The Pinckney family owned Snee Farm from 1754 to 1817, and Charles Pinckney inherited it from his father in 1782. It was one of his seven plantations and, at 715 acres, his smallest, serving as a favorite retreat from his Charleston house on Meeting Street where the family relaxed and spent holidays. During this early period, enslaved Africans and African Americans cultivated the plantation’s staple crops, with high ground planted in provision crops, indigo, corn, and later cotton, lowlands planted in rice, and woodlands used for cattle grazing, game hunting, and pine extraction for turpentine and other naval stores. Snee Farm reflects more than 200 years of agricultural use before that era ended with the sale and development of 687 acres in the 1960s into residential subdivisions, a country club, and a golf course, while the house and remaining acres stayed a family residence until 1990. The preserved remnant is now Charles Pinckney National Historic Site. Archeology has been important to understanding Snee Farm and Charles Pinckney because few of his personal papers survive after most were destroyed in the 1861 Charleston fire. Excavations have shown that Pinckney-era structures standing there between 1754 and 1817 were razed in the early 19th century, possibly after hurricane damage, and it is believed that when William Matthews bought Snee Farm in 1828 he removed the damaged buildings and built the present house on the same site, with wings added by the Ewing-Stone family in the 1930s. Excavations in the core area revealed the locations of the Pinckney farmhouse, well, kitchen, and other outbuildings, and construction material and an 1826 penny found in the well suggest it was filled when the Pinckney structures were razed in the 1820s.