08/05/2026
Wednesday Wanderings in the Archives: As America continues to celebrate it's 250th, the Wednesday Wanderer thought we'd take a look at a member of a prominent Charleston, South Carolina family during the revolution who visited the York Sulphur Springs resort in the summer of 1815.
Harriott Pinckney Horry was the only daughter of Charles Pinckney and Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Eliza is credited with transforming agriculture in South Carolina when she developed indigo as a cash crop. Harriott's brothers included Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, minister to France during Washington's administration, and candidate for Vice President in election of 1800 and Presidential candidate in 1804 and 1808, and Thomas Pinckney, who served as governor of South Carolina from 1787-1789, was minister to Great Britain during Washington's administration, the Vice Presidential candidate for the election of 1796 (losing to Thomas Jefferson), and served in the US House of Representatives for the 1st district from 1797-1801. Harriott would marry Daniel Horry, a wealthy planter (Hampton Plantation on the Santee River), in 1768.
During the Revolutionary War, with her brothers and husband away fighting, Harriott would manage not only her husband's Hampton Plantation, but would help run both of her brother's plantations too. Harriott is an example of how women took on a range of roles traditionally reserved for men during the Revolution.
In 1815 (May-October) Harriott, who had been widowed since 1785, embarked on a journey that would take her from her home in South Carolina up through New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont) and back. Along the way, Harriott stopped for a few weeks at the York Sulphur Springs Resort from June 28-July 13.
Harriott noted that "the road from York to the sulpher Springs
is worse than any we have yet travelld with rocks ruts & Hills." She described the resort, which at the time was managed by Robert K. Lowry, as "a large establishment with excellent fare" and "is situated in a hollow surrounded by hills, the water is impregnated with Sulphur and Magnisia and not very unpleasant. The complaints for which they are most famed are complaints of the liver Rheumatism & Bile." Harriott also found it "intolerably hot here and
the dew very heavy, the instant the sun sets and rather before, there is so great a dampness that we were fearful of Walking out a minute after sun down..." Well, it was summer in Adams County. š
