Archeologists have uncovered the ruins of the earliest rice plantation at the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation State Historic Site. During the first decade of the 19th century the William Brailsford family moved from Charleston, South Carolina to the Altamaha River area. They built a home and the associated buildings necessary for operating a large rive plantation. The tabby ruins recently found seem to fit a description of the Brailsford plantation home that was built around 1807 and burned sometime in the late 1850s.

North of the Broadfield House, archeologists have also discovered the ruins of a small cabin that may have originally served as a slave dwelling on the plantation. Artifacts associated with the house indicate that it continued to be inhabited after the Civil War, probably until sometime around the turn of the 20th century.

This work is generously funded by the Dent-Troup Memorial Trust Fund and administered by the Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Kay Wood, Principal Archeologist with Southern Research, is directing the work.