This Carpenter Gothic house was begun about 1858 for Aaron Austin and his wife Margaret Jane Craig. Austin, a Northerner who settled in Chesterfield in the 1850s, was a lawyer and a Chesterfield District magistrate. He joined the Confederate army in 1862, became 2nd lt. of Co. D, 6th S.C. Cavalry, and died in 1863 in Charleston County, and the house remained unfinished until after the war. In 1903 his widow Margaret gave the house to George Kershaw Laney and Sarah Louise Tiller as a wedding present. Laney was a lawyer and teacher, then a longtime state representative and senator, serving in the S.C. House from 1903 to 1906 and in the S.C. Senate from 1907 to 1922 and 1931 to 1942; he was also a member of the Senate judiciary committee from 1911 to 1922 and 1931 to 1942, and its chair from 1919 to 1922.