Vales of Time

Historic Brattonsville's Expansion Plans

Through strategic planning for improvements to Historic Brattonsville’s site that began in 1997, CHM staff began working on a plan to expand programming to explore the natural and cultural history of the site during the approximately two centuries when agriculture dominated the socio-economics of our region.

The plan calls for Historic Brattonsville (HB) to tell the story of the interrelationship between people and place in the Carolina Piedmont through the lens of agriculture. The Vales of Time will allow visitors to experience different time periods as they travel through the site. Using the history of the Bratton family, their neighbors and the surrounding community as an example, HB will show how, from the 1750s through the 1930s, Carolinians found ways to make a living from working the land. Specifically, the site will illustrate how agricultural pursuits influenced settlement patterns, land as a natural resource, the economy, and the relationship between Americans of European and African descent.

The educational master plan focuses on three time periods, or three separate vales:

• Vales I - Colonial (1755-1775)
• Vales II - Antebellum (1850-1860)
• Vales III - Great Depression (1930-1940

These are distinctly different periods in American history that also contain important milestones in the agricultural and social history of the Southern Carolina Piedmont. Through our Vales of Time plan CHM will renovate HB’s historic structures that are on their original foundations as well as those that were relocated to the site and create some historically reproduced structures.  All will be located adjacent to an approximately one mile ‘trail’ that visitors will use to experience each Vale.  New visitor amenities such as an expanded store, educational center, assembly space for meetings and group visits, and new educational interpretation tools will be added during the project.

Vales I - Colonial (1755-1775)
The story will begin with the European settlement of the region. The preceding two decades before the American Revolution saw the Southern Carolina Piedmont rapidly settled largely by people of Scotch Irish descent.  Some initial settlers engaged in extensive livestock ranching giving rise to open range rights, cattle drives and cowpens.  Most, however, established small farms that featured the cultivation of a wide variety of crops with wheat and corn probably being the principal consumable and cash crops.  Few farmers owned slaves.   

Vales II - Antebellum (1850-1860)
The 1790s however, saw cotton cultivation in the upcountry explode and with it came the reliance upon enslaved African and African American labor. By the 1850s the upcountry was home to many cotton plantations.  One of the largest in York County was that of the Bratton family which owned over 130 slaves and 6,000 acres.  Despite the presence of a few large cotton plantations, most planters in the region managed much smaller farms and in fact most farmers in the region did not own slaves and only marginally participated in the cotton economy.

Vales III - Great Depression (1930-1940)
With the end of the Civil War, the slave dependant plantation economy was abolished, but the reliance upon cotton and the need for inexpensive labor continued.  Cotton farming continued to dominate the region through the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, policies implemented by the Federal government to stabilize commodity prices and to keep farmers employed combined with the increasing mechanization of agriculture contributed to actually decrease rural populations and change farming practices and the landscape forever.