With no other site serving as such a template or illuminating the authentic story of the place where freedom began for America’s Black citizens, Historic Mitchelville is uniquely positioned to broaden the awareness and recognition of its rich story. Actions to do so began more than three…

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…

Much of the land for Mitchelville was purchased by March Gardner and managed by his son, Gabriel. Due to lawsuits and a series of land purchases, the land that was once Mitchelville was sold to the Hilton Head Company in 1950. Mitchelville was…

The Drayton Plantation (on which Mitchelville was located) was returned to the heirs of its former owner in April 1875, with the federal government deed failing to provide any protection for Mitchelville. The Drayton heirs, however, were not interested in planting the lands and began…

With the end of the Civil War, the Union Army began to leave the island, which led to scores of freedmen leaving too, either following the Army for jobs, moving on to reclaimed plantations for wage jobs, or moving further inland. At the same time,…

Following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson repealed a special order which distributed abandoned land to the formerly enslaved.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…

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…

As the first self-governed town for the formerly enslaved, Mitchelville, named posthumously after its founder, General Ormsby Mitchel, was a fully functioning town with a mayor, councilmen, a treasurer and other officers, who all oversaw every aspect of Mitchelville, from town disputes to sanitary regulations.…

Union Army Major General Ormsby Mitchel arrived in HHI to replace General Hunter (who went on leave) and assumed command. Once he saw the living conditions of the formerly enslaved "contraband" in the refugee barracks, he directed a new “negro village” near Drayton Plantation to…

First African Baptist Church was founded with 120 members and led by Rev. Abraham Murchison (a freed, literate, formerly enslaved person from Savannah, Georgia), who was the eventual magistrate, then mayor of Mitchelville.  The church was structured with two rows of benches, a…