Major Pierce Butler, who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a supporter of slavery, owned the property in 1790.

[1] Following the resignation of the King overseers in 1838, grandson and co-heir Pierce Mease Butler traveled to the plantation with his wife and two daughters in December of that year.

His wife, Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble, was opposed to slavery and wanted to see and learn how the enslaved people lived.

[2] Eventually, she published her writing, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839,[3] which is thought by some to have influenced the British against supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War.

In 1866, Butler's daughter Frances returned with her father to attempt to restore the plantation to its former productivity.

[9] Due to the lack of slave labor, and the postwar depression in the Southern United States, plantations failed, and the fifth generation of Butlers sold the remains of their lands in 1923.

[10] A description of the plantation from November 1873: I am monarch of all I survey, which is an island of about 1,600 acres, surrounded by a muddy-looking river, called the romantic-sounding Indian name of the Altamaha.

... Our castle is a neat but not gaudy little frame house, with a piazza in front of it, from which you descend by six steps to a garden, or rather a small grove of orange trees, palmettoes, oleanders, and roses.

The first-named are laden with golden fruit, of a quality unsurpassed anywhere in the world, I am bold to say, for size and sweetness.

On the right are the barns and the threshing mill and engine, which are very nearly finished, and present a magnificent appearance from the river.