The Miles Brewton House and the Story of Rebecca Brewton Motte

Miles Brewton House, 27 King Street

        Miles Brewton built this beautiful Georgian Palladian home in 1769. It is one of the finest examples of this 18th century architectural style in America. Over the main doorway is the earliest example of a fanlight in Charleston. The details, both interior and exterior, make this house one of exceptional note.  Miles Brewton made his huge fortune as a merchant and a slave trader. He had a number of plantations and grew rice and indigo. He was active in the Pre-Revolutionary Charleston political scene and was  elected to the second Provincial Congress. He took his wife and children with him when he left Charleston in 1775 headed for Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the entire family was lost at sea. If MIles Brewton could have foreseen the future, he would have seen his magnificent home occupied by the officers of two enemy armies, during both the American Revolution and the Civil War. The "chevaux-de-frise" - iron bars with spikes topping the fence and gate - was installed in 1822 in reaction to an alleged slave insurrection plot led by Denmark Vesey. It gives this stately home an air of fear and danger and an undeniable reminder of a painful past......not the usual Charleston welcome we have come to expect.



        After Miles Brewton's death, his sister Rebecca Brewton Motte inherited this home, as well as a plantation on the Congaree River, known as St. Joseph (later renamed Fort Motte.)
Rebecca became a Revolutionary War heroine and her story is one of strength and ingenuity -- both, without a doubt, characteristics of a "Strong Southern Woman"!  Rebecca Brewton was born in 1737 and married Jacob Motte in 1758. The couple had seven children - and therein begins Rebecca Motte's journey with grief and loss. Of her seven children, only three daughters lived to adulthood. In 1775, her brother Miles and his family were lost at sea. She moved with her family into the home her brother had built on King Street. Rebecca Motte was a strong supporter of the Patriot cause and gave all she could to advance it. Imagine her horror when Charleston fell to the British in 1780 and, to add insult to injury, her home was commandeered as the headquarters for the British officers Sir Henry Clinton and Lords Rawdon and Cornwallis! She locked her three daughters in the attic of the house to keep them away from the presence of the British soldiers. Jacob Motte was, by this time, quite ill. Rebecca was given permission to take her family to her plantation home on the Congaree River in the Orangeburg district. Jacob Motte died shortly afterward in January, 1781.  When the Motte family reached the plantation -- longing, surely, for some respite from grief and war, the British had also occupied her plantation home! She and her family were exiled to a small overseer's house. The British now occupied what had become know as "Fort Motte". General Francis Marion ("Swamp Fox") and Colonel Henry Lee were sent, along with their troops, to capture Fort Motte. After five days, Francis Marion approached Rebecca with a difficult scenario. The only apparent way to rid her house of those pesky British was to burn it down! Rebecca did more than just agree! She remembered a quiver of arrows that had been given to her brother by a West Indian sea captain. The arrows were supposed to be combustible. Rebecca Brewton supplied the arrows to burn down her own home! 


             The plan succeeded and both British and American soldiers worked to put out the fire before the house was completely destroyed. Always the epitome of the "Strong Southern Woman", Rebecca Motte then prepared and served dinner to the American officers and their captive British officers!