The Bowens Family

The Critical Role of Oral History

Richmond Bowens

In 1908, Richmond Herschel Bowens was born at Drayton Hall. Richmond eventually became the National Trust's greatest resource on African-American history at Drayton Hall. He was able to bring an entirely new perspective to Drayton Hall's history — as much of African-American history doesn't exist documentarily — and his role at the Trust highlights the critical role that oral history plays in historical research.


Richmond's family's first house was located near today's gatehouse. Later, when he was around 14 years old, after his father died and after his mother remarried, he lived in the Victorian caretaker's cottage that serves as today's Museum Shop. When he was about 17 years old, Richmond and his brother moved into the only other surviving 18th-century building at Drayton Hall. Originally the privy, the building had been converted into an office with a fireplace during the phosphate mining period.

Later, Richmond began to work for the Draytons. At first, he helped out his father Richmond, who was working as a gardener. Much later in life, Richmond was still able to identify trees that he and his father had planted. One such tree is a camellia that is part of the self-guided River Walk, that he remembers planting "when it was just a slip."

Later, he worked as a chauffeur, and around 1940, he left Charleston for Chicago where he worked as a chauffeur for most of the next 30 years. When his uncle became ill in 1974, Richmond returned to Charleston and visited Drayton Hall.

After deciding to stay in Charleston, he became the first gatekeeper at Drayton Hall. Over the course of the next 24 years, Richmond became a crucial asset to the National Trust as he recounted oral histories of African-American life on the plantation and as he worked with archeologists.

During January and February of 1990, archeologists began a survey of the wooded areas adjacent to Ashley River Road where an African-American community had thrived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thanks to the help of Richmond, the archeologists were able to find the specific locations of house sites and other buildings that were likely developed as part of the phosphate mining operations at Drayton Hall.


Then, in the spring of 1992, National Trust Archeologist Lynne Lewis began investigating the area on the north side of the entry drive in order to determine the location of a house where Richmond lived during his childhood. What made this project significant is that it relied almost exclusively on Mr. Bowens' recollections to determine the location of test pits and underground investigations. Oral histories made it possible for archeologists to create a map of the proximal locations of Mr. Bowens' family's house and others in the community. Mr. Bowens created the map from memory and helped interns at Drayton Hall develop sketches and drawings based on his descriptions of the house, its surrounding landscape, and the use of the site. To guide the excavation, Mr. Bowens directed the placement of pin-flags in the locations he recalled as the four corners of the house. The excavations that followed revealed that the foundation piers were just four feet from where he had remembered them!


In his later years, Mr. Bowens retired from his work as a gatekeeper but continued to play an important role at Drayton Hall. From the caretaker's cottage where he had once lived, he spoke with visitors and shared his family's story. When he passed away in 1998, he asked to be buried in the African-American cemetery on the property where his grandfather Caesar and many other African-Americans who lived and worked at Drayton Hall are buried. After his death, Drayton Hall developed "Connections: From Africa to America" as an attempt to fill the void left by his absence and to tell the stories of the Africans and African Americans who lived and worked at Drayton Hall for over 200 years.