Maxcy-Rhett House

Front inscription

This house was built circa 1810 for Milton Maxcy (1782-1817), who came here from Massachusetts in 1804. Maxcy and his brother Virgil, who founded a school for young men in Beaufort, later taught at Beaufort College. In the 1850s Edmund Rhett (1808-1863), lawyer, planter, state representative, and state senator, bought the house and extensively remodeled it in the Greek Revival style, featuring an elaborate two-story portico.

"Secession House"

Edmund Rhett, along with his brother Robert Barnwell Rhett (1800-1876), lawyer, state representative, state attorney general, U.S. congressman and senator, was an outspoken champion of state rights and Southern nationalism from the 1830s to the Civil War. This house, long known as "Secession House," was the scene of many informal discussions and formal meetings during the 1850s by the Rhetts and their allies advocating secession and Southern independence.