Wormsloe’s Belly: The History of a Southern Plantation through Food

Wormsloe Historic Site near Savannah, Georgia, is an impressively preserved Old South plantation. Wormsloe’s story is, among other things, a classic southern food tale, an account of innovation and tradition, of constant struggles between forces of change and continuity. Wormsloe residence, 1899, courtesy of the De Renne Family Papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library/University of Georgia Libraries.

Visitors to Wormsloe Historic Site near Savannah, Georgia, enter what appears to be an impressively preserved Old South plantation. Guests pass through a massive stone and wrought-iron gate, and travel down a mile-long avenue lined with towering live oaks that arch across the drive to shade out the Lowcountry sun. From the modern visitor’s center at the end of the avenue, a short hike through Spanish moss-draped woods, replete with clumps of saw palmettos and singing warblers, leads to the ruins of a fortified colonial house, one of the oldest surviving structures in the state. The observant visitor who reads the interpretive signs, or who simply studies the landscape, might note that the situation of the fort reflects the topography of the land. The ruins sit on the edge of the plantation facing the salt marsh and the tidal Skidaway River, where Wormsloe’s guns once watched over the Skidaway narrows, a back door to Savannah for potential invaders.

The fort’s location also served another purpose: easy access to food. The tidal marsh and riverbank near the fort abounded with oysters (and still do). Native Americans had long used the bend in the river for harvesting the bivalves, and a number of nearby middens affirm the historic bounty of the surrounding waters. Connecting food and place even more firmly, in the mid-1730s, fort commander Noble Jones and the marines under his command built the fortified structure of tabby, a composite of sand, lime, and water, mixed with oyster shells excavated from the middens, which the men poured into wall-length forms to harden. In essence, Jones and his men wove the remnants of meals past into the very fabric of their new structure, likely enjoying a few oyster roasts as they did so. Connections between food and the environment were not always so evident over the course of Wormsloe’s subsequent history, but the interaction of food, the landscape, and ever-changing perceptions of the surrounding environment remained active factors in shaping the plantation’s history well into the twentieth century. Exploring this ever-changing nature of eating on one plantation can give insight into the history of a southern place from the belly up.¹

Even though it is just a single plantation among the thousands of large and small landholdings that cover the southern landscape, Wormsloe’s story is important. First, Wormsloe has an astonishingly rich collection of records. Historians, like cooks, need ingredients, and Wormsloe has a full larder. From its initial settlement in the 1730s until the property changed hands during the Great Depression, plantation residents often jotted down recipes, receipts, garden maps, estate inventories, and other references to producing and consuming food, scraps that have been collected and preserved in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Collection at the University of Georgia. Second, southern food culture was and is so diverse that it begs for studies of particular places. A small-scale study of a location like Wormsloe allows details to come out, necessary for understanding the intimate relationships between people, landscape, and food. Wormsloe cannot reveal the history of southern food and environment; no one place can, but it does provide a unique window into a piece of southern food culture. Wormsloe’s story is, among other things, a classic southern food tale, an account of innovation and tradition, of constant struggles between forces of change and continuity. Based on these plantation records, we glean a snapshot of gardens, stoves, and plates, a brief attempt to understand the connections between people and place through one of the most essential ways humans interact with their environment—by eating it.