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"I hardly know how to describe this place, I think God made it
for the Garden of Eden..."a letter home from Sgt. Calvin Shedd,
encamped near Dataw Island, S.C., Civil War,
June 20th , 1862. |
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Having long been a
fertile source of history and folklore these great
barrier islands of South Carolina have seen many
visitors. Dataw Island's
first visitors arrived 2,000 years ago.; Wandering
Tribes of early Indians returned frequently to the
island, drawn by the bountiful supplies of game and
shellfish.
Dataw Island greeted the Spanish Europeans in the early
1500s. Captain Pedro de Salaza discovered the area in
1514, which establishes Beaufort county as the second
landing in the new world by the Europeans, preceded only
by Ponce de Leon's founding of St. Augustine, Florida,
just one year earlier. Over the course of the next 200
years, the English gradually replaced the early Spanish
settlers. In 1685, Caleb Westbrook, an entrepreneurial
Scotsman, established a trading post on Dataw Island,
trading with the Indians for deerskins, a valued
commodity in England. |
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Steady settlement of the area continued
through the pre-Revolutionary War years. With the
beginning of the Plantation Age, the great sea islands
of South Carolina became the "Newport of the South",
with large, opulent homes financed by the enormous cash
crops of indigo, used for cloth dying, and sea island
cotton, the finest in the world. In the late 1700s,
William Sams selected Dataw Island as the site for his
indigo fields and the remains of the family's
magnificent tabby home are a carefully preserved
treasure today. The Civil War heralded the end of a gracious and
privileged lifestyle and for over 100 years Dataw Island
was a quiet hunting preserve. The acquisition of Dataw
Island by Alcoa Properties, Inc., in 1983, assures that
the next era of the island's history will be recorded as
the sensitive and responsible development of one of the
more beautiful islands in this part of Eden. |
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