711 Prince Street

'Bythewood'

History 711 Prince Street

English sea Captain Daniel Hingston Bythewood built this in-town Georgian plantation style manor house as a wedding gift for his Welsh wife, Elizabeth Taylor in 1792. Daniel Hingston owned the 700 acre Whitehall Plantation, a rice plantation, just across the river on Lady's Island. 'Bythewood', a classic Low-Country double piazza style house served as their summer residence and was situated on one of the highest elevations in Beaufort to capture the breezes coming off the Beaufort river, a few blocks away. The house has a unique feature of early Beaufort style architecture in the center hallway whose walls are the thickness of a single board, much like ships built during the same time, and one of only three examples in Beaufort. The fireplace mantels and elaborate swallowtail moldings and cypress paneling were all hand-carved.

The house rests on a high 'tabby' foundation, an early building material made of oyster shells. Unlike Charleston, whose homes were often built on tiny lots, early Beaufort rice planters built their in-town houses on larger parcels of land. As a result, their owners became avid gardeners. The large formal front garden of Bythewood was redesigned 'in the French style' in 1825, according to family letters, to commemorate the visit of Lafayette to Beaufort. The garden was restored in 2004 by Lanier Laney and Terry Sweeney. Presently there are over 5000 hand made oversize bricks in the walk and gate and the gate itself is solid hand hammered wrought iron. There are also 300 boxwoods, 200 white 'Iceberg' roses, 10 Natchez Crape Myrtles, and four mature Palmetto trees (the state's symbol) along with dozens of gardenias, hydrangeas, rare lilies, and Jessamine that symmetrically flank the center walk.

The house was the center of social life for the Bythewoods, during the summer social season in Beaufort when surrounding rice plantation families would migrate back to their in-town mansions. Family letters describe the many happy social events that were held at the house over the years. From weddings to dances to elaborate dinner parties. It was always a time of joy when the Bythewoods returned to their home 'in town'.

Bythewood Legends

One Bythewood legend involves the graves of Captain Daniel Hingston and Elizabeth. If one stands on the top step of the Prince Street gate and looks South West toward the Baptist church, you can see their two raised brick graves to the right of the front door. The Bythewoods were founding members of the church and Daniel Hingston was one of its first pastors, dedicated to converting the African Americans on many of the neighboring island's plantations to the Baptist Faith. The Bythewoods were buried side by side, with 'their heads pointing to God (the Church's altar) and their feet towards their beloved Bythewood'. Legend has it that it is impossible to build any building to block this path. In the past 200 years, several buildings have been built on the lot between their church graves and Bythewood, but none have ever lasted and the lot stands empty today.

Te Lady in White

The gardens of Bythewood have been loved and cultivated continuously since 1792, by successive generations of Bythewoods. The second Mrs. Bythewood, an Alabama belle named Eliza, made the garden famous with her many roses modeled after Josephine's rose garden at Malmaison. Eliza gardened at Bythewood for 30 years until she was forced to flee the advancing Yankee troops in 1862 with little more than the clothes on her back. Family history has it that as she ran for the carriage she pulled one of her beloved white Crinum Lilies out of the flowerbed, so as to have something to remember her cherished garden by. When she reached her father's plantation in Alabama, she planted the bulb, and it has grown there, passed down from family member to family member for over 150 years, and known as Eliza's "Beaufort Lilly'. The Bythewood family was destitute after the war, losing both the Prince Street house and their Lady's Island Plantation in the direct tax sale. Eliza was never able to return to her garden although she longed to. But ever since her death in 1872, a mysterious 'Lady in White' dressed in old fashioned antebellum style has often been seen moving through the garden on full moon nights, past the luminous moonlit glow of magnolia blossoms and white roses. So perhaps Eliza was able to return to her garden after all. Recently a Bythewood ancestor by the name of Jim Lafferty brought two of Eliza's lily bulbs from the plantation in Alabama back to their original home in the Bythewood garden, and they can be seen along the east side fence, opposite the brick walk.


The African American Bythewoods

Most Low Country families have both white and African American branches; due to the practice of slaves taking the last name of the family that owned them. The Bythewood family was no different. In the time of before the civil war, Daniel Hingston Bythewood owned a slave by the name of Mary Bell Bythewood. According to ancestors of Mary Bell, Mary and Daniel fell in love after the death of Daniel's wife and she bore him four children. The four children are listed in the Beaufort City census as 'mulatto'. After Daniel's death, his daughter Elizabeth Bythewood inherited Mary Bell and her children shortly before the Civil War. After Northern troops captured Beaufort, Elizabeth Bythewood and her husband lost everything and were penniless. Mary Bell, now a freed slave, bought the house at 315 Federal Street for herself and her family. Taking pity on her former owner and half sister, Mary Bell allowed Elizabeth and her husband to move in with her family in the Federal Street house where they stayed a number of years. Mary's family remained in the house until 1893. At that time, the remaining members of Mary's family moved to New York City. Today, one of their descendants, a lawyer by the name of David Bythewood, can be seen regularly on Court TV.