In the first half of the nineteenth century, Georgetown was at the heart of one of the most productive rice-growing regions in the world, which resulted in Georgetown landowners who were among the richest Americans in the country. At the end of the Civil War, the emancipation of the slaves brought an end to the enforced free labor that propelled these rice planters to such riches, resulting in the demise of large-scale rice-growing in the region. Land prices plunged and in the early twentieth century, wealthy Northerners began purchasing South Carolina lowcountry plantations with their abandoned ricefields (which were selling dirt cheap) for seasonal use as winter residences and hunting retreats.
This time of year, it is fun to look back to this rich and colorful time in Georgetown’s history known as “the second northern invasion.”
It had not happened in a vacuum. According to Georgetown historian George Rogers, the entire nation had been experiencing a retrospective tendency, which began with the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States. It was held in Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the next years, there was a rash of other nostalgic festivities, which culminated in 1889 with a great society ball in New York City celebrating the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration.
Ward McAlliister, a Savannah native who had become the arbiter of New York society, helped plan New York City’s “great society ball,” and he began to “look back” in history. He had earlier created, with New York society maven Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the “Four Hundred,” a sort of social register for the very rich. Soon McAllister was fashioning a fascination with southern life and southern ancestors among the upper class of New York and Newport. He was claiming his own ancestral connection to “the Wards of Waccamaw,” and both McAllister and Mrs. Vanderbilt soon discovered they were descended from Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox.” Shortly after, they were busy marking Marion’s grave in South Carolina, where a period of glorifying of the antebellum South was underway as well.
An unrelated event happened in 1894, when President Grover Cleveland visited Georgetown on a duck hunting expedition and was rumored to have fallen out of a skiff and had to be hoisted out of the water. Suddenly newspapers across the U.S. were publicizing Cleveland’s visit, and noting the “fine duck shooting available in Georgetown waters.”
These occurrences coincided with the final collapse of rice-growing in the lowcountry region. From 1893 to 1913, a series of storms and hurricanes upended the ricefields of the few remaining planters and joint-stock companies participating in commercial rice culture. After 1913, nobody could afford what it would take to repair the infrastructure, nor compete with increasing competition from Southwestern rice growers. Thus, the history of rice cultivation in the lowcountry was at an end.
Due to all these events, in the years just before and after 1900, wealthy northerners (some of them “new” northern industrialists in search of status) were searching for plantations in the South Carolina lowcountry. These northerners came seeking southern roots, as well as mild weather, outdoor sports, and the quaint, antiquated charm of small southern towns. In some cases, single owners bought up numerous plantation lands to combine into winter estates or hunting preserves.
In the Georgetown region, there were Vanderbilts, du Ponts, and Isaac Emerson, inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, whose Arcadia would consist of seven former rice plantations. The Santee Gun Club formed and bought twelve plantations of 20,00 acres in the Santee Delta south of Georgetown. Of course, there was Wall Street financier and South Carolina-native Bernard Baruch of Hobcaw Barony (whose daughter, Belle, would one day create the Belle W. Baruch Foundation to dedicate the 16,000-acre Hobcaw Barony to research and education). There was Archer Huntington, one of the richest men in the country, and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, who created Brookgreen Gardens from four plantation properties (which Huntington left to the people of South Carolina in his will). There was sportsman Thomas G. Samworth of Delaware (who would gift 500 acres of former plantation lands at Plantersville to South Carolina, which resulted in Samworth Game Preserve), and Thomas Yawkey, owner of the Boston Red Sox, who became title-holder to a chain of islands near Georgetown, which included North Island, South Island, Sand Island, and a majority of Cat Island (Yawkey at his death willed 20,000 acres to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources). There was Jessie Metcalfe of Rhode Island, who purchased a large acreage of plantations along the Pee Dee River, as well as Sandy Island, and Dr. Henry Norris of Pennsylvania, who bought Litchfield Plantation. There was Robert Goelet from New York City, heir, businessman and yachtsman, who acquired Wedgefield. Walker Inman, half-brother of heiress Doris Duke, purchased Greenfield Plantation. And there were many more, so many that, according to George Rogers, “by 1931 there was scarcely a plantation left in the hands of native South Carolinians.”
In fact, in 1931, when Harold and Julia Kaminski purchased what is now the Kaminski House Museum, they bought the property from two prominent New Yorkers who had used the house as a winter residence during the sporting season. Harold Aymar Sands and Paulding Fosdick, like many of their northern friends who bought houses and plantations in the region, had purchased the Georgetown house as a seasonal residence for hunting, fishing, and for socializing with their friends.
The socializing among these wealthy northerners spilled over into local Georgetown society, and added a certain pizazz to an otherwise insular region. Harold Kaminski and his family were related to Bernard Baruch through his mother’s family, the Wolfes, and Harold and Julia Kaminski had numerous other friends and acquaintances among the “rich Yankees,” with whom they socialized. Even Doris Duke (who was rich but not a Yankee) visited Julia Kaminski at the Kaminski House, at which time the two were photographed on the steps to the front piazza.
Foremost among the Kaminski’s northern friends was Colonel Robert Montgomery and his wife (and second cousin), Hope Binny Tyler, from Philadelphia’s Main Line. Colonel Montgomery was an investment banker and founder of Montgomery, Scott & Co. of Philadelphia (today known as Janney Montgomery Scott). The Montgomerys owned Ardrossan Estate at Villanova, Pennsylvania, where they lived in a 50-room, 33,000-square-foot Georgian Revival manor home, which still stands today. After visiting a friend’s plantation near Georgetown in 1931, Robert Montgomery purchased, Mansfield, a 780-acre plantation on the banks of the Black River, which he restored. The Montgomerys spent their winters at Mansfield, employing a staff of locals. (The hiring of locals by all of these resident northerners, as well as their patronage of local businesses, gave the Georgetown economy a much-needed boost during these hard economic times.) Evidently, much entertaining went on at Mansfield, “boat trips, picnics, duck hunting and socializing,” as well as drinking, so much so that in the winter of 1935, a Georgetown doctor ordered Robert Montgomery to bed and afterward, home to Philadelphia, after a bout of “excessive entertaining and drinking” at Mansfield. However, even though Hope Montgomery once remarked, “People went down there and drank themselves to death,“ she wintered at Georgetown in an annual migration she continued even after Robert’s death at Mansfield in 1949. In fact, the Montgomery family would own Mansfield for nearly forty years. It remained in the family until after Hope’s death in 1970.
It’s unclear when it began, or how often Harold and Julia Kaminski socialized with the Montgomerys, but they were clearly good friends. Hope loved to embroider and passed much of her life “with needlepoint in her lap.” Today, in the library and ballroom of Ardossan, which is still in the family, Hope Montgomery’s two remarkable needlepoint sofa covers are preserved, and her needlepoint vignettes of Ardrossan home life are framed on the walls. And in the foyer of the Kaminski House Museum, on the stairwell wall, there hangs a framed needlepoint image of the Kaminski House that Hope Montgomery created for Julia.
Colonel Robert and Hope Montgomery’s daughter, Helen Hope Montgomery (1904-1995), well known as a young socialite for her extravagant parties, is said to have been the inspiration for the character of Tracy Lord in Philip Barry’s 1939 play that was made into the movie, The Philadelphia Story ( in which she was immortalized by actress Katherine Hepburn). She eventually married Edgar Scott, heir to the Philadelphia Railroad fortune, and lived part of the year at Ardrossan, sometimes making the southern pilgrimage to Mansfield with her mother. Hope Montgomery Scott remained in touch with Julia, sending a number of postcards through the years, when she and her mother would arrive back at Ardrossan after a winter season at Mansfield. Arriving home in 1957, she sent Julia a postcard with a picture of Ardossan on the front. It reads, "Dear Julie, arrived safely, 14 hours, had a good trip. I hope your well. Am having a nice time with mum. Lots of love, Hope.” It is addressed to Mrs. Harold Kaminski, Georgetown, South Carolina, and postmarked Villanova, Pennsylvania, on July 24, 1957.
So once upon a time, during this time of the year, the “rich Yankees” would have been in residence on plantations around the lowcountry. Therefore it’s festive to remember this flamboyant, outdoor sports-loving, and very social, chapter in the history of the Georgetown region. I, for one, am sorry I missed it!
After World War, II, the second invasion was generally at an end. Most of these seasonal residents had sold their winter retreats and moved on. A number of plantations sold to local lumber concerns. Yet there remained the few that continued to own their properties for subsequent decades, like Julia Kamnski’s friend, Hope Montgomery, and the heirs of Isaac Emerson, who have continued to reside at Arcadia on Waccamaw Neck, among others.
As fun and glamourous as it seems in retrospect, the fact remains that the Georgetown region survived the Depression largely due to these wealthy northerners, and those mentioned above became benefactors, leaving properties and legacies that remain intrinsic and vital to the region today.
Sources:
George C. Rogers, Jr., The History Of Georgetown County, South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 1970. See Chapter XXI: “The Rich Yankees.”
Janny Scott, The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, And The Story Of My Father (New York: Riverhead Books), 2019.
John Timpane, “The Ardrossan Estate: Last Surviving Gem of the Main Line, a 'Philadelphia Story' Looking For a Future,” The Philadelphia Enquirer (February 16, 2018): See Arts and Culture.
By Jennie Holton Fant