Plantation that once housed nearly 1,000 enslaved people listed for $17.5 million in Eastover (2024)

EASTOVER— Goodwill Estate, a 700-acre former plantation 25 miles east of the state's Capital City, was listed at $17.5 millionon May 9.

The multihome property, which is situated on thousands of acres of preserved land, housed nearly a thousand enslaved people during the Civil War, according to National Register documents. The plantation dates back to the late 1700s.

The listed property, at 229 Joseph Kershaw Road in Eastover, includes two massive estate homes along a 35-acre lake. The 8,400-square-foot main home includes a lakeside sunroom, space for an indoor gym and a large brick outdoor fireplace. The property itself has nearly 60 acres of scenic outdoor space such as trails and fields.

The property in east Richland County first began being developed as a plantation in 1795 by Daniel Huger, a slave owner and politician from Berkeley County. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1778 to 1780 and a member of the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788.

Huger's plantation was a trailblazer in the agriculture industry and is thought to be one of the first attempts in the state to use low-lying land for farming purposes through a canal irrigation system.

"Although it is possible that the mill pond predates Huger's ownership, the pond and canal system are known to have existed by 1827," historical registry documents noted, adding that more detailed investigations of land from earlier years are somewhat lacking.

Huger's son, Daniel Elliott Huger, was given the property by his father in 1827 and, with the purchase of more land, he brought the plantation up to 7,465 acres by 1854. At the time, the plantation had about 700 acres of irrigated fields that yielded crops of corn, cotton, beans, peas and sweet potatoes.

Those crops remained staples at Goodwill, even after the property was purchased by Edward Barnwell Heyward following Huger's death, up until the Civil War.

When the war began, Heyward's family in the Lowcountry sent some 976 enslaved persons to the Midlands plantation to wait out the war, historical tax records indicate. There were two cabins for enslaved laborers on the property.

After the war, Goodwill fell into financial decline and experienced significant turnover in ownership — changing hands between a hoard of wealthy northerners, one of whom used convict labor to improve the land. Eventually, the farm was purchased by Samuel McMaster in 1910, and the property stayed in the family until it was purchased by Larry Faulkenberry in the mid-1990s.

The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.