember reading about him in my college years at Clemson University and the medical experiments he did on the enslaved individuals, the non-consensual relationships that he had with his enslaved individuals as well that produced lots of illegitimate children,” said Virgo.

Deep in the woods of the Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary, there is a cemetery where the bodies of around 250 or so enslaved people rest. Most are believed to have been owned by Hammond.

Only about ten have headstones. The rest are marked by fiberglass stakes in the shallow indentations of each grave.

Heitkamp told NewsChannel 6, the burial site was chosen for a reason.

“But the first ones are probably six foot from where it rolls off and becomes a cypress swamp, because farmable land was important. That’s how they made their money. And so they took all of it and squished it as far to the side as they could.”

One of the graves is that of Eliza Collick. Her headstone reveals a stunning milestone.

“It says she lived 110 years. She must’ve been, maybe a house servant. 110 years, even if they counted wrong, she wasn’t out in the sun the whole time. Pretty remarkable age now, let alone in the early 1800s,” said Heitkamp.

Descendants of the people buried in Colvin Cemetery are still around. The cemetery is not open to the public, but the Sanctuary makes an exception for them.

“It’s actually a very serene and beautiful place. And we allow descendants to schedule to come back and see it,” Heitkamp said.

After Hammond’s death in 1864, the property exchanged hands, mostly within the Hammond family– for decades.

Eventually Floyd Starr bought Silver Bluff Plantation from the Hammond family. He lived in Pennsylvania and for decades he used it to hunt quail.

“And we’re talking about an era where a lot of farming and a lot of hedgerows, and so we had a lot of birds. And as things were being taken out of farming and developed, he saw a decrease in the amount of game birds that he was hunting and interested in,” Heitkamp said.

Heitkamp added that Starr was so concerned about the decrease in the Northern Bobwhite Quail population, he donated the property to the National Audubon Society.

“Gave roughly 3000 acres to Audubon, and we took ownership in 1975. But his charge for us was to build bird habitat and be self-sustaining.”

Since 1975, the original purpose of the Silver Bluff Audubon Sanctuary has evolved, with the goal to try to bring the land back to what it was 400 years ago.

“My predecessor, Dan, kind of took the move from farmland to forestry. And then I have been here 14 years and I took his vision away from just forestry, into ecological forestry, trying to build forests that were places where these birds that people don’t think about, these ecosystems that kind of get pushed aside, can be,” said Heitkamp.

The Audubon Sanctuary is open to the public from dawn until dusk 365 days a year. People can hike the trails, look for birds, see the bluffs and even check out the dig site where George Galphin’s home once stood.

Heitkamp said that if Starr hadn’t donated his land- things at Silver Bluff could look very different now.

“Just the fact that he would think at the time to protect birds and think about all of the development that was going on. This 3,000 acres could have very well been a subdivision. And now it’s a it’s a public place that people can come every hour of the day and hike and bird and see birds that a lot of people don’t get to see.”

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