Known as The Thicket, William Carnochan ran a sugar mill, rum distillery, and plantation on this land from 1816 to 1824. The buildings were constructed from tabby, a combination of shells, water, and sand. Sugar cane had become a prosperous crop along the Georgia coast. The mills would crystallize the sugar and create molasses, which would be manufactured into rum. Operations ceased after a hurricane destroyed some of the buildings.

The village of tabby buildings was built in 1816 as double slave dwellings. Research on the history of The Thicket does not highlight the number of people Carnochan enslaved. Slave cabins, built by the enslaved, could house as few as five people up to 20. With four double dwellings, it is plausible that there were as few as 40 men, women, and children held in bondage, likely many more due to the hard work of harvesting sugar cane could entail.

After the end of the Civil War, freedmen and women founded Carnigan, a town a few miles from the plantation. The name was a deliberate change from Carnochan.