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Bulloch History with Roger Allen: Rice success increases slave trade activity along coast
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Roger Allen - photo by Special
(Note: The following is part of a series of articles looking at the history and evolution of agriculture in Georgia and Bulloch County.) The largest rice planter in Georgia was Nathaniel Heyward, who — by the time he died in 1851 — accumulated 4,390 acres divided into 14 different rice plantations. In 1860, the average size of Savannah River rice plantations was about 425 acres per plantation, with the largest single plantation reaching 1200 acres. The Georgia agricultural census of 1849 showed that James Potter in Chatham County sold 1.75 million pounds of rice, surpassing Pierce Butler’s harvest of over 1.5 million pounds.
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