Comingtee Plantation – Cooper River – Berkeley County

— Comingtee Plantation 1940 © Library of Congress —
(Prints & Photographs Division HABS SC-132 )

Basic Information

• Location – Western branch of the Cooper River, St. John's Berkeley Parish, Berkeley County
  

• Origin of name – Named after Captain Coming, who settled the land, as well as the T-shape made by the Cooper River's east and west branches coming together (7, p. 126).
  

• Other names – Coming Tee, Coming T, Coming's T

• Current status – The house stands inside the 10,700-acre Bonneau Tract that the state of South Carolina and The Conservation Fund acquired from MeadWestvaco in 2004. The SC Department of Natural Resources does have the property open for public use. Access is available to the Comingtee ruins and nearby rice mill on days without hunts. The gates on the roads leading to these sites will be closed on hunt days.
  

— Comingtee Plantation House © Brandon Coffey, 2015 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

Timeline

• 1669 – Earliest known date of existence (9)
  

  John Coming gained land grants along the Cooper River, which brought him to South Carolina. He was mate of the pioneer ship Carolina, and later captain of the Blessing. He was married to a passenger on the Carolina, Affra Harleston.
  

• 1695 – John Coming died leaving his entire estate to his widow (9).
  

• 1698 – Affra died childless and willed her estate to her nephew John Harleston and to her husband's half-nephew, Elias Ball (9).
  

• 1701 – Elias Ball was a planter and lived at Comingtee. He married a sister of John Harleston (9).
  

• 1738 – Wooden house built by Elias Ball. He would later add a brick addition to the house (9).
  

• 1893 – The house was damaged by a storm and sold to Alwyn Ball, Jr. who began extensive work on the house (9).
  

• 1918 – The Ball family formed the Comingtee Corporation (9).
  

• 1927 – Senator Joseph S. Frelingheysen purchased Comingtee from the Comingtee Corporation for use as a hunting retreat. Frelingheysen also owned Fish Pond Plantation and Rice Hope Plantation (9).
  

• 1946 – Grover Sullivan discovered the lost Parish silver. The colonial sacramental plate of Strawberry Chapel was placed in Keating Ball's possession in 1865 when Sherman was marching through the area. Ball had a servant bury the silver for safe keeping but after the war, the servant could not locate where he had buried it (13).
  

• 1949 – West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (which through mergers would later become part of MeadWestvaco) purchased the property to harvest the lumber (9).
  

• 2004 – The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources acquired the 10,700-acre tract from MeadWestvaco (12).
  

— Comingtee Plantation House © Barry Gooch —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

Land

• Number of acres – Part of 10,700-acre Bonneau Ferry Wildlife Management Area (2004)

• Primary crop – Rice

Slaves

• Number of slaves – ?

— Interior of Comingtee Plantation House Ruins © Brandon Coffey, 2016 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

Buildings

• Elias Ball constructed a house made of wood in 1738, later adding a brick addition. Over the years, the wooden portion has been destroyed, but a portion of the brick structure remains (9).
  

— Comingtee Plantation Cistern © Gazie Nagle, 2014 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

References & Resources

1. National Register of Historic Places - Cooper River Historic District
   – Nomination form - PDF - submitted in 2002
   – Photographs, architectural overview
   

2. Comingtree Plantation: Coming and Ball Families: Click here
   

3. Kimberly Christine Norton and Abbid Hussein Kahn, Comingtee and Stoke Plantations: Historic Structures Report
   

4. Bonneau Ferry Wildlife Management Area

5. 30-15 Plantation File, held by the South Carolina Historical Society

6. Claude Henry Neuffer, editor, Names in South Carolina, Volume I through 30 (Columbia, SC: The State Printing Company)
    Order Names in South Carolina, Volumes I-XII, 1954-1965
    Order Names in South Carolina, Index XIII-XVIII
   

7. John Beaufain Irving, A Day on Cooper River (1842) (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2010)
   
   

8. Samuel Gaillard Stoney, Plantations of the Carolina Low Country (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1990)
   
   

9. J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin's through Berkeley (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Company, 1985)
    Order Historic Ramblin's through Berkeley

10. Sankofa's Plantation Data Collection
    

11. Maxwell Clayton Orvin, Historic Berkeley County, South Carolina: 1671-1900 (Self published, 1973)
     Order Historic Berkeley County, South Carolina: 1671-1900

12. Information contributed by Barry Gooch.
    

13. Information contributed by Ramona L. Grimsley, Digital Projects Librarian for Berkeley County Library, from:
    J. Grahame Long, Stolen Charleston: The Spoils of War (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014), pp. 127-128
    
    

14. Comingtee Plantation Ruins - SC Picture Project: South Carolina Citizen History
    

15. Anne Simons Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family of South Carolina and the Comingtee Plantation (Charleston, SC: South Carolina Historical Society, 1909)
    
    

16. Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1998)
    
    

Contact Information

• Bonneau Ferry Wildlife Management Area
  South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
  305 Black Oak Road
  Bonneau, SC 29431
  

  Website: Click here
  

— Interior of Comingtee Plantation House Ruins © Brandon Coffey, 2016 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

— Entrance to Comingtee Plantation © Gazie Nagle, 2014 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)

— Grave at Comingtee Plantation © Gazie Nagle, 2014 —
(Do Not Use Without Written Consent)