Build A Bridge. Bring Land Over Water. Bring Worlds Together.

Everyday hundreds of commuters cross it and a handful of boaters pass under it without giving a thought to the significant role it played in the growth and development of the Ashley Barony and Dorchester/Summerville areas. From Charles Towne, it was the first crossing point downstream over the Ashley River. During the American Revolution and American Civil War, controlling it was strategic. In recognition of its importance, it was honored with a historic marker in 2014, and in 2017, residents, town officials and members of the Summerville Preservation Society formally commemorated it with a celebration. Bacon's Bridge is the place.

John Stevens was the first owner of the crossing site. He had acquired two grants of land near the Dorchester settlement called Boo-shoo and Rose's Land. The grant was laid off in two divisions and then one of the divisions was divided into two ranges. The first range consisted of 26 lots of 50 acres each parceled out along the Ashley River. His bridge was built between 1696 and 1700. He named it Stevens's Bridge. Then, Michael Bacon received a lot in the first range and purchased Lots 6 and 7 in the same range from John Stevens. On one of these lots was situated the bridge and he renamed it Bacon's Bridge. It became a public bridge in 1722. The area around the bridge developed alongside the Town of Dorchester.

The Ashley River was navigable by small boats as high as Bacon's Bridge, approximately 30 miles from Charleston. Slann's Bridge was located three miles upstream, after which the Ashley becomes a stream and then the Cypress Swamp. During the American Revolution, Patriot and British/Loyalist commanders in the lowcountry considered Bacon's Bridge to be strategic. In February of 1780, General William Moultrie built an earthwork nearby to defend the bridge and the approaches to Charleston. The exact location of this earthwork fort is not known. Today, it is known as Moultrie’s "lost fort" and is one of the most significant regional sites from the period still to be found.

In the same year, according to the story, Francis Marion and the Second South Carolina Regiment camped under a live oak tree at Bacon's Bridge. Located on the Summerville side of the bridge, it became known as the "Marion Oak." Standing in the same location today, you can view an old oak tree on top of the bluff where a dam and a pump house was located at one time. Whether it is the same oak tree or not, is highly unlikely. The age of the tree would have to be evaluated. There is another famous "Marion Oak" located on what was the Hayes Plantation, today known as Ingleside.

About the dam and pump house, Elliot Mellenchamp Jr of Summerville explains, "The dam had two purposes. The dam converted the Ashley River into a reservoir. Fresh water flowed from the Edisto River at Givhans through the tunnel into the Ashley. The dam also separated the fresh water from the brackish water...The pump house sent the water into Summerville and Goose Creek." The old aquaduct tower remains at this location and is an historical marker on the Ashley River Blue Trail.

old aquaduct

The British gained control of the bridge. In 1782, General Nathaniel Greene's forces took Bacon's Bridge from the British that still occupied Charleston. Greene's Southern Army, including Francis Marion's militia, camped at Bacon's Bridge March of 1782. Also, Bacon's Bridge was the launching site of Americans who captured the British gunboat Alligator on the Ashley River on March 19, 1782.

It was in that same year, Colonel Francis Marion wrote these words to Peter Horry in a letter on May 3rd, “I am posted here, two miles in front of the Continental Army, within three-quarters of a mile of Bacon's Bridge. The General, according to custom, keeps me between him and the enemy." You can read those words on a trail marker in Rosebrock Park at 507 Beech Hill Rd in Summerville--a Dorchester County Park and natural setting for riverside hikes through forest and wetlands along the Ashley River with a picnic shelter. The park is well worth a visit.

Greene's papers indicate that the bridge was used as a rest and staging area for American troops. They would hold that position until July. Control of Bacon's Bridge allowed the Americans to "more effectively restrict British movements into the countryside and impede the flow of provisions and goods into Charleston."

In 1850, Reverend Robert I. Limehouse built a house on the redoubt and named his plantation "The Hill." Rev. Robert I. Limehouse was a  magistrate and a Methodist minister who is believed to have built the Old Town Hall on West Carolina Avenue. Limehouse served as mayor in 1860-1861 and again in 1867-1868.

During the Civil War, Bacon's Bridge continued to serve as an important transportation route and mustering point for soldiers. Confederate General Johnson Hagood gave orders to his forces on October 5, 1863 during the battle of Fort Wagner, "If the Union effect a crossing east of Rantowles road, running rapidly take position behind the Ashley crossing at Bacon's and Slann's Bridges, but keeping a strong advanced guard on the west side."

Before retreating from the Charleston area, Confederate troops destroyed the bridge. A Federal regiment of black combat veterans rebuilt the bridge. On May 7, 1865, the Union Provisional Brigade moved from Charleston and camped in the vicinity of Bacon's Bridge before moving into Summerville the next day.

Bacon's Bridge

Since, it has gone through several improvements. The most recent was in 2014 when the road and bridge were widened to accommodate the growing commuter traffic. The history marker was erected after the improvement was completed, but many residents are unaware of it because the bridge is a low pedestrian traffic attraction. The Howard Bridgman River Access is situated at the base of the bridge on the Dorchester side of the river. The Boat Landing is owned and operated by the Town of Summerville Parks and Recreation. Dorchester Parks future Ashley River Park entrance is also located there.

Next time you cross over South Carolina's Black Pearl on your way to or from Summerville via Bacon's Bridge, remember its strategic significance in South Carolina history and in the growth of the Charleston Lowcountry. Just another reason the Flowertown in the Pines is at the heart of it all.

History note: The old Georgian style former Prettyman House on W 2nd South Street" is decorated with a fireplace mantle and a window salvaged from the old Francis Marion Plantation.

John Grimke Drayton's Magnolia-on-the-Ashley And His Noble Vision Of Love And Affection

The ominous storm clouds of reprisal had abated, but the unforgiving intruder's fires of retribution had accomplished its merciless task. With the blinding grey smoke finally whisked away by the Ashley River's appeasing breezes, the remaining heap of suffocating ash blanketed the desecrated landscape. The grand two-story clapboard plantation house with porticoes on either side was now a heap of blackened timber. Only the brick steps and the English style ground floor basement remained. A left over lingering pungent odor crept through the surrounding gardens where the estate's precious Azalea Indica's delicate branches had once flourished in fragrant tranquility, now a trampled and twisted stroll of despair. The glory that was Magnolia Plantation had been laid to near waste. It was the early days of 1865.

In 1861, John Grimke Drayton lamented, "Shadows have become substance--and threats and bitterness have marched out of Congress and off of Paper and embodied themselves in gathering armies and the bristling implements of war. The die is cast and the fears of the Father of his country have been realized--We are no longer one People--a gulf yarns between us--a gulf which, I very much fear the largest concessions can henceforth never bridge...Everything hear looks very dark...our population walking as if it were upon the crust of a volcano."

When the ravaging Union troops grew closer and closer to Charleston, Reverend John Grimke Drayton and his family had fled Magnolia Plantation for their mountain residence at Flat Rock in North Carolina. Around 1859, he built a summer home there and named it Ravenswood. Drayton served as a rector in Flat Rock at the Wilderness Church of St. John from 1843-63. Care of Magnolia and its gardens was left in the hands of his trusted slave foreman, Adam Bennett. The Drayton family waited the inevitable.

According to stories, the marauding Union soldiers tied Adam Bennett to an oak tree on the plantation and threatened to hang him when he refused to tell them where the family silver was buried. They let him live and burned down the house.

Reverend Drayton received a letter from his mother in Charleston that his plantation had been "taken for their own" by his former slaves. In the meantime, as the story goes, Adam Bennett walked the 250 miles to Flat Rock to personally inform the Drayton’s about what had happened and the plantation's former slaves were caring for the remaining gardens.

He and his family returned to Charleston with Adam Bennett. Upon returning, he sold all but 390 acres of the plantation to raise money. He also sold off the family town house at 42 South Bay in Charleston and all of the family's sea island properties on the Coosawhatchie River and Kiawah. He went to work at restoring and expanding the previous gardens to a greater glory with the help of Bennett. His noble vision to create a series of informal romantic gardens focused on emotion, the dramatic, and the spectacular for his wife had always been the driving force. Expressing this affectionate desire to a fellow minister in Philadelphia, he once said, "...to create an earthly paradise in which my dear Julia may forever forget Philadelphia and her desire to return there."

He continued to devote himself to the enhancement of the plantation gardens despite having suffered from tuberculosis. His own cure for the illness was working outside in the gardens he loved. In 1870, the endearingly cultivated gardens were opened to the public for the first time and Magnolia Plantation was saved from ruin, but there was still no house.

Like many Charleston planters of that time, Reverend Drayton owned a summer cottage in nearby growing Summerville, which was serving as their current home. Built prior to the Revolutionary War, it was of a typical design for summer cottages at the time with four rooms--two rooms on each side of a breezeway and an attic above. In 1873, he had the cottage disassembled, loaded onto barges, and floated down the Ashley River 14 miles to Magnolia. It was then mounted on the brick remainders of the devastated house.

Today's one and a half story home has gone through several modifications and additions since Reverend John Grimke Drayton, who did not have any sons, passed the home to his elder daughter, Julia. With this action, he did what his grandfather refused to do due to the practice of primogeniture--only leaving property to a male heir. It was by that twist of fate--his uncle, William Henry, passing without a male heir and his older brother, Thomas, getting shot in a hunting mishap--John Grimke came to inherit Magnolia and the Drayton name. He was the son of Thomas and Mary Drayton's daughter Sarah Daniels, who married Thomas Smith Grimke.

The home's high steps lead to a piazza which is supported by Doric columns and enclosed with a balustrade. The two story stucco tower is set in a gable roof which also features gabled dormers. A porch was added on that surrounds the house. Later, the house was extended south and west with the addition of the present living room, dining room, two upstairs bedrooms, and a water tower. Some of the porch area was lost due to these additions.

More than anyone else, he can be credited with the internationally acclaimed informal beauty of the garden today. He introduced the first azaleas to America and was among the first to utilize Camellia Japonica in an outdoor setting--naming his particular varietal after his wife. He befriended John James Audubon, the famed writer and illustrator of Birds of America. They were such good friends that Audubon painted two of his final works at Magnolia. Later, the estate’s swamp garden would be dedicated to Audubon and bear his name.

Reverend John Grimke Drayton, the renowned horticulturalist at Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, served as rector of St. Andrew's Church until 1891. Located just two miles south of Magnolia Plantation, the church was one of the few buildings along the Ashley the Union troops did not burn to the ground at the end of the Civil War.

Just a final point of fact. Some articles written about the final days of Magnolia Plantation in 1865 attribute the burning of the house to the troops of Sherman. By the time General Sherman left Savannah with his troops, most of Charleston was already devastated by a 15 month bombardment by Union troops on Morris Island. Sherman referred to Charleston as a "mere desolated wreck" and no longer had any military importance. Taking the city would merely be a symbolic victory. Sherman's formidable force headed for Columbia.

It was reported Sherman had felt some affection for Charleston having spent four years stationed at Fort Moultrie in the 1840's. After the war, Sherman visited the Holy City and was stricken by the sight of his former home. "Anyone who is not satisfied with war should go and see Charleston," the general later wrote, "and he will pray louder and deeper than ever that the country may in the long future be spared any more war."

The famous oak tree where Adam Bennett was tied and threatened was taken down by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

The family town house at 42 South Bay is the William Gibbs House at 64 South Battery today.