Pinewood Plantation

Pinewood Plantation was the home of Major William Seaborn Bamberg (1820-1858), planter, merchant and the founder of Bamberg. Maj. Bamberg, a native of what was then Barnwell District, returned to this area from Georgia in the late 1840s. The town of Bamberg, called “Lawrey’s Turnout” or Lawrey’s, was little more than a stop on the S.C. Railroad before a post office opened there in 1850. William Seaborn Bamberg, who built a store and depot at Lawrey’s by 1850 and built a hotel there in 1853, was the town’s first mayor. Lawrey’s was renamed Bamberg for him in 1854, and chartered in 1855. W.S. Bamberg died before the present house at Pinewood was completed in 1859; his widow Philippine Picquet Bamberg (1820-1895), a native of France, lived here until her death.