Magnolia Hall

National Register Listing

Street Address:

2025 Horatio-Hagood Road, Hagood, SC (Sumter County)

Alternate Name:

Dr. Swepson Saunders House

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NRHP Nomination

Record Number:

S10817743009

Description and Narrative:

Magnolia Hall, in the rural community of Hagood, is significant as an example of a typical, if restrained, mid-nineteenth century Greek Revival plantation house built ca. 1821 and altered in 1855 and 1860. It is also significant for its association with Dr. Swepson H. Saunders, a prominent cotton planter of antebellum Sumter District and post-Civil War Sumter County. The house as built in 1821 consisted of the present dining room, kitchen, porch, bedroom, and parlor. Between 1853 and 1860, Dr. Saunders added onto the existing house with elements of an elevated façade and a full façade front porch with detached columns, adding four large bed rooms with the spacious hall and the front piazza with overhanging roof structure to accommodate the Saunders’ growing family of fourteen children. With this addition, the axial orientation and front of the house shifted from a northern to a western exposure. In the early 1900s, a tornado removed the front porch roof, which was replaced in a style of that time period, leaving the rafter tails on the porch exposed. Outbuildings contributing to the historic character of the property include a weatherboard sided, lateral gabled, double-pen former slave dwelling, a gable-front detached kitchen, and a two-story, gable-front frame barn. Listed in the National Register September 2, 1999.

Period of Significance:

circa 1821;1855;1860;circa 1930

Level of Significance:

Local

Area of Significance:

Architecture

National Register Determination:

listed

Date of Certification:

September 2 1999

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