Restoration of the plantation’s agricultural operations, however, proved more difficult. The tidal rice fields, which required constant maintenance, had been neglected, and the loss of the more than 100 slaves who had worked the plantation grounds and rice fields left Williams without the necessary labor for large-scale cultivation. Although vastly diminished quantities of rice continued to be harvested elsewhere in the lowcountry, Middleton Place apparently never again produced a successful rice crop. By 1890 rice from Louisiana, where flat upland fields permitted mechanized cultivation impossible in the South Carolina marshes, had begun to drive Carolina rice off the market. Today no rice at all is grown in South Carolina. Two new commodities that gained importance in the land-poor lowcountry economy were phosphates, of which postbellum South Carolina was the nation’s leading supplier, and timber, an important product in the Southeast. Williams turned his hand to exploitation of these natural resources, and by 1878, Middleton Place boasted both phosphate mines and a sawmill. Although he and his heirs continued to lease the plantation timber and mineral rights until the early twentieth century, by 1880 the aging Williams had left Middleton Place, taking up residence in Greenville, South Carolina. After Williams died in 1882, his wife Susan made regular visits to the plantation. But following her death in 1900, Middleton Place lay abandoned, except for periodic visits, for over 20 years. Williams and Susan’s son Henry, who had left South Carolina in the 1870s to attend Cambridge University, was living in England, and their daughter Elizabeth had married and settled in Greenville. The plantation was inherited by a cousin, J. J. Pringle Smith, who, in 1925, moved his family into the southern flanker house and began the slow job of restoring the Middleton Place grounds and gardens. Pringle Smith built the present stableyard complex on the site of older outbuildings, installed an electrical generator in the former privy building, and opened the gardens to the public. In 1970 Middleton Place became a Registered National Historic Landmark under the management of the Smiths’ grandson, Charles Duell. In 1975, with the creation of the Middleton Place Foundation, the south flanker containing many of the family’s original furnishings was also opened to the public. ARCHEOLOGY AT MIDDLETON PLACE [Illustration: uncaptioned]