Halcyon Grove, a Federal house with a later Classical Revival porch, was built about 1824 for planter Daniel Bird, who sold it in 1829 to Francis Wilkinson Pickens, then a lawyer and planter. Pickens lived here until the mid-1830s, when he deeded the house to his father, Andrew Pickens Jr. The elder Pickens, a planter, was an officer in the War of 1812 and then governor of South Carolina from 1816 to 1818, and he lived here until 1836. Francis W. Pickens later served as a state representative and senator, U.S. Congressman, and U.S. Minister to Russia, and was governor from 1860 to 1862 during the secession crisis and the first two years of the Civil War. In 1836 Andrew Pickens Jr. sold the house to John Lipscomb, a planter and merchant who also owned plantations in Florida but lived here. Descendants of the Bates / Hartley / Feltham family owned Halcyon Grove for nearly 140 years, from 1869 to 2008.