White House

About this property

The White Home in Rock Hill, South Carolina is a historical site & wedding venue. Five generations of the White family lived in the house between 1837 and 2005. Over the years, the home transformed from a one-room cottage into an eighteen-room, two story house. It is located in the Reid Street-North Confederate Avenue Area Historic District. The White Home was originally built in 1837, but has undergone extensive renovations and expansions since then. George Pendleton White and Ann Hutchison White purchased the land from Alexander Templeton Black and moved into the original one-room cabin in 1837. They started out with 153 acres of land. George and Ann began to make additions to the one-room cottage soon after their arrival. After George's death on February 25, 1849, Ann continued making renovations until the cottage became a large two-story home. To sustain herself and her four small children Ann rented rooms to boarders, particularly during the Civil War, who often paid her in furniture as they fled from the approaching Union Army. Ann was also able to afford an 1870s building project because of a considerable inheritance left to her by her older brother, Hiram Hutchison. Aside from paying boarders, Ann had a room set aside - the "Prophet's Chamber" - for traveling ministers passing through Rock Hill. Ann White was also renowned for her generous participation in the community, including donations to schools and the building of Rock Hill's first Presbyterian Church. == Construction, expansion, and renovation of the White Home == The White Home began as a one-room cottage, which is believed to have been built shortly before the White's obtained the property. There is a separate log cabin behind the house which was later used as a kitchen for the boarding house but does predate the property by a number of years. After her husband died, Ann White took over management of the family's finances. Due to laws regarding inheritance, she was only authorized to act as a steward for her son. As a result, she was forced to keep meticulous receipts of everything she purchased. These receipts were found preserved in the attic when the White Home was refurbished into a museum. These receipts provide information about what types of supplies Ann White purchased, where she purchased them, and how much they cost. In 1849, as the house was expanded, a room known as "the Prophet's Chamber" was added on the second floor. This room was specifically set aside to host traveling ministers. When Ann's brother, Hiram Hutchison, died on October 22, 1856, he left a fortune to Ann. She used this money to make additional expansions to the White Home, as well as some aesthetic changes beginning in 1859. One change was the addition of a front porch in 1859.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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