Buckeye Plantation is located in Burke County, Georgia. The land that is Buckeye Plantation was ceded to the British by the Creek Indians in 1733 and was part of a Colonial Parish named Saint George. After the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Whig forces took control of the government in Georgia and formed Burke County in 1777, naming the County after Edmond Burke, a member of British Parliament who championed the rights of the American Colonies. The County Seat, nearby Waynesboro, was established in 1784 and named for Revolutionary War hero General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.

The land that is Buckeye Plantation was originally the Brack Plantation, established by Benjamin Brack in the late 1830’s or early 1840’s. How or when Brack settled the land is uncertain, but Brack most likely won the land in a series of State land lotteries in the 1820’s and 1830’s. An 1850 census states the Brack Plantation had 3 whites named with the surname of Brack and 44 slaves present. Mr. Brack and his family now rest in a cemetery on the South side of the property, where evidence of the early cotton terraces remain in the piney woods.

During the Civil War the Left Wing of General William T. Sherman’s army, on its infamous March to the Sea, burned the railroad bridge crossing the Ogeechee River near present day Midville November 30, 1864, and immediately made camp on the Buckeye Plantation property before proceeding to Millen.

Ownership of the property between the Civil War and 1934 is unknown at this time, but the property has evidence of dozens of small tenant farmer houses, some still standing, that represent the small, 20-40 acre tenant farms that became common in the south after the great plantations failed following the Civil War.

Joseph Henry Rowland purchased the Buckeye Plantation land in 1934 and in subsequent years raised cotton, peanuts, corn and soybeans. The heirs to the property, J. Henry Rowland II and Hank Rowland, planted the agricultural portions of the property in Loblolly Pine in 1989. The Pine stands were thinned beginning in 2005 and have now been completely thinned as of March, 2007 as part of an overall property management plan developed by American Wildlife Enterprises of Jacksonville, Florida. After over 150 years of agriculture, Buckeye Plantation now begins a new era as a property managed exclusively for wildlife.

Buckeye Plantation was named when J. Henry Rowland II, suffering the effects from a stroke, was doing poorly in the hospital. He was given by a friend the nut of a Buckeye Tree, which is purported to bring good luck. His recovery from that moment on was rapid and dramatic. Mr. Rowland had just competed building the magnificent Plantation House at Buckeye Plantation in 1998, and was trying to decide upon a name for his plantation when he suffered the misfortune of the stroke. The family thought naming the property Buckeye Plantation was very appropriate in light of the circumstances. Mr. Rowland remains in good health to this day.