Hobcaw Barony
Georgetown County, Georgetown County, South Carolina
Marker Inscription
In 1718 the Lords Proprietors granted 12,000 acres on Hobcaw Point, the southern portion of Waccamaw Neck, to John, Lord Carteret. The barony was subdivided beginning in 1766, creating several large rice plantations which flourished until the Civil War. I… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
In 1718, when the Carolina Lowcountry was still a young proprietary colony, the Lords Proprietors handed a vast 12,000-acre grant on Waccamaw Neck to John, Lord Carteret — one of the great baronial tracts of early South Carolina. As the barony was carved up after 1766, its tidal marshes and riverbanks were reshaped into some of the region's celebrated rice plantations, an agricultural empire built on the skill and forced labor of enslaved Africans. That plantation economy thrived for nearly a century until the Civil War brought it to an end.
Why it matters
Hobcaw Barony traces the arc of the Carolina rice coast — from an aristocratic colonial land grant to the enslaved-worked plantations whose wealth and human cost shaped the American South.
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Related people
- · John, Lord Carteret
- · Lords Proprietors of Carolina
Themes & tags
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