A slave trader, a diplomat, and a Catholic Trappist Monk walk into a bar….
Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. However it is a good intro into the strange history of a large southern plantation.
Mepkin Plantation became the Mepkin Abbey with a few stops in between. I was wandering the property yesterday.
Henry Laurens was the largest slave trader in North America mid 1700’s (married to Elanor Ball the Strawberry Chapel family, I was with a Ball family member yesterday also). He was a leader of the American revolution against England, and actually was locked up in the famous London Tower, and sitting next to Benjamin Franklin in a famous portrait during the Paris Treaty.
The plantation itself was burned during the revolution, and again during the War of 1812.
After years of rebuilding/neglect the property was purchased by two famous Americans. Henry Luce and his wife Claire Boothe Luce owned the plantation and restored it. Henry Luce was a wealthy published (Life Magazine, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated). Claire Boothe Luce was a member of the US Congress, a writer, Ambassador to Italy and Brazil, a political activist.
In 1949 the Luce’s donated the plantation to the Trappist Monks. Twenty-nine monks of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance moved in to found the Mepkin Abbey.
Today (2026) the Abbey grounds, not the homes or church area, are a large park like property open to the public. It’s still in a rural area, just down the road from the old Strawberry Chapel and close the Biggins church ruins.
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A long article but I hope you found it interesting. I have said the American history down here is fascinating because you can walk it, and even touch. In this case I was talking to it, through a Ball family member I was just with.
I really like the first photo! Such interesting (living) history.