By Cristin Jordan
It was towards the end of my spring break, and I wanted a quick easy getaway, so I’d feel like I did something with my time off. I’ve been to Jekyll Island which is a coastal island in South Georgia, so I figured I’d try St. Simons.
My priority was a visit to the Hofwyl Broadfield Plantation. I took my 13-year-old daughter with me, and we both enjoyed it. The tour was 13 dollars for the boths us. The guide offered lots of information about details regarding the house and the family; however, there wasn’t any information about the slaves that worked the rice plantation at the time.
The plantation remained with the same family for five generations. Ophelia Dent was the last heir to live there. She didn’t have any children, so she left the property to the state of Georgia. Before her death she stipulated that her butler would have a job at the property. She also left him a trust.
I did take an interest in the butler. His name was Rudolph Capers. His grandmother who was a slave was a cook on the plantation along with other relatives years earlier. Dent started working at the plantation in 1933. He worked with Dent for the next 40 years.
After Ophelia Dent died in 1973 Capers began giving tours of the property. I believe he died in the 1980s. It was interesting to me to learn that someone who lived up until the 1980s…had grandparents who were slaves.
I also learned that the Gullah Geechie cultured developed because the slave owners in this part of the country often spent months away from their plantations due to the heat and the fear of malaria. As a result, the slaves had more time to themselves and a creole culture was able to emerge.
After the tour we checked into our hotel which was actually on St. Simons. The plantation was in Brunswick. We changed and walked along the beach looking for shells. We didn’t find many shells, but there were a ton of jellyfish! Yikes.
It was a nice short easy trip.
For more information about St. Simons visit the link below .
It makes a difference to get out and explore, doesn’t it?!
That’s interesting about the Gullah Geechie and how they were able to have more space/time to develop a culture of their own! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for reading. I really enjoyed learning about it.