Historic home on Edisto Island gets new lease on life

EDISTO ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) – The last home standing from a Black settlement community formed during the Reconstruction Era will welcome visitors after an extensive renovation is complete.

The Hutchinson House stands on Edisto Island, whose vast green land once housed plantations and reveals a story of acres and a home owned by a freedman who was once considered as property himself.

“Henry Hutchinson, his uncle, John Pearson Hutchinson, and Jack Miller: these three men primarily were the builders of the Hutchinson House,” Greg Estevez, Henry Hutchinson’s great-great-grandson, said. “They built it in 1885 because it was a wedding gift to his bride, Rosa.”

The gift, built with love, is still being unwrapped 140 years later.

The Hutchinson House, owned and built by a freedman, is the last home standing from a Black... — The Hutchinson House, owned and built by a freedman, is the last home standing from a Black settlement community formed during the Reconstruction Era.(Hutchinson Heritage Foundation)

After gaining his freedom, Henry Hutchinson made his living as a sea island cotton farmer. Ahead of the Civil War, Sea Island cotton, known as the finest cotton grown, made white planters on Edisto incredibly wealthy.

Hutchinson ginned his own on his own land for himself and neighboring Black farmers.

“Henry’s cotton was the very first cotton that made it to the Charleston Market, white or Black farmers. So, we know that Henry was a very astute Sea Island cotton farmer,” Sarah Stroud Clarke, the director of Hutchinson House, said.

Hutchinson learned this entrepreneurial way of thinking from his dad.

“Henry’s father, James, had been born enslaved on Edisto Island in 1835. He went to war. He fought in the Union Navy during the American Civil War for his own freedom,” Stroud Clarke said.

At the end of the war, James Hutchinson, nicknamed one of the Black kings of Edisto, came back to the island with his freedom and with the knowledge of home and land ownership

“He was part of Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, getting his 40 acres; they were taken away from him. He was not deterred. He kept trying,” Stroud Clarke said.

In the 1870s, Hutchinson’s determination led him to purchase 404 acres of land, which was previously the Clark plantation.

But, he didn’t buy alone; other Black families and friends who had also been newly freed invested.

The acres were then subdivided among themselves, creating a neighborhood and community of possibility.

This photo, from about 1900, depicts the Hutchinson family in front of their cotton gin house.(Hutchinson Heritage Foundation)

“The Hutchinson House, this house today, is the only one of the 19th-century homes that survived from that Black settlement community that they called the Clark community,” Stroud Clarke said.

Today, descendants of the Clark community describe what it was like growing up on these acres.

“We had a rope on the bucket, Joseph Fludd said. ”We used to drop it down in the well, and that thing was, oh, that water was cool.”

These family lines can still trace their land and homes on the island back to that original 1870s purchase.

“You see the kids unhitching the horse from the buggy in the mornings, and in the evening, they bring them back and hook them back up, so they can go back home. But that’s the life that we lived. It was a beautiful life,” Lavinia Armstrong said.

Time, though, along with natural disasters like hurricanes, would almost batter away the Hutchinson home.

Henry and Rosa Hutchinson pose with their daughters, Lula and Mabel, shown in their Sea Island... — Henry and Rosa Hutchinson pose with their daughters, Lula and Mabel, shown in their Sea Island cotton field beside the house.(Hutchinson Heritage Foundation)

So, in 2016, with the exterior barely holding up, the Edisto Island Open Land Trust purchased the house directly from the Hutchinson family.

Through grants, Open Land Trust has been able to restore the home back to its original appearance. By taking microscopic samples, the team can somewhat go backwards in time.

“It’s like archaeology. You start at the most recent paint color, which we knew was the white, and you go all the way down to the actual wood substrate,” Stroud Clarke said.

From the last layer of paint, you can see the colors of these yellow and red walls were all handpicked back in 1885.

“We went into this with the intention of using and reusing any and all historic fabric that we could within the house,” she said.

Around the top of the home, you can see hand-chiseled shapes of diamonds, believed to be crafted by Henry Hutchinson for his bride.

“Even if a piece of wood couldn’t be reused in its entirety, if part of it was rotten from the rain, we were able to cut a piece off the end and still reuse the rest of the board,” Stroud Clarke said.

“We would have a Christmas tree set up right by the fireplace in this very room. Our grandmother made sure we had a connection to the house and I’m glad she did,” Estevez said.

This home is history and these acres represent the continuity of Black land ownership on an island where freedom wasn’t always free.

The director of the Hutchinson House says the home is expected to be open to the public by the summer of 2026, listed as a National Historic House museum for all to learn, reflect and celebrate.

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