Beaufort, South Carolina, History

Beaufort Real Estate Owners Immersed In Country's Rich History

Like the tides, Beaufort’s fortunes seem to ebb and flow. The merchants who built the great homes of Beaufort real estate along Bay Street once earned Beaufort, SC, the highest per capital income in the United States. But early in the last century, the area drifted toward poverty with the collapse of phosphate mines, a severe storm and a devastating fire. Fortunately, Beaufort’s rich history is preserved in Beaufort real estate's grand homes and churches of the antebellum days and in Gullah culture and the Southern way of life.

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to enter Port Royal Sound, only 30 years after Columbus arrived in the new world. For the next 200 years the Spanish, French, Native American Indians and ultimately the British struggled to control the Beaufort, SC, area. The British won, and Beaufort, the second oldest town in South Carolina, was incorporated in 1711.

By the time of the American Revolution, Beaufort, SC, had a population of 4,000, which included some of the wealthiest families in America. Their fortunes came from indigo and rice and the labor of enslaved Africans. Attitudes toward the Torries were mixed, but Thomas Heyward, Jr. a local rice plantation owner, signed the Declaration of Independence. South Carolina lost more men and gave more money to the Revolutionary cause than any other colony.

After the Revolution, Sea Island cotton was the crop that made Beaufort, SC, “the wealthiest, most aristocratic and cultivated town of its size in America.” Planters came to Beaufort and built magnificent summer homes and Beaufort real estate along the water downtown and on the Old Point. Those homes are a major attraction in Beaufort real estate today.

In the decades preceding the Civil War, secessionist sentiment grew. But after the Union Navy decisively won the Battle of Port Royal Sound on November 7, 1861, the white population fled.
When General Sherman marched through the south burning towns and plantations, Beaufort, SC, was spared.

With the Civil War, life in Beaufort, SC, changed forever. Beaufort real estate and wealth were confiscated through tax sales and resold mostly to carpetbaggers. The political base shifted from European American to African American. The Gullah/Geechee culture flourished on St. Helena, where the first school to educate freedmen was established, and Beaufort real estate was sold or parceled out to them. The lifestyle fostered skills and crafts brought from Africa and the Caribbean and emphasized the importance of family and religion, while continuing a language blend of Elizabethan English and African rhythms. Beaufort hero Robert Smalls, a slave whose courage and knowledge of Lowcountry waters aided the Union forces, eventually served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Phosphate mining, a revival of cotton and rice farming, and a new influx of Northerners seeking moderate winters brought better times to the Beaufort, SC, area. But they ended after a succession of natural disasters and the arrival of the great depression.

Slowly, with shrimping, farming and the Marines nudging the economy, Beaufort’s fortunes began to improve. Northerners again came to visit and to live. The Historic Beaufort Foundation moved to protect Beaufort’s history, the Open Land Trust and conservationists to protect its shoreline. Thus, no matter the ebb and flow of history and the economy, Beaufort’s beauty is, and hopefully always will be a constant.  //