The Hero’s Return: Lafayette’s Epic Journey Back to a Grateful America
The First Meeting of Lafayette and Washington, Philadelphia, August 3, 1777
This category identifies any form of history about Dataw Island; our archives. Includes professional reports, copies of published articles, photographs, presentations, and works our Foundation members have researched and produced. To view these by tagged, relevant time period, go to our EXPLORE area.
The First Meeting of Lafayette and Washington, Philadelphia, August 3, 1777
The music of the Antebellum Era expressed the feelings of the two classes of people on Sea Island Plantations: the white plantation owners and the enslaved people. Listen to their…
The DHF is proud that we have artifacts found on Datha Island in the early ALCOA days that date back thousands of years. For example, in the display on the southwest wall of the History & Learning Center is a Paleo Indian Point that dates to 10,000 B.C. However, many have explored our area over the centuries. I recently learned from a young lady in Massachusetts that Charles Upham Shepard found an older and much larger item on St Helena Island in the 1800s; an American mastodon (Mammoth americanum) from the late Pleistocene era! This intact skeleton, found next door, pushes back our knowledge of this area by several thousand years, to at least 12,000 B.C.
Oak Island is a 32-acre natural beauty sitting next door to Dataw Island. Native Americans frequented the island about 1,000 years ago. Fast forward 800 years to the BB Sams / LR Sams plantation era, and it was an adventure spot for James Julius Sams and his brothers Horace and Donald. As Sea Island cotton took off as the “finest in the world,” BB Sams decided to build a system of dikes between Dataw Island, Oak Island, and the two marsh hummocks to the north (i.e., Pine Islands).
The Dataw Historic Foundation engaged Colin Brooker (Brooker Architectural Design Consultants) and Benjie Morillo (Frederick and Frederick Architects) to conduct a drone survey of historic features around Datha Island, particularly…
This photo is of Brutus on Palawana Island, SC, circa early 1900s. The image is from Face of an Island: Leigh Richmond Miner’s Photographs of Saint Helena Island, compilation by…
Peaceful Retreat plantation home of Robert Gibbes and his wife Sarah (Reeve) Gibbes. On the Stono River, John’s Island, SC. There is so much to say about this woman. She…
By now, most of you will have received the Spring Edition 2022 of the Dataw Historic Foundation’s Tabby Times. This is the “live” version of the beautiful cover article written…
We are compiling a list of the “Grande Dames of Datha Island” and adding each tree’s location and approximate age to the map below. We’d love to have residents participate by going to the Google Form at this link and entering data on whichever tree you wish.
Reproduction of a circa 1858 ambrotype of Sarah Jane Graham (Sams) Sams (1835 – 1920), courtesy of Teresa Bridges. Sarah Jane Graham Sams married Dr.Robert Randolph Sams (1827 – 1910),…
Presentation by Bill Riski, of the Dataw Historic Society, on the history of sea island cotton. He explains why plantations came to the sea islands, why this crop was unique to the sea islands, why it was so desirable, and why it disappeared. This presentation adds to the body of knowledge of the Sams of South Carolina. Though sea island cotton generated enormous wealth for a few, it required great suffering by many.
Christmas in the Lowcountry of South Carolina will be celebrated this week, as it has been for centuries. However, back in the antebellum days, the planters celebrated one way, and the enslaved in a much different way. Like the plantation system, which was imported from Britain, the Christmas traditions when the Reverend James Julius Sams (1826 – 1918) reflected on his childhood around 1835 – 1840 on Datha Island were probably more British-inspired than German. Julius begins his reflections about Christmas this way,
“Christmas was the merriest and saddest time. The merriest, because we were all together. The saddest, because the time was coming for us to part again.”