Hume-Lucas History

Lynch sold Hopsewee to Robert Hume in 1762.  Hume died only four years after moving to Hopsewee.  He had two sons, Alexander who died in the siege of Savannah in 1779 and John, who was only two years old when the family moved to Hopsewee.  As a young man he fought with Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox) during the Revolutionary War.  After the war, the Hume family lived at Hopsewee in the winter and Charleston in the summer.  He died in 1841 leaving seven children and several grandchildren.

In 1844 the Estate of John Hume advertised "That Plantation called Hopsewee" for public sale for a division among his heirs.  The successful bidder was his grandson, John Hume Lucas who was married to his first cousin, Eleanor Ball Simons, also a grandchild of John Hume.  Hopsewee remained a very successful rice plantation under his care.  In 1850 the Georgetown Census showed Hopsewee Plantation had 178 slaves and produced 360,000 pounds of rice.  Lucas died in 1853 and his widow and three children lived most of the year in Charleston, returning to Hopsewee at Christmas and Easter.  The plantation remained successfully in production through an agent until the Confederate War.  The house was beautifully furnished, but at the time of the evacuation of Charleston, the Yankees divided everything they did not want for themselves among the former slaves.  
In 1866 the planters, who had left their homes wealthy men, returned poverty stricken and tried to take up the old life on the abandoned plantations.  Hopsewee was never planted again, but as a large number of the slaves remained on the property, they continued to work on the land and rent the property they remained on.  
William Lucas, the eldest son of John Hume Lucas and his wife, Mary Doar Lucas, returned to Hopsewee in 1900 where they lived until his death in January, 1914.  In 1935 Mrs. William Lucas wrote "Now the old house is closed and has been for twenty-one years.  Will it ever be opened again?  Not for the Lucas family in whose possession - and the Humes - it has been for nearly two hundred years.  It is taken care of and, as much as possible, kept in order, but this once quiet place is now on the Georgetown to Charleston highway, which goes right through the property, within a short distance of the residence."