Bluffton Heyward House Kept Off the Market After Pushback

Bluffton, S.C. — The Historic Bluffton Foundation has taken the Heyward House on Boundary Street off the market after months of community pushback, according to a foundation board posting reported by local coverage.

The 1841 house museum, headquarters of the foundation, was listed for sale in June when leaders said operating costs had become too heavy. The home was one of 15 that survived the Burning of Bluffton in 1863, and eight of those houses remain.

Board members reversed course after hearing from residents and visitors who described the site as an active museum and communal space, not only a landmark. The foundation is now asking for renewed memberships, donations, docents and preservation help to stabilize finances.

The Heyward House Museum was built by enslaved West Africans in 1841 and later served as a summer home tied to plantation owner John J. Cole. The foundation purchased it in 1998 and converted it into a museum after a decade of renovation. It once served as the town welcome center and still includes an 1841 cabin interpreted as the last remaining slave cabin in Bluffton.

The foundation website says the museum is owned and operated by the Historic Bluffton Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Bluffton culture and history, and the group also owns the Colcock-Teel House from about 1890.