Exeter Plantation  
EXETER PLANTATION
Butler and Colleton Families
 
 
1 Black & White
 
 
    Persons who pass the Berkeley Country Club admire the beautiful  Live Oaks along the entrance road and often fail to realize that the county lost one of its historically important houses when Exeter was burned. 
     In the Stoney notes to A Day On The Cooper River we are told that the late Mr. D. E. Huger Smith had access to extracts of old records showing that Hugh Butler leased this land from Sir John Colleton in 1726 and mortgaged it with the house he had built thereon in 1738 to John Colleton: This Hugh Butler married Anna Colleton, a daughter of Major Charles Colleton of Fairsight Plantation and the owner of large tracts of  land on the Santee, Cooper, and Wassamassaw. 
    Some persons have claimed that the Exeter house was built as early as 1700, but Samuel Gaillard Stoney, in his Plantations of  The Carolina Lowcountry, gave the house the probable date of 1726 during the ownership of Hugh Butler. 
     Butler was one of the Justices of the Peace for Berkeley County for 1737 as published in the South Carolina Gazette of April 2, 1737.  He was a witness to the will of the Hon. Thomas Broughton of nearby Mulberry, and on June 19, 1719, Butler was one of the twelve persons appointed by the Palatine to serve on the last Grand Council under the Proprietors whose government of the Province was overthrown by the people in December of that year. 
     From records that are available today we know that the tract was called Exeter Plantation when left to son, John (under 21), in the 1749 will of John Colleton (dated 26 Sept. 1749) and when it was sold to Mrs. Mary Broughton on September 15, 1767. When Irvin wrote his Day On The Cooper River he listed T. 0. Dawson at Exeter and stated that the tract included the pine land exchanged by the Broughtons for the Colleton land on which Mulberry Castle had been built by Broughton. The house was owned by Colonel Isaac Motte who married a Broughton. In 1902 Mr. J. S. Jones, Sr. of Moneks Corner bought Exeter from the Motte estate and made it home. It was later the home of Mr. J. W. Jones and then was subsequently owned by Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Jones who annually hosted a supper for the Pinopolis and Friendship Methodist Church Board Members along with the Methodist District Officers. After the ownership of the Jones family it became the site of the Berkeley Country Club. 
    The house is described as having been originally built in the shape of an H with a large central hall and steps entering this hall from the front and rear between the wings. About the middle of the eighteenth century when new architectural styles were the fashion, the front portion of each of the two wings was enclosed to form a stairhall. The original brick work was laid in Flemish bond with glazed headers. This fine brick work was set off by white stucco at the base of the building and on the corner pilasters. Fire destro,yed this historical and architectural treasure in December, 1967. 
     An old family cemetery occupies a prominent spot in the fine golf course that occupies the fields and former wooded areas around the avenue and the old house spot. Much of the surrounding property has become a rapidly developing sub-division as people from the urban areas seek the beauty of rural Berkeley County. 
 
Information and Article from
"Historic Ramblin's Through Berkeley"
 written by and used with permission of
Mr. J. Russell Cross