Qualla: Kensington Plantation House

Kensington Plantation House: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Curator14, CC BY 4.0. The bricks hold fingerprints. Pressed into the clay by hands that were never paid, never free, the ridges and whorls survive in the foundation of Kensington Plantation House near Eastover, South Carolina. The mansion itself is a three-story confection of Corinthian arches, a domed copper roof, and goat-head pilasters -- designed to echo the Louvre and the Palace of Fontainebleau. It was built between 1851 and 1854 by enslaved laborers who planed the cypress lumber, shaped those bricks, mixed the plaster, and forged the ironwork. When the estate was appraised in 1852, the 281 enslaved people at Kensington were valued at $121,600 -- nearly 90 percent of the property's total worth, excluding land. The mansion itself was, in a sense, the lesser asset.

Image: Curator14 | CC BY 4.0

Kensington Plantation House: Cotton, Railroads, and the Singleton Fortune

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dima Sergiyenko; Please attribute this image as the work of "DiscoverWithDima.", CC BY-SA 4.0. The Singleton family had been accumulating land and enslaved labor in the South Carolina lowcountry for a century before Kensington's walls went up. Englishman Matthew Singleton acquired 1,250 acres east of the Wateree River in 1762, growing rice and indigo with enslaved labor. B...

Image: Dima Sergiyenko; Please attribute this image as the work of "DiscoverWithDima." | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kensington Plantation House: A Child on Horseback

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Curator14, CC BY 4.0. Among the 281 people enslaved at Kensington was a boy named Jacob Stroyer, born around 1849. In his autobiography, My Life in the South, Stroyer described being trained as a horse rider at age five, taught to compete in races sanctioned by the South Carolina Jockey Club. The trai...

Image: Curator14 | CC BY 4.0

Kensington Plantation House: The Widow's Ledger

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The ed17, CC BY-SA 4.0. Matthew Richard Singleton died of tuberculosis in August 1854, leaving Martha with three children, an unfinished mansion, and debts to nearly 70 creditors. Floods and droughts had decimated the crops. Martha's response was ruthless and effective. She sold 38 enslaved laborers, 40...

Image: The ed17 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kensington Plantation House: Spared by Sherman, Claimed by Time

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Historic Columbia, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Sherman's army approached Columbia in 1865, Martha hid her livestock in a swamp, gathered her mother and a few necessities, and fled. The Union troops destroyed the nearby Kingville railway depot but left the mansion standing. After the war, the Singletons returned to find t...

Image: Historic Columbia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kensington Plantation House: The Unfinished Reckoning

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Union Camp purchased Kensington in 1981 for $2.5 million and spent approximately $1 million restoring the mansion, which opened to the public in 1985. The Scarborough-Hamer Foundation, overseen by descendants of the Scarborough, Hamer, Singleton, and Stroyer families, ran tours f...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain