Bonneau Ursula Morrison McGillvray House — McClellanville, South Carolina

Special thanks to Mr. Bud Hill, founder of the Village Museum in McCellanville, for much of the information on this page.

This home looking out onto Jeremy Creek was built around 1920 for Bonneau Ursula Morrison McGillivray (1877-1945), daughter of Richard Tillia Morrison, II and his wife Eliza Abigail Toomer. Morrison was one of McClellanville‘s founding developers. He and town namesake Archibald McClellan subdivided plantations – Jeremy Plantation and Pointe Plantation – and sold the lots to wealthy planters for summer homes. After the Civil War, many former planters permanently moved into burgeoning villages such as McClellanville to start businesses.

Bonneau – or “Nonie” as she was called – lived here with her husband, Dr. Hugh Swinton McGillivray (1871-1960), whom she married in 1899. Born in Charleston to Elizabeth Gready Ward and Alexander Chanler McGillivray, Dr. Gillivray was a descendant of Alexander McGillivray, an early settler of Charleston. Alexander’s brother, Lachlan McGillivray, left Charleston and settled in the Savannah area. Lachlan married an Indian princess and their son, also named Alexander McGillivray, became the famous chief of the Creek Nation who led the tribe into battle and negotiated treaties with Washington.

In 1893 Hugh Swinton McGillivray graduated from the College of Charleston. He received his master’s degree from the University of Goettingen in Germany and his doctorate from the University of Chicago on a Peabody Scholarship. A respected scholar, Dr. McGillivray taught at the Charleston High School and Converse College. He also served as the chairman of the English department at The Citadel. After retiring he taught for a while at the Confederate Home School in Charleston. A published author and poet, he was elected president of the Poetry Society of Charleston. After Nonie McGillivray’s death in 1945, Colonel Hugh Swinton McGillivray married Margaret Gibbs Taylor. As a side note, Colonel McGillivray was the brother-in-law of Henry Toomer Morrison – father of William McGillivray Morrison who served from 1947 through 1959 as the 57th mayor of Charleston.

Nonie McGillvray’s brother, William McGillivray Morrison, served from 1947 through 1959 as the 57th mayor of Charleston.

The Bonneau Ursula Morrison McGillivray House has undergone at least two restorations, one in 1950 and another in 2007, and remains a private residence. It is listed in the National Register as part of the McClellanville Historic District:

The McClellanville Historic District contains a collection of approximately 105 residential, commercial, religious and educational properties dating from ca. 1860 to ca. 1935. This collection is architecturally significant as an illustration of the founding of a pineland resort village and its development into a small but stable year-round commercial fishing village. McClellanville begin in the late 1850s as a summer retreat for St. James Santee and Georgetown planters. The prevailing vernacular forms, especially the central hall farmhouse, predominated in early McClellanville architecture, although the more fashionable architectural styles began to receive attention and can be seen throughout the town: Carpenter Gothic, Queen Anne, and Italianate with a rare Colonial Revival example. The commercial strip developed in the early 20th century and are of frame construction built directly on the road. The historic district is visually unified by the nearly ubiquitous wooden frame construction, by the consistent scale of the house, lots, and their relation to the banks of the creek, by the tremendous live oak trees that permeate the town, and by the relative absence of contemporary commercial intrusions.

Bonneau Ursula Morrison McGillvray House Map

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