Mepkin Abbey and Plantation are rich in natural beauty, tradition and history

And long before that it was the home of Henry Laurens, who was born in Charleston in 1724 and died at Mepkin in 1792. Laurens was a merchant who imported tropical goods from the West Indies, manufactured goods from England and slaves from Africa and exported rice, indigo, deerskin and naval stores. He was elected to the Commons House of Assembly in 1757, was president of the First Provincial Congress of South Carolina in 1775, vice president of South Carolina in 1776 and president of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1778. Laurens became minister to Holland in 1779 and was captured at sea by the British and confined for 14 months in the Tower of London. He was exchanged for Lord Cornwallis after Cornwallis’ defeat at Yorktown in 1781. Along with John Adams, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin he negotiated and signed the Preliminary Peace of Paris in 1782. Laurens at one time owned eight plantations and 300 slaves, using the latter to cultivate rice at Mepkin. (He did, however, get out of the slave trade after 1786.) He and his family are also buried at Mepkin.

***image3***The Laurens family fortune declined after the Civil War and by 1911, Mepkin had declined so much that the owners decided to sell it to the Rutgers family of New Jersey. (Many other Southern estates were meeting a similar fate at that time.) Henry and Clare Luce bought the property in 1936.

In 1937, Clare Luce commissioned noted New York and Charleston landscape architect Loutrell Briggs to design the garden near the high bluff on the property where she and Henry planned to build a grand permanent home close to the Laurens house. Briggs used low brick walls to delineate rooms in the terraced space, included two small lakes in the design along with trees to shade lavish plantings of azaleas, camellias and other flowering shrubs. He called it the "Camelia Garden." The Luces also planned to build a house for their daughter, Ann Clare, but she was killed in an auto accident in 1944 at age 20. Eventually Ann Clare, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, Nancy Bryan Luce, Henry’s third wife, and Clare’s mother and other family members were buried in a family plot in the highest of the garden rooms, and after rehabilitation in 1984 the garden was renamed the Nancy Bryan Luce Garden.

The other graveyard of great historic interest at Mepkin is that of the Laurens family. To get to this site, which is apart from the Camelia Garden, you cross an open space, enter the woods and follow a boardwalk down and up a steep ravine. A gated brick wall surrounds the graveyard, on a bluff above the river.

***image1***The Luce family donated the plantation to the Roman Catholic Church for a monastic foundation in 1949. The Trappist monks who took over the property then were from France, members of the worldwide Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, with a long tradition of hospitality. They open their doors to men and women of all faiths for tours and retreats, and they’re also open to the general public for tours of the grounds and gardens, the Abbey Church and Monastery and the Abbey Store. At the latter they sell fine handcrafted religious art and statuary, rosaries and other religious artifacts, books on faith and spiritual and theological subjects, CDs of religious music including Gregorian chant and Russian Orthodox choral music, handcrafted blown glass, fine art pottery and tableware, framed prints, cards and stationery, and specialty foods such as Monks Blend Coffee from a monastery in California, and fruitcake, candy, honey and preserves made by the monks at Mepkin. In addition, they offer eggs that they gather from their own hens and compost for your garden. Each November they also hold a crèche festival featuring nativity sets from around the world. More information is available online at www.mepkinabbey.org or by calling 843-761-8509.