... Mr. Wilkins left all his property, a very great estate, to his only daughter, Ellen, the first wife of John Screven, who was without fortune. She died two or three years after Mr. Wilkins, leaving several children (one of her daughters, Kitty, married Robert J. Turnbull and had a charming family of sons and daughters), but bequeathing all her property to her husband. Strange to say, when Mr. Screven died he left almost all Mr. Wilkins*s property to a daughter by his second wife (Miss Van Rensselaer), who was, of course, no relation to the Wilkinses. ...
... Before going home that winter I spent three very pleasant weeks at my cousin Ellen Screven's place near Pocotaligo, Castle Hill, named, I suppose, after Uncle Gouv's place in Westchester [NY] ...
... The Screvens were delightfully hospitable and let me do just as I pleased there. They were still young, with five little children, and lived handsomely in extreme comfort. They had a stable of good horses, and I had a mount
whenever I wanted one; and the shooting was excellent, particularly ducks. There was a large reserve for flooding the rice-fields, filled with flocks of ducks, and at the upper end of it a river where blue-winged teal abounded. I would go up this, shooting as I went, and then down; up and down as long as you wished, all the time the birds rising before you. Screven had a large rice plantation, and to house his slaves had a good-sized village of vhite cabins, where the negroes were comfortable and seemed happy. These negroes had formerly belonged to Colonel Ward, who had left four hundred slaves to my Aunt Mary, Mrs. Gouverneur Wilkins, but only a few to my mother, as she did not care to own slaves. The few she inherited she set free. When I was staying with the Screvens I had a brisk little darky about my own age allotted to me, who brought water for my bath, blacked my boots, ran errands for me, and was always at my command.
As Screven was then very prosperous, he was adding to his slaves whenever he had a chance to buy a good one. To show what they cost, just before I went there he bought a carpenter for whom he paid thirty-seven hundred dollars. The planters were then at the height of their glory. John H. Screven served in the Confederate army, I think as major. At the close of the war he was ruined, lost all his slaves, and when I saw him later at Mr. Wilkins's place in Westchester he had nothing but his bare land in South Carolina. Some of his Turnbull grandchildren now own the plantation Castle Hill, and often spend their winters there. ...
