History investigators: College class is focusing on the stories of the enslaved people at Dawkins House in Union, S.C. The home to where the state's Civil War governor fled is being preserved

Shored-up house (Annie Smith/USC Union), 1850 Dawkins slave schedule; interior door (Picket photo)

A course that debuted Aug. 18 at the University of South Carolina Union won’t be like the campus classes I attended back in the day. There will be no lecture hall, study sessions or a professor regurgitating set material.

Rather, “HIST 480-701 -- Internship in Public History” will turn students into investigators, digging up little-known facts about the Thomas and Mary Poulton Dawkins House in Union and the people – free and enslaved – who lived there before, during and after the Civil War.

The timing of the class is perfect. The once dilapidated home is slowly being rehabilitated into a new campus facility.

“Everything we are doing is bottom up,” said Andrew Kettler, assistant professor of history at the two-year campus (right). He will work with a small, but he believes mighty, group. So far, three students have signed up for the assignment, which includes building an archival history.

Kettler hopes a few students more will join the inaugural effort. He expects a bigger class in the spring once the work and documentation takes shape.

Union, which is south of Spartanburg, briefly served as the Civil War capital of the state after Columbia fell to Union forces in 1865 and Gov. Andrew Magrath fled to Union. From about Feb. 15, 1865, until early April, Magrath ran the state from the Dawkins House. He apparently worked in an informal library near the drawing room, which survives today.

According to histories and local legend, Magrath and his subordinates burned possibly incriminating documents and correspondence in the home’s fireplaces. (The building served as South Carolina's capitol while the city was briefly is capital.)

The 1850 federal slave schedule indicates Thomas Dawkins (left) enslaved about 20 persons, but there may have been more elsewhere. Some likely worked at other locations besides the home, which was called “The Shrubs.” (The project has not yet found an 1860 slave schedule)

Over the years, residents came and went from the Dawkins House, which is located on the small USC-Union campus. But there had been one constant: The deterioration of the building into near ruin.

Now the nonprofit Preservation South Carolina is working with the campus and local leaders to rehabilitate the house into an alumni and corporate center for the college. Raising money for the effort has taken time, but officials continue to make progress.

“This is the first time for PSC to have a class that is going on at the same time as one of its preservation projects,” said Kettler.

There’s a lot at stake. Supporters say it’s important the full history of the home and its occupants be told, warts and all. But they also want the building to be aimed at the future and bring new attention to USC Union, which has a growing enrollment. Currently, it has about 1,400 students; many are affiliated with the athletics programs.

Union County has a long segregation history and the area was known for Ku Klux Klan activity and postwar lynchings. There have been recent efforts, however, to acknowledge that history. Kettler said there is much more to learn.

2021 markers details part of the county's lynching history (Picket photo)

Annie Smith, director of development on the campus, said the course also will seek to identify those individuals who lived in the original structure between 1765 and the early 1800s, before Thomas Dawkins bought and expanded the residence.

The class research will include library, courthouse and genealogical records. Kettler previously told the Picket the aim is less about assigning blame for slavery than moving toward acknowledgement and reconciliation

“We don’t know what we are going to find. It just has to be an honest investigation,” said the professor, who showed the students the outside of the home after the class began.

So far, they have possible names for 2 enslaved

A large focus of the class is finding out about the enslaved persons, most of whose names are not know. Names were not included in old census records.

“Focusing searches on that specific population will also allow for uncovering connections to the later history of Black citizens in Union County,” says the class syllabus.

Kettler (right, Picket photo) and a couple students conducted some research over the summer, including at the South Caroliniana Library at the main University of South Carolina campus in Columbia. “We’re digging constantly,” he said.

Kettler, 42, said they have learned the possible names of two of the enslaved. He is not identifying them at this point until he can confirm accounts. One was mentioned in a postwar newspaper article saying the bride was a Dawkins servant (slave). The second may have been a lynching victim in the 1870s, said the professor.

He expects students will glean more names from county-by-county agricultural censuses.

“Tracing formerly enslaved people is very difficult because of name changes,” said Kettler. Others may have moved north decades later during the Great Migration.

The students, working like detectives, will dig up records from myriad sources, such as death schedules and wills. If they can find a Dawkins will, it may list enslaved persons and what they may have received upon Thomas’s death. That could help the effort to find out more about those individuals.

College hopes for an archives open to the public

The public history course outline includes this overview:

“Students will be engaging with archival documents to gain respect for the application and relevance of historical knowledge, as well as support the broader goals of the university and its environs. With the work in this course, USC Union students can begin to explore documents that are to be organized into a “Dawkins House Archive” that will be housed at the future Alumni and Corporate Sponsor Center in the Dawkins House. Our focus on the course will be on answering: What were the historical experiences of those who resided at the Dawkins House?”

Kettler envisions binders of documents at a location ”where people can see the actual letters.” (At left, part of 1867 correspondence by Thomas Dawkins)

Students will share extensive readings during the semester. Topics will include the Dawkins House, memory, the antebellum period, slavery, Reconstruction, “historic sites as powerful institutions,” contemporary Union and modern public history.

The class is half education on the topic and half working through the methods of public history. Students will analyze documents, said the professor. “They will do the work of the historian.”

Resources include census records, newspapers, the Union Country Museum, Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site, diaries and other papers. Kettler wants to see if the county clerk has deeds to property owned Thomas Dawkins. That might help the researchers go back to those who lived in the house way back in 1765.

One goal of the endeavor is to get local folks involved in uncovering the area’s history and make the Dawkins House a destination of sorts. Kettler, who believes a book may result from the project, is available to speak to groups about the Dawkins House as part of South Carolina Humanities’ speaker’s bureau.

For white citizens, a world turned upside down

When it comes to the Civil War period, recorded experiences have almost exclusively been of white people.

Mary Poulton Dawkins was many things in her 86 years, the majority of which were ensconced in the home that was dubbed “The Shrubs” in honor of a family estate by the same name in her native England.

Dawkins (right), who in 1845 married Thomas, a prominent South Carolina judge 14 years her senior, was described by relatives as headstrong and proud of her imported furniture and Queen Victoria.

There was another side of the Englishwoman, however, that doesn’t project well these days.

While of the “highest culture,” Mary had a tendency toward bigotry, an observer wrote, and a paternalistic view of slavery.

Enslaved people had become a majority in Union County during the 1840s.

Following the South’s loss in the Civil War, and the Dawkins’ fortune largely gone, Mary lamented Reconstruction and the brief political power accorded to Black people.

“The negroes on the plantation had really no ill feeling, but poor ignorant creatures, they were intoxicated with the idea of power and always fond of idleness; began to steal and destroy property, scarcely a night without a burning,” Mary wrote in a memoir penned late in life. “There was no redress, no law, and the ‘Ku Klux’ was formed to frighten the negroes, so sensational, supersti­tious.”

Kettler said Thomas Dawkins lived in a world based on the idea the patriarch is nearly above the law on his own property, a theme popular on Southern plantations.

“Dawkins basically had one square mile that defined his life.There are four large Southern homes within a few blocks of the Dawkins House, one we date to 1850 and another to 1857. Those would have been his direct neighbors less than a mile away, he said. 

”A half mile up the road is the church he paid to build. And just up Main Street would have been the courthouse where he practiced as a lawyer and then a judge. (At left, Episcopal Church of the Nativity, Wikipedia).

“This was a figure who exemplified the Southern ideal of Pater Familias, and used Greco-Roman architecture to signify that in a Greek Revival-esque home,” the professor added.

Group is raising more money for work on house

Some 120 years after Mary’s death, Preservation South Carolina is raising money for the next phase of the restoration of the residence.

Bill Comer, a Union native who is heading up the DawkinsHouse rehab project for PSC, previously said the refurbished site will provide lessons from the past once it reopens.

Early rendering of what the house will look like when completed (PSC)

The $300,000 state-funded Phase 1 of the work, which concluded more than a year ago, shored up the building. Phase 2 will be much more extensive and expensive.

PSC said they need at least $845,000 for the next phase of work. About $284,000 has been raised or been committed, including a $100,000 award from the Timken Foundation and a $25,000 grant from the SC Department of Archives and History, said Comer.

Donations to the project can be made here.

“We hope to finalize other significant funding arrangements within the next several weeks. Fundraising efforts will be ongoing until the house is fully renovated and ready for use,” Comer said in an email.

It is anticipated Bennett Preservation Engineering of Charleston will begin updating and preparing design specifications for Phase 2 in early October and that construction will begin in January 2027. “Phase 2 will take the building well beyond stabilization to the point that it is ready to accommodate the Final Phase of mechanical, electrical and plumbing construction,” Comer said.

USC Union offers associate degrees in arts and science and a bachelor's in nursing

After that, the house will be owned by the Union Laurens Commission for Higher Education.

“PSC will continue to work collaboratively with USC Union and the commission via a memorandum of understanding to help secure funding and to provide historical preservation counsel until it is completely finished,” Comer added.

Juggling myths and the real stories

The Dawkins House rehabilitation and the university course are coming at a fortuitous time in South Carolina.

Gov. Henry McMaster has championed commemoration, including the state’s importance in the American Revolution. That awareness includes the complex history of slavery and its legacy, said Kettler.

“The base of the Freedmen’s Bureau was in Beaufort, South Carolina,” he said, arguing that’s where emancipation really began.

There are a lot of stories about the Dawkins House, he argued. “School kids know about the myth of McGrath’s silver.”

Upon learning of Rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in early April 1865, Magrath and his staff raced away from Union as Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Federal troops moved in. 

Magrath apparently hid a silver tea set at the Dawkins' home while he was based there. Mary Dawkins wrote the couple took the set to Mills House in Charleston after Magrath was released and they gave it to him.

The silver tea set story is covered in the book "South Carolina's English Lady," compiled and edited by the late Sarah Porter Carroll in the 1980s. You can read the text on Family Search (right).

Letters and accounts written by relatives of Mary Dawkins -- and included in Carroll's book -- suggest slaves at “The Shrubs” and any other land owned by Thomas were treated more kindly than at other plantations. But that view belies the fact the institution was inherently cruel and violent.

For Kettler and students, this will be in intense exercise in public history, a movement that marries academic with engagement in the community.

Kettler hopes uncovering the history of the house and 19^th century Union will better inform the community of its rich, complex history.

There is a  “mythic, shrouded history we are going to uncover.”

READ MORE:

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/04/as-fundraising-intensifies-to-fix-up.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/01/scs-civil-war-governor-slept-and-likely.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2025/09/craftsman-has-window-to-history-of-home.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2025/02/s-carolinas-governor-fled-to-this-house.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2024/07/south-carolina-community-gets-into-game.html

As fundraising intensifies to fix up Dawkins House in Union, S.C., a university prepares to identify, learn and teach about those enslaved at Civil War landmark

Dawkins House awaiting next phase of work (Picket photo), Mary Poulton Dawkins and part of slave schedule

Mary Poulton Dawkins was many things in her 86 years, the majority of which were ensconced in a Union, S.C., home that was dubbed “The Shrubs” in honor of a family estate by the same name in her native England.

Dawkins, who in 1845 married a prominent South Carolina judge 14 years her senior, was described by relatives as headstrong and proud of her imported furniture and Queen Victoria. She was determined to see the Poultons restored to their former position of wealth and prominence, whether in the United States or England.

There was another side of the Englishwoman, however, that doesn’t project well these days.

While of the “highest culture,” Mary had a tendency toward bigotry, an observer wrote, and a paternalistic view of slavery. The 1850 federal slave schedule indicates husband Thomas Dawkins enslaved about 30 persons.

One of several fireplaces on the main floor of the dwelling; the library is nearby (Picket photo)

Following the South’s loss in the Civil War, and the Dawkins’ fortune largely gone, Mary lamented Reconstruction and the brief political power accorded to Black people.

“The negroes on the plantation had really no ill feeling, but poor ignorant creatures, they were intoxicated with the idea of power and always fond of idleness; began to steal and destroy property, scarcely a night without a burning,” Mary wrote in a memoir penned late in life. “There was no redress, no law, and the ‘Ku Klux’ was formed to frighten the negroes, so sensational, supersti­tious.”

Some 120 years after Mary’s death, the nonprofit Preservation South Carolina is raising money for the next phase of the restoration of the dilapidated Dawkins House. The dwelling is destined to become an alumni and corporate center for the University of South Carolina Union, a small campus in the heart of the Piedmont city. (Picket video below of Bill Comer of PSC)

At the same time, USC-Union is establishing a genealogical and archives course that will focus on the history of the house and its occupants and visitors, including the identification of the enslaved, who – with a few exceptions -- currently are known only by their age and gender. The goal is to offer the class this fall.

It is anticipated that the course will be open to students and Union County residents who have an interest in ancestry research and history.

Backers of the Dawkins House project have said it is important the whole history of the home – warts and all – be told. That's the aim of other sites in Union County, including Rose Hill, former home of the Gist family.

Andrew Kettler, an assistant professor of history, told the Picket the aim of the course is less about assigning blame than moving toward acknowledgement and reconciliation. He describes it as a public history course; the syllabus is still being finalized.

“We are going to run … grants this summer that focus on finding sources related to the Dawkins House,” Kettler said (left, Picket photo). “We are currently recruiting two students and will apply for that funding at the end of April. The grant students will assist with identifying materials that focus on the Dawkins House held in local archives.”

Annie Smith, director of development on the campus, said the course also will seek to identify those individuals who lived in the original structure between 1765 and the early 1800s, before Thomas Dawkins bought and expanded the residence.

Bill Comer, a Union native who is heading up the Dawkins House rehab project for Preservation South Carolina, previously said the refurbished site will provide lessons from the past once it reopens.

“Those who were slaves should be identified and recognized, just as much as the Dawkins family and their prominent guests. Going forward, people of all races and religions should pass through the Dawkins House's doors and occupy its spaces, to do good without discrimination and to learn.”

Thomas Dawkins' property is listed on two pages of the 1850 schedule (click to enlarge)

Fireplaces apparently burned more than wood

The Dawkins House is a terminus residence situated on the campus at the end of Church Street. The property is best known for several weeks in spring 1865.

Union, which is south of Spartanburg, briefly served as the capital of the state after Columbia fell to Union forces in 1865 and Gov. Andrew Magrath fled to Union.

Gov. Magrath, before leaving Columbia, got in touch with college chum Thomas Dawkins (right) about using the home and others nearby to conduct business amid the chaos.

From about Feb. 15, 1865, until early April, Magrath ran the state from the Dawkins House. He apparently worked in an informal library near the drawing room, which survives today. Chaos ruled across South Carolina.

According to histories and local legend, Magrath and his subordinates burned possibly incriminating documents and correspondence in the fireplaces. (The home served as South Carolina's capitol while the city was briefly its capital.)

Amid the panic, Mary P. Dawkins later wrote, folks in Union tried to stay upbeat.

“The young people were hopeful to the last, so when soldiers were with us music, dancing, charades, etc. made such enjoyable eve­nings, never to be forgotten. There was bon amie, a comradeship born of the situation, very fascinating and rare.”

Recollecting the great silver tea set caper

The house has had several additions and changes over the centuries (Picket photo)

Upon learning of Rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Magrath and his staff raced away from Union as Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's Federal troops moved in. He was eventually captured on May 25 and imprisoned at Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Ga., until release that December. 

Magrath apparently hid a silver tea set at the Dawkins' home while he was based there. Mary Dawkins wrote the couple took the set to Mills House in Charleston after Magrath was released and they gave it to him.

The silver tea set story is covered in the book "South Carolina's English Lady," compiled and edited by the late Sarah Porter Carroll in the 1980s. You can read the text on Family Search.

Mary wrote that a few months after hostilities ended, "our servants (were) free and sought for by (Union) soldiers.” One book says she presented a paternalistic view of slavery.

Enslaved people had become a majority in Union County during the 1840s, and the area became a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity during Reconstruction.

Letters and accounts written by relatives of Mary Dawkins -- and included in Carroll's book -- suggest slaves at “The Shrubs” and any other land owned by Thomas were treated more kindly than at other plantations. But that view belies the fact the institution was inherently cruel and violent.

Widow stayed proud of her English roots

During most of their 25-year marriage, Thomas and Mary Dawkins lived the good life. They were well-known in society, had amassed a fortune and were active in local civil and social affairs. They were key supporters of the Church of the Nativity, about a half mile from their home. Mary enjoyed traveling to Charleston and Edisto Island on the Atlantic Ocean.

Things went south after 1861.

 The left rear of the house dates back to the 1760s or so (Picket photo)

“When the war closed every servant Judge and Mrs. Dawkins owned left them, with the exception of ‘Aunt Sophia,’ who showed she appreciated their many kindnesses to her by remaining loyally with them for years as their cook, then, after a long period, going out and doing private nursing,” wrote one relative, as related in Carroll’s collection.

Mary Dawkins wrote that, actually, a few other servants, as she called the enslaved, stayed faithful to the household.

She said that a few months after hostilities ended, "our servants (were) free and sought for by (Union) soldiers.” 

Thomas Dawkins died in 1870. Mary wrote of experiencing sadness after the war while she allowed several relatives to live at The Shrubs. She said she occasionally helped her former servants. Most of her extended family had remained in England, rather than move to New York as she had in the 1830s.

While left with some money when Thomas died, Mary went through it and was almost penniless when she died at 86 in November 1906. Relatives remained in the house for years.

“Mrs. Dawkins was a woman of broad and rare culture, and not so long ago compiled some very interesting reminiscences of her life,” her obituary read. “She was a charming conversationalist, and she numbered many young friends as well as older ones, who considered it a great pleasure to spend an hour in her society. In her death Union loses a gentlewoman, whose presence and quiet influence will be greatly missed.”

In the end, Mary Poulton Dawkins’ story is well-known.

Those of the enslaved in the household she managed are not. (Above, Picket photo of Bill Comer and Robert Schmitt on front porch of The Shrubs)

'The integrity will stand on its own merit'

Curtiss Hunter, tourism director for the county and a member of the Union County Community Remembrance Project (UCCRP), which documents racial violence and lynching and promotes healing through preservation, previously told the Picket restoration of the Dawkins House will boost tourism and community engagement.

Hunter (left) said its full history should be part of its interpretation. “I believe … the story of the Dawkins House should be told as authentic as there is history to prove the content. The integrity will stand on its own merit.”

Hunter’s group in 2021 put up three marker detailing racial injustices in the county. Among them was Sax(e) Joiner, who was hanged by white men just before Union fell during the Civil War. He allegedly wrote an insulting letter to a white woman and was taken from the jail by a mob.

Kettler, the professor at USC-Union, said faculty and students will turn to the census, the Union Country Museum, Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site, diaries and other papers.

“We are also accessing the University Archives, which have been in storage for a time. As well, part of the PURE grant work over the summer will be to try to find other archives in the state that might have reference to the Dawkins House and its inhabitants.”

Tour of home took me way back in time

The Picket attended a January meeting at USC-Union at which Comer and Joanna Rothell, director of outreach and preservation for Preservation South Carolina, made a pitch to area corporations and businesses to donate money for work on the Dawkins House.

I later saw the inside of the house, which has some wonderful architectural elements, timbers dating to the 1700s and windows undergoing conservation.

Comer reiterated the project will attempt to identify those who lived in or worked at the home in the 1700s and 1800s. Hopefully, he said, the team will be able to contact descendants. “We are going to do the right thing,” he told the audience.

The $300,000 state-funded Phase 1 shored up the building. (At right, Robert Schmitt, who was worked on the home's windows, shows where the spiral staircase once rose. Picket photo)

Phase 2 of the ambitious project will be much more extensive and expensive. The aim is for PSC to eventually hand over the house to the university for finishing and customization.

Rothell said Phase 2 will include:

-- Installation of new piers on concrete footings in the crawlspace;

-- Strengthening of porch, first and second floor framings, the roof system and all walls;

Rendering of the finished house, complete with landscaping (Preservation SC-USC Union)

-- Installation of the required framing for a new interior staircase where the original historic, spiral staircase was located in the central hall. This will entail strengthening the floors and walls in this area, including any necessary new footings in the crawlspace.

Name of house will honor famed black coach

PSC said they need at least $845,000 for the next phase of work. About $206,000 has been raised or been committed. Donations to the project can be made here.

“Fundraising is through personal outreach to corporations, organizations and individuals and participation in local meetings,” Comer told the Picket.

Construction could start in September or October, if enough money or promises come in.

PSC put out a fundraising brochure that includes “premier naming opportunities” for portions of the house, including the library, front porch, main hallway and the original 1700s home that was incorporated into later additions. Organizers hope one day to rebuild a spiral staircase that once joined the first and second floors.

The restored residence will be known as the Willie and Mary Jeffries’ Commons at Dawkins House. (PSC photo, right)

Willie Jeffries  played for the all-black Sims High School in Union and is the legendary former football coach of South Carolina State University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2010 and is a member of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame.

In 2023, the South Carolina High School League recognized the Sims football squad’s 96-game unbeaten streak from 1946-1954 as the longest in state history. 

According to PSC: 

"The 'Commons' represents a shared and vibrant space—one designed to bring people together. Located on the USC Union campus, it will serve as a hub for connection and collaboration, where students, faculty, and corporate partners can gather for networking, professional development, meetings, and special events. It will a place where ideas are exchanged, partnerships are formed, and innovation is fostered."

The library remains where Gov. Magrath worked in spring 1865 (Picket photo)

S. Carolina's governor fled to this house in Union as Sherman's men arrived. Here's the latest on efforts (and a donation) to repair building. Will staircase return?

Stabilization of ceiling, exterior, crawl space (Preservation South Carolina); Gov. Andrew Magrath

An ambitious project restoring a weathered South Carolina home at the center of an interesting chapter in Civil War history is being compared to taking a patient from critical condition to full recovery.

The nonprofit Preservation South Carolina this month began Phase 1 of its plans to turn the Judge Thomas Dawkins House to an alumni center for the University of South Carolina-Union. The home in Union briefly served as the Confederate state’s capitol during the waning weeks of the war in 1865.

The current stabilization work – funded mostly by $300,000 in state money -- began in early February and is expected to be completed around June 1.

Bill Comer, a Union native and head of the PSC’s Dawkins rehab project, recently brought the Picket up to date on where things stand.

“The Phase 1 work to date is essentially securing, strengthening and shoring up the structure to prevent its ‘falling in and/or falling out,’ similar to resuscitating and stabilizing a dying patient that has been badly injured in an automobile accident,” wrote Comer, a retired health care and finance executive.

The ambitious effort was buoyed recently by a $50,000 donation from philanthropist Barbara Harter Rippy (left), who also has contributed to local and university projects, including scholarships, the USC-Union nursing program and the Bantam athletic program.

Amid its 60 birthday, USC-Union recently launched a new alumni association. About 1,400 students attend the school; the deteriorated, long-vacant dwelling is on the edge of campus.

“Officials hope that the restored and functional Dawkins House as the Alumni Center for USC- U in downtown Union will provide an economic boost for the City and County of Union, which is home to 27,000 people,” PSC said in a news release. “About 21% of residents are in poverty, according to the Census Bureau. The median household income lags well below the state average.”

The house is supported by chiseled granite foundation blocks and once had a spiral staircase in the main hall.

Supporters hope the staircase (circa 1970 photos below) -- built by Dawkins in 1845 -- can be reborn.

“We have learned of a home in Union built in the same period that has a similar staircase that could used for duplicative construction drawings,” said Comer. It will not be a part of Phase 2 stabilization unless an adequate amount of funds have been secured to cover the cost, he said.

Rebel leaders reportedly torched papers in home

The Dawkins House, on North Church Street, is best known for several weeks in spring 1865. It was nicknamed “The Shrubs” and was occupied by Judge Thomas Dawkins and his English-born wife Mary Poulton Dawkins. 

Gov. Andrew Magrath, before fleeing Columbia as Federal troops closed in, got in touch with college chum Dawkins (below) about using the home and others nearby to conduct business amid the chaos.

From about Feb. 15, 1865, until sometime in March or April, Magrath (right) ran the state from the Dawkins House as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman sacked Columbia and moved on other cities, bent on destruction and submission of Rebel troops. Magrath apparently worked from an informal library near the drawing room.

According to histories and local legend, Magrath and his subordinates burned possibly incriminating documents and correspondence in the home’s fireplaces. (The building served as South Carolina's capitol while the city was briefly is capital.) Magrath had to flee Union and was captured soon after.

Confederates burned documents for myriad reasons, said USC-Union assistant history professor Andrew Kettler.

“Generally, burning would be to avoid military secrets getting into the enemies hands,” the professor said. “But, at the late stages of the war, such secrets may have become secondary as Confederates may have also wanted to hide evidence of the original treason of the Confederacy in the first place, and any other actions that could have led to prosecutions and trials after the war.”

One of the surviving fireplaces on the first floor of the home (Preservation South Carolina)

Here's what has been done in February

Tarps have covered the roof and a portion of the two-story clapboard house for some time; it has not been occupied for years. The outside appearance doesn’t signal the charm inside, even if much of it has crumbled.

The house has exposed beams with carved end fittings, and many rooms are brightly colored. It still has quality features including, beaded and dovetail wood, joints and beams. (At left, Mary Poulton Dawkins)

Portions of the house date back to the 1790s, making it one of Union's oldest surviving homes, existing during the time of George Washington’s and John Adams’ presidencies. So the Civil War is a relatively short period in its 200-plus years.

The 1850 Federal slave schedule indicates Thomas Dawkins owned about 30 enslaved persons before the war. It is unclear whether they were on more than one property.

Comer provided a synopsis of what’s been thus far:

-- Pickets on the front porch railing were removed and numbered for replacement to their exact position
-- Exterior bracing at front porch and side annex wall are complete.
-- Crawl space shoring with the metal jack posts.
-- Crawl space bracing walls are installed.
-- Plywood sheathing placed on the areas where the floors are weak.
-- Plaster removal has been completed where interior bracing walls will be erected.
-- First floor bracing walls are installed. Sheathing will be installed on these walls.
-- Bricks are being removed from chimneys down second-floor window seals, cement scraped off and stored for replacement.

Recent bracing in the front of the vacant dwelling (Preservation South Carolina)

Huss Construction of Charleston is leading the restoration work.

“Phase 1 will facilitate a subsequent Phase 2 stabilization to make the house strong and structurally sound so that the walls and floors can carry the weight loads required of their anticipated uses and to install the final, long-term roof. (Since the patient has been stabilized via Phase 1, we can perform precision surgery via Phase 2 to strengthen bones so that the patient can walk and run again.),” said Comer.

“Once Phase 2 has been completed, customization construction can begin to put the house in exactly the floor plans needed for its intended use (room design, and installation of bathrooms, HVAC, plumbing, electrical wiring, etc.).”

The first floor of the house will hold larger alumni and campus events. Between four and eight people will be able to work upstairs, officials said.  

William Waud depiction of the capture of Columbia, S.C., in 1865 (Library of Congress)

What lies ahead when funding arrives

PSC initially had $300,000 in state money and $10,000 each from Union and Union County to hire and engineering firm and do the stabilization.

But it will need between $800,000 and $1 million for Phase 2. Comer says the organization is trying to secure that funding. It is likely work will halt after stabilization until a substantial portion of that money is obtained from private and public sources.

“Phase 2 Stabilization will stabilize the House’s structure to the extent that the foundation is solid, floors are appropriately weight-bearing for their anticipated operating purposes, walls are tight and load bearing, and the roof is in its final long-term condition,” said PSC.

Once that is over, ownership will be turned over – perhaps in summer or fall 2026 -- to USC-Union, which will need to find the money to complete the restoration and customization of the space before opening it as the alumni center.

People in the community say the Dawkins House is an important landmark. “It anchors one end of Main Street and the courthouse anchors the other end,” said Comer.

Union County has a rich black history and has seen reconciliation after decades of racial violence during and following the Civil War. 

Comer believes the community is all in for restoring the home. 

Established in 1990, PSC is South Carolina’s only statewide, nonprofit organization dedicated to historic preservation