While in S.C. our good friends the Andersons invited us to go to a reenactment in Pendleton S.C. it was a old plantation, the two story Ashtabula house was built in 1790 by Thomas Lofton. The reenactment was a raid by the Union Calvary under the command of General George Stoneman at this time the plantation was owned by the O.A. Bowen family , In search of President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Cabinet, who were believed to be traveling though the Upstate to evade captured by Union forces at the end of the Civil War. As the Union soldiers approached,the woman of the house hid their silver and fine china along with any other valuable commodities, sugar being one of them. It was good to here the perspective of the Southern side, being in the Northern side you only here the northern side of the war.
As we toured the Ashtabula home with the high ceilings and the extremely large windows, we were told they were built for ventilation purposes, by the tour guides that were dressed for the era. The dinging room was uniquely elegant, where the other rooms were more simplified, the bedrooms upstairs were set up so the nursery/childrens room was directly across from the house slaves sleeping quarters, this house had three house slaves, the wet nurse,the head cook and the maid slave. Being they were not allowed to use the main stair way,they had there own stairway connecting to there rooms leading to the kitchen. the wife of the planter was the educator of her children when they became of school age this plantation had a school room built next to the summer kitchen.
