Using oral history to recover the stories of plantations

When historians from across South Carolina gather Tuesday for a preservation conference, one thing they will discuss is recovering the history of communities that no longer exist.

"That question resonates for any community that is gone,'' said George McDaniel, executive director at Drayton Hall, the 17th Century plantation home on the banks of the Ashley River outside Charleston. "How do you research and tell the story of a community that has vanished from the landscape?''

In the case of Drayton, beyond a chimney in the overgrown woods there's little evidence of the community of blacks at the former plantation after the Civil War. But researchers have relied on oral histories of the descendants of those who lived there to mark a roadmap for reclaiming that history.