This program was made possible in part by the Barbados Tourism Authority.

Barbados.

Just beyond your imagination.

♪ A production of South Carolina E Jean Pinkston> In August of 1669, three ships left England after stopping briefly in Ireland.

They proceeded to the island of Barbados in the British West Indies.

While in Barbados, a valuable commodity was added to the cargo, African slaves.

Rhoda Green> This plot was put here to commemorate the number of Africans who were brought to these shores.

During the period of slavery, during the plantation era.

And the significance to Barbados that during the time period, slaves would have been brought from Africa to Barbados, and from Barbados to Charleston.

The slaves were quarantined here, and then they were moved into the city and other places to work on plantations.

So the connection is Africa to Barbados and from Barbados to Charleston.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Jean> Today, links to Barbados can be found throughout South Carolina.

In Barbados, after years of training, Erika Jelani weaves baskets in the colorful Caribbean tradition while in South Carolina.

Maybelle Coakley of Mount Pleasant follows centuries of ancestral tradition with her baskets woven from sweetgrass as she weaves the fragile strands into intricate patterns with care.

Her art is lovingly guided by her mother and grandmother and all those who came before.

With her skilled hands, she binds together the knowledge of generations, the heritage of all those who led the way from Africa to the Caribbean to South Carolina.

The first group of settlers sailing from Barbados to new beginnings in America arrived in April of 1670 on the 200 ton frigate Carolina, under the command of Captain Henry Brain.

The group had originally intended to settle in the Port Royal area, but were discouraged by the presence of Spaniards sailing farther north.

They were directed by friendly N to a large harbor records say they entered the first Bold Creek on the southwestern side of a wide river on a bluff overlooking the creek, they established a settlement called Albemarle Point and later Charlestown.

The river was named the Ashley in honor of the most active Lord proprietor, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper.

There were a total of 93 passengers aboard the Carolina.

29 were men of property referred to as Masters and Free Persons, and the remainder were white indentured servants bound to owners for 2 to 7 years to pay their passage.

The African slaves who were aboard were not noted as passengers.

Colonel William Sail, a Jamaican who had been designated the first governor of the colony, was described by Captain William Brain as being ancient and crazy.

Captain Joseph West, who would later assume the role of governor, was noted as being stout hearted and faithful.

Another colonist, Captain Florence O'Sullivan, after whom Sullivan's Island would later be named, was described as a brawling Irish soldier of fortune.

One of the primary directives of the first settlers, as given them by the Lord proprietors of the colony, was to provide for the belly and to make some experiment of what the land will best produce.

A large number of these first settlers and others who would follow had experience in colonization, which is probably why the colony of Charlestown succeeded.

They and their ancestors had colonized the island of Barbados, and it was from the English colony of Barbados that the English colony of South Carolina originated.

Dr. Walter Edgar> South Carolina was a colony of a colony, and it was the colony of the colony of Barbados, During the first generation of settlement, over half of the European population and over half of the African-Ame came from the island, either the island of Barbados itself or the other care of English Caribbean islands to South Carolinians in the 17th century.

If you came from the English spe you came from Barbados.

Now...

I think it's important to understand that culturally, most of the English speaking Caribbean were product island, were products of the cultural hearth, which is what anthropologists use of the culture of Barbados.

So Barbados really was the center of of a very strong culture that was transmitted to the other English Caribbean islands and then to South Carolina.

Jean> The most easterly island i is a small coral island approximately 166 square miles in area.

It is 21 miles long and 14 miles wide at its widest point, but its small size is no indication of the tremendous influence it wielded in the development of the British West Indies and South Carolina.

Barbados was known to the Spanish by 1500, and Pedro Ocampos, a Portuguese mariner, landed there in 1536.

The first Englishman to land at Barbados was Captain Simon Gordon in 1620, who found no inhabitants.

Then, in 1625 Captain John Powell, commanding the British ship, Olive, stopped by on his way home from Brazil.

He explored the island and claimed it for the English crown.

Two years later, in February of 1627, a group of settlers aboard the ship William and John, landed in Barbados.

Their settlement, first called Jamestown, was later renamed Whole Town.

Barbados began as a slave colony, but ironically slavery in this English settlement that would one day supply much of the Caribbean and the Carolinas with African slave labor, began its existence accidentally.

Trevor Marshall> The institution with the settlement of Barbados in 1627.

On that date, 17th of February, when the first set of Englishmen came ashore, they brought with them ten Africans.

Now this was happenstance.

It was not intended, but the these 80 persons in the William and John, on its way out from England, came in contact with a Spanish galleon, and in the conditions of unceasing warfare, especially on the high seas, as obtained during that period, the Englishmen ordered the Spaniards to heave to, and they collected anything on board the Spanish galleon that was merchant able to use the terms of the day so happened that they had ten Africans on board that ship.

So that Barbados is singular in this respect, in that other Caribbean territories and the Americas begin their modern existence with an Amerindian population, what you would call in the United States, Native Americans.

Then there is the intrusion of Europeans, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, Dutch, French.

And there is that bruising contact between Amerindians and Europeans resulting in some genocide.

But definitely a dwindling of that population.

And it is then about 100 years afterwards, in some cases, in other cases 50, that the Africans are introduced In Barbados, this case, there's a meeting of African and Englishmen, in a master slave relationship is instantaneous.

It is coterminous with the establishment of Barbados as an English colony in 1627.

Jean> The number of Africans in Barbados remained relatively few until 1640.

Then the introduction of sugar as a staple crop brought about a need for a large labor force.

The production of sugar in Barbados came about due to a number of historical occurrences.

Sugar was first produced in northeast Brazil, and much of the technology was in the hands of Dutch Jews.

When the Catholic Inquisition came to Brazil, the Jews fled northward, many coming to Barbados, which had offered them asylum >> Within 15 years of Barbados being colonized, We got the movement of this technology coming up to Barbados along with these Dutch Jewish refugees.

And at the same time, conditions in England were changing.

And during the next few years, a lot of Royalists fled, to Barbados from the civil, what was going to become And they brought a lot of money.

And so we had the coincidence of, technology and capital.

And the third thing was that sugar then was fetching huge prices.

It was a sort of quite a rarity still, prices of a guinea for a pound of good refined sugar and that sort of thing.

And so there was a market, the capital and the technology, and they all coincided in Barbados.

And it's just one of the wonders of history that there was a period of several years where more people came to Barbados and the whole of Massachusetts and New England, there was more, export value from Barbados and the whole of North America.

It's just unbelievable.

And the fact, it's inconceivable now.

And Barbados became an amazingly wealthy place in a very short time.

Jean> The rapid growth and production of sugar fueled the growth of slavery in Barbados.

>> Barbados started with tobacco and 1620s and didn't really develop a plantation system out of it, nor tobacco that became a very important crop for them in the world market with that production, sugar in the 1640s, then profits were made.

It was, almost circular thing.

If you had capital, you could buy slaves and get rich or if you had slaves, you could create capital.

All this time, sugar was becoming more and more in demand.

And, continental Europe and, and, Great Britain.

So the demand for sugar, the demand for slaves and the creation of wealth all went hand in hand.

Jean> The development of the sugar industry brought great changes to Barbados.

By 1655, it had become the most heavily populated place on earth.

It's 166 square miles, accommoda Land prices rose dramatically, and small planters sold their land to make way for large sugar plantations.

But there was little they could do with the money they received because there was no room left for expansion on the tiny island.

In less than 25 years, the lush tropical forest that had once blanketed the island was clear cut to make room for fields of sugar cane, creating a critical shortage of wood for building, cooking fires and manufacturing.

And even though the large planters had become extremely wealthy, their riches could not guarantee a future for their sons, since under the laws of primogeniture, only the eldest could inherit.

>> So for all these reasons, the decision was taken to fund a settlement in North America which would be environmentally different, ecologically different.

Which would have a different climate and hence produce types of materials.

Barbados, a tropical island would need to import.

The question was where was the space to be located?

Of course, it couldn't be anywhere in the Florida zone because that was occupied by Spain.

If we recall, Spain technically claimed all of North America, but the European law .... said it is said that effective occupation made you the master of the territory.

So there was an open space from Virginia for the north, of course, colonies had been established directly from England, but in between and between Florida, northern Georgia and Virginia, there was this open space, the Carolinas and that's where William Hilton and his reconnaissance mission, wrote a report, to the group in who were financing this venture, saying this is the ideal location.

It has the idea of climate.

It's not too cold, it's not too hot.

It'll grow all the crops you want.

There's enormous land space to be used for economic purposes, for colonization.

And on the basis of that very favorable report, then, the corporation in Barbados decided to fold the colony Jean> Of the eight Lords Proprie who received a charter to settle the Carolinas, the most active were Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Sir John Colleton, both of whom had ties to and owned plantations in Barbados.

Carlton began actively recruiting Barbadians for a settlement of the new colony.

When the plantation owners were informed of the vast amounts of land available in the Carolinas, they formed companies to take advantage of the potential for great wealth that existed there.

They were called the Barbadian Adventurers.

Having experienced the difficulties that came with establishing a colony, the Barbadians came to South Carolina fully prepared and determined to succeed.

Dr. Edgar> They came to South Carolina prepared.

There was no starving time here, if there wasn't Massachusetts or Virginia, and you didn't have people lollygagging on the piazza waiting for somebody else to do the work, because one of the interesting aspects of the early settlement, those who came out, no matter how much money they had, you didn't have the white planter sitting on the back on the, on the porch, and his white indentured servants and his black slaves working in the fields, the first generation was a pioneer period.

Everybody worked.

They knew it took work.

And you compare that to the to the gentleman of Virginia who died like flies.

While somebody else was trying to plant their tobacco because they didn't have any food.

You know, or the starving time in Massachusetts.

These people had the colonial experience from the Caribbean.

So the Barbadians were, they were tough people physically, having been through the climate in the in the tropics, having had to fend off, the French, the Spanish pirates, and when they came out here, they came in here to make a buck.

They made no bones, of course, that's why they were in Barbados.

They were in Barbados to get rich.

And they came out here for the same reason.

So the Barbadian influence, not only politically but culturally, they established, a sense of ethics, if you want to call that a, a moray that, was basically hedonistic.

Don't worry.

Be happy.

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow.

You may die.

They made money and they made no bones about enjoying what they what they earned.

Which is one reason why, South Carolina was not particularly liked by the other colonies.

Not only was it successful, but they rubbed it in everybody's face, and that comes from Barbados.

Jean> While all the settlers in the new colony of South Carolina were not Barbadian, it was from Barbados that laws, religion and other aspects of the new colony were derived.

South Carolina was laid out in parishes named after those of Barbados.

Many streets in Charleston were named after streets in Barbados.

Even the system of government established in South Carolina was brought from Barbados.

>> I say it was limited representative government because of this.

Only those individuals who had the income, who owned sufficient land in excess of ten acres, there were several limitations placed on who could represent, the population.

And quite frankly, political representation was limited to the planter class.

Almost all the poor of whatever race were excluded, women, or whatever race were excluded because of their sex.

Jews were excluded.

It was a highly exclusionary form of government.

And that type of political system was taken, to South Carolina, Jean> One mostly Barbadian political faction that did much to control early government in the colony was called the Goose Creek Men.

Most were members of Saint James Goose Creek Parish Church, and they opposed the plans of the Lords Proprietors seeking to control the affairs of the colony.

>> The Goose Creek Men was for the most part, Barbadians.

Now they had some interesting political allies the Huguenots, the French Protestants who come to South Carolina were also part of the Goose Creek Men Party political party.

But the people we call Goose Creek men were Barbadians who settled on, Goose Creek, which was a tributary of the Cooper River.

Just, just north of, just outside of Charleston.

They were tough.

They were politically astute.

They caused any number of governors grief.

They made tremendous fortunes.

And the first fortunes they made were not in rice as people think.

The first fortunes that they made were in the Indian trade, deer skins.

They weren't averse to, violating the rules of the proprietors, enslaving Indians and shipping them off to other colonies.

They weren't averse to trading with pirates.

The only reason that we finally decided to quit trading with the pirates, after 1715, is that people were making too much money off of, deer skins and naval stores and rice.

And the pirates were now a hindrance to, to fortune instead of an assistance.

So these were, these were people who played by their own rules.

But again, in terms of governing the colony, the Goose Creek Men provided tremendous leadership for South Carolina during the proprietary period and also in the transition from the proprietary government to the royal government.

Jean> It was also from Barbados that the new colony would inherit a system that has affected its history, culture, politics and legal system since its inception.

The institution of slavery Dr. Edgar> South Carolina was settled by people who came from Barbados with a full scale idea of slavery, with a full scale slavery system, highly developed, that certainly underwent modifications in South Carolina.

The change from the gang system, which had been central to Barbadian slavery, became, with rice as the great staple crop of the became the task system.

But the basic system came intact from Barbados.

Jean> For a number of years, slaves arriving in South Carolina came directly from Barbados after having been shipped there from Africa by the Middle Passage.

>> After being captured on the African coast, and some things being taken by Coffle, that is, a slave caravan hundreds of miles and reaching the coast in an exhausted state.

The African was then transported on a base on, let's say, for three months, we went up across that stretch of ocean known as the Middle Passage.

He would have landed in Barbados.

Barbados was the first stop for the slave ships 3500 miles from Africa itself.

On reaching here, the trauma, if it had not struck him before then, would hit him in the throat, and concretely and brutally he was auctioned.

The slave auction market was his first view of the horrors and the dysfunctionality of slavery.

Because at that point he might have been separated from his family by the simple exercise of being purchased by a different slave master than was his wife or his children.

So that is where the trauma began.

>> When they did arrive, what they found was that they were enslaved.

They were made into laborers.

There were usually put in the charge of someone who had already learned the plantation ropes, but for a while there was a great difficulty in understanding what people were saying to you.

These strange, pale skinned people with bright colored eyes yelling things to you, some kind of gibberish in some strange language you didn't understand.

If you didn't understand, they would yell louder.

But the other Africans didn't necessarily speak the language you could understand either.

And so, little by little, what happened was they created a Creole language and, learned to communicate with one another.

The first had to communicate with one another because they outnumbered those strange, pale skinned people with the bright colored eyes by so much.

But, they needed to understand that language, too, because that was the person with the power.

Jean> In both Barbados and South Carolina that need to communicate, to understand what the people in power wanted brought about the creation of a new language.

In South Carolina, it is called Gullah.

In Barbados it is called Bajan >> The Boy Friends by Timothy Callendar.

And Mina Griffith had two boyfriends.

One was sharp and one was tall.

One was ugly and the other was good looking.

One had a lot of money.

The other didn't have none, and Elmina did like all two of them.

From the start, she grandmother was giving trouble, when it come to this boy talk.

She start from the time she first see Elmina with James.

Now, James was the short one.

Th and didn't have no money either.

You come home and sit down and talk to the grandmother.

Grandfather.

Good, good.

I was talking nice, nice to find out things, but we come from a wee family is.

And when James get up and go along, seeing and getting a chance to talk lovey dovey with Elmina that night, the grandmother up, sunset.

But Elmina, what you get to know with no... what I bring you up to a doe?

Your mother gone and dadda and left me with you I look how you want to make your memory shame, after I tried so hard with you.

What a young little girl like you, want with my friend already?

When I was your age, I couldn't even look at a man.

I know you got them coming... >> You're dealing with a situati bringing Africans face to face with English in conditions of slavery, where learning the language wasn't.

The facilities weren't very good.

So they all had to learn in the same way.

So the process of learning would have been the same.

So it doesn't necessarily require, some identity, though.

It's just similarity of context that will produce similar results.

So that you will get things in Gullah produced through the same process that were produced in Jamaica and in Barbados.

But in addition to that, what many of the slaves came from the same area.

And there are similarities in the West African languages.

>> One, one of the things I did, once in a, in a symposium in which I was taking part in, I think it was St. Helena, I asked the people whether they were ten, I was I was going to say something and they would tell me whether they understood it.

And they said, look at the star shining so why it twinkle, wish I know shining there like diamond ring.

Ain't that just the prettiest thing?!

When the blazing sun gone down, can't see nothing all around.

Man can't even see heaven.

Then you shine to beat the band.

And of course they all laughed and said, oh, that's Twinkle, Twinkle little star, you know?

And essentially, that is how, it would be said in Bajan.

Jean> While Bajan is still widely spoken among Barbadians today, and is in little danger of disappearing from the culture, the Gullah of the South Carolina Sea Islands is considered by many to be a dying language.

It has disappeared in many areas of the islands because of heavy development, tourism, and an education system that for many years considered it simply bad English.

>> The speech forms that were used in this encounter between the speakers of African languages and speakers of English became pretty much the form at British standardized.

In fact, you can speak, you can speak, ungrammatical Gullah.

You can speak ungrammatical Bajan, You can speak ungrammatical Afri...well I call it "Af-rish".

See the form that the, the language that, was that came about as a result of the contact between, Africans and Europeans, of English speech.

I call, "Af-rish" sea, in England, it would have been English, but since it now is spoken and in fact is a creation largely of African people, we call it, I call it Af-rish because the, people who went in very large numbers, the Africans who went in very large numbers to the Sea Islands, came from Barbados and Jamaica.

Well, Gullah is the result of the retentions of that form of speech in that area.

So Gullah is not a dialect of English.

It is a language in its own right.

There's not bad English, as some people, tended to represent it.

Some people felt that, the Africans just couldn't pronounce these words and they, misused them in the way that they did.

It's just they were using, they were using African phonology.

As we linguists call it, African phonology, African syntax, and, English, applying it to English words.

We are not ashamed of, the language, although we were, frequently encouraged to be ashamed a little, because we were speaking broken English, you see.

But now we know, and you're rather proud of, the language as it's come down to us.

And we can use Her Majesty's English in the Caribbean.

And we do, but we also we can talk Bajan like anybody else.

(laughs) ♪ Jean> Another aspect of African heritage that can be found in Barbados is Tuk Music, a form of music that developed due to the severe restrictions placed on slaves by the plantation owners.

Uniquely Barbadian, it is performed here by the Rag Tag International Band.

>> When the slaves were brought over from West Africa, the plantation owners banned the use of the African drum because they thought they would be able to communicate and cause a rebellion.

So having banned that drum, there was even a death penalty attached to it.

But the slaves managed to get around that and were able to still play the music on weekends.

They built their own drums, which looked like the Scottish marching band drums, and they used coal skin, sheepskin, goat skin and other indigenous materials from the village, and they were able to play on weekends.

That unit was called the Tuk band.

They used to use a fiddle a long time ago.

Now that it has developed and grown into where we have it today, it is a mixture of that European marching band plus a lot of African rhythms.

And more recently, the Barbadian experience has been injected into the music.

So we have a flute, a kettle, a bass, and sometimes we use the percussion instrument, triangular cowbell.

And of course we have some characters which go along with the Tuk band and it's all a part of the remnants of our African heritage.

♪ (music ends) Jean> Those first African slaves who came from Barbados formed the nucleus of what would become the slavery system in South Carolina.

After the establishment of the rice culture in the Lowcountry, slaves were brought from other areas because Henry Laurens, one of the largest slave traders in the colony, complained that the quality of slaves coming from Barbados had declined, Laurens was instrumental in starting a new system that brought more slaves directly from Africa.

While the slave systems and the barbarities they practiced on enslaved Africans in both Barbados and South Carolina were essentially the same, the routes to emancipation in the two colonies were vastly different.

The end of slavery in South Carolina was achieved at an extremely high cost.

>> We have always been taught that the American Civil War was unavoidable, that slavery could not have been ended short of a civil war.

But slavery has existed everywhere in the world, and the most advanced industrial societies and the most primitive societies that anthropologists have ever studied slavery has been we call it the peculiar institution in the Old South.

But it wasn't peculiar in the sense of being strange or unusual.

Slavery has been so widespread in human history that probably everybody on the planet is a descendant of slaves and of slave holders.

But all of those slave systems managed to abolish slavery peacefully, more or less peacefully at least.

Except one.

Only one did the slave holders make them fight for it, and only one did they commit the belief, did they believe that preserving slavery was so important that to that cause they would commit the blood of their children and grandchildren.

>> We were very lucky, in 1718, which was more than 50 years before emancipation, a remarkable man came to live in Barbados, and he married the widow of a very important slave and plantation owning family in Barbados, and she was very wealthy.

Then she in turn died, and this guy came out to, just see for the first time what it was that his wealth was being derived from.

And within hours of arriving in Barbados, he just couldn't believe the system of slavery.

And he unilaterally freed the slaves on about over a thousand acres of land in Barbados.

And the result was that the productivity of the land went up.

So, and, long before emancipation, we actually had a model which had actually happened in Barbados, of the fact that the, slave, labor changing to a wage labor, people shouldn't fear it.

Each freed slave in Barbados received a parcel of land called a tenancy.

Here he could build a home, work and care for his family.

From this system, a unique form of architecture called the chattel house developed.

>> The land couldn't be moved, but the houses could.

So the houses were designed and built, so they could be taken to pieces and moved to a new job.

So, when the ex-slave, now decided, well, they didn't like this ex- master or they wanted to try their hand at being a blacksmith instead of, sugar worker, they could move freely.

But they took the house with them, and, and when Barbadians moved house, they literally moved house.

The house was taken to pieces and moved to the new site.

So, one of the most obvious features of Barbados is small... take to pieces houses the chattel house.

It's called chattel because it's part of your goods and chattels, and because chattel is a movable possession.

Jean> Today, the chattel house as an architectural style is still being built in Barbados.

Throughout the island, the small, quaint houses that were once a practical solution for housing freed African slaves have become a local Barbadian art form, beautiful in their simplicity and practicality.

While the chattel house did not make its way to South Carolina, other forms of Barbadian architecture did.

>> Architecturally, the famed Charleston single House has a Barbadian ancestry.

And people have, you know, argued this back and forth, but there's no question.

But the piazza and the Louvre frequently, they'll have the tropical louvers on the on the porch themselves to shield against the sun.

I would say that the whole city of Charleston, the single house aside, the built environment that resulted from, this ethos of display of wealth is the Barbadian, is indirectly a Barbadian legacy.

The beautiful Anglican churches that we have that are still scattered throughout the Lowcountry were all built, under the Church Act, which the Barbadians, Goose Creek men, passed and made South Carolina have an established church.

That's a physical legacy.

Jean> Two rare examples of Jacobean architecture found today in Barbados are believed to be the oldest surviving houses of English structure in the Western Hemisphere.

Jacobean was a prominent architectural style in England during the reign of the Stewarts.

Drax Hall in Saint George Parish was built by James Drax and his brother William in the 1650s.

It was here on the Drax estate that sugarcane was first cultivated in Barbados around 1640.

Drax Hall has remained in the Drax family since the 17th century, and descendants still live here and work the surrounding farmland.

The other Jacobean Manor can be found in the parish of Saint Peter.

Saint Nicholas Abbey is the oldest house in Barbados, built around 1650 by Colonel Benjamin Barringer, the second owner of the house, Sir John Diamonds was not only the second governor of the South Carolina colony, but it is widely believed that he murdered Colonel Barringer.

Yeomans, who had led a group of Barbadian adventurers to explorer Carolina and was appointed the first governor designate, was a business partner of Colonel Barringer.

While Barringer was in England for a number of years, Yeomans developed a relationship with Mrs. Barringer.

After his return, Colonel Barringer was poisoned by Yeomans who then claimed Saint Nicholas Abbey, along with Mrs. Barringer.

Yeomans later came to South Carolina and succeeded William Sail as governor.

He was removed from office by the Lords Proprietors for unscrupulous activities and returned to Barbados, where he died in 1674.

Another Barbadian, who became famous or infamous in South Carolina, lived in this manor house.

This is Upton Plantation, home of Stede Bonnet.

Bonnet became very wealthy after inheriting this property from his father, Edward.

He married Mary Allenby, the daughter of a planter from Saint Thomas' Parish, and they had three sons and a daughter.

Bonnet was considered a distinguished and model citizen, and in 1716 was made a justice of the peace, but in early 1717 he abandoned his wife, family and property, bought a ship, hired a crew and became a pirate.

Many said he was simply bored and sought adventure.

Others blame his actions on the desire to escape the wicked and abusive tongue of his wife.

In any event, he took to the seas and eventually teamed up with Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

In May of 1718, Bonnet and Blackbeard blockaded Charleston harbor way-laying ships as they arrived in Charleston.

Bonnet was eventually captured in the Cape Fear area and returned to Charleston for trial.

Dubbed the Gentleman Pirate due to his wealthy Barbadian background, Stede Bonnet was hanged here at White Point Gardens on December 10th, 1718.

Pirates like Bonnet and Teach thrived on the trade that existed between South Carolina and Barbados.

The money to build the colony, and later the great plantations along the Cooper and Ashley Rivers came not from rice or cotton as many think, but from the early trade that flourished between the two colonies.

>> The Barbadians saw South Carolina as a place that could supply them the things they needed on their sugar plantations, that they didn't have, and so cattle, for example, which was a very, before rice took over in South Carolina, cattle and hogs were, were a staple and shipping that as a, as a product to the colony was big business.

In the early records, you keep coming across scantling also and they were sending scantlings to Barbados.

Well, scantlings are barrel staves.

And they were that was big business was making barrel staves, I suppose for molasses.

I'm not sure for or for sugar.

But there was the symbiotic relationship of what, what they thought might be raised, or at least what the Barbadians thought might be raised in South Carolina.

Jean> Two Lowcountry plantations of Barbadian ancestry that were established by the wealth gained from trade are Magnolia and Drayton Hall.

Today, Magnolia Gardens is a favorite attraction for visitors from throughout the world.

>> I happen to be the ninth generation owner of the property since, Thomas Drayton.

Before that, there was Fox, who was the father in law of Thomas Drayton and before that, a very prominent, person named Maurice Matthews.

Since that time, there have been quite a few Draytons, and about the third generation, Drayton Hall was established next door by John Drayton, who failed to inherit Magnolia, so he bought 900 acres next door and built this house.

And there's a Drayton Hall, known as Drayton Hall.

Now, it's a beautiful building.

But he did manage to buy a Magnolia Plantation back from his nephew, who was sent down to Florida as chief justice.

The original garden was begun in the 1680s by the wife of the first, Thomas Drayton, the first written in American, and it by the time that Thomas Drayton died, it was about ten acres.

It's been expanded ever since, and, Reese's present, I think it's I hope that's one of the apexes of its existence.

Jean> Drayton Hall, next door to Magnolia Gardens, is a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

>> This plantation was developed in 1738 by John Drayton.

He was either the son or grandson of settlers from Barbados.

They had come here seeking a new way of life, but used as their model what they had seen, in Barbados.

When colonists arrived from Barbados, there was no staple, profitable crop.

And the colonies traded intensely with Barbados.

Barbados was a very small island, intensively cultivated, which in sugar, and...the plantation owners there needed wood for the processing, of the sugar and the molasses as fuel.

They needed wood for barrel stav for the shipping of molasses.

And they needed foodstuffs, especially cattle.

And cattle not only as food, food and also for leather.

And so the Carolina colonists, answered that need, in Barbados and became engaged very deeply in trade with the, in the Caribbean.

And so the origin of the wealth, in the Carolina colony was not in a plantation economy in its early years, but rather in trade with Barbados.

So it was that trade with Barbados that gave the nucleus of capital to these families, that enabled them later to establish plantations once the staple, profitable crop of rice was introduced.

Drayton Hall, the main house of Drayton Hall, is of a of an architectural style, that's Georgian and that's Palladian.

Georgian in there's built during the reign of the King George's and is characterized by boldness by, by symmetry and by order.

On the land front, facade of the river is a portico very much in the Palladian style, derived from Roman temples, perhaps one of the first of its kind, in America, the house dating to 1738, 1740, 42.

This style of architecture was popular, in early 18th century England.

John Drayton is looking to the motherland for architectural styles.

Just as Barbadian planners, were looking to the motherland for their architectural style.

So, as I understand it, in the early to mid 18th century Barbados, they are Georgian houses, perhaps different in scale, but still Georgian.

In, in concept, just as they are here, in Carolina.

So in both colonies, when wealth is accumulated, the planners are looking to styles in England, in, with which to fashion, their, their, their, their esthetic tastes.

Jean> The Barbadian heritage can also be found in the descendants of African slaves who were brought to Magnolia Plantation by the first Drayton's to arrive in the colony, according to oral history, Richmond Baldwin's, The Gatekeeper at Drayton Hall for a number of years was a descendant of those slaves through his stories and memories, Richmond Baldwin's preserved his family's heritage and links to Barbados.

Today, that tradition is continued through a ninth generation descendant of the family.

>> I met Richmond shortly after I, came to Charleston, but I didn't know exactly who he was.

And when I finally found out, you know who he was, I became very excited, by that, primarily because I learned of our history here at Drayton Hall, first, and realized that he was the one that was the tradition keeper, the tradition bearer in our family, and, he basically, he just, you know, kept our light, you know, lit for our family.

It was really important to Cousin Richmond.

To tell the history.

And, he seemed to be very, happy when he was telling it.

And it seemed as though he was very fulfilled when he was telling it.

And I felt that from him that it was really important because he was passing on a legacy that he was passing on information that, was invaluable.

What he did tell me was that, John Caesar and Catherine were actual, slaves here on this plantation, and they were actually slaves, descendants of slaves from Magnolia Plantation here on the Ashley River.

And, they came from Barbados with the Drayton's and, they were our actual ancestors.

This information was just it was very it was very overwhelming for me, very overwhelming.

And I just feel very, you know, fortunate.

I feel very, you know, blessed.

That's the word I'm looking for.

I'm really blessed to, to have, Cousin Richmond be, you know, a part of this, for him to actually make the oral tradition, a legacy for him.

And it was, You know, just, just wonderful.

I just I don't know what else to say.

I just, it's hard to really put it into words, I guess.

Maybe because emotionally it's, you know, it's just really But I'll need to put it in some words so I know.

Jean> Putting those feelings int is difficult for many.

From the descendants of Lowcountry planters to the descendants of Africans slaves, how does knowledge of the connections between Barbados and South Carolina aid one in condensing the combin of the two worlds?

They are separate and distinct cultures and several generations into words of understanding.

Dr. Edgar> As we look at our her and we realize that we are part of a larger world, people need to understand that South Carolina historically always was part of a larger world of the Atlantic, world of the Caribbean, that we were the colony of a colony, that the cultural impact of Barbadians on South Carolina, black and white, was tremendous.

I think in order to understand who we are, we need to remember that connection, I think, is something to be celebrated.

We should celebrate the fact tha have historically been part of a larger world, not just looking at ourselves, but looking at South Carolina and from whence we came.

>> I think that, stressing the historical linkages that bind us, that, that, that show us a shared past.

I think that future generations then can learn much from the shared background, and we all aspire to improve our condition.

We are hopefully on a curve of progress, and I hope that venture such as this will lead us to become better people, more understanding people, more tolerant people, and people who can cross artificial boundaries.

And look at ourselves as what we are just simply human beings and nothing more than that.

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