The Human History of the Kaminski House: The Owners
The fascinating thing about the Kaminski House Museum is that on its grounds is encompassed the entire history of Georgetown. The original lands date back to the early founding of Georgetown, two lots on the Sampit River that were first owned separately by outside investors. Paul Trapier, Jr. purchased one lot in 1758, another in 1759, and added a third lot to the property in 1767. And here the story begins.
Many people owned the house over the decades before Harold and Julia Kaminski purchased the property in 1931. Who were they? That is what I wanted to know. So I did a deep dive into the human history of the property to see what we could learn. Working with the scant documentation that exists and considering I haven’t access to city directors or county or city records, due to the coronavirus closings, I’ve done what I can.
I have included research performed by the Museum’s Dave Gorman, and have taken it further, tying the Kaminski house and property and its owners to the larger history of the region. Here is what I found.
We will be posting the owners one at a time for the next weeks, so stay tuned.
This is the story, and these were the owners:
Paul Trapier
Paul Trapier, Jr. owned the property 1758-1767, when he gave it to his daughter, Elizabeth.
Paul Trapier, Jr. (1716-1793) was the son of Paul Trapier and Elizabeth DuGué, whose French Huguenot families were among the earliest colonists of Carolina. The Trapiers settled circa 1695 on the French Santee in Berkeley County. Paul, Jr. was a minor when his father died, leaving him a town house in Charleston. He first sold goods on commission at a store in Georgetown for Joseph Wragg from Charleston. In 1741, Wragg wrote a letter of credit to help Trapier get a loan and goods in London. He went to London to secure credit and goods and returned to Georgetown to trade on his own. By the mid-1740s, he had expanded and opened a store in Charleston, and through the 1750s, he attained wealth on export sales in naval stores, rice, and indigo. [George Rogers, History of Georgetown County (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 1970: 49, 50, 52.]
In 1743, Trapier, Jr. married Magdalen Horry (1715-1767), the daughter of Huguenot immigrant Elias Horry and Marguerite Huger from the parish of Prince George, Winyah. In the decade after their marriage, the Trapiers, Horry and Lynch families, entangled by intermarriage, emerged as the region’s three most influential families and dominated politics. Paul Trapier, given power of attorney in many transactions, represented numerous Carolina men in business matters. He attended sessions of the Commons House of Assembly in Charleston, first taking his seat in 1748, and remained a political figure through the 1750s. [Rogers, History of Georgetown: 49, 50, 61.] Well-connected and well-known both in Charleston and Georgetown, he was soon referred to as the “king of Georgetown.” He and Magdalen had two children, Elizabeth, born in 1745, and Paul Trapier, III, born in 1749.
Trapier, Jr. turned from merchant to planter when he purchased 757 acres from the estate of his friend, John Waties, Esq., after the latter’s death in 1760. In 1762 he established the family home at Windsor, a rice plantation on the Black River. As late as 1790, he was one of the largest planters in the region. [Rogers, History of Georgetown:166.] Meanwhile, three London MPs, who were merchants, partnered as speculative investors, hoping to turn a huge profit on Carolina lands. In 1765 they appointed Trapier as a trustee with “full power of attorney and sale” of the original parcels, tracts and plantations of Hobcaw Barony, a lucrative venture for Trapier. [Rogers, History of Georgetown: 23.] He himself eventually obtained about 2,447 acres of the Georgetown region, and over a thousand acres in Granville County (near Beaufort). [N. Louise Bailey, Mary L. Morgan, Carolyn R. Taylor, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina Senate, 1776-1985, Volume 3 (University of South Carolina Press), 1986:1632.]
Trapier first purchased a lot of the property on which the Kaminski House stands as an investment in 1758 and acquired a second lot of the property in 1759, thereby combining two lots that had sold separately since the town lands were first granted. These lots had some interesting prior owners, such as Gabriel Manigault from Charleston, but the earliest owners were likely investors. Situated on high ground overlooking the Sampit River, the property was referred to as “the Bluff.” Trapier held the two lots until after the death of his wife, Magdalen in 1767, when he, planning to remarry, decided to first settle his “spinster” daughter, Elizabeth, who he feared would never marry. He gifted her three lots, having added a third lot to the property when he turned it over to Elizabeth. In 1769, he married Elizabeth Rothmahler Waties, the widow of his late friend, John Waties, Esq.
Trapier owned North Island when in 1789, he made a “gratuitous cession" of seven acres to the federal government for the building of a lighthouse on the island. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 202.] ] No money was available until late 1798, when Congress appropriated $7,000 to build the lighthouse. The lighthouse was completed in early 1801, after Trapier’s death, and still stands.
He died in October of 1793 and was buried beside his first wife and son in Prince George Winyah Churchyard.
by Jennie Holton Fant