[Updated January 23, 2022]
The people in this single image above span 184 years of Sams descendants; from today back to the working plantation days when B.B. Sams was growing Sea Island cotton here on Dataw Island.
The picture shows Therese (Sams) Colquhoun in our History & Learning Center last year. On the table are pictures of her grandfather Milledge Bonum Sams (1855-1906) and grandmother Sarah Phoebe Caroline (Sams) Sams (1858-1901) from her paternal side. That is also her grandmother as a young child sitting in Miss Therese’s great grandmother’s lap, Sarah Jane Graham (Sams) Sams (1835-1920). Above that is her great grandfather, Dr. Robert Randolph Sams (1827-1910). See the fan chart at the bottom of this page for a visual representation of Ting’s ancestors.
Close to Home
“Close to home” is this week’s entry for 52 Sams in 52 Weeks. It serves as a bookend to my articles on “fresh starts” made by Bonum Sams and John Barnwell in the late 1600s. Here I will talk about a few Sams descendants who spent most of their lives in Beaufort, a short distance from the BB Sams plantation ruins. Yet, these Sams are close to our homes, in both location and time.
For our Tabby Tattler back in the fall of 2004, Jack Brown wrote, “Ever since I became involved with the Dataw Historic Foundation more than five years ago, I have been fascinated with the history of the Sams family. Considered to be one of the most important and influential families in South Carolina history, the Sams family owned Dataw Island for close to 80 years from 1783 until 1861 and played a major role in the development of Beaufort, South Carolina.” You can read his entire article in our archives here.
Jack researched this family by interviewing two local Sams descendants and long-time DHF supporters; T. Reeve Sams (1924-2013) and his sister S. Jeanne (Sams) Aimar (1926-2017). Their other sister Therese (Sams) Colquhoun has shared many stories and family artifacts over the years with DHF.
“That Sweet Little Ting”
Miss Therese loves to tell the story of how she got her nickname. Sometimes she attributes it to her mother and father; other times, her older brother, T_Reeve_Sams, gets the credit. Therese was named after her mother, Therese (Talbird) Sams. When she was very young, friends outside her family did not pronounce her first name correctly. I’m sure her French name and living in a very non-French town had something to do with it. Her sobriquet, “Ting,” grew out of her family’s oft-used phrase, “Sweet Little Ting.” From now on I’ll call her Ting.
On Ting’s paternal side, her grandfather is a descendant of BB Sams. And her grandmother is a descendant of both BB Sams and LR Sams. On her maternal side are the Talbirds, another famous Beaufort family. However, her maternal grandmother, Joséphine Jeanine Frédérique (Canter) Talbird was French. She was born in Menton, Provence, France. Unfortunately, long before Ting was born, Joséphine died in the hurricane of 1893. What is even more soulful is that she was pregnant at the time; neither mother nor child survived.
A few Sams in Ting’s pedigree returned to Beaufort after the Civil War; quite unusual given the circumstances of 1861.
As most of you know, the Sams’ departure from their plantations and Beaufort was sudden and traumatic. The Confederacy lost the Battle of Port Royal on November 7th, 1861, leading to an immediate and sustained departure from Beaufort of the plantation owners and their families. While a few enslaved left, most stayed and farmed the land for themselves; it was survival. In a future article, I’ll address what we know of the freedmen in Beaufort during and after the Civil War.
To put this exodus in perspective, I looked at 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 U.S. Federal Census records on Ancestry.com for all Sams living in South Carolina. In 1850, 86% of the Sams in S.C. resided in Beaufort County. After the war, in the 1870 census, that number had dropped to 14%. The 1880 numbers were a little different than 1870. Once the Sams evacuated Beaufort at the start of the war, very few returned. Those who moved back include Ting’s great grandfathers Melvin Melius Sams (1815-1900) and Dr. Robert Randolph Sams (1827-1910), sons of BB Sams and his first wife, Elizabeth Fripp.
Miss Ting (Sams) Colquhoun lives in Beaufort today and has been a wonderful friend of the Dataw History Foundation for many years. She and her brother T Reeve Sams (1924-2013) and sister Jeanne (Sams) Aimar (1926-2017) were born in Beaufort.
Below is a fan chart showing Ting’s ancestors back to Bonum Sams II’s generation. (Due to intermarriages, some names are repeated in generational rings.) She is the last of her generation of Sams in Beaufort. Her home is less than 5 miles from the Sams Plantation Tabby Ruins Complex as the crow flies! So she is very ‘close to home,’ and close to us.
Miss Ting likes to joke that her family has lived in Beaufort for over 300 years! And she is right. Her Sams ancestral line starts in Charles Towne with Bonum Sams, her five times great grandfather. He arrived in our corner of North America in 1681, about 340 years ago!
Sources
- Tabby Tattler, Dataw Historic Foundation Newsletter, Fall 2004, The Sams Family of South Carolina by Jack Brown
- Tabby Tattler, Dataw Historic Foundation Newsletter, Winter 2011, Sams Descendents Gather in the Ruins for Four-Generation Portrait by Marilyn Peck
52Sams, Week_04, Therese_Canter_Sams_Colquhoun, Ting