This is the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site and on this site you can find the Snee farm
house which is not the original house owned by Charles Pinckney, but is a house that was built
later by William Matthews in 1828. This is what I found when I visited this historic site. Well I've
come to the Charles Pinckney house and plantation with the national park service, but because of the
covid the building is closed. So I can just walk around the place and kind of get a feel for it.
The reason this site has been preserved is because of Charles Pinckney. Charles Pinckney
was a signer of the United States constitution and played a critical role in its development.
Not only that Charles Pinckney had a long history of public service he was the governor
of South Carolina several times. He served in congress in the senate, also was a member of
the constitutional convention for this state of South Carolina. Not only that he served in
the American Revolution and was captured by the British and at one time was a prisoner of war.
Charles Pinckney inherited this plantation from his father Colonel Charles Pinckney after he
died in 1782. Now the Snee farm was one of seven different plantations that Charles Pinckney owned.
At the time his father Colonel Charles Pinckney purchased the Snee farm in 1754,
like his son Colonel Charles Pinckney served in the legislature of South Carolina
and fought in the American Revolution, and was also held as a prisoner of war. On this
farm the Pinckneys grew several different crops including rice, indigo, corn, and later cotton.
As I walk around the Pinckney house you notice these square additions that are on both sides
of the house. These additions were added in the 1930s, and are not a part of the original house,
but they are used by the park service. As I continue around the house we are
coming up to what would normally be the main entrance to the Pinckney house for the park
center visitor center. In here you will find a short film on the Pinckney plantation,
and you will also find a small museum with exhibits that I'm sure is well worth the visit,
but right now you can't enter the building because of the covid virus. So let's look around the rest
of the site and see what we can find. Behind me now is an example that the park service has built
of a rice trunk. This is what they used to use to let the water in and out of the rice fields.
Something you just don't see these days and until I came here I really didn't realize how big
rice was in this area. All right behind me now they've got these lines drawn out in the ground
with bricks, that represents where the buildings were in the enslaved community near the Charles
Pinckney house. They're back in the woods. There's a marker here and that's about all you can see
back here. Based on the size of the Snee farm I'm sure that the slave community back here was much
larger than these two buildings, that they have marked out. One day they'll probably find more
of the buildings. Well I'm sitting on the porch of the Pinckney house just enjoying
the rocking chair they left here. I know this visit was short, but Ii hope you enjoyed it. Bye.