Mitchelville

[18thVirginia]

Freed people who were formerly enslaved on Drayton Plantation,
now planting and harvesting cotton for themselves.

 

[ErnieMac]

I find Ormsby Mitchel one of the more interesting figures of the early part of the war. Unfortunately he died of yellow fever about six weeks after arriving at Hilton Head. Mitchel was the man who ordered the Andrews Raid (Great Locomotive Chase). In addition to his military career he was an astronomer, surveyor, attorney, professor and publisher.

 

[18thVirginia]

This house had a large addition and a fenced yard

Military sawmills provided free lumber for, and the ex-slaves provided the labor for the houses. Each house had a quarter-acre lot. The typical house measured approximately 12x12ft, were of frame construction, had wood pier foundations, glass-paned windows, wood floors, weatherboard siding, wood shingle roofs, and having either metal stoves or brick and/or tabby or wattle and daub ("stick") chimneys.

This house used canvas sheeting to create an extra room.

 

[18thVirginia]

I find Ormsby Mitchel one of the more interesting figures of the early part of the war. Unfortunately he died of yellow fever about six weeks after arriving at Hilton Head. Mitchel was the man who ordered the Andrews Raid (Great Locomotive Chase). In addition to his military career he was an astronomer, surveyor, attorney, professor and publisher.

Mitchel was a Class of 1829 West Point grad who resigned his post and later offered his services during the Civil War.

Mitchel was nicknamed "Old Stars" for his interest in astronomy--the top of his gravestone has a star on it.

 

[18thVirginia]

"...the present negro quarters, a long row of partitions into which are crowded young and old, male and female, without respect either to quality or quantity... the Major-General has ordered [it] to be removed outside [the encampments], and accordingly a piece of ground has been selected near the Drayton Plantation, about two miles off, for a negro village. The negroes are to be made to build their own houses, and as it is thought to be high time they should begin to learn what freedom means by experience of self-dependence, they are to be left as much as possible to themselves..."

New York Times, October 8, 1862

Drayton Plantation (Fish Haul) was owned by Confederate General Thomas Fenwick Drayton. Also called Fish Haul or Fish Hall Plantation, it dated back to an original Royal grant to his wife's family in 1762. By 1861, it had become a cotton plantation with about 700 acres available for cultivation. General Drayton used the family home at Fish Haul as his headquarters in 1861. Drayton assigned many of the 102 slaves he owned on the island to work on Confederate fortifications.

Expired Image Removed
General Thomas Fenwick Drayton

General Drayton was a West Point classmate and friend of Jefferson Davis, who appointed him to head up the defense of Hilton Head Island. Drayton had married Catherine Pope, of a wealthy planter family in 1832. The Fish Haul property had about 250 unimproved and 450 improved acres on which 52 slaves worked.

Field hands and overseers

Drayton Plantation House

After the Battle of Point Royal on November 7, 1861, the Union occupied Hilton Head and Drayton/Fish Haul.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Bumping, Mitchelville does not receive the attention due its fame or importance as the first Freedmans Village. Pretty cool place. I don't think any of the sea island areas do, or Beaufort, SC . All of these were extremely active early and through out the war- need to bring more of these up.