The plantation dates to 1679, when Thomas and Ann Drayton (née Anna Fox) built a house and small formal garden on the site.

[4] They have retained many combined cultural elements from West Africa to this day in what is known as the Gullah Heritage Corridor of the Lowcountry and Sea Islands of the Carolinas and Georgia.

[2] Through his father, John was a nephew of sisters Sarah and Angelina Emily Grimké, who moved north and became noted abolitionists.

Drayton, an Episcopal minister, began to have the gardens reworked in an English style; according to legend, this was done to lure his bride south from her native Philadelphia.

In the aftermath of the Civil War and postwar economic disruption, John Grimké Drayton sold all but 390 acres to raise money.

[2] In the 20th century, notable visitors included George Gershwin, Henry Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles and Reba McEntire.

In the early 20th century, the impressionist painter William Posey Silva painted the garden a number of times, and several of his canvases are on display in the main house.

This is considered a unique culture among the various African-American groups, distinguished by a specific cuisine, which features rice and seafood, and crafts such as baskets made of sea grass.

In order to represent the range of enslaved and free black workers' lives, these cabins have been restored to differing periods: one for 1850 and others to decades after the Civil War into the 20th century.