Williamsburg County, South Carolina
Jane Pressley McConnell
born Zuill · married Clarke · married McConnell
The widow who ran Oak Hall Plantation and the marriage that came before it
About This Chapter
April 13, 1864. The Confederacy has less than a year left, and everyone in Williamsburg County knows it. In a house above Black Mingo Creek, a widow named Jane Pressley McConnell is writing her will. Paralysis has taken her right arm. A clerk guides her hand. Where her signature should go, she marks an X, and that mark becomes law. It divides her land, her house, and dozens of people, by name, among her six children.
This is where the story of Jane and Thomas starts to matter. Not with a wedding. With an ending.
But it was not the first ending Jane had already lived through. Family history holds that by 1864 she had already buried one husband before Thomas McConnell ever held a deed in her name. This chapter starts there.
One piece of ground Jane's story touches, a swamp tract with a family graveyard on it, will resurface decades later under a different name, Dorsey Town.
Chapter Contents
You may navigate this chapter via the index below.
Introduction
A widow marks an X, and that mark becomes law.
I. A First Marriage: Dr. John Jay Clarke New
Before there was a Thomas, there was a John Jay.
II. Building Oak Hall
Old Tom gives Jane and his own son 1,500 acres, cash, and twenty-six people, as her second marriage settlement.
III. Thomas Disappears From the Record
The will names him as already gone, but never says when, or how.
IV. A Will Written in Wartime
Remember Betty. Her story is only getting started.
V. The Three Pillars of the Will
Three legal mechanisms, one designed to claim children not yet born.
VI. The Enslaved Community Ledger
Names recorded next to livestock and furniture, listed here on their own.
VII. What the Will Doesn't Say
The silence in a legal document is its own kind of record.
VIII. Sources
Twenty years of research, primary documents, and family history still being verified.
IX. Glossary
The terms behind the legal language, defined in plain English.
I. A First Marriage: Dr. John Jay Clarke
December 20, 1827, Williamsburg District
Before there was a Thomas, there was a John Jay.
On December 20, 1827, in Williamsburg District, a marriage settlement and bond was signed between Dr. John Jay Clarke and Jane P. Zuill, named in the document as the step-daughter of Old Tom McConnell. Old Tom was not yet Jane's father-in-law at this point, that would come five years later, when his own son, who carried his father's name, Thomas McConnell, became her second husband. In 1827, Old Tom was simply her guardian and trustee. Because she was still a minor, she could not yet convey the property she was entitled to under her father's will directly, so Old Tom and David D. Wilson were named her trustees, and Clarke bound himself to them with a bond of forty thousand dollars.
The property Jane brought into the marriage in her own right, funds, land, and twenty-one enslaved people, was recorded in the bond itself:
"Chloe, Nell, Leah, John, Mick, Eliza, Betty, Doris, Emeline, Peter, Jenny, Billy, Ned, Reg., Eliza, Phillis, Charlotte, Ann, Patsy, Fanny and Tom."
Marriage Settlement and Bond, John Jay Clarke and Jane P. Zuill, December 20, 1827 (primary source)
Family history also holds that Jane and Dr. Clarke, together, purchased a second tract of land, later known as Dorsey Town, from a Mr. John Graham on the Burnett Swamp. The sale reportedly came with one condition attached: Graham's own family burial ground, called the "Old Graveyard," was never to be disturbed, no matter who owned the land around it.
Dr. Clarke's death date is not yet recorded here. Family history says Jane married Thomas McConnell, Old Tom's own son, five years later, in 1832, when Oak Hall Plantation passed to the couple as her second marriage settlement, though the manuscript that preserves this memory leaves the exact wedding date blank, a placeholder never filled in. That gap is honest. It is also the next thing this project needs to close.
Research Note
The marriage to Dr. John Jay Clarke, the $40,000 bond, the trustees, and the twenty-one enslaved people named above are confirmed by the original Marriage Settlement and Bond, Williamsburg District, December 20, 1827. The Dorsey Town purchase from John Graham on Burnett Swamp is drawn from family history research (Jones, Hidden Jewels, pp. 31, 33) and has not yet been independently verified against a primary source. What would confirm this: the original Graham to Clarke deed for the Burnett Swamp tract, which should also name the "Old Graveyard" restriction if the family account is accurate, and a death or probate record for Dr. Clarke to establish when the marriage ended.
A Note From Our Founder
"I grew up knowing there was a first husband before Thomas McConnell. Nobody in the family could ever tell me exactly when Dr. Clark died or when Jane remarried, only that it happened, and that she came into that marriage already a woman of means. Some of our history was passed down to us with the dates worn off. That doesn't make it less true. It means we have more work to do."
Tanya Jones, Our Mahogany Heritage
II. Building Oak Hall
By the time Jane married again, then, she was not a young bride starting from nothing. Family history holds she had already survived one marriage, one widowhood, and one plantation's worth of decisions made in her own name. What follows is the version of events currently backed by a primary source, the 1832 transfer of Oak Hall.
Whether that transfer represented new property, or the formal joining of land Jane already held through her father and her first husband, is a question this project has not yet closed. The existing sourced account is presented below as published, alongside the question it now raises.
1832, Willtown, Black Mingo Creek
Back up five years, to 1832. Willtown is already fading. The merchants are gone. The gristmills have gone quiet. But the McConnell family is just getting started.
That year, Jane marries Thomas McConnell, Old Tom's own son, and Old Tom gives the couple Oak Hall as Jane's second marriage settlement: 1,500 acres, $8,050 in cash and goods, and twenty-six enslaved people, handed over in a single document as casually as furniture.
"Flora. James. Billy. Adam. Ned. London. Jane. Betty. Louis. Emeline. Peter. Sarah Ann. Charlotte. Ben. Rosina. Lavon. Matilda. Peg. Eliza. Phillis. Richard. Nell. Dinah. Tom. Dick. John."
Oak Hall Plantation deed record, 1832 marriage transfer (primary source)
Source Note (Existing)
By April 1864, Jane's right arm was paralyzed, so the will was penned in another hand and closed with her mark, "Jane R. X McConnell." This 26-name list is confirmed by the Oak Hall Plantation deed record, 1832. Compare against the 21-name list from the 1827 Clarke marriage settlement in Section I above, seventeen names overlap almost exactly (Flora, Dick, John, Jane, Betty, Louis, Emeline, Peter, Billy, Ned, Peg, Eliza, Phillis, Charlotte, Ben, Rosina, Tom), which may mean these are two snapshots of the same community five years apart, one at Jane's 1827 marriage to Clarke and one at her 1832 marriage to Old Tom's son.
III. Thomas Disappears From The Record
Here is what we don't know yet: when exactly Thomas McConnell died. By the time Jane sits down to write her will in 1864, he is already gone. The will does name him directly. In dividing her residual estate, Jane writes of "my undivided interest in the real and personal estate of my late husband Thomas McConnell," but it gives no date, no cause, no record of his passing.
What we do know is that Jane didn't remarry after Thomas, and didn't step aside for a son to take over early. For years, on her own, she ran Oak Hall.
IV. A Will Written In Wartime
April 1864, Oak Hall Plantation
By April 1864, Jane is a widow managing a plantation while the Confederacy collapses around her. She writes a will, and on the same day, a codicil to correct a mistake in it. She had divided her land among her three sons and forgotten that John Thomas already lived on a separate 200-acre tract she owned. She catches the error hours after finishing the will and corrects it in writing, on the spot, ordering that the extra acreage be counted against his share so his brothers aren't shorted.
She divides 1,500 acres among three sons, James Zuill, John Thomas, and Samuel Blakely, so precisely that if the brothers can't agree on the split, three independent appraisers will settle it for them, and whoever gets the better land pays cash to whoever doesn't. The dwelling house and other buildings go specifically to Samuel Blakely.
Then she does the same with the people she owns, divided by name among all six of her children, the same way she divided the land, the same way she divided the cattle and horses. People, counted and assigned like property, because under the law of 1864 South Carolina, that is exactly what they were.
To her son John Thomas, she gives Betty, along with ten others. This is confirmed directly in the 1864 will. Remember Betty. She goes on to care for a young girl whose story changes the course of everything that follows.
V. The Three Pillars of the Will
VI. The Enslaved Community Ledger
Jane's will named these people one by one, clause by clause, in the same sentences as land shares and livestock. These are not inventory numbers. These are names.
Cross-Reference
The eleven names in John Thomas McConnell's clause (Betty, Franklin, Travis, Meled/Melia, Madison, Eliza, Tom, Daphne, Joe, Daniel, Lavenia/Lavinia) match, almost name for name, the list Grace recites in Hidden Jewels as the people who came with John Thomas "from his mother to stat dis here plantation" (p. 33). This is strong, independent corroboration between the 1864 will and Tanya's family oral history, and is worth citing directly in the Sources section below.
VIII. Sources
IX. Glossary
Marriage Settlement (Bond)
A legal agreement made before or at marriage, setting aside property or a cash bond for a wife's separate benefit. Family history places a $40,000 bond in Jane's settlement with Dr. John Jay Clark, her first husband.
Burnett Swamp / Old Graveyard Covenant
The wetland tract later known as Dorsey Town, reportedly purchased by Jane and Dr. Clark from John Graham, with a condition that Graham's family burial ground on the property, the "Old Graveyard," never be disturbed.
Codicil
A written amendment made to an existing will, used to correct or add to its terms without rewriting the entire document.
Separate Use Clause
A legal provision that protected a woman's inherited property from being claimed by her husband or his creditors.
Executor
The person named in a will to carry out its instructions and manage the estate through probate.
Probate
The legal process by which a will is verified and its instructions carried out after the person's death.
Future Issue
A legal term used in wills to refer to children not yet born, used in Jane's Ninth Clause to pre-assign unborn children of enslaved women to specific heirs.
Coerced Labor
Work extracted from people through force, threat, or legal bondage.
Willtown
The historic 1698 trading village on Black Mingo Creek in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, tied to the Zuill, Belin, and McConnell families. Not to be confused with Willtown Bluff, a separate colonial town on the Edisto River in Charleston County.