Culp-Beaty Hall

Front inscription

This Greek Revival house was built ca. 1857 for Benjamin Dudley Culp (1821-1885) and his wife Cornelia Meng Culp (1830-1888). Culp, a Union merchant, owned stores on Main Street with partners J.T. Hill and H.L. Goss from the 1850s through the 1870s. In early 1861 the “Johnson Rifles,” a volunteer company soon to become a Confederate company in the 5th S.C. Infantry, received its silk flag in a ceremony here. The flag is now (2006) in the Union County Museum.

Reverse inscription

In 1876 Gen. Wade Hampton, running for governor, made a campaign speech from the second-story portico. The house passed to the Beaty family through B.D. Culp’s daughter Cornelia C. Beaty (1864-1892), wife of William T. Beaty (1864-1944). This house, which features massive fluted Doric columns and a full-width two-story portico with large brackets and a pierced balustrade, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.