The Barbados Period
1675 – 1680

In 1675, Thomas Drayton and his son, Thomas, Jr., boarded the ship Willing Wind and left England for Barbados to capitalize on England’s growing stake in the New World. Sugar plantations had sprung up all across the Caribbean and West Indies making rich men out of those Englishmen willing to take a gamble in the New World. The population of Barbados exploded to make it the most densely populated portion of the British Empire, but the majority of the best land had already been taken by the time the Draytons arrived. So, like many other Barbadian settlers, they began to look to other British outposts to seek lands of their own. Opportunity in the older and better established British communities in the Caribbean, Virginia, and Massachusetts were available, but it was in the new Carolina colonies, more specifically Charles Towne and the surrounding Lowcountry, that the opportunity to make ones fortune was most prevalent.

During this same period, Stephen Fox, another Barbadian, also settled in Charles Towne. There he acquired a tract of land along the Ashley River, which was later named Magnolia Plantation. The marriage of Thomas Drayton, Jr. to Stephen Fox’s daughter, Ann, proved to be the beginning of a long line of Drayton family ownership of Magnolia Plantation that has lasted over 300 years.

The Drayton family was one of the more affluent in the colonies. The sons were educated in England. The education of the daughters was conducted largely at home and extended little beyond literature, the arts, and etiquette. For sons, the eldest always inherited the family seat and his career was set as a gentleman planter. Younger male siblings often chose between the Clergy or the military as an officer, both considered respectable positions for men of good backgrounds and means. Life as a gentleman planter, however, offered the greatest prestige, for through it one had the time and means to pursue service in government.