Medway Plantation, Pine Grove South Carolina
The builder of Medway, -Tim Van Arrsens, died shortly after his arrival in Carolina. His widow, Sabina de Vignon, then married Thomas Smith who later became landgrave and then governor of Carolina. Smith became one of the greatest common ancestors of the Low Country through his first wife, for Sabina had no children. He is buried at Medway. A part of the building was destroyed in the earthquake of 1886, but was restored twenty years later. The Dutch style of Van Arrsens' architecture has been maintained through several additions and changes.
Medway owes its planting of trees to two sisters. The larger oaks around the house were set out by Mrs, Theodore Marion Du Bose between 1825 and 1835 and Mrs. Peter C. Stoney set out the double avenue in 1855.
Medway, built only sixteen years after the founding of the colony, and now the oldest house in South Carolina of record, is in pan already typical of the Plantation houses to be built in the Low Country during the next hundred years.
This house served John Bennett as the plantation house in his novel, "The Treasure of Payre Gaillard".
