Tara This Ain't

Tara from "Gone with the Wind" was a fictional plantation in a Civil War era novel. A facade visualized & constructed for the movie then sat in storage until 2005 because the Margaret Mitchell estate wouldn't grant permission to capitalize on anything from the book. 

Unlike Tara – there is a real plantation in our lines - the Oakland Plantation in South Carolina that came into existence way, way, way back. 

Oakland Plantation - courtesy of US Library of Congress

Around 1704, a little under 1000 acres of land was sold to John Pierre, who commissioned a fella name John Abraham Motte to settle the land. Motte established the plantation and named it the Youghal Plantation after Pierre's Irish homeland. 

Fast forward to 1852 when Mary Barkdale McBeth took ownership and changed the name to Oakland - historians believe she built the oak alley seen in the picture above, hence the name Oakland.

Generations later, descendants of Charles Barksdale, the Gregories, still hold the land. This article in the Moultrie News, "Oakland Plantation: One of Mount Pleasant's Treasures" by Suzannah Smith Miles, 21 Feb 2013, covers a good part of the history of the conservancy.

How do we fit in? Well by marriage of course!

1944, Fort Dix - courtesy of Esther Gilmore, Ancestry

A fella named John Judson Gray married Esther DuPre Gregorie in 1950. 

He's a descendant of Hezekiah Rogers Jr & Hannah Vincent and the son of Everett Gray & Garnet Vollertsen. 

Esther was the daughter of Ferdinand Gregorie & Esther Royall.  

Together they had 4 kids - Esther, Sarah, Julian & John.

John died in 1973 in Florida where he relocated after Esther's death in 1962. They are buried together at the Christ Church Cemetery at Mount Pleasant, SC - photos courtesy of Linda Ullom Buchanan, Find A Grave