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Altamont Plantation
circa 1808

This land was first claimed for ownership by Joseph Whitner. Whitner was a German immigrant to the Charleston area in the late 1700s. He became a land surveyor, moved to Pendleton, South Carolina, and became one of the first major private landowners in this area. Whitner held the first deed on the property that would be purchased next by Col. Thomas Pinkney, Jr. to become Altamont Plantation.

Col. Pinkney and his brother Charles Cotesworth Pinkney, sons of General Thomas Pinkney, veteran of the Revolutionary War and Governor of South Carolina, immigrated from the South Carolina Low Country to the Pendleton area in the early 1800s. Col. Pinkney built the plantation house called Altamont circa 1808. Sometime within the next 20 years he built a second house on the plantation and called it Altamont II. He sold the first Altamont to his brother-in-law Dr. Francis K. Huger, who later enlarged the dwelling and renamed it "The Long House." Also, in this first quarter of the century, Charles Pinkney built Woodburn Plantation house.

Altamont II and Woodburn were built with similar floor plans. The ground floor consisted of five rooms with a wide piazza at the front of the house. The upstairs had three large rooms. Six large, louvered half-windows opened into the four front rooms of the house. The portico and front porch were each graced with double curved entasis columns in the style of Greek architecture.

Among the exquisite features of the house interior were the six black marble fireplace mantles that were purchased in Italy, shipped to Charleston, and transported by ox cart from Charleston to Altamont Plantation. The purchase price before shipping was $1500. Two of these were later used in the Pendleton Historic Society's restoration of Woodburn House and can be seen there.

The outdoor kitchen had a massive brick double Dutch oven. When Clemson University razed the house, the oven was dismantled and reconstructed for the outdoor kitchen of the Calhoun House at Fort Hill on the Clemson campus. (View the original kitchen house: view1 and view2).

The Pinkneys left Altamont in the late 1830s. Col. Pinkney died in France in 1842.

A subsequent owner was Robert Adger. Mr. Adger and his wife, Jane Fleming Adger, were very influential in Pendleton society. During the Civil War, he invested much of his wealth in the support of the Confederacy. Economically devastated following the War, he sold Altamont to Edmond McCrary for $1500.

Mr. McCrary died in 1875. Altamont was passed on to his wife and children, and eventually to the children of his daughter, Alice Gant. Ms. Gant's children deeded the property to their sibling sister, Mamie McCrary Brown who farmed it with her husband Fred. Ms. Brown died in 1919. The probate court sold Altamont, now known as the Brown Farm, to the Federal Land Bank in 1923. The bank sold the 237-acre Brown Farm to the U. S. Government in 1937 to become part of the Clemson Community Conservation Project.

Between the time of Ms. Brown's death and the purchase by the federal government, Altamont House was lived in by a series of tenants and continued to decline. Upon purchase by the government, it was heavily vandalized and scavenged. The house was razed in the 1940s with only the Italian mantels being saved. Today, only two of those can be located. They rest safely in Woodburn House.

Dr. Kathleen Dooley
Dr. Gene W. Wood, Professor and Extension Trails Specialist
Clemson University