Built around 1828, Woodburn Historic House reflects several eras of South Carolina history. In the early 1800s, many Lowcountry plantation owners sought the cooler foothills in summer, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, elected lieutenant governor of South Carolina in 1822 and a Harvard Law School graduate, made Woodburn his summer home around 1830. Designed for that seasonal retreat, the house featured high ceilings, cross ventilation, and wide columned piazzas on both front and rear stories. In 1852, Dr. John Bailey Adger acquired Woodburn, and members of the Adger family owned it for more than 50 years, lived there longer than any other family, and later donated furniture and family portraits connected to the house. Jane Edna Harris, later known as Jane Edna Harris Hunter, was born on the property in 1882 in a tenant house rather than the plantation house; she trained as a nurse, moved to Cincinnati, founded the Phillis Wheatley Association, and in her 1940 autobiography recalled her family's two-room frame dwelling and her parents' work in the garden and fields. Major Augustus T. Smythe took ownership in 1881 and developed Woodburn as a model stock farm with high-bred horses and cattle at a time when most Upcountry farms grew cotton. After passing through a series of owners, the property suffered during the Great Depression and the declining viability of agriculture in the early 20th century. In the 1950s, the U.S. government gave Woodburn to Clemson College, which deeded it in 1966 to the Pendleton Historic Foundation. Since the 1960s, volunteers have restored, refurnished, and revived the property, which today preserves furnishings tied to its past and includes the plantation house, the reconstruction carriage house, and the Moorhead Cabin, representing the region's frontier period.