Butler Island Plantation, Real Photo Postcard, 1935. Collection of Brian Brown.
After many years of decline, the historic lands and waterways of Butler Island, just south of Darien, were purchased and modernized by Col. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu (T. L.) Huston, in 1926. A dairy was part of the Butler Island Plantation enterprise before it was converted to an iceberg lettuce farm, and some of the dairy structures were maintained throughout Huston’s ownership. This barn and other related buildings have been gone for decades, but may have still been in use when R. J. Reynolds purchased the property after Huston’s death in 1938.
This real photo postcard, dated Tues. Apr. 16, 1935 wasn’t mailed, but features a somewhat exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek message on the reverse: “Near border of Georgia & Florida. Air fresh & fragrant with blossoms. Cattle have free range in this state & receive excellent attention, as card shows. Autos barely escape colliding with hogs, cows, chickens, dogs, turtles, etc. on the highways.” It isn’t signed.
Friends from Darien have just called to tell me that the historic Huston House, built on Butler Island in 1927, is engulfed in flames. The Huston House is a landmark of McIntosh County and Highway 17, the Georgia home of Col. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu (T.L.) Huston, a part owner of the New York Yankees. Babe Ruth spent time at this house during that era.
Before Huston’s association, the Butler family owned this land from at least 1790 until 1923. Their rice plantation was dependent on the labor of as many as 500 enslaved people at its peak. Multiple generations of families were chained to this land and many were buried here, as well. As the plantation declined, most of the Butler enslaved were sold at a Savannah racetrack between 2-3 March 1859, in what came to be known as the Weeping Time. Their sale to disparate buyers ensured that most would never see each other again.
In recent years, ownership has shifted between state and local sources and its future has been uncertain.
I’ve shared photos of this favorite landmark in the past, but recently located some interior views. The property has changed hands several times but I believe it’s now owned by the Department of Natural Resources or McIntosh County. Hopefully, they will stabilize this important piece of Georgia history and utilize it as an event space in the future. The interior of the house is no longer publicly accessible.
View of the antebellum rice mill chimney from one of the third floor dormers
Third floor guest quarter details, featuring built in drawers and closets
In 1926, the languishing lands of the Butler Plantation were purchased by Colonel Tillinghast L’Hommedieu (T. L.) Huston.
Colonel Huston, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and World War I, had previously been a part owner of the New York Yankees baseball team.
He built this house in 1927 and numerous baseball players were among his many guests here, including Babe Ruth.
The Huston dairy barn can be seen on the east side of US 17. The dairy, anchored by a herd of Friesians, proved a difficult enterprise and Huston transformed the property into one of the largest iceberg lettuce farms on the east coast within a decade. The remaining structures on the property, however, date to the dairy era. After Col. Huston’s death in the 1938, the property was purchased by tobacco heir R. J. Reynolds, Jr.
This structure has been identified as the farm office for the Butler Island farming operations of Col. Huston.
In front of the house is one of the landmarks of US 17 in McIntosh County, the old chimney from the steam-powered rice mill from the 1850s. An additional ruin also remains.
Heading south out of Darien on US 17, you’ll begin to notice what appear to be large ditches to your left, especially in the winter months. These are the historic canals and dikes engineered for the cultivation of rice on the plantation of Major Pierce Butler and though the industry died with the end of the Civil War, its physical evidence remains.
The Butler family of South Carolina and Philadelphia owned extensive cotton and rice plantations on the Georgia coast. Pierce Butler (1744-1822) was the son of a minor Irish aristocrat and after service as a major in His Majesty’s Twenty-ninth Regiment came to the colonies in 1767 and married Mary Middleton, the daughter of a prominent South Carolina planter. He sided with the colonies during the Revolution and sold his army commission to purchase Hampton Point Plantation on St. Simons Island. In 1787 he was app0inted a South Carolina delegate to the constitutional convention and was integral to securing the protection of slavery as an institution in our nation’s founding document. By 1793 he owned over 500 slaves, who made him a fortune in cotton and rice. He spent most of his time in Philadelphia. He owned this land from at least 1790 until his death in 1822, and after interim management by Roswell King (namesake of Roswell, Georgia), it passed to his grandson, Pierce Mease Butler, in 1838.
Pierce Mease Butler (1806-1867), born Butler Mease, changed his surname to honor his grandfather as the will required and around this time married the famed English actress Fanny Kemble. Kemble was opposed to slavery but upon being told that conditions were “good” at the plantation, coerced her husband into taking her to see it for herself, in 1838-1839. She immediately noted that the conditions were far from good and kept a journal of her time there. Two daughters and a contentious divorce would follow, with Pierce Mease Butler gaining custody of the children.
Years of poor money management and lavish spending left Pierce Mease Butler financially insolvent and his only option was selling off his slaves. At an old racetrack in Savannah between 2-3 March 1859, the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States saw the liquidation of 429 slaves. Among slaves it came to be known as “The Weeping Time” for its displacement of families, many of whom never saw each other again. A few years later, at the height of the Civil War, Fanny Kemble published her controversial Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, first in her native England where it was a huge bestseller and then in America, where it was widely popular in the North and nearly as popular, if reviled, in the South. Its firsthand accounts of the horrors of slavery are said to have influenced England to side against the confederacy.
After the war, the plantation failed without the benefit of free labor, and Pierce Mease Butler died of malaria in 1867. His daughter, Frances Kemble Butler Leigh, inherited the lands and tried to keep them profitable but gave up after ten years. She wrote of her experiences in Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War (1883). The property eventually passed to her nephew Owen Wister (famed author of The Virginian) who sold off the last of the property in 1923.
The area is now publicly accessible and is a popular spot for birding and hiking. Always bring insect repellent, though, even in winter.
