Hampton Plantation

John Henry Rutledge shot himself during a family party at this 1735 Lowcountry plantation on March 30, 1830, after his family forbade his marriage. His rocking chair rocked by itself for years until it was removed from the house.

The rocking chair in John Henry Rutledge's room kept moving on its own. It rocked by the window, where he used to sit and stare out for days at a time, until someone finally removed it from the house.

Hampton Plantation sits north of McClellanville along the South Santee River, a 1735 estate with one of the earliest temple-front facades in American domestic architecture. The Rutledge family owned it for generations. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1970, and the state of South Carolina operates it as a historic site now, with nature trails winding through the Lowcountry landscape along the river.

John Henry Rutledge was twenty-one, the heir to this plantation and the Rutledge name. He fell in love with a pharmacist's daughter from Georgetown. His family considered the match beneath them. His mother refused to permit it. His father sided with his mother.

On March 30, 1830, the family threw a party in the downstairs ballroom. While guests danced below, John Henry went upstairs to his room and shot himself in the head. He didn't die immediately. He suffered for two more days before finally dying on April 1, 1830. They buried him behind the house.

The ghost story that comes from this is rooted in interviews Nancy Rhyne conducted in the 1970s with Sue Alston, the daughter of formerly enslaved people who had lived at Hampton. Alston described how the rocking chair near the window in John Henry's room would be found rocking by itself, over and over, for years after his death. Visitors would wake to find it moving. Staff would push it flat against the wall and return to find it pulled back to the window, rocking slowly, facing the view John Henry had stared at during his final depressed weeks.

Windows were another problem. Shut windows would be found open. Open windows would be found shut. No drafts could explain it.

The last private owner of the property was Archibald Rutledge, South Carolina's first poet laureate, who wrote about his 1937 return to Hampton after a thirty-three-year absence in Home by the River. He lived with John Henry's story his whole life. The ghost was family.

Hampton Plantation is a State Historic Site open to the public with tours of the mansion and grounds. The rocking chair is gone now. Whether John Henry noticed, nobody can say.