A Special Night in the Watershed

Constance Riggins, Altamaha Riverkeeper Development Director

Guests attending a Harvest Evening at Hofwyl experienced a historical glimpse into life on one of the last coastal rice plantations in Georgia.

The October 23 event for the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Georgia Conservancy, and Friends of Hofwyl
began with music and a sampling of ale and wine served in the dairy barns. The barns were built by the enterprising siblings of the fifth generation at Hofwyl-Broadfield , who started a dairy rather than sell their family home after the Civil War, when rice cultivation became increasingly difficult.

Solders in eighteenth-century uniforms greeted guests with a round of musket firing along with the last living owner of the home, Ophelia Dent, enacted by Sudy Leavy, author of Timeless Stories and Relics from the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation.

Ophelia welcomed everyone and invited them into her home full of family heirlooms and asked them to please help her decide what to take on her escape from the approaching Yankees.
Under live oaks, estimated to be over 300 years old, guests enjoyed an antebellum dinner. And later, when they walked to the front of house overlooking the marsh to enjoy the full moon, they heard the sounds of an alligator catching a wild pig for his own dinner.

The evening was a reminder of how magical it is to live in an area so enriched with natural and cultural resources- resources the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Georgia Conservancy, Friends of Hofwyl and their members are working together to protect.

After her death in 1973, Ophelia Dent bequeathed Hofwyl to the State of Georgia. The historic site is located on the Altamaha River between Darien and Brunswick and  open to the public Thursday-Saturday.