Salt in Colonial South Carolina: harvesting 300 years of history
- cdavis884
- Jul 15
- 8 min read
By Bertha Booker
After being laid off from a job in international shipping in 2010 and tired of globalism, I decided to reinvent myself as a small farmer on Wadmalaw Island. My entrepreneurial colleagues and I, seeking our fortunes in the burgeoning Local Food Movement and “finding what worked” in a new economy, reminded me of the early colonists of South Carolina. Many of us dreamed of bringing back historic products like heirloom grains, indigo, or citrus. One day on a kayaking expedition across to Botany Bay Island, I had forgotten the salt to cook my hamburger, so I boiled a little creek water on my camp stove. The briny white crust had a slightly sweet finish, like a Lowcountry oyster. Inspiration struck: Botany Bay Sea Salt could be my historic product!
What seemed like a simple idea soon grew more complex. Arguably the world’s oldest food product, salt had probably not been produced in South Carolina since the Civil War, so regulatory agencies considered salt from local seawater “new.” During the next 21 months, it became my task to convince authorities — first state regulators and then the FDA — that culinary salt could be safely made from this abundant natural resource. Curiously, regulators could find nothing on the books allowing the harvesting of the state’s waters for salt, but nothing prohibiting it either.
I wanted a very traditional process but soon realized how much fuel (and patience) it would take to boil down the five gallons of seawater necessary to make a single pound of salt using historically available kettles. The traditional French method of solar evaporation seemed like a better solution until I learned that summers in the subtropical climate of the Lowcountry are much rainier than the dry summers of coastal France, making crystallization in open ponds here difficult to achieve. As food authorities were requiring that I cover my ponds to prevent contamination from rainwater, I happily complied, recognizing the evaporation benefits. But it occurred to me that early colonists had no such access to modern climate data or rain-deflecting greenhouse plastic.
As cheap and ubiquitous as it is today, salt was essential for preserving food in the days before refrigeration — so valuable that it was sometimes referred to as “white gold.” I became increasingly curious about the history of this deceptively humble substance and the extent to which a salt industry had existed in early South Carolina. Many are familiar with the scarcity of salt and efforts to produce it during the Revolutionary War due to blockades, but was this essential resource mainly imported during peacetime?
After a little investigating, I was surprised to locate no in-depth research on the subject of early salt production in the state. An SCDAH archivist cautioned that there would be “a lot of tedious research to tease out the story of salt production in colonial South Carolina,” while a rice historian encouraged me to pursue this “missing piece of the colonial puzzle.” I realized the project would be more about understanding the wider context of salt production and trade in the Atlantic world (England, France, the Caribbean, and other North American colonies) than digging into the archives.
Combining my hands-on salt-making experience with my Ashley Hall and College of Charleston educations, I deemed myself an independent “colonial salt researcher” and set out to gradually uncover this understudied part of our history.
My first big break came when the girls at the library’s South Carolina Room forwarded me material concerning a Huguenot salt maker named William Mellichamp, who petitioned colonial authorities in 1724 for a monopoly to make salt at — of all places — Botany Bay. In The Huguenots of South Carolina, William H. Hirsch describes Mellichamp’s salt works as the “pioneer salt making concern in South Carolina.” This 300-year-old historical coincidence convinced me that my salt-making adventure was indeed fate. Feeling a kinship to this fellow salt maker across the centuries, I immediately adopted Mellichamp as my honorary Huguenot ancestor. Although I romanticized Mellichamp raking solar-evaporated salt as a youth in the marshes of western France, it turns out that most of his salt-making skills were probably learned in England, where the tradition of boiling seawater to obtain salt crystals prevailed.
In Tales of Edisto, Nell Graydon describes the salt works, closely echoing the writings of Hirsch:
“William Mellichamp, a French refugee, in the spring of 1724 seeing the possibilities in manufacture of salt petitioned Governor’s Council, for the exclusive right of salt manufacture in Province of South Carolina … The salt was run in shallow iron pans, some being as large as 10 by 20 feet. By use of evaporation basins and troughs, water was let in from the ocean in the process of sluices and transferred from one basin to another, as various steps in the process was necessary until the salt finally crystallized. The crystal salt was shoveled into heaps to dry, after which it was pounded fine.”
The journals of the Commons House of Assembly provide valuable chronological details about Mellichamp’s efforts to obtain his 14-year monopoly. He convinced colonial authorities that he possessed the experience to efficiently manufacture salt in accordance with English methods and “bring to perfection” salt making in the Province. His big selling point was that with its own supply of salt, the colony could expand its provisions trade in beef and pork and perhaps launch a fishery. Colonial authorities were impressed by Mellichamp but expressed concern about the “newness” of his proposal — suggesting that salt making was not, at that time, a familiar endeavor in the colony. After many months it was decided that the “pleasure of the Crown” should be known before approval could be granted. More challenges arose as Mellichamp was then given a deadline to begin production under the terms of his monopoly, only to reportedly have his salt pans from England almost lost in a hurricane. Ultimately, he began production with the help of his sons and three slaves somewhere in the vicinity of Botany Bay Island at the mouth of the North Edisto, and in 1731 he reported that 14,000 bushels of salt had been produced. (That’s a lot of salt!)
Another colonial salt-making attempt I am researching is that of Sir Nathaniel Johnson on Bulls Bay around 1696, about which little is known except that it was apparently unsuccessful. However, by tracing Johnson’s life before he came to Carolina, my salt maker’s lens revealed new insights about this prominent colonist who would later become proprietary governor. For example, I discovered that a devastating four-year drought had occurred during his tenure as governor of the Leeward Islands, undoubtedly causing local salt production to skyrocket. This experience may have convinced him that Caribbean-style solar salt production would provide an excellent diversification of his Carolina agricultural endeavors, which included silk production at Silk Hope Plantation. Johnson acquired two tracts on Bulls Bay, which he named Salt Ponds and Salt Hope. He was probably misjudging (like so many others) the Carolina climate and imagining that when a drought occurred, he would be well positioned to prosper. I have found nothing specifically describing attempts to use these tracts for salt production but look forward to investigating further.
Even less is known about salt production in the first decades of the colony. Virginia has proudly documented several early salt-making attempts, including a group of men sent out from Jamestown to boil seawater on the Eastern Shore in 1612. Thus far, I have not discovered any similarly organized attempt in Carolina, probably because trade routes were more firmly established by the 1670 founding of Charles Town, so subsistence production was not critical. Salt was surely being made on a small scale in the colony from the earliest days, typically by boiling seawater in kettles or perhaps evaporating it in clay-lined vats. Huguenot settlers from La Rochelle likely attempted traditional long-cycle solar salt production but were probably discouraged by unpredictable summer rains. An early act encouraging the making of salt was dismantled by a 1696 bill, which simultaneously ended the encouragement of indigo and wine, apparently because the production of all three commodities had so far proved disappointing. Salt-making efforts probably largely died out in Carolina by around 1700 in favor of imports, a pattern observed throughout the colonies, until one man saw new possibilities in the 1720s for a profitable private industry and finally cracked the code.
Although there is still much to discover about early salt making efforts in the region, William Mellichamp’s large-scale salt production at Botany Bay seems to stand alone in the Southeast. Mellichamp’s genius rested in recognizing that salt production in South Carolina at a meaningful scale would require an optimized “partial solar” method involving skillful management of seawater through linked marsh evaporation ponds before boiling the semi-concentrated brine to precipitate the crystals. The key was the large evaporative surface area of his enormous salt pans, which were constructed of individual riveted plates. The pans offered much greater efficiency compared to equipment commonly available in the colonies and allowed the process to be scaled up. But importing this state-of-the-art technology from England at his own expense involved great entrepreneurial risk. Mellichamp must have already had the necessary experience with this almost industrial technology, as well as knowledgeable contacts in the business, to arrange the manufacture and shipment of the pans and launch a successful salt-making operation — an impressive feat for which he deserves recognition.
While many have assumed that colonial South Carolina had easy access to salt from seawater, I’ve found this to be a great paradox: while the colony bordered the sea with its seemingly limitless supply of salt, actually extracting that salt under local conditions was surprisingly difficult. At around 3.5 percent salinity, seawater is considered very weak brine, and stronger sources of underground brine weren’t discovered inland until after the Revolution. As much as we celebrate Revolutionary and Civil War efforts to produce salt in the Lowcountry, these were desperate wartime measures — not signs of a once-flourishing industry. The state’s climate wasn’t well-suited to solar salt making, nor did it have ready access to state-of-the-art equipment like Mellichamp’s salt pans.
Today, we often romanticize these impromptu efforts without asking why such a strategic commodity wasn’t being produced locally in the first place. As a modern-day salt maker doing the hands-on work of bringing back a historic product, I have realized that challenges like our humid climate and inefficient equipment made sustainable salt production here difficult. As a result, we relied heavily on imports — a potential Achilles heel in wartime.
Looking ahead, I have teamed up with archaeologist Hannah Hoover to study the possible site of Mellichamp’s salt works at Botany Bay with plans to present our findings at a future meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference. In addition to site work, we plan to investigate not only Mellichamp’s possible salt-making methods, but also how salt and salinity intersected with other early industries in South Carolina. For example, we will evaluate whether Huguenot knowledge of solar salt works hydraulics may have influenced tidal rice field engineering — a possible connection that (as far as we know) has not yet been explored by historians. It will be a truly fascinating experience to work with Hannah and other collaborators in the future to continue researching salt and help add this missing piece to the colonial South Carolina puzzle.
As an artisan salt maker in the Lowcountry, Ms. Booker enjoys a lifestyle governed by the tides, weather, and weekly markets. Her Botany Bay Sea Salt products may be found at several area farmers markets and shops, including the Charleston Farmers Market and Preservation Society Shop on King Street. She looks forward to continuing researching colonial salt making in South Carolina and being an avid “salt tourist.”
