GEORGETOWN — A nearly 1,000-acre waterfront property once owned by a Revolutionary War commander is on the market for the first time in almost 30 years for nearly $15 million.
Dover Plantation, listed for $14.75 million, sits on 957 acres abutting Winyah Bay south of Georgetown and was the slave-owning property of Col. Peter Horry, who inherited the land and served with Gen. Francis Marion in the war for independence. He later became a brigadier general in the militia. Horry County, home to Myrtle Beach, bears his name.
Originally, part of the 12,000-acre Winyah Barony, the property has changed hands just four times outside of family since a king’s grant in 1711, according to the Montana-based listing agency Hall and Hall and its Southeast affiliate, The Wings Group, of Chattanooga.
The main 2½-story house, at 7,910 square feet with five bedrooms, four full bathrooms, two half baths, wine cellar, cigar room and widow’s walk, is not the original structure. That house burned at some point, according to Hall and Hall.
Cornelia Sage and her husband, Henry, a New York businessman and politician, bought the property in the early 1900s.
After his death, she started constructing the residence standing on site now in 1949 from parts of other houses, mainly the Woodlawn Plantation house that had previously been taken apart and moved from Berkeley County to make way for the Santee Cooper lakes.
“It was quite an undertaking,” said listing agent Elliott Davenport of The Wings Group. “She had the disassembled house moved down the Santee River to Dover to keep it from being flooded and had it reassembled later.”
The staircase and wallpaper came from Mendenhall House in Newberry, and a doorway, Palladian window and balcony came from Hunter House in Savannah, according to a history of the house provided by the Georgetown County Museum.
The property, on a gated entrance off South Island Road, has several other structures including three guest cottages, staff residence, owner’s office, small theater, picnic building, recreation room, standalone sauna, skeet range and three-car garage.
“It also has tremendous hunting and fishing opportunities with brackish and freshwater,” Davenport said. “It’s a sportsman’s paradise.”
Cornelia Sage died in 1969 and left the property to her son. His children sold it in 1995 for $3.1 million to the current owners, Harry J. Butler Jr. of Butler Properties in Atlanta and his wife, Beckie, according to county land records.