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The nouveau riche beaus
of Charleston
It's hard to imagine that Charleston's wealthy elite were
in fact the nouveau riche of the South and that many a hasty
fortune and a gracious antebellum home were built by
growing tobacco in the dirt. But the Carolinas wealth didn't
only come from tobacco. Carolina Gold was what they
called rice in the Low Country - partly for
the colour it turned when ripe and partly because of the wealth
it brought them.
Middleton Place plantation
At Middleton Place, Charleston, see a thriving
restoration of eighteenth and nineteenth century rice plantation
life. This was once the home of the prominent Middleton
family - who include amongst them a signer of the Declaration
of Independence, a Governor of South Carolina and a signer
of the Ordinance of Secession.
The grounds were always important to the plantation owners
and those at Middle Place are 65 acres of the oldest landscaped
gardens in the nation dating back to the 1740s and following
the principles of the Palace of Versailles featuring
swans, allees, sundials, statues, sculpted terraces, parterres,
reflection pools - all designed with elegant symmetry and
balance.
The slaves of Middleton
Place
But plantation life wasn't all flowers and foxhunts. It was
slave labour that created the gardens, built the house,
and toiled in the rice fields - so it was the slaves who were
instrumental in the success and survival of the plantation.
Enslaved Africans retained their tastes for certain foods
and spices even though they were in the Low Country. On the
plantation they ate in a West African style and many of their
dishes now have become part of what is known as Low Country
Fare. |
