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John Rutledge House Inn

I have long wanted to visit the John Rutledge House Inn in Charleston, South Carolina, and I finally got to do it for my birthday in 2025. I was so excited. We never know where we are going to stay that night when we wake up in the morning in our gypsy style of travel. As we were deciding our next location, I decided to call the Inn to see if we would be able to just visit and tour the house. After several calls and back and forth about spending money, we decided to book a room. I told them that we wanted their least expensive room. We were just an hour and a half away and decided to go straight there. I have Y-DNA to John Rutledge and he and his brother Edward Rutledge are two of the original founders of the United States of America. See my Rutledge Genealogy page.

We parked in front of the house in a temporary parking area and I loved the flowers and the green wrought iron fencing. I used to have this color on my front door of my house for many years.

We are finally here!

After the concierge checked us in, he gave us a key and directions up the stairs. What a surprise when we arrived and I saw that we were actually staying in the John Rutledge room too! This was the first clue that we had been upgraded from the least expensive room request. This place went above and beyond to make our stay special to celebrate my heritage and my birthday.

Here is the bed and through the doors is the shower and bathroom. I did take a bath and a shower the next morning just to enjoy them both. You can see it on the video above.

This is looking the other direction in the room. Isn't it grand! The doorway on the other end is the the John Rutledge study which was a part of our suite.

What a sweet surprise to find a birthday card and a bottle of goodness waiting for us.

They all signed it! They had very little time to set all of this up and they quickly put together and printed a card especially for me.

This is the John Rutledge study that was part of our room. We later learned that this room has a lot of history. The doors to the right opened up to the parlor to make the front of the house a large area for dancing and parties. When the doors were closed, John Rutledge spent a lot of time in this room where John Rutledge wrote his contribution to the Constitution of the United States of America. I understand it was the first part of it that was written.

On our bed was another surprise.

This tells about John Rutledge and was on the wall by the bed. I did not want to stand to read it all, so I snapped a photo of it and read it sitting down. This is a great synopsis of the many things he did for our country. I found it interesting that John Rutledge wrote the constitution of South Carolina and that the United States Constitution has many of the same writings in it. That is proof that he was a big contributor to writing the US Constitution. I understand there is some controversy to who wrote it, but the articles I read in the house gave him credit for writing the major portion of it.

This was on the wall and talks about John Rutledge and the South Carolina state seal.

This looks really old, but I am not sure how old it is, but it contains the state seal embedded on it.

There were scheduled gatherings the parlor. The first was high tea at 4 p.m. I loved how they created an atmosphere as if you were staying in the house in the 1700's. The food was delicious. We enjoyed meeting other people staying in the Inn and chatting with them.

There is a book on the table where guests signed in. It was interesting reading through them to see if there were other Rutledges. We did find at least one.

This is the parlor. The doors to the left open up to the study shown above. We spent a lot of time here. The doors to the left of this photo open up to the balcony. We read in some of the reading in this room that this room is where the first men sat together to begin writing the United States Constitution.

This is a view from the balcony. We enjoyed sitting here. Across the street is the Edward Rutledge house who was the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence. I learned later from the concierge that they did not live here at the same time. I was dreaming of them shouting across the street at each other, or just waving, but that was not the case. John actually did NOT own this house for a long time.

There was a really great binder in the parlor and there was no time to read it all, so I did snap some photos of pages I wanted to be able to read later. I did not by any means photograph it all. They really did a great job with the history of people and the history of the building in this book. Each room as a person's name on it and there is a writing about that person.

It is possible that I am also related to the Middleton's who intermarried with the Rutledges. I am SO close to figuring out the last puzzle piece connection as I have my line up to 1790.

Here is about Edward Rutledge.

There are rooms in the carriage house.

Regarding the Boone's, John and Edward Rutledge's mother was a boon.

A cannon ball hit the top of the house.

There was a lot of history for the building, but this page was the most interesting to me. John Rutledge was the first owner of the real estate and house from 1763 to 1793. He lived here for 30 years though, which is a significant amount of time. John died June 1, 1800, about 7 years after he moved from the house.

I found this article in the Innsider, August 1991, to be most interesting as it discusses who wrote the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson is said to have written it, but he was in France when it was written.

The article continues on this page. John Rutledge was one of 55 signers of the Constitution. His home is one of 15 that remain standing of the signers. The author of this article found Richard Barry's "Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina" which was considered to be a dramatized biography, with notes in the margins written by historian John Rogers, correcting certain points. Mr Barry wrote the book in 1942. (I found it on the Internet Archive where you can borrow books to read with a free account. It is 454 pages. It is also embedded below.) "John Rogers said that Rutledge played a more important part in writing the Constitution than most people give him credit for. Rogers felt Rutledge was a major player. According to John Barry, Rutledge drafted South Carolina's Constitution, which established America's first independent, legally defined government. This served as the foundation for a draft later submitted by South Carolina delegate Charles Pinkney at the Constitutional convention. Twenty-nine of the Constitutions 69 components can be traced to Rutledge." I note that Charles Pinkney's family intermarried with the Rutledges, so they would have been close friends.

I pause in writing because I found this partial comment on the book on Amazon interesting, "This book was published in 1942 and has been proven to be completely wrong. John Rutledge is the reason for the civil war because he is the reason the constitution protects slavery and the slave trade. John Rutledge was the leader of the 3 southern states (SC, NC, and GA) in forcing the remaining states to accept that the constitution protect slavery and the slave trade."

"And it was in the library of 116 Broad Street that these components were conceived. . . . Separated from the ballroom by large pocket doors, the former library is now the sitting room of the John Rutledge Suite...The house had been designed for entertaining, for which John Rutledge was famous. George Washington didn't sleep at 116 Broad, but he ate breakfast there with Mrs. Rutledge during his 1791 visit to Charleston. (John Rutledge, however, did sleep at Mount Vernon.)"

I read that there were two original hearths in the house and both of them were in the study and room where we were staying, so I snapped photos of them.

John Rutledge's portrait by contemporary Charlestonian Frank Gouchnour.

Since I have my Uncle's Y-DNA that shows we are closely related to John and Edward Rutledge, I decided to stand at the same angle as the portrait to see if there were any resemblances. The answers I received on social media were interesting. Some saw resemblance in the eyes and some in the thin lips, giving credit to those being common characteristics of Rutledges.

We decided to have our breakfast in the courtyard as I love being outdoors. We could have had it delivered anywhere. These are photos taken, however, as we toured the house and gardens when we first arrived.

These are the carriage houses where there are additional guests staying.

A second gathering was in the evening and they served brandy, sherry, and port so that it was like the 1700's when the men would gather and have a drink.

This is the staircase in the house.

I loved the chandelier.

For the evening, we are back in our room. I snapped another shot of the study after having ready about it.

We celebrated my birthday early with the gift bottle we had received. I actually realized later that everyone has a bottle in their room as part of the cost of the room because others I was talking to in the parlor also had different bottles.

I had the "Rutledge biscuit with hot sherried fruit" just because it was a Rutledge thing to do!

This was my breakfast. It was great!

This was hubby's breakfast.

Another image hanging on the wall in the hallway of John Rutledge.