Family settles in battle for ancestral land in South Carolina

The family of a woman who fought with a developer to keep their ancestral land in Hilton Head, S.C., has reached a settlement in the legal battle that recognizes her ownership, a family attorney said this week.

Josephine Wright, who died in January at the age of 94, led the fight to retain rights to the land that had been in her husband’s family since the Civil War. Her quest received support from celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Kyrie Irving.

The company that owns the project next door to her property, Bailey Point Investment, had sued Ms Wright for trespass in February 2023. The company said its satellite dish, shed and screened porch encroached on the land, which had “significantly delayed and hindered” development.

The two sides had agreed to the terms of a settlement before Mrs Wright died in January, but the documents had not been signed so they had to wait until it was determined who would be authorized to sign on behalf of her estate, Roberts Vaux. the family’s attorney said in an email.

Mr Vaux declined to give details of the settlement but said the land Ms Wright claimed had been “confirmed as hers”.

An attorney representing Bailey Point Investment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the family, Altimese Nichole, told South Carolina Public Radio that the settlement requires Bailey Point Investment to stop contacting the family about acquiring the land and to repair a roof on the property, install a privacy fence and provide landscaping.

Mrs. Wright had previously told The New York Times that her husband inherited the 4-acre estate from his parents and that it was transferred into her name after he died in 1998.

The property was a gathering place for Ms. Wright’s seven children, 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, she had said.

However, Ms. Wright’s predicament was not so unique among residents of Hilton Head, SC, an island 100 miles from Charleston, SC.

Land in the area was owned by many black families who had settled there long before developers arrived in the 1950s and turned it into a tourist destination, Mel Campbell, 75, a community elder previously told the Times. Many of the black families were descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and worked on rice, indigo, and cotton plantations.

Many families received large checks from developers for their land, Ms Wright said. She said she declined when she was offered $39,000 for the land years ago.

Ms Wright told The Times in August that the value of the land was not just monetary. “It’s a family affair,” she said then, “and we want to keep it that way forever.”