Summerville's Most Famous Porch Swing--An Entertainingly Interesting Story

There are stories, and then there are the stories. You know, the kind that flirts with the boundaries of the unbelievable, leaving the reader wondering how the outcome could even be in the realm of possibility. Summerville holds within its historical archives such stories. What you are about to read is not a mind-blowing revelation, but it is entertainingly interesting.

It was the Golden Age for the inns of Summerville. Sara Woodruff had just purchased a 65-year-old house located on the corner of Richardson Ave and Palmetto Street. She watched with curious interest as the influx of visitors from Charleston and places beyond created potentially profitable opportunities and stimulated Summerville's local businesses. The Pine Forest Inn, Carolina Inn, Halcyon Inn, and others were all thriving as a result. She envisioned the house, with its three servants' cottages, as a potential source of income for the future. She would call her new purchase White Gables. Then, one unsuspecting day, an opportunity came rocking on her porch.

Upon coming out her front door, she found a man sitting on her porch swing. He had been walking around town looking for a place to stay, got tired, and took a seat on the swing. He introduced himself as Henry Clay and related how he had been sent to Summerville by his doctor to take advantage of the turpentine-rich air. He was an asthmatic. Sara left Mr. Clay with a glass of lemonade and an invitation to talk when she got back, which they did, and Mr. Clay became her first boarder.

The story's most captivating feature is about to be revealed. Mr. Woodruff was a regimented man and did things to a particular schedule, habits of a railroad employee. Except for his own rooms and the first-floor parlor, he never went into any other part of the house, nor did he show any interest in the day-to-day matters of the household, which he left to Sara to govern. As part of the strict terms laid out by Sara, Mr. Clay agreed to stay in his room during the evening hours, only venturing downstairs during the day. Mr. Clay was a paying guest on the third floor of White Gables for almost four years, which brings us to the most astonishing part of this story. Mr. Woodruff never knew of Mr. Clay's presence in all those years.

Now, you have to wonder, in all that time, the two of them never once crossed paths. Believe it or not, that is the way the family tells the story. It was Sara's profitable little secret.

From 1914 to 1939, Sara's White Gables was famous for Summerville hospitality. Ten months out of the year, many visitors from Charleston and some nationally famous people rented the three cottages on the property and boarded rooms in the house. It became the financial success she envisioned and the security she scrupulously and shrewdly planned for herself and her family.

White Gables had changed over the years since its glory days under the ownership of Sara Woodruff. Future owners altered the rear porch, and added a brick chimney that blocked one of the house's back gables. During recent years, the structure has been restored back to the house Sara Woodruff fell in love with and turned into a beloved Summerville inn. Today, the emblematic porch swing she found Mr. Clay sitting on that providential day remains in place.

White Gables today.