By Donna Andrews Bratcher
For years the old house stood forgotten in time, slowly being swallowed up by her surroundings, her roof barely visible to those driving down the small country road nearby. She remembered a better time…when the patter of little feet ran across her wooden floors, when a father sat on her porch steps in the cool of the evening and smoked his pipe after a long day of working in the fields, when the soft lullaby of a mother drifted through her open windows. What was the history behind this house? What secrets was she hiding? Who were the families who lived in her and called her home?

The first documented history of someone living in this home began over 100 years ago in 1912 when John Wesley Suttles moved with his wife and children from Pendleton to this beautiful farm in the Diamond Hill Township of Abbeville County. 4 years earlier Sallie Burns, John’s first wife and the mother of his 8 children, had passed away. He remarried a year later to Emma Burns, Sallie’s older sister. It had been more than a decade since Sallie and Emma’s parents had left South Carolina and settled in Texas, and now the Suttles family would be making a move of their own. Their farm was situated near the small community of Ray, which was located in the area of Trail Road not far from the Abbeville/Anderson County line. At one time Ray had a post office and a one-room schoolhouse. The post office was operable from 1896-1909, and Ray School closed at some point after 1923.
The Suttles moved into a previously built 2-story white clapboard house surrounded by 130 acres of farm land. The decorative corbels and porch railings made the home beautiful and inviting. The house had a stacked fieldstone foundation and a cellar with a cistern for water access. Two multi-story chimneys, one on each end of the house, were beautifully crafted of fieldstone and brick. The Suttles eventually expanded their home by building a one-story addition on the back of the house that included a large kitchen and fireplace. Two magnolia trees were planted in the front yard to provide shade from the summer sun and a delightful sweet scent when their large white flowers were in bloom.

The years passed and most of the children grew up, married, and started families of their own. A son and daughter, Bill and Lou Vera, never married and continued to live the remainder of their lives in their childhood home. Both passed away in the late 1980’s. They were the last of their family to call this place home. Since that time, the house and land have been sold twice, yet never again has a family lived there.
And so, time passed. Her white clapboard sides turned gray with age. Broken windows, missing doors, decaying floorboards, and graffiti…with each passing year she became a shadow of the fine home she once was. Yet inwardly she stood strong against the ravages of time, as if waiting for someone to return…for someone to love her once more…for someone to come save her.
How often we see old homes that are abandoned and eventually crumble to the earth in a sad heap, never to live again. Thankfully, this house would not suffer that same fate. She would live on, though not as she once was. Although the house could not be saved in its entirety, the current owner allowed the home to be dismantled so that at least parts of her would survive. During this process, as each layer of her exterior was peeled away… each floor board, each square nail, each door and mantel piece… it was then that the secret she had kept hidden for so long was revealed. Tucked deep inside the interior of the house stood a beautiful, solid log cabin. Inside those thick log walls, it breathed with the history of the original settlers who first came to this area and began a new life so long ago, much as the Suttles had years later.
Piece by piece, the log cabin was carefully disassembled. Ironically, it will make a journey to Texas, just as Sallie and Emma’s parents did all those years ago. The heart of the home will live on, housing a new family and creating new memories. Other materials that were removed from the home will be used to repair and restore another historic home in nearby Troy, SC.

All that remains today of the old homeplace in Abbeville County are three tall crumbling chimneys and the walls of a fieldstone foundation. They stand as a testament to the families that once called this land home. And nearby, two old magnolias still stand in the yard, their leaves rustling lightly as a bittersweet breeze passes by.
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