Pineville, a historic refuge Part 4: Plantations and People
- Thomas Walters
By Warner M. Montgomery
Warner@TheColumbiaStar.com

Sylvia Daniel, docent for Keith Gourdin's tour of the Santee Canal, stands before the grave of Thomas Walter on the Santee River.

By 1800, there were over 30 plantations along the River Road (now S.C. Hwy 45) between St. Stephens and Eutaw Springs. Most were about 300- 400 acres though some were over 2,000 acres. These farmlands ran from the road to the Santee River.

Major plantations and their early owners were Belle Isle (Marion), Bluford (Williams), Buck Hall (Gourdin), Eutaw (Sinkler), Laurel Hill (Peyre), Lifeland (Maham), Mexico (Porcher), Murrel (Frierson), Peru (Porcher), Pond Bluff (Marion), Richmond (Palmer), Tower Hill (Couturier), Walnut Grove (Marion), and Windsor (Gaillard).

Murray's Ferry crossed the river between St. Stephens in Berkeley County to Kingstree in Williamsburg. (Murray's Ferry Road is now S.C. Hwy 52.) The King's Highway from Charleston to Camden crossed the river at Nelson's Ferry near Eutaw Springs.

Three early Pineville residents of note were Thomas Walter, Theodore Gourdin, and Francis Marion. Walter, an English merchant, arrived in Charleston before 1769 and immediately began building his fortune in land and politics. During his life he owned 4,387 acres of farmland and was elected to the offices of county road commissioner and state House of Representatives.

Thomas Walter - a photo from a miniture in possession of a direct descendant, Mrs. Benjamin Arthur Bolt of Greenville, in David Rembert's book,

Walter's greatest contribution, however, was as a botanist. He rented (then later purchased) 500 acres of Mexico Plantation between the Porchers and the Marions where he built a home and a botanical garden. Using the system of Linnaeus, he collected and described over 1,000 native plants of the Santee.

John Fraser, the English plant collector, met Walter in 1786 and encouraged him to record his findings, which he did as a manuscript called Flora Caroliniana . Fraser took the manuscript and many of Walter's plants back to England in 1787. The manuscript was published in 1788. After Fraser's death, the collection was purchased by the British Museum of Natural History in London and placed in the Walter Herbarium, named for Pineville's Thomas Walter.

Carolina's first botanist was married three times and had five children. He died in 1789 and left his three daughters, 32 slaves, seven oxen, nine cows, 39 sheep, 19 hogs, 230 bushels of corn, 45 barrels of rice, and 2,700 bushels of rough rice. He was buried on his property overlooking the Santee River near the historic Santee Canal.

Walter's daughters placed a marble marker over his grave 25 years after his death, which reads, in part: "At his desire he was buried in this spot, once the garden in which were cultivated most of the plants of his Flora Caroliniana ." The grave was restored with a brick foundation and a wrought iron fence in 1931. (David H. Rembert. Thomas Walter, Carolina Botanist . Museum Bulletin Number 5, S.C. Museum Commission 1980).

Thomas Walter's grave is, today, at the end of a logging road that runs along the Old Santee Canal to the Santee River. The property is now owned by former SC Governor James Edwards.

(Next week:

Theodore Gourdin)

Thomas Walter, Carolina Botanist .