Ask people worldwide what they know about South Carolina and right at the top – after beaches and palmetto trees – will be history. With so much history to go around, sometimes bits can get lost in the shuffle. That’s where Joseph McGill comes in. McGill is a Kingstree native, and he works as a Program Officer for the National Historic Trust, but eight hours of history a day isn’t enough. Since May, McGill has been spending a few nights each month sleeping in what remains of antebellum slave cabins across the state. “My intent is to bring attention to these structures,” he says, adding, “ African-Americans have lost a lot of our built environment – buildings that can help tell our story. I think these slave cabins can do just that.”
As you might imagine, McGill is a huge history buff, and so it’s no surprise that one of his other longtime interests has been Civil War reenactment. He was part of a 2001 History Channel documentary about re-enactors called “The Unfinished Civil War,” and at the time suggested the concept of sleeping in a slave cabin when the producers needed more material. McGill’s first night was way back then at Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant. The experience convinced him that the project had legs, but his real odyssey only a few months ago.
In just a few months, McGill has stayed at plantations like Goodwill Plantation near Columbia and Heyward House in Bluffton, as well as a few of the plantations around Charleston. More recently, though, he has been closer to home at Hobcaw Barony in Georgetown and next up he’ll be staying at Mansfield Plantation – even closer to Williamsburg County.
The prospect of salvaging history isn’t the only reason that McGill, who is African-American, is spending his time on this project. He also feels a personal connection. “I don’t know [if there are any slave cabins remaining in Williamsburg County],” he says, “But as a result of my last stay at Hobcaw Barony, I learned about Mansfield Plantation, which is also in Georgetown County, on the Black River. The Black River runs through Kingstree, so there might be some ancestral ties for me.” Although he’s not certain about his own history, McGill agrees with the logic that at least some people from the community might have slave ties in the area. “I don’t know that [I have ties] to Mansfield, but out of any place I’ve stayed, the closest ties to any blacks in Kingstree might be there. If I don’t have any ancestral ties there, there’s a great chance that other blacks in Williamsburg County may have.” Those potential ties are why he’s made Mansfield his next stop – in late September. The next destination, however, is a big leap for McGill. He plans on taking his show on the road to Montgomery, Alabama as part of a work trip in October.
In addition to educating people and his own personal ancestral ties, McGill’s mission is to preserve the buildings themselves.  “The buildings I’ve stayed in thus far are habitable, but there’s some out there that might be on the verge of collapse. We certainly want to bring attention to these buildings while they still stand. We want to get them stabilized and eventually restored so that they can continue to help us tell the story that needs to be told.”
And what’s it like to be alone in one of the cabins late at night? “If I believed in ghosts, I couldn’t do this – I’d have had a heart attack by now,” says McGill. “You get a sense of why you’re doing this – it’s very quiet. All you have are your thoughts, and you think about what those folks experienced in those cabins. What waited outside for them was not a good thing, but at least within those walls, you had the opportunity to relax.”
The very nature of McGill’s project – highlighting often forgotten slave cabin sites – presents one very large problem. Because the sites are hidden or off the beaten path, there could be tens or hundreds of places that only people who live nearby know about. Finding those places is just another of the reasons he’s sharing his story with the world. He encourages people to contact him “If [they] know about places that I don’t know about, or if they know they have ancestral ties at a plantation that currently (or no longer) exists.” McGill is also going one step further in his attempts at educating the public, offering to speak about his experiences to groups. He can be reached at 843-722-8552 or on Facebook.
Of the factors that go into his project, education is ultimately primary – not just for some groups, but the entire population. “I believe that because I’m doing this, it’s going to be woven into the American story, not just as an African-American story.”