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| Front of St. Matthews plantation house |
The location/setting for III the movie is on a pre-Civil War plantation located in the
Sandhills region of South Carolina known for
producing cotton. The house is 6,800 square feet, has 17 rooms, and
features an additional 3,000 square feet of covered porch space. The property
is owned by director/producer, Trey Howell, III's aunt and uncle who purchased
it in 2001. Owner Drew Rowe, who has a B.A. and M.A. in History and a
doctorate in Education, worked diligently on sabbatical for two years to
restore the home to habitable condition and furnish it with Southern period
antiques.
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| Back of St. Matthews plantation house |
The house was constructed in three phases. An original 4 room plantation plain house was
built in 1854 by Horace Walker Hennon, a merchant who also had a store on the
property. This was the first residence
built in St. Matthews, immediately after the completion of the railroad that
runs through the town. A two-story
addition facing Church Street was constructed in 1878 when Hennon’s daughter,
Agnes, married. Following the death of
Hennon, his wife and daughter, the home was sold in 1903 to Russell Zimmerman,
who owned a cotton plantation near Cameron.
Zimmerman employed a German-architect to expand and remodel the home
into the Gothic Revival plantation house that has remained unchanged down to
the present. The home was restored to
its 1903 condition by Drew and Linda Rowe between 2001 and 2003.
The current property includes 4 acres of land and a cook’s house, which
the Zimmerman family cook lived in from the 1920’s to the 1970’s.
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| Cook's house, St. Matthews plantation house |
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| Cook's House, St. Matthews plantation house |
Deceased
members of the Hennon and Zimmerman families who lived in the house are buried
in the St. Paul United Methodist Church cemetery which is located across the
street from the house. The cemetery was
initially started as the Hennon family cemetery and the oldest grave is that of
an infant boy who was born and died in 1855. Four Zimmerman children are also
among those buried there.
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| St. Matthews plantation family plot |
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| St. Matthews plantation family plot |
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| Arial view, St. Matthews, SC plantation |
