History of Murrells Inlet

te Senate and House, as well as the Governors and Lieutenant Governors office during the 1800s. The rice planters were also active in the establishment of social, educational, and religious organizations, including the Planters Club, the Winyah Indigo Society, the Hot and Hot Fish Club, the All Saints Academy, the Waccamaw Methodist Mission, and All Saints Waccamaw. The names of the families are shown on the various historic maps that date back as far as 1783 – the listing of the Murrell family on the first maps is the most credible explanation of the origin of Murrells Inlet. It has been alternately shown as Morrall’s Inlet and Murrays Inlet on later maps.

The rice plantation era came to an end after the Civil War with the emancipation of the slaves (rice cultivation was labor-intensive) and a series of hurricanes that climaxed with the 1893 Hurricane (also known as the Flagg flood, where the Atlantic Ocean was reported to meet the Waccamaw River). The loss of the slave labor resulted in the decline of the fields, dikes, and water control structures required for rice cultivation, since planters had to rely on freedmen to work the fields. Several powerful hurricanes following the Civil War and up to the 1893 hurricane resulted in uprooted trees and flood damaged dikes in the rice fields and ultimately ended the production of rice on the Waccamaw Neck. The 1893 hurricane became known as the Flagg Flood because the Flagg families that lived in houses on Magnolia Beach (Dr. Arthur, his wife Georgeanne, his son Arthur Jr., and his wife and 6 children) were swept away in the storm surge. Dr. Ward Flagg (one of 3 sons) survived the storm and retired to the miller’s cottage in Brookgreen and reportedly never visited the ocean again.

After Dr. Allard Flagg's death in 1901, his daughter sold Wachesaw and the Hermitage to Samuel Sidney Fraser, a real estate speculator, who bought and sold interests in several old plantations