Stafford House

The Stafford family began acquiring land after the Revolution. Robert Stafford Jr. purchased much of the land from the descendants of Catherine Greene. He was a successful planter, growing sea island cotton and owning up to 348 slaves by the 1850s. Stafford never married, but he had six children with an enslaved woman, though he did not include them in his will. After the Civil War, the slaves migrated to the mainland or other parts of the island, leaving him with no workforce. When Stafford died in 1877, his land did not go to his children, but to his nephews. They sold the land to the Carnegies. The Stafford mansion was built by Lucy Carnegie for her children in 1901, as can be seen above, after the original plantation house burned in 1900.