Tabby ruins on Callawassee Island near Port Royal in Beaufort County probably aren't the remains of a residential structure despite local folklore indicating they are remnants of a house occupied from the early 1800s to the Civil War.

More likely, said Stan South, a research archaeologist with the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC, the ruins are those of a storage facility in an area once dominated by large plantations that produced goods like cotton and molasses sent to market by cargo vessels.

South and archaeologist Michael Stoner studied the ruins in January. Their findings helped clarify questions about the tabby structure for their owner, William R. and Shanna Sullivan, who funded the work that was conducted with fellow institute research professor Chester DePratter. Assisting were volunteers Bill Behan, Dick Schwarz, and Jim Scott.

The team conducted excavations around the tabby ruins in the expectation that refuse deposited at the doorways of the structure would indicate that it was likely used as a domestic household. "But the absence of refuse suggested the structure was instead at one time an office or storage facility for bales of cotton and sugar mill products awaiting loading onto vessels for transport to market," South said.

"Only two or three ceramic fragments dating from the mid-19th century were recovered from 50 holes all around the ruin," he added. In addition to its excavations, the team also transit-mapped the ruin to provide a plan drawing, and measured, recorded, and photographed the standing wall profiles of the tabby. They also attempted to locate an outbuilding ruin whose foundation wall was not found.

Documents suggest the structure, which the Sullivans have highlighted through landscaping to enhance its beauty, was in use between 1816 and the 1860s. That period coincides with the operation of a sugar mill whose ruins are elsewhere on the island.

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