Pineville, a historic refuge
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To avoid the floods and the summer insect plague, the Sinklers built summer homes on the pine ridge between the Santee and Cooper Rivers in 1793. Soon other planters followed, and Pineville was established as a summer resort for planters. A year later Gen. Thomas Moultrie introduced cotton to the area.
Capt. James Sinkler and his neighbor, Capt. Peter Gaillard, began experiments in cotton further up river where Eutaw Creek flowed into the Santee River. Their land was adjacent to Nelson's Ferry Road, the chief road to the Upcountry which crossed the Santee River at Nelson's Ferry. Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, stage coaches, carriages, and wagons rattled along the road shuffling people and goods from Charleston to Columbia and Camden.
Sinkler called his new plantation, a triangular slice of land between Eutaw Springs and the Santee River, Belvidere. Gaillard named his The Rocks. The planters and their overseerers developed a process of compressing cotton into bales which greatly improved the previous method of bagging. In a few years, Sinkler and Gaillard had made fortunes in cotton cultivation.
Capt. Sinkler died in 1800. His wife, Margaret Cantey, and his son, William, built the house at Belvidere a few years later. The home, located on a small hill and facing east, was one of the earliest cotton plantation houses in the South Carolina Lowcountry. It had a wooden frame on an open brick foundation, a gable roof, and was two full stories high.
In front of the home an avenue of trees led to Nelson's Ferry Road and the Santee River. A half- mile or so behind the house flowed Eutaw Creek which emanated from the cool, clear waters of Eutaw Springs. A mile southeast lay the historic Eutaw Springs Battleground, site of the last major battle of the Revolution in South Carolina, September 8, 1781. The British were forced to retreat to Charleston, and one month later Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.
Plantation slaves were housed along a "Negro Street" in neat whitewashed cabins. Each family had their own garden behind their home. At the end of the street was a chapel where the slaves held prayer meetings and Sunday worship services.
The love of horses ran in the veins of the Sinklers of Belvidere, from the founder, Capt. James Sinkler, to General Charles St. George Sinkler who died in 1934, the last of the Belvidere Sinkler men. They all bred and raised a stable of famous blooded stock.
A family legend speaks of an interesting ritual in the care of the thoroughbreds in antebellum days. "Each morning the head groom, in immaculate white gloves, handed an equally immaculate pair to each individual groom. Each horse had a groom.
"Each groom, after donning his gloves, was ordered to run his hands over the coat of the horse for which he was responsible. Each then showed his gloves to the head groom. If any dust or dirt showed on his white gloves, the groom was thoroughly flogged by the head groom under the supervision of the overseer. The system is said to have been highly efficient."
The sound of the cannon bombarding Fort Sumter in April 1861 was heard 60 miles away by Charles Sinkler at Belvidere. In the last year of the Civil War, raiders from General Hartwell's Union forces swarmed over Belvidere stealing or destroying everything in sight. Only after Sinkler begged Hartwell for protection was the house saved.
In 1940, however, the story was different. The Santee- Cooper Project seized Belvidere, and the magnificent house was demolished and the fertile lands where James Sinkler made a fortune in cotton culture during the last years of the 18th century sank beneath the waters of Lake Marion.
(Editor's note: Much of the above information was taken from F.M. Kirk's
description of Belvidere in A Survey of the
Early Buildings in the R egion of the Proposed
Santee and Pinopolis Re servoirs in
South Carolina by the US D epartment of
the Interior, National Parks Service, Historic
American Buildings Survey by Thomas T. Waterman in 1939.) (Next week: Belvidere surfaces after 68 years)
