Beaufort County · Marker 07-31
Rose Hill
Rose Hill Way on the Colleton River, just off Fording Island Rd. (U.S. Hwy. 278), Bluffton vicinity
Front inscription
This plantation was part of the barony of Lords Proprietor Sir John Colleton; his descendants sold this portion to Dr. James B. Kirk in 1828. Kirk was one of the wealthiest cotton planters in antebellum St. Luke’s Parish. He gave Rose Hill to his daughter Caroline (1817-1864) in the 1830s when she married her cousin Dr. John W. Kirk (1803-1868), also a physician and cotton planter.
Reverse inscription
The Kirks began building this Gothic Revival house shortly before the Civil War. The house was unfinished for many years until John Sturgeon III (d. 1978) bought it in 1946; architect Willis Irvin completed much of the interior in 1946-49. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, damaged by a fire in 1987, and restored by the White family in 1996-2007.