Jamie Constance has lived in California for 69 years, but when he was a partner in the Litchfield Co., a real estate developer based in South Carolina, he found that he was constantly visiting the state.

Together with his wife, Marcia, who’s a granddaughter of the billionaire Max Whittier, “we decided that it would be nice to have a place when we came down for board meetings,” Constance says.

They began to look in an area known for its gracious (and massive) plantation homes. “People asked me, ‘Had you always dreamed of having a plantation?’ ” Constance says. “And I said, ‘Definitely not.’ ” It was mostly, he says, his wife’s idea. “She said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have a place like this, and put it together with chewing gum and baling wire and have our California friends come visit us?’ ” And so that’s exactly what they did, purchasing the 920-acre Chicora Wood Plantation near Georgetown, S.C., for about $1.4 million in 1984.

When they bought it, Constance says, “we didn’t know the amazing history of the Allston family,” the plantation’s original owners. But as he began to research the property during its multiyear, multimillion-dollar restoration, “it all became very interesting,” he says. Among many tidbits, Constance discovered its original owners were very distant cousins. Now, he says, “I’m writing a book about it.”

The book will be the final chapter in the couple’s 34-year involvement with the property. After initially putting it up for sale for $15 million in 2013, they’ve cut the price to $9.5 million, listing it with Elliott Davenport of Hall and Hall. “I’m 89 years old,” Constance says. “It’s time to be more or less settled in one place.”

The History
The land was originally deeded to John Allston by King George II in 1732. It then passed down through the Allston family (technically leaving it for a few years when female family members ceded the property to their husbands), until it came to Robert Allston, who was the governor of South Carolina from 1856-1858.

Before the Civil War, the Allston family was spectacularly wealthy—Robert Allston owned thousands of acres of land, and, at the time of his death, “he owned something like 600 slaves,” says Constance. (The online South Carolina Encyclopedia lists the number as 690.)

Under the governor’s stewardship, the original 1700s-era home was enlarged and updated, and the land was cultivated and improved.

After the war, the slaves’ status was changed to “sharecroppers.” It was a distinction that effectively meant now they were provided “a field to grow their own rice in, which they could then sell,” Constance says.

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