The Sams Family Cemetery and the Cotton Dike Cemetery: Two Burial Grounds, One Island, and What Memory Owes to Both
Dataw Island: People, Places, and Legacy
Both cemeteries are located on Dataw Island and were used during overlapping periods. The people buried in each shared the same island landscape, worked the same cotton fields, and experienced the same broad historical events. One cemetery is enclosed by a wall, contains seventeen engraved marble headstones, three box tombs, a large live oak at its center, and a drawing by Paul Brodie from 1870. The other holds at least 38 graves, most of which are unmarked. The names there were discovered through old Bibles and family stories, and the total number of graves wasn’t known until 2006. This article recounts the stories of both cemeteries and examines their differences.
The Sams Family Cemetery
William Sams (1741–1798) moved his family from Wadmalaw Island to Datha Island in 1783 after buying Datha from his cousin, Sarah Reeve Gibbes. He had been an indigo planter on Wadmalaw Island, like his father, until events at the end of the American Revolution forced him to move. William probably chose the site for this cemetery, selecting a cleared spot under a large live oak. “When William was buried there in 1798, the first recorded burial in what became the Sams Family Cemetery, there was no road where Dataw Drive now runs. People reached the site by docking at the south end of the island and following the road now called Long Field. His wife, Elizabeth Hext Sams, was buried there fifteen years later, in 1813.
The cemetery expanded as the plantation grew. By 1820, at least six graves had been found. A tabby-and-brick wall was probably built around it in 1833, perhaps the same year the Sams brothers constructed the nearby chapel. Lewis Reeve Sams buried his first wife, Sarah Fripp, in a crypt he designed himself. Though locally referred to as a ‘crypt,’ technically it is a box tomb erected above her grave. Pieces of marble from the box tomb were recovered and reassembled during DHF preservation work in 2006. The last confirmed burial took place in 1864, just before the Civil War ended and the plantation system that influenced the Sams family collapsed.
Seventeen engraved headstones remain above ground. A ground-penetrating radar survey in March 2005 identified between 19 and 26 potential grave sites, suggesting that several individuals without headstones are buried within the walls. Family groups are organized by generation: William and Elizabeth are near the west wall, Lewis Reeve’s family is in the second row, Berners Barnwell’s family is in the third, and the grandchildren’s generation is further beyond. Archaeologists have observed that graves tend to remain in place, whereas monuments can be moved. The layout of the cemetery, the oak tree, and the chapel on the south side were all designed to be enduring.
The DHF has maintained the cemetery through preservation efforts, archaeological surveys, inscription restorations, and interpretive signs. It holds a significant place in the foundation’s history.
The Cotton Dike Cemetery
At the end of Cotton Dike Road, near the water, there is another cemetery. It was used to bury enslaved people connected to the Sams plantation during the Civil War era. After emancipation, freedmen who stayed on or returned to Dataw continued to use the cemetery. The last recorded burial took place in 1967, marking nearly two centuries of use.
Burials near the shoreline held significance according to Gullah Geechee burial tradition. Among Sea Island communities, burial near the water was a meaningful tradition often linked to the soul’s journey home. The location of the Cotton Dike Cemetery along the tidal edge of Dataw was a meaningful act of faith by people who had been taken from one shore and could not return in their lifetime.
Since modern development started on Dataw Island, people have known about the cemetery at the end of Cotton Dike Road. For many years, it was called the slave cemetery, but that name was incomplete. Slaves, freedmen, and their descendants were all buried there. It was generally regarded as an African-American burial ground from the plantation era. For decades, it received little formal documentation or preservation.
The full extent of the cemetery wasn’t known until 2006, when a GPR survey pinpointed at least 38 intact grave sites, mostly located in the southern and western parts. Water erosion had already shrunk the cemetery’s size, and some graves had been lost to the marsh. The exact number of people buried there will never be known.
Two Brothers at the Gate
In 2007, Andrew “Bullet” Robinson (1923–2020) and his brother Deacon Nathan “Willie” Robinson (1913–2018) arrived at Dataw Island’s gatehouse and said they needed to speak with someone about their ancestors.
They are believed to have been born on Saint Helena Island, although family memory leaves open the possibility that they were born on Dataw itself. Their father, Nathan Robinson, worked on Dataw from 1928 to 1933. Soon after Kate Gleason bought Dataw in 1928, she hired him as the island’s caretaker. One of their infant brothers, Freddy, was buried in the Cotton Dike Cemetery in 1922. Andrew graduated from the Penn Center’s Normal Industrial and Agricultural School on Saint Helena Island, which was established by Laura Towne and Ellen Murray in 1862 as part of the Port Royal Experiment. After graduation, he moved to New York City. He worked as a longshoreman, carpenter, artist, licensed real estate agent, and small business owner. Still, he never forgot where his family was buried.
Andrew’s nephew, Nathaniel, gathered a list of names from old Bibles and family conversations, totaling twenty-eight names. John Colgan from the DHF met with the brothers. With help from neighbor Gloria Cartwright, who spoke both Bronx English and Gullah, they bridged the language gap. Everyone agreed that interpretive signs in the cemetery, instead of a monument, would be the best way to honor those buried there. Peter Pearks created the signs, and the DHF paid for their installation. The family names of those buried here include Allen, Brayn, Brisbane, Chaplin, Polite, and Robinson.
The Rededication Ceremony was held on December 29, 2007, during a gentle winter rain. About fifty members of the Robinson family attended, along with their minister, family historian, and a singer. Chairs were arranged for the guests, and the ceremony lasted around forty-five minutes. Afterwards, some mothers brought their children to see the plaques. For many, it was the first time they learned where their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were buried.
John Colgan, who organized the ceremony, remembered a very tall man approaching him afterward. The man said he had worked on Dataw Island for years with a moving company but had never known where his ancestors were buried until that day. “I was so glad,” Colgan wrote later, “that I had a part to play in this.”
What the Surveys Found
The same firm conducted ground-penetrating radar surveys for both cemeteries: the Sams Family Cemetery in 2005 and the Cotton Dike Cemetery in 2006. They used the same equipment and techniques. Overall, the results reveal two communities that shared the island but experienced different histories.
The Sams Family Cemetery has 17 inscribed headstones above ground and between 19 and 26 likely graves below. Named individuals have been confirmed through family documents, genealogical records, and Conway Whittle Sams’s 1903 transcription of the inscriptions. The South Carolina Historical Magazine’s 1963 genealogy and Teresa Bridges’s 2022 research also proved invaluable. Even after two decades of focused research, five to ten graves remain without names.
The Cotton Dike Cemetery has over 38 probable graves. There are no surviving inscribed headstones from the plantation period, and they probably never existed. Names have been collected from old family Bibles, oral histories, and the 2007 visit by Andrew and Nathaniel Robinson, totaling twenty-eight names.
Of these, nine individuals, based on birth year and family history, were probably enslaved. The others came from later generations. The last burial occurred in 1967, a century after the Civil War ended and three years after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed.
Andrew Robinson died at Harlem Hospital in New York City in May 2020 at the age of ninety-six. His obituary highlights the rededication of Cotton Dike Cemetery as one of his proudest achievements. John Colgan was invited to speak at his graveside service, and a copy of John’s remarks was buried with Mr. Robinson.
The cemeteries do not just look different; they also show different ways of remembering, record keeping, and enduring.
The Physical Expression of the Gap
In November 2018, Victoria Smalls, a respected African-American preservationist from the Beaufort area who served as Executive Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, Director at Penn Center’s York W. Bailey Museum, and a National Park Service Ranger at the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, brought a small group to Dataw Island to visit Cotton Dike Cemetery. With her were Peggy King Jorde, who helped establish New York’s African Burial Ground National Monument, and Annina Van Neel Hayes from the other Saint Helena Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic, where a mass burial site of 10,000 Africans who died during the Middle Passage is being documented in a film. Victoria Smalls looked at the Cotton Dike Cemetery and said:
“The Cotton Dike Cemetery is the finest and most carefully maintained slave cemetery of its kind.”
That statement comes from a scholar with a broad perspective. Among the Sea Island burial grounds from the plantation era, most have been destroyed or lost to development. The Cotton Dike Cemetery stands out as an exceptional example of preservation and ongoing care. It is important to recognize this before considering what the two cemeteries do not share.
The differences between the two cemeteries mainly stem from history, not the DHF’s stewardship. The Sams family had marble headstones, kept genealogies, and had the literacy and resources to leave detailed records. In contrast, the people buried in the Cotton Dike Cemetery followed different traditions: their names were kept in family Bibles rather than on stones, and they chose burial sites near water for spiritual reasons rather than enclosing them within architecture.
These are not lesser forms of memory, just different ones shaped by circumstances neither group fully chose.
The records show that both communities lived in a world where a planter family’s history was preserved in permanent form from the beginning, while the history of the enslaved community was preserved in memory and later recovered through efforts such as the DHF’s work with the Robinson family in 2007. Jane Griffith’s 2022 study, the rededication ceremony, and the GPR survey all demonstrate serious, ongoing work. Whether any of Griffith’s 350 recovered names match the Robinson family list or Freedmen’s Bureau records remains unknown, but this is the type of research the DHF collection can now pursue.
Both cemeteries are located on Datha Island and contain the remains of those who shaped its history. The 400-year-old live oak provides shade over the marble headstones, and the tidal creek brushes against the edge of carefully maintained ground. The preservation of both cemeteries is the result of decisions made over generations by the Sams family, the Robinson family, and the DHF.
Victoria Smalls’ judgment remains steadfast. The work of remembering continues.
Sources
Riski, Bill. “Uncertainty — Grateful to Andrew Robinson.” 52 Sams in 52 Weeks, Dataw Historic Foundation, June 2, 2020.
Riski, Bill. “Sams Family Cemetery — Datha Island, South Carolina.” 52 Sams in 52 Weeks, Dataw Historic Foundation, May 2, 2022.
Riski, Bill. “Gone Too Soon.” 52 Sams in 52 Weeks, Dataw Historic Foundation, November 2, 2020.
Riski, Bill. “Crypt of Sarah (Fripp) Sams (1789–1825).” 52 Sams in 52 Weeks, Dataw Historic Foundation, May 12, 2022.
Poplin, Eric C., et al. Recent Archaeological Investigations on Dataw Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Brockington and Associates, February 2006.
Poplin, Eric C. Archaeological Investigation of the Sams Family Cemetery, Dataw Island, South Carolina. Brockington and Associates, June 2006.
Griffith, Jane. “Slavery and Datha’s Enslaved.” Dataw Historic Foundation, 2022.
Riski, Bill. Datha Island — Patterns and Connections Analysis, March 2026.