The Darien Journal of John Girardeau Legare, Ricegrower

Editor's Introduction: The Darien World of John Girardeau Legare

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION The Darien World of John Girardeau Legare The old rice aristocracy of tidewater Georgia and South Carolina died in the ashes of civil war. The great rice plantations which prospered on the engines of huge labor forces of slaves, enormous outlays of capital and the ingenuity and resourcefulnessof a handful of planters had represented the greatest concentration of wealth the antebellum South had ever seen when the national conflict of 1861-65 effectively and forever sealed the end of both an era and a way of life. It was no exaggeration when it was said that the crescent of south Atlantic seaboard from Georgetown District, South Carolina, southward to Glynn County, Georgia, was known as the Rice Kingdom of the world. No region produced more rice prior to the Civil War. And because of the enormous value of this section to the Confederacy, no region of the South felt the direct impact of war more than this one. When the blood-letting was done, the old rice planting aristocracy was obliterated—the slaves emancipated, the plantations destroyed, the wealth gone. The planter class, what remained of it, had little left but their land. For some that was enough to try to begin anew but, as Peter Coclanis appropriately comments, it was but "the shadow of a dream." A few of the younger members of the formeraristocracy tried to resurrect the rice industry, becoming burdened with debt in the process and struggling for three decades to recapture at least a measure of the wealth and grandeur that their fathers had labored so mightily to sustain. The hardier ones held on until just after 1900 until the realities of labor shortages, lack of adequate capital, declining markets and the vagaries of the coastal storm season finally sealed the Atlantic rice industry 's fate. John G. Legare of Darien was one of those who made the attempt to keep rice cultivation alive in the "kingdom" but, as his personal Journal increasingly reveals, through his thoughts and observations, he was among the first to realize that rice would never again be the valuable commodity on the south Atlantic tidewater that it had once been. He correctly reasoned sooner than most that the industry, irrevocably, had to end. It could not sustain itself indefinitely. When he realized that there were no more 1 profits to be had in rice, however small, he walked away from it and never looked back. Others continued for a few more years, always believing that, somehow, the next crop would be the one which started them back on the road to recovery. As one traverses the coastal highway through the brackish tidal marshes, a few lingering vestiges of this legacy remain. Abandoned rice fields and irrigation ditches are now havens for migratory waterfowl and the intricate systems of canals and rice dikes remain as visible symbols of a way of life that has forever disappeared. The ticiegates are rotting away in the levees, no longer able to keep the flooding and ebbing tides out of the square fields where rice once thrived. The old threshing and winnowing houses, mills, barns and workers quarters have long since disappeared, leaving only a few crumbling brick remains and the occasional rice mill chimneys which still stand watch as silent sentinels over the remnants of the former rice culture. But even more than that, it is the moss-draped live oaks, the drooping willows on the dikes and the huge expanses of marshes which still change color with the seasons, which remain as the most enduring and tangible testimony to the days of tidewater rice cultivation. These will always be here, as will the denizens of their habitat. John Girardeau Legare of South Carolina was only twenty-five years old when he made the town of Darien, Mclntosh County, Georgia, his adopted home in 1877. He probably little realized it then but this small coastal community would be his permanent residence for the remaining fifty-five years of his life. As so amply demonstrated by his Journal, Legare was an interesting man who lived in interesting times. He came to tidewater Georgia practically without a penny in his pocket, and with a young family to feed and care for. The southeastern coast was still recovering from the ravages of war—few places had suffered more than Darien. On the surface of it, a place such as Darien, Georgia seemed to offer poor prospects for a young family seeking a new beginning...