REBECCA BREWTON MOTTE
To recognize the critical roles women have played in shaping our nation’s history -- contributions rarely as celebrated and remembered as prominently as men’s -- Congress established March as Women’s History Month in 1987. There are so many examples of such women in the Lowcountry one hardly knows where to begin.
One of those is Rebecca Brewton Motte, who epitomized grace, style, character, and self-sacrifice in support of the American Revolution.
Born in 1737 at her parents’ plantation along the Santee River, Rebecca was the youngest surviving daughter of Robert Brewton and Mary Griffin Loughton. Her father, a goldsmith, was also involved in the colony’s banking and financial businesses. Her grandfather, Miles, was among Charles Town’s earliest settlers, having immigrated from Barbados in 1684.
At 21, Rebecca married Jacob Motte Jr., son of the colony’s treasurer and a politically active rice planter. Of their seven children, only three daughters survived to adulthood. They also reared her half-sister's daughter, Susanna Smith (Elliott), after her parents’ deaths.
The Mottes were active, early supporters of the American Revolution, as was Rebecca’s better known older brother, Miles, a successful shipping merchant, planter, and one of the wealthiest men in colonial North America, who was elected to the Second Provential Congress in 1775.
Unfortunately, as Miles, his wife and children were on their way to Philadelphia, their ship was lost at sea. Rebecca and her sister Frances inherited their brother’s fortune, including his magnificent townhouse at 27 King St. and several plantations including Mt. Joseph in the Orangeburg District, which was briefly used as a Patriots’ field hospital.
Though they had no sons to fight in the Revolution, the Mottes supported the army by providing supplies and food such as rice, beef, pork and corn. They also supplied enslaved labor to help build Charles Town’s defenses.
When the city fell to the British in 1780, Brewton’s grand King Street house was commandeered as headquarters for Sir Henry Clinton and later for Lords Rawdon and Cornwallis, along with their entourages. The Mottes withdrew to Mt. Joseph while their townhouse was occupied. Around that time, Jacob Motte became ill and died.
In 1781, British troops under the command of Lt. Daniel McPherson seized Mt. Joseph because of its strategic location overlooking the British supply route where the Congaree and Wateree rivers met. McPherson renamed the site Fort Motte, a small nod of respect for Rebecca. She, her children, and servants moved out of the plantation house into the nearby overseer’s house.
Digging a moat around the main house with wooden palisades and a rampart that held 165 soldiers, the British successfully defended the site from Patriot forces under Gen. Francis Marion and Col. Henry Lee. After several siege attempts, the Americans decided the only way to dislodge the British was to burn them out.
When the officers reluctantly presented their plan to Rebecca, she not only agreed that her house should be burnt, but even offered the use of her bow and arrows to shoot the first incendiary shot. With the roof ablaze, the Patriots opened a barrage of artillery fire.
The British surrendered, after which the Patriots and, by most accounts, even the British worked together to contain the fire before Rebecca’s house was destroyed. Afterward, Rebecca prepared a hearty meal for officers on both sides to dine together. During their dinner conversation, Rebecca advocated for Americans’ rights to liberty.
By the end of the war Rebecca had become one of the wealthiest women in the state. She and her son-in-law Maj. Gen. Thomas Pinckney (son of Charles and Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who became South Carolina’s governor, a U.S. Congressman and Vice Presidential candidate in 1796, and married two of Rebecca’s daughters – first Elizabeth in 1779, and after her death, Frances in 1797), built a new rice plantation in the Santee Delta they named Eldorado. Though the house was lost in an 1897 fire, its overgrown ruins remain within the woods of the Santee Coastal Reserve, managed by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
Rebecca spent the rest of her life at Eldorado with Frances and Thomas. She died of natural causes in 1815 and is buried with her husband in St. Philips’ churchyard in downtown Charleston.
