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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2017 From Rice Fields to Duck Marshes: Sport Hunters and Environmental Change on the South Carolina Coast, 1890–1950 Matthew Allen Lockhart University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Lockhart, M. A.(2017). From Rice Fields to Duck Marshes: Sport Hunters and Environmental Change on the South Carolina Coast, 1890–1950. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4161 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FROM RICE FIELDS TO DUCK MARSHES: SPORT HUNTERS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA COAST, 1890–1950 by Matthew Allen Lockhart Bachelor of Arts Wofford College, 1998 Master of Arts University of South Carolina, 2001 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2017 Accepted by: Robert R. Weyeneth, Major Professor Janet G. Hudson, Committee Member Kendrick A. Clements, Committee Member Daniel J. Vivian, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Matthew Allen Lockhart, 2017 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION In memory of my brother Marc D. Lockhart, who began this journey with me iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I want acknowledge with gratitude my splendid dissertation committee. Getting to this point would not have been possible without my director, Robert R. Weyeneth. He is a long-time mentor who helped me through every step of the doctoral program. A graduate student could not ask for a better advocate. I also appreciate Bob introducing me to Daniel J. Vivian. Dan showed an early interest in my work, and he has been a steady source of encouragement and expert advice over the last several years. I got to know Janet G. Hudson through our mutual association with the South Carolina Historical Magazine. After working with her for a number of years editing the journal, I asked Janet to join the committee because I have grown to hold her scholarly opinion in the highest regard. Finally, Kendrick A. Clements is someone I did not know prior to his retirement, but I was eager to tap not only his wealth of knowledge on the conservation movement but also his decades of experience as a dissertation reader. I am very thankful for his willingness participate in the committee. Second, I must thank the many archivists and librarians who connected me to the primary sources and facilitated my access to many hard-to-find secondary sources. Those at the South Carolina Historical Society, the University of South Carolina’s South Caroliniana Library and Thomas Cooper Library, and the Hagley Library and Museum stand out for their generous research iv assistance. Outside of the archives and libraries, four individuals—Lynn Miller, Selden B. “Bud” Hill, Richard Wyndham, and Robert B. Cuthbert—warrant special mention. Their help with the early stages of my research was indispensable. Third, I want to express my appreciation to executive director Faye L. Jensen and assistant director John Tucker of the South Carolina Historical Society for always being accommodating and understanding while I finished the degree. I especially want to thank my past and present editorial colleagues at the Historical Society—Katherine W. Giles and Lauren Nivens, respectively—for their willingness to work around my schedule and lend a hand whenever I needed them. Last, I want to thank my family. For me, this dissertation was a labor of love. For them, it represented major sacrifices of important time together. My in- laws, the Davises and the Bradshaws, and my mother, Peggy E. Lockhart, gave up a lot so that I could complete what I started, but no one sacrificed more than my wife, Jennifer Davis Lockhart. Jennifer demonstrated patience beyond measure, and her steadfast love and support pulled me through more than a few rough patches. v ABSTRACT In part because some historians are ethically opposed to their avocation, sport hunters of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era are an understudied group. As environmental actors, they have been virtually ignored. Based on the biological traits of their quarry, one particular subset of sportsmen, waterfowl hunters, were especially disposed to manipulating the environment in which they hunted. Their efforts to attract migratory waterfowl to privately owned wetlands through habitat management, which started nearly a half-century before federal engineers and biologists undertook similar work on the national wildlife refuges in the 1930s, were pioneering. By the midpoint of the twentieth century, sportsmen were managing several million acres of wetlands in the United States as waterfowl habitat. In areas with high concentrations of duck-shooting preserves, sportsmen’s management activities could alter the regional ecology. Strong evidence of duck hunters effecting widespread environmental change comes from South Carolina, where they purchased unprofitable rice plantations around the turn of the twentieth century and converted them to shooting preserves by employing a mixture of old and new approaches to wetland use. Initially, they carried on traditional agricultural practices and retained much of the ecological integrity of the rice plantations. Later, though, after adopting modern waterfowl-management vi techniques that sportsmen were using with good results in other parts of the country, they altered the ecology of the plantations by introducing new species of plants and reclaiming tidal impoundments. Managed duck marshes, artificial ecosystems created by the sportsmen, became a dominant feature of South Carolina’s coastal wetlandscape by the mid-twentieth century. At this point, hunters in South Carolina and elsewhere began passing on responsibility for managing waterfowl habitat to wildlife biologists. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ............................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. iv Abstract ................................................................................................................ vi List of Figures ...................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Connecting Historians, Hunters, and Habitat .................................... 38 Chapter 3: Exploring the Ecology of Early American Duck-Shooting Preserves ................................................................................................... 63 Chapter 4: Examining Race and Sport on Nineteenth-Century South Carolina Rice Plantations ......................................................................... 123 Chapter 5: Staking Claim to the Old Rice Coast ............................................... 167 Chapter 6: Adjusting to New Circumstances in the Twentieth Century ..................................................................................................... 237 Chapter 7: Repurposing the Rice Plantations ................................................... 269 Chapter 8: Moving toward Habitat-Based Waterfowl Management .................. 305 Chapter 9: Managing Impoundments ................................................................ 332 Chapter 10: Conserving Habitat ........................................................................ 352 Chapter 11: Conclusion .................................................................................... 380 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 395 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Map of the North-Central South Carolina Coast, 1938......................... 7 Figure 1.2 Map of the Santee Club Preserve, 1937 .............................................. 9 Figure 1.3 Pond in Jordan Marsh, Santee Club, 1928 ........................................ 23 Figure 2.1 “The American Sportsman’s Creed” .................................................. 47 Figure 3.1 “A Long Side-Shot” ............................................................................ 77 Figure 3.2 Wild Celery ........................................................................................ 93 Figure 3.3 David W. Cross (1814–1891) ............................................................. 97 Figure 3.4 Wild Rice .......................................................................................... 101 Figure 3.5 Diagrams of a Rice Trunk ................................................................ 117 Figure 4.1 James Henry Rice Jr. (1868–1935) ................................................. 126 Figure 4.2 “Cooper River Jump Shooting” ........................................................ 144 Figure 5.1 Map of the Georgetown Region, 1880s ........................................... 174 Figure 5.2 Plat of the Annandale Clubhouse Tract, 1914 ................................. 186 Figure 5.3 Edward Porter Alexander (1835–1910) ........................................... 190 Figure 5.4 Ex-President

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