ames B. Kirk began life under near tragic circumstances that almost killed him in infancy. Amidst the most ferocious moments of the American Revolutionary War, James B. Kirk was born in December 1780 on his father’s Swallow Savannah Plantation located on the savannah River. His father William Sr., was a patriot and guerrilla trooper in the South Carolina Volunteers under General Francis Marion at a time when British and Tory forces occupied virtually the entire state. On a dark winter’s night in 1781, James’s father returned unexpectedly to his home to visit his family, which also included his wife and four year old son, William. Unbeknownst to him, he was apparently followed home by the hated Bluffton Tory planter (and officer), Richard Pendarvis, a legendary figure to this day for his widespread acts of terrorism, torture and murder. For reasons we do not know, Pendarvis apparently had a personal vendetta against William Kirk, Sr.

Late that same night, Pendarvis shot and killed William Kirk, Sr. in his own home, and then torched their home trying to kill the entire family. He almost succeeded. The infant, James Kirk, was hurriedly dropped from an upstairs bedroom window into the arms of an unidentified slave woman standing on the ground. In pitch dark , she walked an estimated eight miles with the child until she reached one of the Heyward family homes near today’s Hardeville, where he was temporarily cared for, along with brother William and possibly their mother. They could not stay long. According to Heyward history, the Heyward’s (which family branch not identified) learned that Pendarvis was still seeking to kill the survivors. They quickly moved the children and possibly their mother, to the family-owned Callawassie Island where they were hidden until the crisis had passed. The boys’ mother died about this time, whether of fire injuries of some natural cause isn’t known. Nor do we know exactly where. Some Heyward family legends say she died and was secretly buried on Callawassie Island, but nothing definite is known at the current moment.

Whether any of these events caused James Kirk to buy Callawassie Island fifty years later may never be known. We do know that the only oil portrait of William Kirk, Sr. was inherited by his grandson, Clarence, which hung in his Callawassie Island home before the American Civil War along with treasured William Kirk Sr.’s battle sword.

The two, orphaned youngsters grew to manhood under someone’s care as yet unknown. We do know that the boys kept names and at least inherited their father’s oil portrait and his battle sword, but possibly little else. The brothers remained close and both achieved great wealth and success. They were famous and dubbed the “Beaufort Boys”.

Very little is known of James Kirk’s early life. We do know he started working early as a plantation overseer for wealthy planters. Family oral history claims he was an employee of considerable talent and trust to the London-based Colleton family, descendants and heirs to the considerable holdings of the original Lords Proprietor family. These included the six thousand acre residue of the 1718 Okatie Barony land grant on Colleton’s Neck and the Bluffton area as far as Rose Hill, held on to until about 1829. In those times, the overseer class as a group was widely despised and looked down upon. It was also a frustrating and even dangerous occupation because of direct exposure to many communicable diseases. It rarely provided a means of upward social mobility. James Kirk proved the dramatic exception to the rule.

In 1807, James married Mary Baldwin, 14-daughter of socially prominent parents. This union, which probably brought some wealth with it, produced fourteen children nine of which, four boys and five girls, reached adulthood. These included Clarence Kirk born in 1834 as the youngest son who was destined to inherit and reside on Callawassie Island in the last antebellum decade. About the time of 1807, James Kirk also established a tenant farmers’ home on Colleton land adjacent to today’s village of Bluffton on a scenic high bluff over looking the May River. James Kirk specializes in planting Sea Island cotton as his cash crop, as well as varied subsistence crops, woodlands and livestock of many types.

Long before his death, he established himself, along with George Edwards of Spring Island, as the leading cotton planter in this region. He gave large plantations to all his daughters when they married. According to the 1850 U.S. Census these properties, with his own, produced a cash income from cotton alone equivalent today to $525,000 per year (no income taxes either) on their Okatie-Bluffton lands of over ten thousand acres.

James Kirk was a good deal more than a one-dimensional. He had a number of other interests in which he invested his time and his fortune. He started the first known school in this local area in 1823 with his own resources. It was called the May River Academy and was open to the local planter children in the region. He brought in outside tutors, some from Europe, to teach there. He was always very supportive of his Episcopal Church. Between 1840 and 1850, he provided gifts of land and building funds to construct a new St. Luke’s Parish Church and cemetery which became today’s Church of the Cross in Bluffton. He co-founded the village of Bluffton and helped to assemble the one-square mile acreage that he had platted and subdivided into lots and streets. In the 1840’s he and a handful of local families successfully marked the small community of Bluffton, South Carolina as a healthy, summer resort, safer from diseases to the broader area’s planters.

From extant family letters that he wrote, he reveals himself as a good writer with a logical mind, also as one broadly informed and knowledgeable on the key political and economic issues of his day, whether national, state or local in nature.

Probably the most important and lasting political legacy came on July 31, 1844, when he provided the money, muscle and mentoring to organize the first “Secession Oak” political gathering in Bluffton. The meeting created a bombshell that attracted national attention because it was the venue where the organized secession movement, known henceforth as The Bluffton Movement first appeared under the fiery leadership of orator, Congressman and publisher, Robert Barnwell Rhett and Daniel Heyward Hamilton. Though initially held in check, the movement steadily gained a hearing and adherents throughout the South culminating in the American Civil War 16 years later. In this and its subsequent events it shows James Kirk in his truest form. He avoided elected politics and histrionics for himself; he preferred to influence and shape large events quietly behind the scenes and out of the limelight.

In November 1850, James B. Kirk quietly died in his home at age 70. As he lay dying recounting his life, he was entitled to feel very satisfied. He had started with very little, but in his lifetime assembled a small empire with a large, extended family, capable of succeeding him and growing it even larger. He was truly a patriarch for his time.

This article was taken from the book A Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina written by Bill Behan, a resident of Calawassie. The portrait of James Kirk, ca 1816, was painted by an artist named Waldo, in New York City. It now resides in the home of Bud and Barbara Martin of Luray, Virginia. Bud Martin is a great-great grandson of James B. Kirk.