THOMAS DAGGETT
Thomas West Daggett (1828-1893) owned the property of what is now the Kaminski House Museum for less than a year, but he makes for one of the more interesting owners. Daggett, born in Bedford, Massachusetts, came south when he was sixteen years old and found work in Charleston as an apprentice in a machine shop. The skills he learned qualified him as an engineer. This led him to Darien, Georgia, to run a sawmill. He soon returned to manage Francis Marion Weston’s rice mill on Waccamaw Neck at Laurel Hill, one of the plantation properties that today comprise Brookgreen Gardens. He leased the mill and was the miller, which he advertised to the outlying region in the newspaper. At the start of the Civil War, Daggett served as a captain in the Waccamaw Light Artillery. He entered Confederate service as an ordnance officer and was eventually made responsible for all the coastal defenses from Little River to Georgetown.
Near the end of the war, Georgetown surrendered to the Union Army (February 25, 1865). The next day, Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren entered Winyah Bay to take over the city. He put the city under martial law and freed the slaves, ordering their prior owners to provide them with provisions for sixty days. Dahlgren afterward turned his flagship, the Harvest Moon, back down the bay. He toured a silenced Battery White and spent the night of February 28 anchored opposite the fort. On the morning of March 1, 1865, as he attempted to sail back up the bay his ship hit a crude floating mine and sank. Adm. Dahlgren survived but a captain’s steward was killed. The bomb was the work of Capt. Thomas Daggett, fashioned it is said, on "the second floor of the oldest store in Georgetown, occupied at the time by S. W. Rouquie, and later by H. Kaminski." The wreck of the Harvest Moon can still be seen, or at least a section of the flagship remains visible at low tide in Winyah Bay. [The Independent Republic Quarterly Vol.27 No.3; Summer 1993: 19.]
Before the Civil War, Daggett had attained some financial comfort as lessee of the mill at Laurel Hill. After the war, he, like most southerners, experienced financial reversals. It is unclear under what condition he bought and sold the house on the Bluff.
What is known is that in 1866, he sold the house and property to Arthur Morgan.
by Jennie Holton Fant