The third of the three houses in the Town of Kingstree on the National Register of Historic Places is the Joseph Scott House. Historians tend to agree that it is likely the oldest of the three houses on the National Register, constructed in 1843.
The Joseph Scott House seen from Kellahan Park. The park
was at one time the front yard of the Scott House but was
deeded to the Town of Kingstree by R.H. Kellahan for a park.
Joseph Scott, born in 1782, spent his early life with his brother, Samuel Scott, on the old George White place about a half mile from Indiantown Presbyterian Church, according to Dr. Samuel Davis McGill in his Narrative of Reminiscences in Williamsburg County. Dr. McGill relates the story that when it was "not convenient" for Joseph Scott to go to church, he could, from his home, distinguish the bell-like tones of Mary Ann McGill's voice from the other singers as she led the women in song during services.
Dr. McGill and Joseph Scott were apparently close friends as Scott was best man at Dr. McGill's wedding.
According to William Willis Boddie's History of Williamsburg, "Joseph Scott and William Reid established a sawmill about 1820 on 'The Branch' in the northeastern part of the present limits of the Town of Kingstree." This would have been the town limits a hundred years later in the early 1920s. Boddie says this was the first sawmill in Williamsburg County. He adds that this sawmill furnished much of the lumber from which the reunited Williamsburg Presbyterian congregation built its new meeting house in 1828.
Boddie adds that later, Joseph Scott established a steam sawmill on his second wife, Mary Ervin Matthews', plantation on Findley Bay. This would be in the vicinity of the DSM facility today. This mill used the first steam engine brought to Williamsburg County, Boddie writes. He continues, "The whistle was the most important part on a steam engine of that day. It is said that for years when Joseph Scott's whistle blew on Findley Bay, all Williamsburg, man and beast, stood at attention. Planters for miles around abandoned their noonday horns and gongs for when this steam whistle sounded, it was twelve o'clock in all the land."
The Scott House in the background as seen from Kelley Street.
Boddie got much of the information he used in his history from the records kept by his mother-in-law, Martha Brockinton "Patti" Scott. She was Joseph Scott's granddaughter, the child of his daughter, Elizabeth Burgess Scott who married John Fowler Brockinton, and so one wonders if the story of the whistle that could be heard all over Williamsburg was passed down through the family or was simply a bit of embellishment on Boddie's part.
Dr. McGill simply notes that the machinery of the steam sawmill on Findley and Rutledge bays "was a great curiosity, and people came from a distance to look at it and hear the whistle of the engine, being the first ever brought in this part of the district."
Dr. McGill further states that Joseph Scott built a large dwelling in Kingstree and moved his family to town for "educational advantages." Scott was a founding trustee of the Kingstree Academy, where his four children, Mary Burgess, Samuel McBride, Susanna Theresa, and Edward Branard, or Brainard, were educated. Edward Branard, the youngest of the children died in Virginia in 1862 while fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War. According to Dr. McGill, "When the report of his death reached his beloved father, the old gentleman, [who was then 80 years old], said, 'Would to God I had died for thee, oh, Branard, my son, my son.'"
Of the house, Dr. McGill writes, "The house was constructed after the old-fashioned style of our well-to-do citizens and stands today as a memorial of ancient economy and comfort."
In 1961, a Kingstree Girl Scout troop visited the Scott House as part of a Heritage Hike. At that time, the house was owned by 89-year-old Elise Kennedy Hodges, who lived there with her daughter, Margaret Hodges Hauenstein, and her family. Elise Hodges was Joseph Scott's grand niece, according to the article in The Florence Morning News.
Margaret Hauenstein explained to the Girl Scouts that the framing for the house appeared to have been hand-hewn. The sills were marked with Roman numerals and were probably cut to fit before the actual construction began. Some of the boards were put together with wooden pegs.
She also noted that the brick for the pillars, which rest on millstones, and the chimneys were made from clay on the place. Three of these clay pits were located where the Welch house now stands, just down Live Oak Avenue from the Scott house. At that time, some of the original, long, hand-forged iron hinges were still on the upstairs doors.
Last summer a storm broke a huge limb off this old oak in the back yard of the house.
"The stairs to the second floor are steep and narrow," Mrs. Hauenstein said. "How Susan Theresa Scott, one of Joseph Scott's two daughters, ever came down the stairs in a bride's dress and train to be married to Col. R.C. Logan, is a wonder."
Joseph Scott was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1836. His descendants, likewise, took an interest in public affairs. His older son, Samuel McBride Scott, served the citizens of Williamsburg County at various times as sheriff, magistrate, clerk of court, and probate judge. He was probate judge when he dropped dead at 4 p.m. on December 31, 1907, while in conversation with a friend in front of the Bank of Williamsburg on Main Street in Kingstree. Without warning, he fell forward on his face. Dr. C.D. Jacobs reached him within minutes but was unable to revive him. At 73, he had been the oldest citizen of Kingstree. The County Record noted, "With the death of Judge Scott... another landmark of this old town passed away." The judge, the paper reported, "had a most prodigious and retentive memory for facts and circumstances connected with the history of Williamsburg." Attorneys, when examining real estate titles, always went to him for help when the records failed to show a clear chain of title, and it was "seldom that the judge failed to put them on the right track."
It was in front of this building that housed the Bank of Williamsburg
that Probate Judge Samuel McBride Scott died on the last day of 1907.
Some years earlier, Judge Scott's son, Samuel McBride Scott, Jr., had died in a tragic boating accident on Black River. On Saturday afternoon, March 21, 1896, Scott and a Black companion, Ned Covington, were fishing for shad after they got off work. As they were returning to town, they encountered a canoe which had capsized. In the attempt to rescue the two men who had been thrown into the water, a gun lying on the seat of Scott and Covington's boat discharged, hitting Scott in the chest. He reportedly lived long enough to announce, "Boys, I am killed!" before he died.
Another of the Judge's sons, William Rodgers Scott, served three terms as Mayor of Kingstree. He was mayor during the time in which the Carnegie Library was built. During World War I, he encouraged the town's citizens to "adopt and apply every possible means in conserving and protecting our present resources and increasing food production." He was a partner in a seed and fertilizer business and was president of Kingstree Grocery, which catered to both wholesale and retail trade.
William Rodgers Scott
Through the years, the house has passed through a number of different families. As a young lawyer Thomas McDowell Gilland bought the house in 1874 and "kept a Bachelor Hall there while establishing his law practice," according to a 1933 profile written by Gilland's daughter-in-law, Nell Flinn Gilland, of Louise Brockinton Gilland, his wife. Sharing the house with him were three ministers, W. Smith Martin, who married Lou Brockinton's sister Vermelle, the Rev. Mr. Newell, and Tom Gilland's brother, Henry, who succeeded their father as minister at Indiantown Presbyterian. When Louise Brockinton and Thomas Gilland married in 1877, they set up housekeeping at the Scott house. "I loved it," Louise Gilland said, "although it was built by a cock-eyed carpenter, and no two windows are at the same level."
Louise Brockinton Gilland and Thomas McDowell Gilland
Later, Tom Gilland traded the house to Bill Lee, with a "bit more," for the house on the corner of North Academy and Kelley where the old Kingstree Elementary School stands. Lee's wife, Jennie, was not too happy about the trade, but Lou Gilland noted, "One morning early I saw her coming to the Scott house. I called Mr. Gilland and told him to get up, Mrs. Lee was moving in."
R.H. Kellahan
R.H. Kellahan also owned the house at one time. During the time of his ownership, he deeded a portion of his front yard to the Town of Kingstree for use as a park. You may read about Kellahan Park here.
The Hodgeses and the Hauensteins lived in the house for over 50 years, and the current owners, Kelly and Ernie Atkinson have lived there since the 1990s.
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