My Corner Online

 

Middleton Place

We visited the Middleton Place in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 2, 2025. I highly recommend it! We were blown away by the gardens, but we also toured the house. I could not film or photograph in the house.

The reason I wanted to visit this place is because the original owners of the house could be my ancestors as I have Y-DNA closely related to Edward and John Rutledge. Edward Rutledge married Henrietta Middleton, who was the daughter of Henry Middleton. My possible ancestors are all over the founding father status of America. Henry Middleton was born in 1717 and died in 1784. Henry's father was Arthur Middleton born in 1681 and died in 1737 when Henry was only 20 years old. Arthur's father-in-law, John Williams, was probably the first owner who began the landscape. I read that construction of the Middleton Place gardens began by Henry in 1741 and the gardens are considered the oldest landscaped gardens in America. Restoration of the gardens began in 1916.

I learned while touring the house that the Middletons in my tree early-on did not create the beautiful gardens we adored as they were restored and added on to. I also learned that the Middletons who married the Rutledges moved to Tennessee, which is where I believe my DNA is taking me to as well, so there are some green flags that I need to study. The Middletons and the Rutledges also both intermarried with the Pinkneys (whose plantation we also visited.)

Here is the self-guided map tour that we used to walk the grounds and here is the Middleton Place Museum brochure when we toured the house.

Middleton Place sits along a Ashley River.

This is the entrance to the gardens after you park and pay for tickets.

We turned right to head towards all of the goodness through the Camellia Allees which I heard are gorgeous in the Spring..

There is tribute at Middleton Place to the African Americans who labored to build these gardens.

The huge trees really take you aback! I loved this place.

At the end we learned about the Spanish Moss growing in the trees that really make the place from one of the workers that we were walking by. He said it is called Spanish Moss, but it is not of Spain and it is not a moss. Spanish Moss is actually an epiphyte, which is in air plant. It is a living plant part of the pineapple family. Charleston has much humidity so the epiphyte sucks up the nutrients out of the atmosphere. It does not hurt the trees in anyway, like a parasite does when it sucks nutrients out of the tree. The clumps can way 100 pounds or more and when it rains it can absorb 7 to 10 times its weight in water and break the tree branch.

This drawing shows the homes as they were. The sign says, "The Middle Place residential complex as seen from the west. The House, built in 1705, passed through three generations of family ownership before Henry Middleton acquired it by marriage to Mary Williams in 1741. The House was fortuitously aligned with the natural stretch of the Ashley River so that Henry could use that alignment as the main axis of the garden plan. In 1755, two flanking buildings were added to the north and south, integrated with the garden design. The North Flanker contained a conservator and library with some 10,000 volumes and the South Flanker held offices and gentleman's guest quarters. The original sketch was drawn from the vantage point by Countess Paolina Bentivoglio Middleton in 1842.

From the website for the house, "Both flankers, along with the main house, were burned by Union troops in February, 1865, just two months before the end of the Civil War. The South Flanker was the least damaged of the three buildings and repairs to it began in 1869 and included a new roof, Dutch gable ends and an entry hall leading from the Greensward. Thus strengthened, the South Flanker survived Charleston's Great Earthquake in 1886 that brought down the gutted walls of the other residential buildings. By 1870 the Middletons had returned to live again at Middleton Place and the South Flanker continued to serve subsequent generations until becoming a House Museum in 1975."

So the house that now stands is the one on the right in this drawing and it was rebuilt after the civil war. It was the the South Flanker held offices and gentleman's guest quarters.

Are you convinced yet how gorgeous this place is? It is just getting started. This is the reflection pond.

We could meander through these gardens all day if we had the time! I believe we are in the secret gardens here.

These trees were in bloom, but we were told the best time to come is in the Spring when other trees are in bloom.

This is the sundial garden.

There is the sundial in the middle.

This is the Middleton Oak which is around 1000 years old and with a 37 feet circumference. It was named a Constitution Bicentennial Tree in 1989.

You can see the South Flanker in the distance.

This is the big field in front of the South Flanker.

We were headed to tour the house museum in the South Flanker at our designated time on our ticket. I could not video inside or take photos. I did enjoy chatting about the Middleton family who intermarried with the Rutledges and seeing the paintings of the people. The ruins of the Main House and North Flanker are to the left of this photo. There was a tour group standing there so I did not photograph it.

As we left the house museum, we walked by the Spring House and Plantation Chapel, and the Mill Pond.

In the distance is a mill and the Mill Pond continues to be on the right.

This bird stood and posed for me for a while and that was great fun!

We turned left after passing the mill to the area below the parterre and terraces and we could see those as we looked up to our left, but the gardens are so large that we did not have time to walk everywhere.

I could not get over the beauty of the moss in the large trees overhanging everywhere!

That is the Ashley River to the right in this photo and the rice farms are beyond it.

 

We ended up back over on the side of the garden where we started and explored more of it. This was near the bosquet and tomb. I read in the above video names of all the inhabitants, all descendants, of Middleton Place.

A bench in front of Reflection Pool.