Bigelow Tea

Charleston Tea Plantation - Wadmalaw Island, Charleston County

Basic Information

• Location - Wadmalaw Island, Charleston County
  Located on Maybank Highway (SC 700)
• Origin of name - Bill Hall decided on American Classic in 1987-1988
• Operated by R.C. Bigelow, Inc.

Timeline

The Charleston Tea Plantation was established in 1960 on a tract of land on Wadmalaw Island. It was never a plantation according to our definition.

• 1960 - The Thomas J. Lipton Company purchased Pinehurst Tea Plantation in Summerville, South Carolina. The plantation had been abandoned since 1915. Thomas Lipton rescued the surviving tea plants and moved them to a research facility that had had constructed on Wadmalaw Island.
• Mack Fleming, a horticultural researcher at Trident Technical College, was in charge of the operation. Lipton concluded, as the federal government had almost 150 years earlier, that the unstable climate and high costs of labor in South Carolina made American tea production unfeasible.
• 1987 - Mack Fleming and William (Bill) Hall purchased the tea farm from their former employer, the Thomas J. Lipton Company.
• 2003 -Fleming and Hall decided to sell the tea farm. The Charleston Tea Plantation was auctioned off to R.C. Bigelow

Land

• Number of acres - 127
• Primary crop - Tea

Web Resources

• Tours of Charleston Tea Plantation
• Bigelow buys Charleston Tea Plantation
• History of Tea in Charleston

Print Resources

• Initial references: 1, 17

Contact Information

• Telephone: 843-559-0383