Howe Hall Plantation was established here by Robert Howe about 1683 and passed to his son Job Howe, who died in 1706 and served as Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly from 1700 to 1705. Later owned by prominent lowcountry families including the Middletons and Smiths, it belonged to James Vidal before the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Vidal sold parcels to African American societies and individual freedmen for small farms. In the 1870s Howe Hall became an African American community of small family farms, nicknamed “Hog Hall” by locals who belittled the area’s lower status compared to the old plantation. Howe Hall Elementary School, serving grades 1-8, consolidated several local black schools and was built here in 1954. It was integrated in 1967 and has been Howe Hall AIMS Elementary since 2002.