It is quite natural for a haunting to last many years, then abruptly stop. When this happens, the reason for the haunting has passed. In the case of Asylum Plantation, located in the Plantersville community of Georgetown County, the ghost finished making her point and ceased to haunt. She has not been seen for over half a century—as far as we know.
Plantersville was named for the numerous rice planters who owned and operated plantations there. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Plantersville was a remote Pee Dee River community consisting of wealthy rice planters, their families, and hundreds of slaves. Its isolation gave rise to numerous hauntings. Asylum Plantation was the site of one of these.
The originator of Asylum Plantation was Davison McDowell of Ireland. His father, James, had emigrated here and settled near the Pee Dee River in Georgetown in 1786 but died in 1787. His mother, Agnes, had emigrated shortly after her husband passed away and stayed on, later marrying Robert Kirkpatrick.
Young Davison McDowell, born in 1783, had remained in Ireland with relatives to complete his education. He arrived in Georgetown from Newry, Ireland, in 1811 at age twenty-eight and immediately set about becoming a rice planter. Within a year of his arrival, he was well into the business, planting with and renting from fellow planters. He continued in that manner until 1819, when he bought the land that was to become Asylum Plantation, a place of retreat and security.
McDowell kept a journal until 1833, documenting a great deal of life at Asylum. According to his January 1, 1819, entry, he paid $1904.75 for the Pee Dee River property. He bought it from Moses Myers, the first Jewish attorney to be admitted to the bar in South Carolina.
McDowell’s rice plantation included 220 acres of highlands and 200 acres of swamp. For part of Asylum’s work force, he hired slaves from the plantation of his mother, Agnes Kirkpatrick. Of those slaves, at least four were natives of Africa, including Manza, who was born in 1770. Manza became McDowell’s main driver in charge of Asylum’s rice-field work force. He and another driver, Sam, were recorded yearly on McDowell’s slave lists. Slave drivers, usually slaves themselves such as Manza and Sam, were often hard and unyielding.
McDowell married Mary Moore in 1822 but became a widower in 1823. After Mary’s death, he hired an overseer, Samuel Smith, for $150 per year. He instructed Smith “to obey me in all things, to treat my people with humanity during my absence; & to do the best you can for my Interest according to the best of your Judgement & abilities.”
According to his journal, McDowell paid taxes on eighty-four slaves in 1826, one hundred ten slaves in 1829, one hundred seven slaves in 1830, and one hundred thirteen slaves in 1832.
He married again in 1827, this time to a widow, and gained ownership of twenty-one more slaves. That same year, he was bedridden for three weeks with a dreaded fever. He wrote in his journal, “During this month the business of the Plantation went on under the sole direction of Manza. For it pleased the almighty to afflict me with a grievious illness … a grievious sickness which the Doctor’s called Epidemic.”
During McDowell’s illness, an event occurred that caused Asylum to be haunted for the next hundred years.
One night, hungry and tired, a slave woman hurried through the gathering darkness on Asylum Plantation. She could hear frogs croaking in the trees, ready to feast on mosquitoes. Her stomach growled ominously, almost drowning out the frogs.
She knew she was late for supper. All the other field hands had already gone back toward the cookhouse. She had been on her way with them until she realized her kerchief was gone. She knew she ought to wait until the next day in the hope of finding it when she went back to the rice field, but she hated to take such a chance. It was her favorite kerchief, blue gingham with a tiny, darker blue flower in each little square, and she wanted to retrieve it that night so she would not have to worry about it. Carefully, she scanned the path, retracing her steps to the field. The kerchief would be hard to see in the dimming twilight.
She was almost back to the field when she slowed dejectedly. She had retraced nearly all her steps, and still no kerchief. She knew the kerchief had been on her head when she left the field, because she had pushed it back just a little when she brushed her hand across her damp brow.
When she reached the earthen trunk surrounding the field, she climbed up, slowly walked the few feet to the place where she had left the field, and shook her head, sighing. This was where she had last touched her kerchief, and it wasn’t lying on the ground. Where could it have fallen?
She heard the unmistakable booming bass grunt of a bull alligator in the river nearby. He must be hungry, too. Her stomach gave a long growl as she turned to leave. Her hand reached up automatically to push back the low-hanging chinaberry branch she had ducked under when she left the field, and there it was! Her kerchief was caught in the low twigs of the branch!
Thankfully, she snatched her kerchief, ran down the earthen trunk, hopped to the ground, and raced for the cookhouse. As soon as she began to run, a pain shot through the front of her thigh. Immediately, she slowed down. It was a long time since she had run flat out, and she was too old for that. She hurried though the dark, limping now. Her stomach growled out loud.
At last, the lights of the cookhouse were in sight. She could see the women outside washing the tin plates in the big, round tin tub.
Her heart sank. The meal had ended. Even if there was any food left, supper was over. The driver never allowed anyone to eat supper late. When suppertime was over, eating was over—no exceptions. Her only supper now might be a pear or two from the big tree near the slave street, but raw pears might not sit well on her empty stomach.
One of the cookhouse workers finished washing plates and picked up a medium-sized cast-iron cauldron. She poured its contents into a larger cauldron that was sitting on the ground. Then she began washing the medium-sized cauldron in the tin washtub.
As the slave woman drew closer, her stomach growled long and low. The smell of crusty cornbread still hung in the humid air. She could smell hominy too, and field peas. As she neared the tin washtub, she could see the heavy black cast-iron pans in which the cornbread had been cooked. By the light of the hanging kerosene lanterns, she could see a thin layer of crunchy crumbs clinging to the inside of each pan where the batter had risen and baked. Not a crust remained. Her stomach rumbled again.
The smell of hominy and field peas wafted to her. She peered into the big, round cauldron into which she had seen the woman pouring something. The bottom of the cauldron was filled with hominy, with the big dipping spoon still in it! On top of the hominy, the cookhouse woman had poured field peas.
The slave woman’s stomach growled again. She was so hungry, and she loved field peas and hominy. She looked around.
The driver would have a fit, she knew, if he saw her eating after mealtime, but he was nowhere to be seen. The overseer would have a fit, too, but he also was out of sight. She knew the master would never want her or any of his people to go hungry. Unfortunately, the master mostly left everything in the hands of the overseer and the driver, or sometimes just the driver.
Quickly, she picked up a newly washed plate and spoon. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two big, heavy boots appear beside the cauldron. One of the boots reared back and kicked it. Over the cauldron went, spilling the hominy and field peas onto the ground right in front of the hungry woman.
She looked up in surprise.
“Supper is over, old woman,” the driver scowled. Behind him, the overseer nodded. They turned to walk away.
The woman’s eyes flashed angrily. Clenching the plate in one hand, she looked first at the driver, then at the overseer. Where was the master at times like this? He owned several plantations—why couldn’t he be here tonight? Asylum Plantation needed a new master, and if that one wasn’t any better, then another, or another, or another!
She threw down the plate.
The driver and the overseer turned around. The woman narrowed her eyes. Her nostrils flared. Her voice, full of fury, sounded like icy thunder.
“This plantation will never be held by one owner for very long, I swear it!” she shouted.
The driver and the overseer glanced at one another, then back at the woman.
Eyes blazing, she stared at them a moment, then whirled and stalked away, her malediction still hanging in the air. The driver and the overseer looked at the overturned cauldron and the food lying ruined on the ground.
“We might ought to have let her eat some supper,” said the overseer.
Little did they know the repercussion the night’s events would have on the future of Asylum.
Nine years later, the old woman’s words began to ring true when Asylum was sold.
Davison McDowell owned additional rice plantations in both Plantersville and other sections of Georgetown County—Rice Hope, Strawberry Hill, Springfield, Pee Dee, Oatlands, Sandy Island, and Woodlands. In 1836, he sold Asylum to Dr. Paul Weston and moved to another of his Pee Dee River plantations, which he named Lucknow.
Following that sale, Asylum went through a succession of more than a dozen owners. When the old slave woman died, her ghost began to appear to slaves at Asylum as the plantation changed hands over and over again.
Dr. Paul Weston willed the plantation to Francis Weston, who sold it to Robert F. W. Allston in 1843. Allston sold it to Cleland C. Huger 1846. Huger conveyed it back to Robert F. W. Allston in 1853. Allston, South Carolina’s governor from 1856 to 1858, died and willed it to daughter Elizabeth Waties Allston Pringle in 1864. Her brother, Charles Petigru Allston, bought the plantation in 1869 and operated it with his brother Benjamin until 1878. Benjamin Allston conveyed his portion to Elizabeth C. Ford in 1887, while Charles Petigru Allston conveyed his portion to the Guendalos Rice Company—owned by James Louis LaBruce, Francis Williams Lachicotte, and Louis Claude Lachicotte—in 1899. James Louis LaBruce bought out his partners’ interests in 1904. James Louis LaBruce, Jr., and George Albert LaBruce inherited it in 1915. After that, the property was conveyed to Delaware native Thomas G. Samworth, the first editor of American Rifleman and the publisher of hunting and small-arms books.
Throughout that time, the ghostly appearances of the slave woman continued. She would, it was said, climb the stairs of the plantation house and tap you on the shoulder while you were sleeping. Without warning, she would materialize in the presence of folks coming back from the rice fields or working in the kitchen building. Workers on Asylum became used to her sudden appearances. They knew she was only checking to make sure they were well fed—and gloating over the frequent exchange of ownership of Asylum.
Over the years, Asylum Plantation changed hands so many times that it began to be called Exchange Plantation. The name stuck.
The chain of ownership ended in 1945, when Exchange Plantation was sold by Thomas G. Samworth to the family that still owns it.
The slave woman’s ghost lifted the malediction. Over a century of haunting the plantation was apparently enough. In 1945, she ceased to visit Asylum and has not been seen again—as far as we know.