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 their 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 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 drew closer and closer to Charleston, Reverend John Grimké Drayton and his family fled Magnolia Plantation for their mountain residence at Flat Rock, North Carolina. Around 1859, he built a summer home there and named it Ravenswood. Drayton served as 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 enslaved foreman, Adam Bennett. The Drayton family waited for 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 stating 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 Draytons of what had happened, and that the plantation’s formerly enslaved workers 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 the family townhouse at 42 South Bay in Charleston and all of the family’s sea‑island properties on the Coosawhatchie River and Kiawah. He set to work restoring and expanding the gardens to an even greater glory with Bennett’s help. 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 his 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 suffering 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 era, Reverend Drayton owned a summer cottage in nearby, growing Summerville, which served as the family’s current home. Built prior to the Revolutionary War, it followed the typical design of summer cottages at the time: four rooms—two on each side of a breezeway—with an attic above. In 1873, he had the cottage disassembled, loaded onto barges, and floated down the Ashley River fourteen miles to Magnolia. It was then mounted atop the brick remnants of the devastated house.

Today’s one‑and‑a‑half‑story home has undergone several modifications and additions since Reverend John Grimké Drayton—who had no sons—passed the home to his elder daughter, Julia. In doing so, he broke from his grandfather’s adherence to primogeniture, the practice of leaving property only to a male heir. It was by that twist of fate—his uncle, William Henry, dying without a male heir, and his older brother, Thomas, being shot in a hunting mishap—that John Grimké 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 Grimké.

The home’s high steps lead to a piazza supported by Doric columns and enclosed with a balustrade. The two‑story stucco tower is set into a gabled roof that also features gabled dormers. A porch was later added that surrounds the house. In time, the home 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 original porch area was lost due to these expansions.

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 earliest 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. Their friendship was so close 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 Grimké 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 that Union troops did not burn to the ground at the end of the Civil War.

A final point of fact: Some articles written about the last days of Magnolia Plantation in 1865 attribute the burning of the house to Sherman’s troops. By the time General Sherman left Savannah with his forces, most of Charleston had already been devastated by a fifteen‑month bombardment by Union troops on Morris Island. Sherman referred to Charleston as a “mere desolated wreck” and believed it no longer held military importance. Taking the city would have been merely symbolic. His formidable army headed for Columbia instead.

It was reported that Sherman felt some affection for Charleston, having spent four years stationed at Fort Moultrie in the 1840s. After the war, he visited the Holy City and was struck 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 townhouse at 42 South Bay is today the William Gibbs House at 64 South Battery.