Skull Creek Chronicles

Stepping into the Past at Green’s Shell Enclosure Heritage Preserve

When “Hilton Head” was cleft from Pinckney’s Isle Making the severed “Head” a skull to style, The stream that severed it thereby became “Skull Creek,” and still to-day retains the name.
Volney Hickox, Palmetto Pictures (1863)

Situated along the shore of Skull Creek on Hilton Head Island, Green’s Shell Enclosure Heritage Preserve encompasses three acres. This is one of the smallest of the 80 Heritage Preserves the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources manages. Nevertheless, this remarkable cultural site represents the fascinating and diverse layers of South Carolina’s past. A large shell mound, four feet high in places, tells of the Indigenous peoples who inhabited this landscape and utilized the resources of the area centuries before European contact. Less visible, but verified by years of archaeological and historical investigations, are the remnants of 19th century Fairfield Plantation. Upon the ground at Green’s Shell Enclosure once stood the enslaved quarters for this Sea Island cotton plantation, one of many on Hilton Head and the surrounding Sea Islands where Gullah culture thrived in times of war, peace, enslavement, freedom, and change from outside.

The Shell Enclosure

In the present, more than two million visitors come to Hilton Head Island every year, and 38,000 people permanently reside on the island. Vacation homes, hotels, condominiums, swimming pools, commercial buildings, and other modern developments can make it difficult to imagine the past in this special Lowcountry place. Yet, at Green's Shell Enclosure, the remarkable work of the island's 14th century inhabitants is in view.

As one steps onto the preserve, oyster shells are visible everywhere on the ground.

Deeper into the preserve, the landscape reveals a ridge appearing as a long, circular heap of earth.

Upon closer inspection, it is clear that this ridge, measuring 20 to 30 feet wide at the base and four feet high in some places, is made of oyster and other shells.

Indigenous peoples who lived in the Sea Islands during the period archaeologists define as the Irene phase (1300 CE–1450 CE) created the shell enclosure.

The Irene phase, named after an excavation at Irene Plantation in Chatham County, Georgia, was a cultural period within the broader South Appalachian Mississippian period which archaeologists have identified at coastal sites from Charleston to northeastern Florida.

Through study of Irene phase sites, archaeologists have identified certain cultural traits that are distinctive of the people of the Irene phase. They include incised pottery, oyster shell gorgets with carvings, urn burials, cremations, circular council houses, temple mound construction, and the use of shell as building material.

Green's Shell Enclosure is one of two Irene phase sites in Beaufort County containing monumental architecture, the other being Little Barnwell Island Mounds. Carbon-14 dating has allowed archaeologists to further determine that the Irene phase people completed the shell enclosure about 1335 CE.

Pottery sherds are particularly useful in determining the age and identity of Indigenous sites. Given that most of the sherds discovered at Green's Shell Enclosure date to the Irene Phase, archaeologists can assume that the Indigenous peoples who completed this work did so rather quickly, rather than over the course of many years.

Archaeologists believe Green's Shell Enclosure may have served as a ceremonial site. Subsistence remains also are evident, and include the bones of deer, rabbit, grey squirrel, raccoon, mink, and fish as well as oysters and other shellfish.

This image outlines the location of the shell enclosure and a detached shell midden. The preserve boundary line is identified in purple.

Gullah Roots

The close of the Irene phase in the mid-15th century marked the beginning of European explorations of coastal South Carolina and their involvement in Indigenous affairs. In the mid-16th century the Spanish and then the French established outposts on Parris Island where Indigenous alliances were crucial. In 1663, English Captain William Hilton, a representative of sugar planters on Barbados, examined an island on the west side of the entrance to Port Royal. He named it Hilton Head. Seven years later, the English founded Charleston, and in 1684 the Scots founded the short-lived Stuart's Town at today's town of Beaufort. The Yamasee dominated the region in this period by developing a substantial trade network and military alliances with the English. However, the Yamasee War of 1715 to 1717 brought their superiority to an end.

Plantation agriculture spread across the Lowcountry islands of South Carolina from the 17th to the 19th century. Indigo and rice held a significant presence. Indigo likely was the first commercial crop of Hilton Head where plantations were founded at the end of the Yamasee conflict. Sea Island Cotton eventually became the primary crop of the island.

The enslavement of Africans was the reason plantation agriculture thrived for so long in the Lowcountry. African men, women, and children, brought against their will to South Carolina at places like Hilton Head, provided the intensive labor that brought great profit to their enslavers.

A large number of Africans in the Sea Islands came from Angola or the Gola tribe of Africa. The name "Gola Negroes" became synonymous with the people of the islands, and eventually this name evolved to "Gullah." As the slave trade persisted, new groups of enslaved Africans arrived from African nations that are known today as Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Congo, and Zaire.

English baron John Bayley and his heirs owned Hilton Head into the early 1700s. The island was alternatively known as Trench's Island after the Bayley's attorney, Alexander Trench of Charleston, who the family appointed to sell the land.

This map from 1773 illustrates the plantations along Skull Creek, including Eden Plantation. Established in the 1720s, Eden Plantation belonged to William Eden until after the Revolutionary War. Based on historic maps, Green's Shell Enclosure likely fell within historic Eden Plantation.

One of the oldest buildings on Hilton Head is the Barnwell Tabby Ruins, located up the road from Green's Shell Enclosure. It was completed in the mid-1700s and has been restored. While its historical usage is unknown, the building reflects the architecture of the island in the colonial period.

At Eden and other plantations on Hilton Head, a new culture imbued with perseverance, tenacity, and strength arose as enslaved Africans fought for survival in an environment of oppression. The enslaved of Hilton Head gradually developed a unique language of African and English words and phrasings that allowed them to communicate with one another and their enslavers. They created a patchwork of African and Christian spirituality. They introduced African foods to the Sea Islands, such as rice, yams, okra, and cowpeas. Gullah culture persists into the present.

Gullah culture held strong in Hilton Head and neighboring Sea Islands largely because of the absence of white people. From the early colonial period until the mid-20th century, the vast majority of Hilton Head islanders were Black. While the early planters kept mansions on the island, they usually did not occupy them except for harvest and planting times. These absentee owners, who kept their main residences in Savannah, Charleston, and Beaufort, left those they enslaved under the charge of overseers.

In this photograph taken in 1862 at James Hopkinson's plantation on Edisto Island, enslaved men, women, and children plant sweet potatoes.

Fairfield Plantation

By the time of the American Civil War, there were more than two dozen plantations on Hilton Head Island where Sea Island Cotton flourished. A nautical chart from 1862 helps illustrate the location and setting of some of these sites in the mid-19th century.

This nautical chart from 1862 is a useful tool in understanding the location and setting of some of the plantations along Skull Creek in the mid-nineteenth century.

Northeast of the Preserve along Skull Creek was Cotton Hope Plantation, also known as Skull Creek Plantation. The 1,000-acre plantation was the home of 201 enslaved people. Their enslaver was William Pope. Cotton Hope, with its main house and numerous outbuildings, is depicted on the chart (right side of map).

Along with cotton, the enslaved of Cotton Hope cultivated corn, peas, and potatoes. They raised turkeys, guinea fowl, cows, sheep, and hogs. The labor of the enslaved brought Pope, known as Squire Pope, and his family extensive wealth. The Popes occupied the main house which featured two libraries and fine furniture. Eleven boats of varying sizes provided transportation to neighboring areas and to cotton markets.

To the west of the Preserve was Jenkins Island Plantation, a 500-acre tract that was home to about 100 enslaved people. The island was named for early 19th century owner Isaac Rippon Jenkins. Squire Pope owned the plantation later in the antebellum period.

Green's Shell Enclosure is located in the western section of the former Fairfield Plantation. The grounds and structures of the plantation also appeared in the 1862 chart.

Fairfield, alternatively known as Stoney's Place after its owner, Colonel Joseph Stoney, covered nearly 1,000 acres. Some 350 acres was under cultivation. The plantation was home to about 150 enslaved people.

In the early years of the American Civil War, a missionary working in the area described Fairfield as follows:

“The place is very attractive looking, with grape vines and honeysuckle, and pinewoods near. The house is raised high from the ground, as all are here, and boarded loosely underneath. The rooms are twelve feet high and the lower story more than twelve feet from the ground. Some rooms are eighteen feet square....There's a circle of orange trees 'round the house and roses in abundance, but no grass. The quarters are a fourth of a mile from the house and a praise house stands near them."
Rev. Thomas Howard, 1862

Archaeological investigations in the 1980s uncovered the remains of a chimney within Green's Shell Enclosure. The chimney remains correspond with the location of the supposed enslaved quarters of Fairfield as illustrated in the chart.

While there are no photographs of Fairfield Plantation, those taken at other Beaufort County plantations in the 19th century provides an idea of how the quarters at Fairfield may have appeared. This photograph, from 1862, documents the enslaved quarters at Smith's Plantation in Beaufort where SCDNR's Fort Frederick Heritage Preserve is located.

Transformations

Skull Creek was a thoroughfare that aided the Union occupation of the Port Royal area early in the American Civil War. Additionally, Hilton Head Island became a strongpoint for Union forces and a haven for the enslaved in search of freedom amidst the conflict. In early November 1861, warships of the Union Navy gathered outside the mouth of Port Royal Sound, the extensive bay to the northeast of Hilton Head. They pushed through the Confederate forts guarding the entrance, including Fort Walker on the east side of the island. By November 7, 1861, the Union controlled the island and the sound area. The enslaved of Hilton Head and adjacent islands would remember the Battle of Port Royal as "The Big Gun Shoot." This marked the beginning of emancipation.

The Union invasion of Port Royal Sound terrified white plantation owners in the Beaufort area. They fled inland with their families and some of the enslaved, but left little or no provisions for others left behind on the plantations. After the Union established headquarters on Hilton Head Island, enslaved people across the islands boarded whatever boats they could find to embark for Union camps on Hilton Head.

The photo at right shows the USS Commodore McDonough, a troop ferry, off Hilton Head Island in 1863. Union troops are landing in a rowboat.

A letter written by a Confederate Lieutenant several days after the successful Union occupation described that Union vessels were working their way up Skull Creek.

"I have just returned from Buckingham ferry [west of Jenkins Island] from which point I observed two of the enemys vessels lying at anchor in Scull Creek. A boat load of men with an officer were engaged in oystering between Pinckney Isld. and the ferry house, but on our arrival they retired to Jenkins Island, an offshoot of Hilton Isld.... the gunboats are gradually feeling their way up Scull Creek."
Robert D. Minor, November 13, 1861.

Many of the runaways arrived to Hilton Head in a destitute situation. Union Army and political leaders argued over how to accommodate this influx of people, and what their status would be. Major General Ormsby Mitchel, who became commander of the Department of the South based at Hilton Head in September 1862, envisioned a self-governed village for them, complete with a church, schools, and dwellings. In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed those who were enslaved. Three months later, the proposed village was complete. It was named for Mitchel who had died of yellow fever. By the end of the war, more than 3,000 people lived at Mitchelville. The community persisted into the 1880s. Located on the east side of Hilton Head Island, the former site of Mitchelville is memorialized today at the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park .

The plantations along Skull Creek were among those abandoned by their owners. As the war moved inland, the Federal Government established a policy in the coastal islands around Beaufort whereby they seized plantations, divided them into smaller tracts, and put them up for sale. The terms of the sales were structured to make it possible for the formerly enslaved to acquire land.

The Emancipation Proclamation had helped to ensure the freedom of thousands across the Sea Islands. Hundreds of newly-freed males enlisted in the Union Army to ensure their freedom was maintained.

Along with the Union Army, Northern missionaries sought to uplift the formerly enslaved at Hilton Head and neighboring islands by establishing schools and churches as well as funneling resources for basic needs such as food and clothing.

One of the most well-known schools of the period was Penn's School on St. Helena, as pictured in this photograph from the 1860s.

Missionary E. Wright wanted to see the old mansions of Hilton Head's plantations converted into school houses and accommodations for missionaries. Writing in December 1866, he listed properties he felt held potential for the educational goals of his organization, the American Missionary Association:

1^st Fish Hall (generally known as Drayton) adjacent to Mitchelville. The mansion ought to be fitted up for a home instead of our present home in Mitchelville and a large school-house should be built in its vicinity. 2^nd The Point (generally called Elliot). This mansion will answer, with some alterations, for a home & for School House. It is now in good repair. 3^rd Seabrook. There are two commissary buildings near the mansion at Seabrook, suited for School-houses which should also be secured. 4^th Fairfield (generally called Stony). This mansion is large enough for both home and School-house. 5^th Lawton. There are several buildings adjacent to this mansion that will serve for School houses.
E. Wright, Dec. 31, 1866

Later records tell us that, by 1867, a school was operating on the former Fairfield Plantation.

The Federal Government compiled a new map of Hilton Head, noting the location of various plantations including Skull Creek's Jenkins Island, Cotton Hope, and Fairfield. During the late years of the war and for several years afterwards, formerly enslaved people acquired portions of these tracts. Upon them, they built new homes, farms, and livelihoods, and established generational roots that hold into the present.

Before the Crossing

For nearly a century following the end of the American Civil War, Hilton Head Islanders continued to live in relative isolation. The nearest towns of Bluffton and Beaufort could only be reached by boat. The same was true for Savannah, the nearest city. In these times of freedom, the Gullah people of the island continued to rely upon their perseverance and tenacity to thrive. From the marshes, creeks, and beaches, they harvested seafood, and from the soil they cultivated produce. Some also grew cotton, but most refused because of its association with enslavement. In sailboats and later, gasoline-powered vessels, they shipped what they did not need for their own consumption to local markets.

In places like Little Stoney, one of 13 historic Gullah communities on Hilton Head and the closest to Green's Shell Enclosure, people raised their families and passed down the ways of their ancestors who came to the Lowcountry long ago. Some would remember this time before the bridge as a utopia.

Photographer Julian Dimock visited Hilton Head in 1904, documenting the lives of residents. Dimock's photographs, along with memories of longtime islanders, help to illuminate the story of those who lived closest to Green's Shell Enclosure.

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The women of Hilton Head, such as the unidentified woman in this photo, possessed a deep knowledge of the land that they received from previous generations. This wisdom included knowledge of local plants that could heal the sick. Okra blossoms could bring a boil to a head, fig leaf was a treatment for ringworm, and pine sap helped backaches.

Regina Chaplin, a native of Hilton Head, relied upon an herb known as "life everlasting" to cure fevers.

You just dry 'em and boil 'em and make a little tea. Then you put a little lemon in 'em. You take it and go to bed, and the fever will sweat out.

The man and boy in this photo are preparing for work on the water. Skull Creek and other waterways touching Hilton Head were a source of sustenance and income for the people of the island.

Born in 1907, Herbert Chaplin spent his life on Hilton Head. He recalled how, as a child, his father Billy made money digging clams along the shore of Port Royal Sound.

"He dug them right out of the beach in the winter. There were plenty of clams out there, and the DeSoto Hotel [in Savannah] would take all he could get."

The Chaplins also caught crabs by the barrel for shipment to Savannah. They would stretch a 500-foot-long string into the water with pieces of ham or bull nose dangling from it. As the crabs descended upon the morsels, the Chaplins would scoop them up with a dip net.

The children of Hilton Head were said to freely wander the island when they were not working. To help their families, youths cast nets for shrimp and mullet. In the winter, they picked oysters in the low tide. They helped tend gardens of corn, sweet potatoes, and butterbeans.

Among the adults of Hilton Head there was a mutual understanding that the responsibility of watching after the children belonged to all. Lifelong islander Johnny White (1906–1993) remembered the watchful eye of adults across Hilton Head.

If a child made a violation in front of any adult it was just the same as making it in front of his parents.

There were some on Hilton Head who kept regular connections with distant shores. They commuted to Savannah where they worked as longshoremen and to the military base on Parris Island where they held various jobs. Rowboats and sailboats, like the ones seen in this photo, carried them to and from work.

Charlie Simmons Sr. (1919–1997) spent his life hauling everything from babies to turkeys between Hilton Head and Savannah. As a boy, during the days of sailboats, he helped haul butterbeans and watermelons from the island to Savannah. His boat would return with shoes, rice, and other goods unavailable on the island. Coastal winds, as he described, dictated the journey.

If it don't move, you don't move, and you just have to wait.

In the early 1900s, many on Hilton Head could recall times of enslavement, and veterans of the Union Army lived in the Gullah communities of the island.

One of the veterans was Matt Jones (1845–1917), pictured here in 1904. Jones, who grew up on Fairfield Plantation, suffered from various ailments stemming from his wartime service. He is buried in Stoney Cemetery which is adjacent to Green's Shell Enclosure.

I have a wife and seven head of children, and if it was not for my wife and large children there would be suffering in my family.

Recreational hunters and fishermen, many from Northern states, discovered Hilton Head around the turn of the 20th century. Ducks, quail, deer, and other game animals drew them to rustic lodges, often named for the former plantations they stood upon. Oftentimes, their guides were local Gullah men who knew the island well from having lived there for their entire lives. Timber men began to exploit the extensive pine, seafood companies established oyster canneries, and real estate investors began to take interest in the island.

Following World War II, tourists became increasingly interested in the coast of South Carolina. For a time, Hilton Head, still without a bridge, remained slightly out of reach even after the state developed a ferry operation in 1953. Three years later, however, the State Highway Department completed the James Byrnes Bridge, a major crossing that spanned MacKay Creek and Skull Creek. As the decades passed, development swept the island. Gullah families who held their land for a century began to lose it. Signs of the island's rich past grew obscure.

An unidentified artist's depiction of the James Byrnes Bridge, *Beaufort Gazette*, 1956.

Archaeology Preserves the Story of Green's Shell Enclosure

As great changes swept Hilton Head in the 1950s and 1960s, Green's Shell Enclosure remained tucked away in a quiet corner of Little Stoney. The site seems to have been known to real estate promoters. One of their billboards from the period featured a map of attractions that noted an "Indian Shell Ring" in the vicinity of Green's Shell Enclosure.

Hilton Head Company directory sign and map, 1960

In the mid-1960s, Alan Calmes was the first archaeologist to investigate Green's Shell Enclosure, which he identified as an Irene phase site. State archaeologists followed with more investigations in 1971. Their work helped place the site in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Archaeological studies of the site in the 1980s revealed more information about its precontact and post-contact features. It was during this period that the site took its name which references a former landowner.

As threats of development increased, the Heritage Trust Program of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) partnered with the City of Hilton Head and the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (SCPRT) to preserve Green's Shell Enclosure by establishing it as a passive archaeological preserve. In 1991, Green's Shell Enclosure was acquired and dedicated as a cultural heritage preserve. This unique place in the Lowcountry continues to be a place where visitors can learn about the Hilton Head Island of yesterday.

Credits and References

Credits

Project Manager: Meg Gaillard, Heritage Trust Archaeologist, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources

Historian and Writer: Nick Linville Linville Historical Consulting

Funding: The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust Program

Additional Assets Courtesy of:

Beaufort District Collection, Beaufort County Library, Beaufort, South Carolina Heritage Library Foundation National Archives and Records Administration Register of Deeds, Beaufort County, South Carolina South Carolina Department of Archives and History South Caroliniana Library

References

Barnwell, Thomas Jr. Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge, 1861–1956. Durham, North Carolina: Blair, 2020.

Eldredge, Daniel D. The Third New Hampshire and All About It. Boston, Massachusetts: Stillings, 1893.

Federal Writer's Project of the Works Progress Administration. Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941.

Heritage Library Foundation. "Eden Plantation." Electronic document, https://heritagelib.org/eden-plantation , accessed March 19, 2024.

Hickox, Volney. Palmetto Pictures. New York, New York, W. Low, 1863.

Internal Revenue Service. Map of Township 3 South, 2 West, SC. Records of the Internal Revenue Service: Township Plats, City Plans, and Island Maps (c.1865). National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

Judge, Christopher. An Overview of the Irene Phase in South Carolina. Paper presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Macon, Georgia, November 9, 2000. On file, Heritage Trust Program, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Columbia, South Carolina.

McTeer, J.E. Adventure in the Woods and Waters of the Low Country with Pictures and Poems. Beaufort, South Carolina: Beaufort Book Company, 1972.

Marscher, Fran Heyward. Remembering the Way it Was at Hilton Head, Bluffton and Dafuskie. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2005.

Martin, Josephine W., editor. “’Dear Sister’: Letters Written on Hilton Head Island, 1867.” Beaufort, South Carolina: Beaufort Book Company, c.1977.

Minor, R. D. (1861). Letter : Bluffton, South Carolina, Minor, to “General.” Miscellaneous Manuscripts, South Caroliniana Collection.

Mottelay Paul Fleury, et al. The Soldier in Our Civil War : A Pictorial History of the Conflict 1861-1865 Illustrating the Valor of the Soldier As Displayed on the Battle Field. Stanley Bradley Publishers, 1890.

Peeples, Robert E.H. Tales of Ante Bellum Island Families. Hilton Head, South Carolina (no publisher), 1970.

Trinkley, Michael. Archaeological Testing of Six Sites on Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Research Series 13. Chicora Foundation, Columbia, South Carolina, 1988. ---. Management Summary of Archaeological Data Recovery at a Portion of the Cotton Hope Plantation (38BU96), Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Chicora Research Contribution 44, Chicora Foundation, Columbia, South Carolina, 1990.

Trinkley, Michael, Debi Hacker, Natalie Adams, and David Lawrence. Archaeological Data Recovery at 38BU833, A St. Catherines and Savannah Shell Midden Site, Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Research Series 27. Chicora Foundation, Columbia, South Carolina, 1992.

Trinkley, Michael, Debi Hacker, David Lawrence, Jack H. Wilson, Jr. Archaeological Excavations at 38BU96, A Portion of Cotton Hope Plantation, Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Research Series 21. Chicora Foundation, Columbia, South Carolina, 1990.

U.S. Coast Survey. Preliminary Chart of Calibogue Sound and Skull Creek Forming Inside Passage from Tybee Roads to Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. Chart. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Coast Survey, 1862.

Williams, Heather Andrea. “‘Clothing Themselves in Intelligence’: The Freedpeople, Schooling, and Northern Teachers, 1861-1871.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 87, 2002, pp. 372–89. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1562471. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

Wooster, Lyman. Squire William Pope.

Works Progress Administration. South Carolina: A Guide to the Palmetto State. New York, New York: Oxford, 1941.