43 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com our town commissioned to be built on the grounds. Visitors included Winston Churchill, Irving Berlin, H.G. Wells, President Franklin Roosevelt, as well as Henry Luce, philanthropist and founder of Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated magazines. His wife, Clare Luce, a writer and editor who also went on to become the first female ambassador to Italy, was a former paramour of Baruch’s, who encouraged the couple to purchase property in the region (“Baroness of Hobcaw,” page 132). In 1936, the Luces bought a plot northeast of Charleston called Mepkin, named for the peaceful and tranquil land once roamed by Native Americans before it was transformed by Henry Laurens, president of the First Provincial Congress in South Carolina, into a 7,200acre rice plantation. Although the Luce’s never lived on the grounds, they commissioned the acclaimed landscape architect Loutrel Briggs to design the gardens. In 1948, Luce was offered $250,000 for the property and sold all but 3,000 acres, which he and Clare donated to Trappist monks of the Abbey of Gethsemani based in Kentucky. Not long after, in November 1949, the monks arrived on the land where they established Mepkin Abbey as their home and place of worship (“Baroness of Hobcaw,” page 132). Since then, the monks have generously opened the grounds to the public every day, and there is a 45-minute guided tour at 11:30 a.m. every Tuesday through Thursday, and on Saturdays, which includes attendance of the midday prayer services and some background history on Mepkin. For an updated tour schedule, visit mepkinabbey. org. While onsite, visit the gift shop, which sells honey, mustards, jams, mushrooms and plants, all handmade and grown by the monks. And stroll the gardens where you’ll find several cemeteries, one of which is the resting place of the Luces. THE VANDERBILTS Once home to eight plantations, the nearly 20,000-acre stretch of land along the Waccamaw River called Arcadia was acquired as a hunting preserve in 1906 by Dr. Isaac Emerson. A multimillionaire from Baltimore, Emerson was an explorer, a sportsman who raced yachts and the grandfather of George Vanderbilt, with whom he enjoyed hunting and fishing and to whom he left the property in 1931. According to Ducks Unlimited, when Lucille “Lulu” Vanderbilt Pate inherited Arcadia from her father George W. Vanderbilt III in 1961, she and the family donated much of the property to conservation easements, because as her son Matt Balding said, “Some things are just more valuable than money.” TOM YAWKEY Then in 1925, Tom Yawkey, owner of the Boston Red Sox, outdoor enthusiast and conservationist, bought 20,000 acres encompassing South, Cat and North Islands, which were donated in his will to what is now the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. According to the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center, this conservation “established the Yawkey Foundation to ensure the continued management of the vast wildlife preserve.” Henry Luce and Clare Boothe Luce. Lucille “Lulu” Vanderbilt Pate. Tom Yawkey.
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