Button Hall

This plantation was once part of Boochawee Hall, owned by Governor James Moore, who died in 1706. Moore left 615 acres to his daughter Rebecca, who married Thomas Barker, who died in 1715, in 1709. Barker planted inland rice here and served one term in the Commons House of Assembly. In 1715, at the outset of the Yemassee War, Barker raised and commanded a company defending Goose Creek, and that spring Captain Barker and 26 of his men were killed in a Yemassee ambush. Rebecca Moore Barker later married planter William Dry, who died in 1740, served six terms in the Commons House of Assembly, and was its Speaker in 1728-29. In 1785 William Loughton Smith, who lived from 1758 to 1812, acquired the plantation; he was a state representative and later a U.S. Congressman and U.S. minister to Portugal. After the Civil War, Button Hall was owned by two of Smith’s grandsons, when it was subdivided and sold or rented to freedmen for small farms.

Goose Creek, South Carolina · United States