This farmhouse in the Kershaw County community of Cassatt was built around 1820 for planter Benjamin McCoy. McCoy and his family arrived to the area around 1797, and with the free labor of his 25 slaves he joined the wealthy society that flourished in the antebellum Camden area.
The house remained in the family until the twentieth century. Today the home is a private residence that is remarkably intact in nearly its original form.
The Benjamin McCoy House is listed in the National Register:
(Banbury Cross) The McCoy House is an excellent example of the type of residence lived in by an upper middle-class planter in the South Carolina midlands. Prosperous farmers in this area built modest but sturdy houses, and the McCoy House characterizes these antebellum dwellings. According to local tradition, the two-story I-House was built for Benjamin McCoy ca. 1820. It is one of the earliest houses in Kershaw County.
The following structural evidence points to a construction date in the early nineteenth century: the use of heavy timber frame construction with hewn, rather than sawn members; the monumental exterior brick chimneys; the absence of a ridge pole and the presence of thin, narrow wood shingles and wide board sheathing; interior details such as the use of the hall-parlor plan; exposed ceiling joists; random width board floors; tongue and groove board walls; and the arched hearth corroborate the ca. 1820 date. None of the original dependencies have survived.
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