Harriet Barber House

The Harriet Barber House is a simple one-and-a-half-storey wooden farmhouse that carries an outsized piece of American history. Built in the 1880s on land granted to a formerly enslaved family during Reconstruction, it is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of very few surviving sites of its kind in the South.

Visits are by appointment only, but the family who still owns the property is generous with their time when arrangements can be made. The setting is rural and quiet, and a stop here pairs well with a morning at Congaree National Park down the road.

things to do sight historic house
A story
Samuel and Harriet Barber bought this land in 1872 from the Federal government's Reconstruction-era programme aimed at giving freed slaves their own farms. The house has stayed in the same family for over 150 years — one of the few surviving examples of a Reconstruction land grant still owned by the original family's descendants.

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