My love affair with the Lowcountry began when I was a small child…back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I got my first whiff of pluff mud at 7 years old when my parents took me to the family plantation on Hilton Head. That was before there was a bridge, and there wasn’t a single paved road on the island. Our family’s house was Honey Horn. On a high tide, our boat could make it up a creek to the rear of the Honey Horn house. On a low tide, we’d put in at the oyster docks, more or less where Hudson’s is today.
When people learn of my legacy on Hilton Head and hear about my forebears selling their 22,000 acres of island real estate in the early 1950s, I am frequently asked, “Don’t you wish you still owned it?”
The implied question teases the idea that our family would have made a ton of money if we still owned the real estate. I certainly wouldn’t mind owning a beachfront lot on HHI, but that’s a mere whim. Actually, my forebears did quite well financially on the deal.
It all began in 1917 when my grandfather (Landon K. Thorne, Sr.) and his brother-in-law (Alfred Lee Loomis) bought 17,000 acres on the island for $120,000. They were young, connected by my grandpa’s marriage to Alfred’s sister, Julia, and business partners. At the time of the acquisition, both were Army officers, having joined up when it was clear the U.S. would enter WWI.
After their initial purchase, they acquired an additional 5,000 acres in several small tract purchases, most at an average cost of $6/acre. The final acquisition was Honey Horn Plantation itself, which they acquired in 1931.
From today’s vantage point, it’s hard to believe the prices they paid. Back then, $120K would probably be equivalent to a couple of million bucks in current dollars…but who’s counting? Heck, nowadays, beachfront lots sell for $2 to $5 million.
Grandpa Landon and Uncle Alfred eventually sold their landholdings for $560/acre. I won’t bore you with a lot of currency adjustments and present value computations, but that sale made a profit of over two-and-a-half times their money in every year of the 34 years they owned the property.
Interestingly, Uncle Alfred thought they’d sold too cheap. Apparently making 93 times his money wasn’t juicy enough. Elon Musk, where are you when we need you? However, at the time, there was some urgency in making the sale. First, there was about to be a change to the tax law affecting family holding companies. The sale slid under the time frame, thereby avoiding the tax implications of the new law. Second, there was a touch of family scandal in the mix, a story much more interesting than the financial aspects of the transaction. I’ll save the scandal story for a future blog post because it can still stir up some excitement in family circles.
So, there you have it. A couple of young guys in their early thirties, both wearing the uniform of U.S. Army Captains as America entered WWI, pooled their resources to buy some hunting land on an isolated South Carolina island. In the 1920s and 30s, they partnered to build a hugely successful bond trading business that established a family fortune. When circumstances compelled divesting the land, they sold their HHI property at a huge profit and went about their business.
As a footnote, the two families continue their connection today. I am Landon III, and my contemporary, Alfred Lee “Chip” Loomis III, is a close friend. Once the Lowcountry grabs your heart, it doesn’t easily let go. In 1962 Chip’s dad, A. Lee Loomis Jr., bought Bull Island, just across the May River from HHI, and it stayed in the Loomis family into the 2000s. Lee Jr. and his wife, Ginny, are buried on the north tip of Bull where their spirits can look out across the salt marsh at their three-generational Lowcountry legacy. You can’t put a price on that.
