In 1939, Jeremiah Milbank, a New York based investment banker, purchased what is now Turkey Hill in Jasper County from the bankrupt Savannah River Lumber Company in a deal brokered by Lee Stevens who established nearby Auldbrass. What Milbank originally intended as a strategic investment in timber land quickly became a beloved home as well as an energetic experiment in improving farming methodology. In his philanthropic ventures, Milbank had the pioneering approach of isolating an area of concern (such as the challenges faced by disabled veterans returning from World War I, various specific diseases, disadvantaged kids) then putting together the minds and the funds that could bring about an effective solution.

His achievements included wiping out diphtheria, funding the first polio vaccine, establishing the International Center for the Disabled (the first rehabilitation organization of its kind), and working with his friend Herbert Hoover to grow the Boys and Girls Clubs of America into one of the United States’ most vital youth-serving organizations. At Turkey Hill, Milbank turned his attention to developing farming methods that would raise the subsistence level in the area and, in response to World War II food shortages, devising the best food-growing use of what began as non-arable land. He and his committee of Clemson University specialists developed a Jasper County Farmers’ Service. If Turkey Hill found that certain nutrients improved the soil, carloads were distributed to hundreds of other farms. When raising poultry proved successful, chicks, feed and brooders were distributed to others. Over the course of the next decades, the Milbank family has experimented with all kinds of large-scale farming from vegetables and fruit to cattle. Today, Turkey Hill’s most important crop, timber aside, is anything that keeps the birds happy.