Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation
A Do-It-Yourself Tour of an Antebellum Georgia Rice Plantation
No one lived in more refinement than the rice planters. Nowhere is their life
better documented than Hofwyl-Broadfield. No one worked under worse conditions than the rice slaves. And nowhere is their life better remembered than this plantation. Boasting the finest rice culture museum in the state and a panoramic view of the old rice fields, the plantation estate also offers a personal look into the antebellum home of a rice planting family who owned the property for almost two hundred years. Photo 1: The Hofwyl-Broadfield plantation house.
In 1806 the slaves of William Brailsford and his son-in-law James Troup carved a rice plantation out of a cypress swamp along the Altamaha River. When Troup died in 1849, the plantation had 7,300 acres, 375 slaves, and an $80,000 debt, a crushing financial obligation that ill-affected the family for generations. Troup’s daughter Ophelia and her husband George Dent inherited the estate and built the house that stands today.
The plantation steadily produced rice until the Civil War when George and his son James, 15, left to serve in the Confederate army. Ophelia and the other children moved to a refugee settlement near Waycross. The Dents gave up much of the estate after the war to pay for taxes. When James Dent took over the plantation’s management in the 1880s, the wealth had gone. He continued
growing rice, but with little success. The end of slavery meant the end of cheap labor. In 1915 a new strain of rice was invented by the Japanese that could be grown inland with machinery, thereby ending the production of rice on the east coast. Photo 2: The Dent family about 1900
With the best interpretive history of coastal rice culture in the state, the visitor center has a large diorama illustrating the layout of the fields and excellent displays of the tools and technology used in rice cultivation, like handmade reed baskets and tidal powered rice mill timbers. A professional, 17-minute documentary offers a revealing look into the lives of whites and blacks on the plantation, while another documents rice cultivation. Graphic models and displays in the museum chronicle the contributions slaves made to rice culture. Many came directly from West Africa, bringing with them valuable knowledge about rice cultivation and tools, such as rice fans, flat baskets and a mortar and pestle to remove rice hulls. Some worked as engineers, boat makers and carpenters to create the impressive rice field infrastructure.
Outside the visitor center, a short nature trail to the left goes to the edge of a river marsh that once grew the Hofwyl-Broadfield rice. Shortly before it reaches the marsh, the tabby ruins of a rice mill appear on the right. Continue straight ahead onto a historic dike, made in large part with shells, which leads to a platform that overlooks the old rice fields.
Looking at the inhospitable marsh, one can easily imagine the perils faced by the slaves: malaria, mosquitoes and burning heat. Cultivating rice proved a most unhealthy occupation, much worse than picking cotton. Rampant sickness meant an extremely high turnover rate.
“A rice plantation is, in fact, a huge hydraulic machine maintained by constant warring against the rivers,” observed Edward King in The Great South in 1875.
Slaves made the technological feat possible through tedious work. They
cleared 50-yard swaths, between 50 to 80 feet from the river water line, dug ditches 8-feet wide and 5-feet deep, scooping up the thick Altamaha River mud to form the dikes. They sowed the seeds in early spring, covering them with mud by hoe, followed by constant weeding and four managed floods over the summer. Astrology played a role in the planting. Careful considerations of the full moon and arrival of the spring flood tide determined when to plant. High and low tides during full and new moons, moving the Altamaha River to its highest and lowest points, also presented the best occasions to irrigate and drain the fields during the growing season. Photo 3: Rice field workers about 1900
During harvest, the workers cut the grain by hand with a rice hook, left the grain on the stubble for a day to dry and tied it in sheaves. They then loaded the sheaves aboard flat boats, transported then to the mill house or yard for curing and put them away in large stacks about 14 feet in diameter. Each contained about 300 bushels of rice when threshed. Either a threshing mill removed the seed from the harvested rice plant, or slaves threshed it manually, using hand flails like those used since Biblical times. Then the rice was winnowed, mostly by hand, which separated the grain from the hull and other chaff.
For details on visiting Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation click here.