The Effects of the Civil War on Land Ownership and Agricultural Production for Freedmen in St. Helena Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina: Using the Agricultural Census to Evaluate and Interpret Material Culture

occupied land included thousands of freedmen, the former slaves who had worked the Sea Island cotton and rice plantations. Two nearly simultaneous events that dramatically affected the low-country landscape followed. First, in an undertaking named the Port Royal Experiment, northern missionaries came to the region to work toward integrating freedmen into the general society. Arguably, the most successful result of the experiment was the 1862 creation of the Penn School on St. Helena Island. The school taught fundamental literacy to island children until 1900 when it expanded its charge to include the teaching of industry and agriculture, a change that resulted in the current campus layout. Second, the U.S. Government used tax laws to take possession of private land within Beaufort District's St. Helena Parish, and sold the property to fund the war. One group of buyers in these public sales were freedmen, who purchased small 10 to 20 acre farms using income accumulated from working on the Union-operated plantations. In an instant, the landscape transformed from large, white-owned cotton plantations of several hundred acres to mostly small, black-owned family farms. As a result, St. Helena Parish is the only example where southern land was confiscated during the war, but never returned to the original owners Study, a document that resulted in the federally designated Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, identified the Penn School Campus as a location for a new interpretive center. The