City Directories and History: Cedar Grove Plantation® was derived from the avenue of cedars leading to the house. The original owner was probably John Lawson, Planter and Gentleman, for whom 2,160 acres were laid out between Jack’s Creek and Taw-Caw in 1786. He had married Elizabeth Billups from Gloucester County, Virginia in 1777, the daughter of Robert Billups and Ann Ransom. One of their daughters, Mrs. Ann Ransom Lawson Felder, widow of John Pelham Felder, married Richard Ragin in 1817. They inherited or bought from the other heirs most of this land (2160 acres) adding more acreage until there were over 5000 acres in the plantation. Richard Ragin is the first owner I know of who lived in the house although John Lawson may have built it. The only daughter of Richard Ragin, Sarah Ann Ragin, married Dr. Thomas W. Briggs in 1837; they had two children, and Mrs. Ragin died at the birth of her second child. One, Ann Ransom Briggs, was the grandmother of my informant. She married James Adger Smythe of Charleston, and as the house was occupied for a time by the Smythe family, one heard the plantation spoken of as the Smythe Plantation. Mrs. Betty Smythe Lee (Mrs. W. Loring, Jr.) has many more interesting facts in her family record, which we hope we can do justice to at some future time. Some of the land formerly comprising this plantation is now owned by the Santee-Cooper Development Company, some by the U. S. Government’s Wild Life Refuge and some by the State Forestry Commission. Mrs. Lee quoted her uncle, Robert A. Smythe, now deceased, as describing the house as “typical southern home of that period, with wide halls and rooms on either side, a portico in front with pillars extending to the second floor.” It was destroyed by fire; but a few brick pillars and a few cedars remain in a plowed field. Patriotic organizations are familiar with that portion of the land bordering on Lake Marion, be-cause of the erection of a stone commemorating the battle of Fort Watson.
(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)
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R&R HISTORY LINK: Colton’s 1854 Map of the Clarendon Co. Area
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