e, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides and
operating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven by
steam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels of
the countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his own
frequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons kept
the scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increase
of his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one and
five per cent. annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. At
his death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields ranging
from seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4,390
acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and a
sawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at
$180,000; securities and cash to the amount of $200,000; $20,000 worth of
horses, mules and cattle; $15,000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of old
wine. His slaves, numbering 2,087 and appraised at an average of $550, made
up the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continued
his policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantation
called Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 per
acre, together with its equipment and 120 slaves, at a gross price of
$135,600.[27]

[Footnote 27: MSS. in the possession of Mrs. Hawkins K. Jenkins, Pinopolis,
S.C., including a "Memoir of Nathaniel Heyward," written in 1895 by Gabriel
E. Manigault.]

The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was in
striking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and married
an actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214
slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in Alexander
Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs.
Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eight
hundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousand
dollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring bought
a large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, and
carried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering the
income for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgaged
the land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement of
Baring's debts, it fel