Explore Hilton Head Island | 10 Million Names

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I have no desire at all to see the Black families on Hilton Head Island who don’t want to sell their land pay higher taxes than they were paying 15 years ago.

I remember I was intensely criticized because we brought in a Black man as head of employment, personnel, administration, at the Sea Pines Company. He had grown up in New Orleans and was very competent, had been to college, knew his job. They said, “Why don’t you hire Black folk?” I said, “This guy is as Black as anybody on the island.”

We put in the first houses in Forest Beach in 1953. Before that, a few had been built, about forty, at one time up at Folly Field Beach. I was not enthusiastic about the quality of them at all.

When I began to think in terms of planning the community which became Sea Pines, everyone in Savannah and Charleston—the business community—thought I was touched in the head, that at it simply could not be done.

I first saw Hilton Head Island in 1949 when I was a senior at the University of Georgia. My father was Major General J.B. Fraser. He was president of the Fraser Lumber Company.

You know, when they changed those names, maybe they didn’t buy those companies from the different company and they changed the name, you know.

Well, down to the far north, they used to call it Doggett Elliot. Between Elliot and what they call Jenkin Island, they used to call it Talbot, you know. I guess it was owned by different people... was owned by the mainland.

There used to be a sailboat, and there used to be a large boat from Savannah to Beaufort, operate under Beaufort and Savannah line. They used to run on from Savannah to Beaufort, and stop by these different sections... carry people from carry people from the island.

After the bridge came across or before the bridge come across near the ferry, and Mr. Charles Fraser and General Fraser and Mr. Joe, he came to Savannah, and he went to Mr. Philip Morgan who—of Morgan Incorporation to get some mill and I guess lumber equipment.

I used to tran…you know, transporting—I began transporting from Hilton Head to Savannah, you know, by boat. I started in 1927, and did it for 25 or 27 years. We would unload for more than 15 years the trucks and buses.

There were sea-goin’ vessels that would come out here. If you were goin’ to Daufuskie, you’d go to Savannah, or Bluffton, or Hilton Head. You wouldn’t come from here. These are sailin’ vessels, with all the—brought in spices, and probably slaves, and everything else in here back in those days.

That was where the light shone, and it synchronized with a light that was on that concrete footing there, between the two little wineries. That was a tower about a hundred feet high. And that was the back range.