By Grover Rye The Heyward family reunion was held at Goodwill Plantation on April 17, 2010. The Heyward family owned six rice plantations on the Combahee River near Beaufort, S.C., an ocean schooner named the Acorn, and Goodwill Plantation on the Wateree River in Lower Richland County.

E. B. Heyward owned Goodwill Plantation from 1858 to 1869 where his son Duncan Clinch Heyward was born in 1864 and who later became governor of South Carolina. During this time period many famous people came to Goodwill Plantation including, Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederate States of America), Mary Boykin Chestnut (author of The Diary from Dixie), and James Chestnut, U.S. Senator and C.S.A. brigadier general.

There were 158 people at the reunion. They were given a tour of Goodwill Plantation’s main house, slave houses, overseers house, mill house, blacksmith shop, and the 80–acre mill pond by reenactors in 1860 costumes. This group included Grover Rye, Margaret Rye, their grandson Jacob, Vicki Evans, and some fine Southern ladies.