Fixer-upper: Read the ‘ad’ for that first home built on Hilton Head — 3,500 years ago

Maybe it was the several years in retirement. When Dan Pinson tried his hand at real estate sales on Hilton Head Island, that sparked his impishness.

Maybe it was boredom.

But when the Hilton Head Plantation resident read last week about the discovery of what could be the first house on Hilton Head — built by Native Americans in what is today’s Sea Pines — two words flashed into his mind: “Fixer upper.”

He couldn’t resist writing the “ad copy” for that home.

To get the picture, don’t think of marsh views and interior designers. Think of archaeologists and students scraping dirt inch by inch within the famous Sea Pines Indian Shell Ring. It’s a circle of shells left here 4,000 years ago, and nobody really knows why.

Whatever it is, it debunks the common belief that the first person to visit Hilton Head was looking for a lost golf ball.

Now, the experts believe, if there was indeed a home built about 3,500 years ago within the shell ring, that helps explain things.

I’m no archaeologist, although I did take a course in college we English majors called “Stars and Rocks” (Astronomy and Geology). But it has always seemed to me that the shell rings are proof that the earliest American women asked the earliest American men to take out the garbage and that’s as far as it got. Either that, or it’s stuff still waiting to be picked up from our first curbside recycling effort.

But it is exciting to think about a home in Sea Pines 3,500 years ago, because today’s Hilton Head homeowners are considered elders of their tribe if they’ve been here 3.5 years.

And it was exciting to Pinson, who emailed me his “Real Estate Ad for ‘The First Home Built on Hilton Head.’ “

Maybe it sounds familiar.

“First Home Built on Hilton Head: fixer upper; built approx. 2000 BC; open, bright and airy floor plan; 24 square feet; dirt flooring; wooded view; 2 mile walk to beach; ground floor master bedroom, living room and dining room; open air exterior bathroom; recently excavated; shell-ring patio and fire pit; listed ‘as is’; owner motivated but may be difficult to locate!”

Yes, picture yourself living in this adorable hut, your own private getaway nestled within a desirable shell ring.

I ran this by our era’s king of Realtors and was shocked to find that James Wedgeworth has never written real estate ad copy.

He’s been the top residential sales agent on the island and the entire state for many of the 37 years he’s been here.

Before that, he was such a successful Bible salesman that even today, when I see him coming, I pull out a Bible, afraid he’ll try to sell me one.

Wedgeworth, who co-founded Charter One Realty, enjoyed the humor of Pinson’s “ad” for the first house.

“I use humor all day, every day,” he said. “You have to if you’re in the real estate business.”

He said Hilton Head real estate still sells today the same way it sold him and his wife, Jane, all those years ago.

“We have beach lovers, golf lovers, and tennis lovers,” he said, “but it is the natural beauty of the island that sells it.”

The old Indian home builders seem to fit his mantra: “It all starts with people coming to Hilton Head. Tourists become residents.”

Today, Wedgeworth has two sons working with him. He recently bought a cool, historic family getaway: the Pleasant Hill Plantation in the nearby Robertville community named for the Lowcountry Huguenot family that produced the creator of “Robert’s Rules of Order.”

We’ve come a long way in 4,000 years.

The Hilton Head Area Association of Realtors currently counts 1,290 Realtor members in southern Beaufort County working from Hilton Head to Hardeeville.

With a median home sales price on Hilton Head last month of $555,000, it’s clear that the shell ring gang should have held onto their fixer upper.

Lee Arberg, the Realtor who sold us our lot on Hilton Head, used to talk about getting “a piece of the rock.”

“Save your shekels,” he would say, as we scraped together a down payment.

But no real estate ad has ever surpassed the one from English Captain William Hilton, who gushed so eloquently in his so-called “discovery” of the place in 1663 that they named it for him.

“The Ayr is clear and sweet, the Countrey very pleasant and delightful,” Hilton wrote. “And we could wish, that all they that want a happy settlement, of our English Nation, were well transported thither.”

It’s a lesson our Realtor friends have taught us well since the beginning of time:

Always put your best foot forward.

This story was originally published July 19, 2018 at 12:09 PM.