Off Beach City Road, inland from Fish Haul Plantation
"The Kirk name is the most frequently inscribed on the gravestones of Zion Chapel cemetery.... Two Kirk brothers, John and Rollin, were among the Confederates who made successful raids on the Yankee held island in wartime. There is some indication, but not actual proof, that their residence on Hilton Head was the plantation called Cherry Hill, sold in 1876 to W.D. Brown. The price Brown paid for Cherry Hill was $400. He sold one acre each to Negro Baptists and Methodists for their churches. After Brown's murder (see Holmgren, p.121), the land was sold to Roy Rainey, with the exception of 51 acres owned for a few years by the Osprey Fishing Club. Thorne and Loomis took over from both."
Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 129
Area named Brownsville in honor of W.D. Brown who had acquired 400 acres in 1876 from two Confederate brothers, John and Rollin Kirk. The First African Baptist Church, 1863, the oldest existing church on the island, is located here. Queen Chapel AME Church, built around 1892, is also in this area.
Grant, Moses, Looking Back, p. 15
Cherry Hill Plantation lay to the north of Folly Field and Grass Lawn Plantations and south of Pope’s Fish Haul Plantation. It included the 258 acres of Lot 1 of Bayley’s Barony plus additional acreage. It was probably once called Baldwin Plantation, later becoming the island seat of the Kirk family from whom it was confiscated in 1861. W.D. Brown bought its 400 acres in 1876 for $400, selling one acre each to Negro Baptists and Methodists for their churches, land still so held.
Peeples, Robert E.H., An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 7.
