The Epps-McGill Farmhouse is a surviving example of a vernacular structure that represents the evolution of agricultural society in Williamsburg County during the 20th century and the end of sharecropping in the second half of the 20th century. The structure’s significance is derived from the evolution of the house and farmland over the course of the 20th century which saw the rise of tobacco tenant farming and the eventual reduction of the farmland to its current footprint due to the changes in the agricultural economy. While the sharecropping system generally failed to produce its promised path to land ownership, the Epps-McGill Farmhouse stands out as a rare and important example of success, with the purchase of the property by African American farmer Weaver McGill offering an unusual case within the broader regional history of sharecropping.
As in other portions of rural South Carolina, agriculture was central to the development of Williamsburg County. Created in the early 18th century, the county was originally a frontier township intended to serve as a protective buffer for coastal Charleston and to promote European settlement of the interior of the state. Over the course of the 1800s, slave-based cotton production came to dominate economic life in Williamsburg County, prompting local planters, in the words of one local historian, “to import as many [enslaved laborers] as they could purchase.” 1William W. Boddie, History of Williamsburg; Something about the people of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, from the first settlement by Europeans about 1705 until 1923 (Columbia, SC: The State Company, 1923), 249. Boddie also ties local planters’ purchase of slaves to tobacco production, however its dominance was a relatively later development. Census records show some 15,000 people living in the county by 1860, 66 percent of whom were enslaved African Americans.21860 U.S. Federal Census
With the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Williamsburg County’s agricultural economy was forced to restructure to account for the loss of its traditional labor supply. Consequently, tenant farming proliferated throughout the county and the rest of South Carolina, with newly freed Black farmers—as well as many white farmers—working land they did not own in exchange for either a share of their crop or cash payments. By 1920, sixty-one percent of Palmetto State farmers were working land they did not own. Of those approximately 95,000 tenants, 66,000 were African Americans.3Orville Vernon Burton, Beatrice Burton, and Matthew Cheney, “Tenantry,” South Carolina Encyclopedia, last modified August 1, 2016, http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/tenantry/. For former slaves and their descendants, tenant farming was a decided improvement from the county’s pre-war labor structure and, if cotton prices rose high enough, could even be quite lucrative. Yet such moments of prosperity were exceptional, and such arrangements, particularly sharecropping, were subject to tremendous instability and uncertainty. 4Ibid. Though touted as a path for laborers without capital to achieve their dream of working their own land, the almost exclusive cultivation of cotton and tobacco within the South and the lack of effective erosion control often destroyed the soil, making it difficult for sharecroppers to obtain a surplus and access alternative forms of capital, keeping a farmer in perpetual debt. 5Roger L. Ransom, and Richard Sutch, “Debt Peonage in the Cotton South after the Civil War.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sept. 1972): 642.
As the labor arrangements of turn of the century Williamsburg County agriculture reconfigured, so too did the hierarchy of crops being produced there. Williamsburg County saw large population growth in the late 19th century, increasing from 15,489 to 31,865 residents between 1870 and 1900. 6Sean Norris and Ramona Grunden, Cultural Resource Identification Survey of the Epps No. Industrial Site in Williamsburg County, South Carolina (TRC, December 2010), 8. During this period, the total number of farms recorded within the county correspondingly grew from 2,488 to 4,585. 7Mary Beth Reed and Christina Olson, Historic Resources Survey: Marion County, South Carolina (New South Associates, August 19, 2009), 19 At the turn of the century, cotton and corn were the dominant agricultural products within Williamsburg County, and the county lacked a significant industry.8South Carolina Department of Agriculture, Handbook of South Carolina, 1907. However, due to the quality of the sandy loam soil, the region of eastern South Carolina known as the “Pee Dee,” including Williamsburg County, was soon producing 95 percent of the state’s tobacco crop average by the early 1900’s.9ichael Trinkley and Debi Hacker, Chicora Foundation, Inc., The Economic and Social Historic of Tobacco Production in South Carolina (Pee Dee Heritage Center, December 1992), 24-25. As many planters in the county converted their cotton fields into tobacco fields, the crop also fueled a period of economic prosperity in the county seat of Kingstree, which become a major tobacco center with a rapidly expanding commercial district.10Philip Thomason, “Historic Resources of Kingstree.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination Form. Building Conservation Technology, Nashville, June 28, 1982. By 1918, the Kingstree tobacco market became one of the largest in the state with 7.5 million pounds of tobacco produced and sold through local warehouses in that year.11Norris and Grunden, Cultural Resource Identification Survey of the Epps No. Industrial Site, 8-9.
Among those white Williamsburg County farmers who transitioned from cotton to tobacco agriculture in this period were members of the local Epps family, who ultimately oversaw the construction of the Epps-McGill Farmhouse. Originally from North Carolina, the white family had moved to St. James-Santee Parish near Charleston by 1860 before settling in Kingstree by 1870. By that year, twenty-four-year-old James C. Epps was growing primarily cotton along with other crops like peas and sweet potatoes on eighty-five acres of improved land. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Epps family had acquired hundreds of acres within the surrounding area. In 1905, Epps allowed his son, a young farm demonstration agent named Silas Wightman Epps, to begin construction of the two and a half story Epps-McGill Farmhouse for his future wife, Caroline Monroe, on land owned by his father.121850, 1860, and 1870 U.S. Federal Census; Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Plat Book 25 Page 81. Silas Epps and likely other local builders took three years to build the Epps-McGill Farmhouse, crafting a vernacular Victorian style home with large two-story porches on the east and west facade and a kitchen outbuilding attached to the main structure via the west porch. The house sat on a fifty-one-acre tract of land used to grow the newly dominant crop tobacco, and the newlyweds moved into the home by 1907.13Kathy Dodge Lloyd, The Epps Connection (Westminster, MD: Willow Bend Books, 2004), 131.
Epps family members and their relatives continued to own the farmhouse and surrounding acreage for the next several decades. However, by the 1930s the family had begun leasing the property to tenant farmers, the first known being the white Wingate family who moved there from neighboring Clarendon County by 1940. The Wingate family’s arrival to the Epps-McGill Farmhouse came despite broader downward trends in the prevalence of sharecropping throughout the South. The implementation of New Deal crop reduction and soil conservation programs by the Roosevelt administration greatly affected the practice of tenant farming and sharecropping in South Carolina, as a large percentage of farm acreage was removed from production.14Tara Mitchell Mielnik, New Deal, New Landscape: The Civilian Conservation Corps and South Carolina’s State Parks (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 7. In the decade after 1930, as farm mechanization increased, the number of tenant farmers in South Carolina dropped by twenty-five percent.15Burton et al., “Tenantry.” Nevertheless, the Wingate family remained at the Epps-McGill farmstead through at least the 1940s, renting the property for $15 per month. Around 1953, though, a new set of tenants moved onto the farmhouse when the McGill family began leasing the property, the first African Americans known to have done so.16Epps and Monroe remained in the farmhouse until 1912, when they moved to Caroline’s family home in Latta, South Carolina, following the death of her father. Sometime during the next ten years, Silas returned the farmhouse and surrounding farmland to his father. In 1924 James’s wife Martha Ann Henson G. Epps died at home, and, by 1925, a 51-acre tract of land containing the farm and house was conveyed by James to his daughter Eula Epps Wilcox. A plat created during this transaction indicates that this land was the northern part of a larger tract owned by James Epps.; Lloyd, The Epps Connection, 131; “Mrs. Annie Graham Epps, “The Charleston Evening Post, April 12, 1924, 5; Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Book A-51 Page 406; Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Plat Book 4, Page 25; Lillie McGill, in discussion with Kalen McNabb, May 2019. Census records show Wingate living in Williamsburg County by 1940. 1930 and 1940 U.S. Federal Census.
Sharecropping was an uncertain enterprise for anyone who took it up, yet the system’s uncertainties were even more acute for African Americans like the McGills, many of whom had abandoned it by the time the family took up residence on the Epps property. In the early 20th century, forces such as the boll weevil epidemic, decreasing crop prices, and predatory lending schemes further made acquiring land economically untenable for Black farmers, causing a mass exodus from the South into urban centers of the Midwest and Northeast. In the 1930s, Black southerners found themselves largely excluded from the benefits of New Deal programs meant to bolster the region’s agricultural economy. Local administration meant that programs were often subject to discrimination, while the New Deal agricultural policy of acreage reductions reduced production on many farms, compounding displacement of the sharecroppers and tenant farmers also being prompted by increasing mechanization. Small sharecropper farms were frequently absorbed into larger parcels that were worked by the landowners and diversified into crops and livestock that did not require as many hired hands.17Camille Goldmon, Refusing to be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention in the US South from Reconstruction to World War II, (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 2017), 63; Mark Reinberger, “The Architecture of Sharecropping: Extended Farms of the Georgia Piedmont,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 9 (2003): 117; Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, & the Transformation of the South, 1938-1908 (Duke University Press: Durham, N.C., 2007, third printing), 4-38. Between 1930 and 1940, more than 200,000 Black southern farmers including owners, sharecroppers, and tenants left agriculture, accounting for a 4.8 percent decrease in Black farm ownership in the region, six times as severe as the .8 percent decrease in Black farm ownership across the nation.18Goldmon, Refusing to be Dispossessed, 63.
Over time, several different trends in the broader history of Black southern sharecropping unfolded through the McGill family’s tenure on the Epps property. The family members who ultimately took up residence in the farmhouse had deep roots in Williamsburg County, some likely extending back to slavery. Esther (Ervin) McGill (c.1902-1956) first leased the property from the Epps family around 1953, following the death of her husband Burgess McGill in 1952. For two years, she lived in the house and sharecropped the land with her children before they, like countless other Black sharecroppers, chose to leave the South, resettling in Rochester, New York, in 1955. After they left the property, Esther’s brother-in-law Weaver McGill (1914-1994) and his wife Margaret (Singletary) McGill moved into the farmhouse with their children and continued to sharecrop the land into the 1950s and 60s.19“Esther B. McGill,” Find-a-Grave Memorial, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/157709327/esther- b_-mcgill; “Burgess McGill,” Find-a-Grave Memorial, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/157709343/burgess-mcgill. Esther McGill’s grandparents, Andrew (b.1842) and Minder (b.1847) Ervin, are documented in Williamsburg County as early as 1880. 1880 U.S. Federal Census, 1910 U.S. Federal Census (father Boisie Ervin), 1930 U.S. Federal Census (B.C. Ervin, Esther); Lillie McGill conversations; “Weaver McGill,” Find-a-Grave Memorial, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142835921/weaver-mcgill. During this time, a large tobacco barn and smaller auxiliary structures were built on the farmland to the west of the dwelling.
Unfortunately, the auxiliary structures were demolished during the late 20th century and the barn collapsed in 2015. The McGill family used the land during this period to grow a wide variety of crops including wheat, corn, cotton, collard greens, soybeans, sugar cane, and potatoes. The family also raised chickens, hogs, and other farm animals.20Lillie McGill, in discussion with Kalen McNabb, April 2019.
As Weaver, Margaret, and their children worked the Epps land, sharecropping continued to fade away from the southern landscape. In the late 1960s, changes in the national minimum wage act practically eliminated the sharecropper system, coming after years of increased farming mechanization and migration of workers to larger cities.21“Automation is Threatening Sharecropping in Dillon,” The News and Courier, April 5, 1964, 35; “An End to Sharecropping”, Charleston Evening Post, February 7, 1967, 5B. Locally in Williamsburg County, the population declined ten percent from 1957 to 1967, making it the seventeenth poorest county per capita in the nation, due to the decline of sharecropping and lack of industry.22“Exodus from Williamsburg Probed by Gov Romney”, The News and Courier, September 28, 1967, 1. Despite the system theoretically serving as a pathway to farm ownership, sharecropping’s decline rarely resulted in African American farmers taking hold of their own land. After World War II, African American farm ownership declined 8 percent annually between 1950-1959, before an even greater decline of 11.4 percent in the 1960’s. This trend continued as the total number of farms decreased nationwide. In 1987, the last year of the agricultural census, Black farmers held 151,441 acres of farmland in South Carolina, a 94 percent loss from the 2.5 million acres recorded in 1950.23“Black Farmers get equal share of hardships,” Spartanburg Herald Journal, September 30, 1990.
The Epps-McGill Farmhouse and a portion of the surrounding historical farmland was among that property that, in spite of those broader trends, ultimately came into legal possession of African Americans who first settled there as sharecroppers. Among the factors that helped make that possible was changing ownership of the land and the interpersonal relationships that developed between the Epps and McGill families. On August 13, 1953, Eula Epps Wilcox, who since 1925 had owned the farmhouse and surrounding fifty-one acres, sold the property to her nephew, Adolphus Epps Frierson, and his wife, Myrtle Frierson, for $10,000. Over the next twenty years, the now-Frierson farm was subdivided into several lots and sold off, gradually reducing the total size of the farmstead down to two acres.24Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Book A-51 Page 406; Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Book A-51 Page 416. Portions of the original farmstead were donated to the local community for important civic uses. Directly behind the Epps-McGill Farmhouse, the land was donated to the Housing Authority of Kingstree for public housing on which the 100-unit Frierson Homes development was built in 1976. Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Book 121 Page 137: Exhibit A; “Kingstree,” Charleston Evening Post, May 18, 1975, page 7; Williamsburg Co., SC., Register of Deeds, Plat Book 25 Page 81. As recalled by a McGill descendant, over this same period, Adolphus Frierson and Weaver McGill developed a strong friendship, and Frierson spent many evenings in the McGill home, i.e. the Epps-McGill Farmhouse. During his ownership, Dr. Frierson moved into a small building to the south of the house that served as an office and a personal retreat for the two men. After years of friendship, Frierson deeded 0.86 acres of land including the historic farmhouse to Weaver and Margaret McGill in 1976 prior to his death in 1980. Weaver McGill died in 1996 and his wife Margaret resided in the home until her death in 2006. The house has remained unoccupied and in the McGill family since her passing.25Williamsburg Co., SC, Register of Deeds, Deed Book 121 Page 137: Exhibit A; Lillie McGill, discussion with Kalen McNabb in August 2018.
Few examples have been identified where a Black sharecropping family was able to overcome decades of challenges and adversity to acquire farmland that they originally worked. While additional examples undoubtedly exist, few have received attention, as the individual stories of Black rural farmers remains underrepresented within the historical record. One known example of a similar situation is the Giles siblings, who recently purchased the Jonesville, South Carolina, farm where their family previously sharecropped. Subject to the same challenges faced by the McGills, Enoumas and Lake Copeland Giles sharecropped the land with their nine children until the 1960s. Fifty years after leaving the farm, the Giles siblings were able to restore the original farmhouse, and their story received national attention.26Allison Klein, “This family grew up picking cotton. Decades later, they returned to the place the sharecropped – as homeowners,” The Washington Post, January 24, 2018.
While the McGill story is not a singular event, this property is notable as a rare surviving example from this period. Few cases of African American tenant farmers purchasing the land they sharecropped have been recorded within the region and the accomplishments of the McGill family increases the importance of the Epps-McGill Farmhouse in the larger history of Williamsburg County. The ownership of the land and the farmhouse by the McGill family illustrates the struggles and rare opportunities for African American sharecroppers in South Carolina during the 20th century. The evolution of the Epps-McGill Farmhouse property is an integral, living example showcasing the larger social development and economic history of Kingstree and Williamsburg County.
In 1920, the appearance of the boll weevil and two consecutive rainy seasons caused devastation to the cotton industry. In addition to this blight, competition and overproduction in South Carolina textile mills hastened the steep decline in demand for cotton.27Norris and Grunden, Cultural Resource Identification Survey of the Epps No. Industrial Site, 9. Between 1920 and 1921, the cotton crop dropped from 37,000 bales to 2,700.28Boddie, History of Williamsburg, 541. A nationwide drop in cash crop prices also led to widespread changes in the farming industry.29Mielnik, New Deal, New Landscape, 2.
In the 1940s the Epps family further split the property among the heirs, and the property was divided to the south of the house by an existing ditch, now Wilcox Street. The southern portion of the original property was conveyed to Thomas Olin Epps, the nephew of Eula Epps Wilcox.30Dodge, The Epps Connection, 45 Thomas further subdivided his heir tract of land and sold a portion to the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church. An additional plot was sold in 1953 to the school district to build the W.M. Anderson School, a segregated school for African American students built under the state’s equalization program, which had the explicit goal of maintaining segregated education facilities (Esther McGill’s son was among the laborers who built the school). Today, the streets dividing the original farmstead bear the name of previous owners including “Wilcox Street” and “Epps Road.”
During his ownership, Weaver McGill was an active member of the Kingstree community including the local chapters of the NAACP and the Farmers Aid Lodges of the Lowcountry. Weaver was active in working with his local church, the North Kingstree Baptist Church, and with Williamsburg County to preserve wetland near the home and church on Eastland Avenue.31Lillie McGill, in discussion with Kalen McNabb, May 2019. In 1966, during the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “March on Ballot Boxes” speech at the local Kingstree high school. In response to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, many non-publicized events of KKK rides occurred throughout Kingstree.32Cassandra Williams Rush, “Williamsburg County Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968,” Kingstree News, February 28, 2018.