J.W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina.]
In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, lay
the well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had some
sixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler,
when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields and
premises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage and
the fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of blooded
horses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and the
pens of Berkshire pigs.[7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the further
uplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on a
somewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acres
in 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Many
of these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workers
using twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops of
a thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five or
thirty bushels; the 300 in oats, fifteen bushels; and ten acres in peas,
potatoes and squashes yielded their proportionate contribution.
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