This handsome Georgian revival house is known as Bonnie Doone and is located near Waterboro, South Carolina. The house is 9,700 square feet and is surrounded by gardens on a 131 acre estate. Originally, Bonnie Doone was part of a 1722 land grant from King George I and changed hands several times before it was bought by Dr. Theodore DeHon who built a plantation house. However, when the Union Army passed through South Carolina towards the end of the Civil War they had different ideas for the plantation and burned it down. As the Union forces were wrapping up the remains of the confederate army in 1865, they were particularly destructive in South Carolina since that State was the first to secede from the union in 1860. Between 1865 and 1911, the plantation (sans a plantation house) was mostly used for rice cultivation and passed through various owners.

In 1931, the plantation was purchased by a New York City stockbroker named Alfred Caspary. Mr. Caspary also bought some adjoining properties and formed an estate of 15,000 acres. One of these adjoining properties was known as Bonnie Doone and Mr. Caspary applied that name to the whole lot. He also commissioned the construction of the Georgian revival house that sits there today. This house was completed in 1932 on the same site as the former plantation house that was destroyed in the Civil War.

Besides being a successful stockbroker, Mr. Caspary was most famous as a philatelist or stamp collector. He amassed one of the greatest stamp collections of the 20th century and reportedly spent $50,000 per year on acquisitions. His purchases were so discerning that his nickname in the stamp collecting world was the “Connoisseur.”

When Mr. Caspary passed away in 1955, two years after his wife, Margaret, the estate sat for a few years before being purchased in 1965 by the Charleston Presbytery, a unit of the Presbyterian church, and was converted into a retreat center. In 1978, the estate was subdivided and 132 acres plus the house was bought by the Charleston Baptist Association and they also used the property as a retreat center for their church community. Much of the rest of the estate was sold to timber companies. In 2019, Bonnie Doone was bought for $2.5 million by Gene Slivka, a Georgia businessman, who has purchased a few other former plantations in the southern states. Presumably, Bonnie Doone is again being used as a private home. A video showing Bonnie Doone can be seen on Youtube here.