Home by the River

The story of Rutledge's return after 44 years to Hampton Plantation, his boyhood home. Built in 1730, the stately mansion and its extensive grounds and woodlands are now one of South Carolina's state parks. The restoration of this house and reminiscences about Rutledge's early years there captures the unique spirit of Hampton.
Hampton Plantation whose two-thousand acres spread along the southern bank of the great Santee River in coastal South Carolina had been in the Rutledge family since 1686. From this house, the British Colonel Banastre Tarleton stole the parish Bible and prayer book. It served as the headquarters of General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox of the Revolution. Once, when surprised by "No-Quarter" Tarleton, he broke the arm off the ebony Chippendale chair in which he was dozing.
Here lived Edward Rutledge, the Signer, and John Rutledge, the able Governor of South Carolina. In 1791, when George Washington made his triumphal tour of the South he stayed at Hampton.
This is the book that earned Rutledge a Nobel Prize nomination.

Archibald Rutledge was born on October 23, 1883 in McClellanville, South Carolina to Henry Middleton Rutledge and Margaret Hamilton Seabrook Rutledge. In 1907, he received a M.A. from Union College. From 1904 to 1937, he was a Professor of English at Mercersburg Academy in the mountains of Southern Pennsylvania. He returned to his old rice plantation home at Hampton in 1937.
He began writing in his late teens until he was well past eighty. He wrote hundreds of stories and articles for magazines, as well as books of poetry and collected writings. Most of his writings are about the Low Country of South Carolina. He wrote about wrens, mockingbirds, rattlesnakes, alligators, turkey, deer and ducks. He also wrote about the land and people who lived during his lifetime. His writing is nostalgic with a profound love of the land and its wildlife.