Free at Last: The Civil War Ends

On April 9, 1865, the Civil War ended with the surrender of the Confederate army at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia and almost immediately, celebrations all over Hilton Head erupted. By this point, Mitchelville’s prominence as the first black freedman’s town afforded visitors from dignitaries far and…

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Land Disputes: Hilton Head Island/Mitchelville is Spared

Following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson repealed a special order which distributed abandoned land to the formerly enslaved. This caused a great upheaval in areas surrounding Hilton Head, as planters came back to reclaim their property and labor contracts were now necessary for freedmen to…

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The Last Straw: the Devastating Hurricane of 1893

On the night of August 27, 1893, a major hurricane, the largest and most powerful to hit South Carolina until that time, made landfall just east of Savannah, GA, with maximum sustained winds of 120mph and a storm surge as high as 12 ft. Hilton…

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