Welcome to Woodburn and Ashtabula
Historic Houses in Pendleton, SC...

EDUCATIONAL EVENTS
Meet the Pendletonians
June 1 - 10AM

Click "Visit/Tours" for more information.

With access to large porches and interior rooms, all educational events are held rain or shine.

Teachers: click "Learn/Teachers" for information about field trips.

Woodburn:

Woodburn is a graceful four-story clapboard plantation house built c. 1830 with a wrap-around-2-story piazza built as a summer home by Charles Cotseworth Pinckney (1789-1865). The house is an excellent example of an early 19th century SC Upcountry plantation house. While owned by members of the wealthy Adger family of Charleston, the house was expanded to 18 rooms, and the farmland was increased to over 1,000 acres. The historic site now consists of the house museum furnished with antebellum antiques and family artifacts, situated on 10 acres of the original plantation with a walking trail to the ruins of other farm outbuildings. Also on site are three outbuildings, a reproduction of the Adger Victorian Carriage house that contains the traveling coach of Thomas Green Clemson; a one-room c.1810 log house built by Robert Moorhead serving as the cookhouse; and a reproduction of a slave/tenant house interpreting the life of Jane Edna Hunter, the African-American activist who founded the Phylis Wheatley Society, who was born in such a house at Woodburn in 1882.

Directions to Woodburn: 130 History Lane, Pendleton, SC 29670

Click here to see a video about the Pendleton Historic Foundation.

Carriage House and Cabin at Woodburn

Ashtabula:

Ashtabula is a charming two-story clapboard plantation house built c. 1825 by Lewis Ladson Gibbes (1771-1828) and his wife, the former Maria Drayton and later owned by their son Lewis Reeves Gibbs, the famous SC naturalist. The house was expanded to 10 rooms by later owners and the farmland expanded to over 1,000 acres. The orginal 2-story brick building on the site dates to before 1790 and was the site of a traveler's tavern prior to the building of the main house. This building was later attached to the main house with a breezway and was used as the plantation kitchen, and other rooms are interpreted as servant's quarters and a school room. Ashtabula is a house museum situated on ten acres of open ground with its colonial period brick dependency and well house. The house was restored by the Pendleton Historic Foundation and furnished with antebellum antiques and family artifacts.

Directions to Ashtabula: 2725 Old Greenville Hwy, Central, SC 29630

From I-85, take exit 19B (US76). Turn onto US76 N towards Clemson and Pendleton. Continue for approximately 8 miles to the intersection with Bus. SC 28. There will be a traffic light at this intersection and a shopping center. Turn right onto Bus. SC 28 (Mechanic St). and continue on Mechanic St. for apprxoimately one mile to the Pendleton town square. At the traffic light on the town square, turn right onto SC 88 (E. Queen St.) and follow signs for SC 88 (Greenville St.) and Ashtabula. The gate to Ashtabula will be on the left apprxoimately 3 miles from town square.

Ashtabula Annex pictured above.

Both Woodburn and Ashtabula are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and are sites on the SC National Heritage Corridor.

The Pendleton Historic Foundation wishes to thank Ashley Cowden, and her Business Writing Class at Clemson University for their assistance with the website. Ashley Cowden may be contacted at cowden2@g.clemson.edu