Preserve Old Trees

“Mr. Barnwell proves his love and appreciation of coastal treasures in the effort he has made to preserve the trees at Cuthbert’s Point.

A hoary oak to the left to he new building has been the mutual joy of generations of negroes and opossums at the point.  It was a hollow throughout it’s great height.  The opossums treasured it because it furnished an ideal hiding place from hungry negroes and the point’s darkies delighted in it for some reason, for they could better get at the opossum family.

Once, the tree caught fire.  It was like a roaring furnace and its hollowness made of it a veritable smoke stack.  Harold E. Scheper owned the place then and he and his family and the negroes on the point were badly frightened.  They fought the fire nearly all night with water dipped from the river and at last put it out…

…Cuthbert’s Point is without doubt rich in history, but that history is so covered with dust of the years that there is none to tell it.  Although the original Cuthbert home stands there intact and is now a boarding house for the workmen on the Barnwell home, very little is known about it save that it has been there for nearly 200 years.  Some estimate its age at more than 200, although the more conservative estimates say it is not quite so old and put it as somewhere between 150 and 200 years.”

– Northern Money, Southern Land, p55-56