Woodlands

Woodlands was the country home of William Gilmore Simms from 1836 until his death in 1870. Simms, the most prominent and prolific writer of the antebellum South, was a novelist, poet, historian, critic, and essayist best known for his novels about colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina, and at his death he was called “the ornament and the pride of the State he loved so well.” In 1836, after becoming a widower, Simms married Chevillette Roach of Barnwell District, and the couple moved to this 4,000-acre plantation owned by her father, Nash Roach. The house burned in 1862, was rebuilt, burned again in 1865, and was rebuilt on a smaller scale in 1867. Woodlands, which Simms called “these grand old woods” in a poem, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.

South Carolina · United States