ELIZABETH TRAPIER MARTIN
Elizabeth Trapier (1745-1817) had owned what became the Kaminski House property for over a decade when in 1778, she married widower Edward Martin (d. ca.1787), originally from England. Martin was first a merchant in Charleston, where he formed a mercantile partnership with Englishman Thomas Shirley. Their firm, Martin & Shirley, was active in the importation of enslaved workers (1763-1765), and they partnered in shares of a sloop, a brigantine, and two schooners.
In Charleston, Edward Martin served as commissioner of the workhouse and markets (1762-1765). In Georgetown, he served as sheriff of Georgetown District, and ended his days as a planter on the Waccamaw River. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County. 284n.] In 1784, Martin purchased 746½ acres and settled Belle Voir Plantation, afterward renamed Friendfield and today a part of Hobcaw Barony. Elizabeth Trapier Martin named the property Belle Voir, which means "beautiful view" in French. [Suzanne Cameron Linder and Marta Leslie Thacker, Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of Georgetown County and the Santee River (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Department of Archives and History), 2001: 4: 18.] It is sometimes referred to as Belvoir Planation.
The same year Elizabeth married Edward Martin, her brother Paul Trapier, III (1749-1778), died. Educated in England at Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge, and admitted to the Middle Temple, London in 1767, he had been a member of the Provincial Congress and the committee of safety for Georgetown, a member of the South Carolina general assembly in 1776, and justice of the peace in 1776. Trapier, III, served in the Revolutionary War as captain of the Georgetown Artillery. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1777 but did not attend due to illness. At his death, he left a wife, his first cousin, Elizabeth Foissin Trapier (1757-1836), and four children: Paul Trapier, IV; Benjamin Foisson Trapier; Magdalene Elizabeth Trapier; and William Windham Trapier.
After the death of their father, the children lived with their Aunt Elizabeth and Edward Martin seasonally in the house on the Bluff, from where their grandfather, Paul Trapier, helped look after them. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 159.] It is unclear if their mother lived with them. In 1784, Elizabeth Foissin Trapier remarried, to Captain Albert Roux (1755-1791), a Revolutionary War officer and Georgetown merchant born in Switzerland. Roux owned Serenity Plantation, lands just to the west of where the steel mill stands today on the Sampit River. He served as a lieutenant, then captain in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment under General Francis Marion in the Revolution. Albert partnered with his younger brothers Lewis and Francis in the Georgetown mercantile firm, Albert Roux and Company. In the 1790 census, Albert is listed as living in All Saint’s Parish, Georgetown, with his wife, and his brother Francis. The next year, in 1791 Captain Albert Roux died in Columbia, South Carolina, leaving no children.
Edward Martin and Elizabeth Trapier evidently did not combine their estates. At his death in 1787, Martin left Belle Voir Plantation, two building lots in Georgetown, and forest land on Black River to his brother in England. [John Martin Papers, 1787-1802, South Carolina Historical Society, at https://schistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Martin-John-papers-1067.0.pdf] At her death in 1817, Elizabeth left her property to her niece, Magdalen Trapier.
by Jennie Holton Fant