The Talbird Oak: Revolutionary Violence on Hilton Head and Daufuskie

This article investigates the legend of the Talbird Oak on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, by testing the modern historical marker’s claims against primary sources. It begins with Rev. Henry Talbird’s 1888 family history and reconstructs the Revolutionary events on Hilton Head and Daufuskie necessary to evaluate his account. Deeds, wills, parish records, judgment rolls, contemporary newspapers, family records, and nineteenth-century surveys reveal families connected by marriage, property, and business but divided by the American Revolution. These include the Talbirds, Ladsons, Martinangeles, Leacrafts, Dohertys, Pendarvises, Blacks, and Bryans. The violence included the killing of James Doherty, the deaths of Richard Pendarvis and others, and the Bloody Legion’s murder of Philip Martinangele Jr. The study traces how Talbird’s recollection, written with explicit warnings about his memory and lost family papers, became a twentieth-century account naming a British officer, fixing the raid’s date, and identifying a surviving oak. An 1855 survey of Thomas Currell’s tract, aligned with the modern landscape, places the marked oak within Currell’s tract and south of the adjoining boundary identified as the Estate of Henry Talbird. The surviving evidence does not connect that oak to John Talbird’s property in 1781.