Abbeville, South Carolina and the Burt-Stark Mansion

      Abbeville is a quaint, little place with a downtown trying to make a comeback.  There are several restaurants, a boutique hotel, an opera house/community theater, and a historic mansion.  Abbeville is known as the birthplace and the deathbed of the Confederacy.  After a meeting held in Abbeville on November 22, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union.  The Confederate cabinet held its last meeting on May 2, 1865 at what is now known as the Burt-Stark Mansion.  

The Main Street

A Building Waiting for a Business

The Belmont Inn is listed in National Register of Historic Places.  

The Burt-Stark Mansion
We enjoyed a lengthy, private tour of the mansion, the slave quarters, and the grounds.  Mary Stark Davis lived in the home until 1987.  Many of Mrs. Stark's evening gowns hang in her bedroom wardrobe.  Our docent opened the wardrobe and showed us each beautiful dress.  No photography is allowed inside the mansion.   

This is a view of the back of the house.  You can see the separate kitchen on the left.  The bumped out area on the right contains the downstairs bedroom.  This bedroom is actually two adjoining rooms divided into a winter area and a summer area.  The winter area has three walls adjoining the interior space of the house.  This makes the room easier to heat.  The summer area has one wall connected to the main house and three exterior walls, all containing windows for catching cool summer breezes.