Beaufort home has legacy of benevolence, generosity

When local author Tim Johnston launches “Friday Afternoon and Other Stories,” his new book of short stories later this month, the party will take place in the parlor of the Lewis Reeve Sams house.

An event like that always has an air of excitement about it, but it’s one in a long line of seminal events taking place in the white house on the corner of Bay Street and New Street.

“The house is almost a person itself in its history and presence,” said current owner Gwen Myers, who, with her husband, Scott, purchased the house after seeing an online advertisement. “We feel like caretakers rather than owners.”

Not knowing the history of the house, they awoke their first morning living there to find a tour guide in 19th Century garb standing in the front yard.

“We just went along with its obligations,” said Myers.

Those obligations included holding regularly scheduled Open Land Trust luncheons and being featured along the CAPA Ghost Tours. Those and others are just recent commitments for a house built in 1852.

During the height of the antebellum period, the Sams family wished to have houses in town and away from the family plantation on Dataw. Today, some of their descendants are among the visitors who come back for friendly visits, another welcome occurrence.

“The Sams family is remarkable,” said Myers. “They’ll always have ties to the house and some of them make the pilgrimage back.”

There almost wasn’t a house to come back to.

A January 1907 article in the Beaufort Gazette described the great fire that started downtown and swept through Beaufort as the “most terrible and destructive fire that ever visited Beaufort.” Before the flames died they took many houses and businesses in the downtown district with them, including the house right next to the Sams house.

George Waterhouse had purchased the home after the end of the Civil War and his widow still lived there in 1907. His son, also named George, owned a cotton gin downtown and when the fire began to spread, his loyal employees formed a bucket brigade to douse water on the house and save it.

That’s why it was still around in 1990 when producers of “The Prince of Tides” used it as the stately home of the stepfather of protagonist Tom Wingo, portrayed by Nick Nolte. Wingo even pauses, briefly, outside of the home before entering. The house itself seems as imposing to him as the people within its walls.

It’s forever preserved on film in that cameo performance, and if Gwen Myers has her way the house will remain open to continuing its literary tradition.

The first meeting of the Clover Club, a local women’s literary club, was held in the parlor of the Sams house in 1891. Johnston’s book launch is yet another social highlight for a house full of them.

“The house has a legacy of benevolence and generosity, and we’re trying to preserve that for future generations,” said Myers.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Beaufort home has legacy of benevolence, generosity."