In Elise Lathrop’s 1926 book, Early American Inns and Taverns, she states that there were not many old inns in South Carolina. She defines ‘old’ as at least 100 years old from the time of her writing. She mentions a few old inns, sometimes called ‘ordinaries’ in the south, in and around Charleston, but only one in the upstate of South Carolina. It was on the stagecoach road than ran from Greenville, SC to Augusta, GA.
How fortunate are we, then, that the Joseph McCullough House is still standing in what is now Fork Shoals, SC and that the Fork Shoals Historical Society has recently undertaken the project of restoring this historical treasure!
The Joseph McCullough House was built by, you guessed it, Joseph McCullough in 1812. Joseph was a Protestant immigrant from Ireland and apparently was a man of some means by the time he made it to Greenville County where he purchased a little more than 200 acres and built what the McCullough family would come to refer to as Cedarhurst Plantation. The 200 acres became 15,000 eventually and housed McCullough’s South Carolinian wife and their nine children as well as over 2 dozen enslaved people. The Gone with the Wind trope of the Irish father and genteel Southern mother in a whirlwind of children and social events was apparently as applicable to the Upstate of South Carolina as across the border in Georgia. The McCullough’s bred and raced horses and raised cotton, wheat and corn. They famously held horse races at Cedarhurst as well as hosting the circus on the grounds in 1850.
James McCullough, one of Joseph’s children, inherited an equal share with his siblings when his father passed away, but eventually traded and bought back a significant portion of the estate including the house, the general store that operated on the grounds and a cotton gin.
David Walker McCullough filed a petition with Greenville County in 2019 to have the home registered as a historic site in which he is listed as the owner of the home but currently residing in Ashville, NC. In his application he provides details about the construction of the original home as well as modifications made throughout the years. He includes that the original red bricks which were subsequently stuccoed over were fired in a kiln across the road, but still on the plantation’s grounds. The kiln was apparently destroyed when the local landfill was expanded some years ago. He also details that many of his ancestors and owners of Cedarhurst have been prominent in business and politics in the Upstate. Judges, senators and even a Civil War colonel have added their weight to the McCullough family tree.
It is unclear at what point the McCullough family began using their home as an inn. In fact, some accounts seem to indicate that poorer visitors were simply allowed to sleep on the grounds. So maybe more of a Walmart parking lot situation than a true inn. There are slave cemeteries still located on the grounds so I think it would be safe to assume that if guests were served meals as a part of their accommodations at Cedarhurst during the antebellum period they were most likely prepared by slaves with food grown and harvested by slaves.
I wonder, though, as travelers made their way from Greenville to Augusta or perhaps, as one account suggests, from the coast to the mountains to escape the summer heat, would there have been differences in the food that they were served from inn to inn or plantation to plantation? Did kitchen staff, enslaved or free, have the agency to prepare food in the way that was familiar or delicious to them? If not, from what instructions were they operating? As most accounts run, slaves were not permitted to be taught to read and poor white or immigrant populations were largely illiterate as well. So, it stands to reason there weren’t recipe books handed to these folks as they made their way into the role of cook. So what was the learning process? Where black enslaved mothers responsible for teaching their children or other enslaved women what and how to cook? Or did women enslavers use written recipes to instruct their staff? If so, from what knowledge did they draw on for what to serve guests? What was considered fashionable to eat throughout this early American period? Where did they learn how to work with available ingredients?
All of these questions are what I hope to continue to learn more about. Hopefully I will have some answers, along with more questions, soon!