Claudia Hillis describes her home as eclectic.
More than decorating sense, the styles contained within her home reflect five generations of her family who have occupied the home.
The house is known throughout North Augusta as The Star of Edgefield. It was completed in 1860 by her great, great, great grandfather, Robert Butler.
Portraits of him and his wife, Mary Anne Catherine Hall Butler, hang in the second floor hallway.
Their canvassed eyes don't watch over the younger generation much anymore. Hillis said the family spends most of their time in a new den and remodeled kitchen they've added to the back of the house.
The original plantation home, intact though added on to, replaces a wooden house that burned down in the 1850s.
Butler was determined to build a home that would not burn so easily, so he constructed the Star of Edgefield out of brick, with one-foot-thick walls.
That fact did little to ease Hillis' mind when she watched the Palmetto House at Seven Gables next door burn to the ground in September.
Embers from the fire burned holes in patio cushions by her backyard swimming pool.
"It was very frightening," she said.
The plantation was in the Edgefield district originally. Butler's daughter, Mattie Mealing (who was married to North Augusta's first doctor, William E. Mealing), sold 5,600 acres to James U. Jackson's North Augusta Land Company.
By 1903, Jackson built the Palmetto Lodge, Pine Heights Sanitorium and the Hampton Terrace Hotel on the property.
Today, seven acres is all that is left of the original Butler plantation.
It contains an original greenhouse and the family cemetery, where Robert and Mary Anne are buried along with their descendants.
Inside, many of the home's furnishings, now antique, were not antique when family members purchased them.
"Most of the furniture in here is original to the house," Hillis said.
For instance, the green and red stained glass that decorate the front entry are original to the house, and were imported from France and Italy.
An original kerosene chandelier hangs in the foyer, with the crystals still intact. An electric light was installed within the fixture to modernize it without subtracting from the integrity of the piece.
Under it, an antique glass-front bookcase contains medical books used by her great grandfather, who was a physician, and her grandfather, who was a dentist.
The home's original claw foot tub even has a place in a second floor bathroom, which Hillis has added on to the rear of the house.
The original structure is a typical plantation home, with four 20-by-20 rooms on the first floor and rooms on the second, and a central hallway containing stairs on both floors. The third floor contains an attic.
"It didn't have many rooms in it, they're just large," she said.
The stairs lead from the first floor to the observatory on top of the house.
Butler grew cotton and corn on his plantation and watched his slaves work from the observatory.
Later, during the Civil War, the women of the house watched for Yankee soldiers from the same vantage point.
Hillis grew up in the home. She moved to Hinesville, Ga., for a while after she married, but she and her husband returned to her family home. She has lived there for 27 years, she said.
Her 27-year-old son will one day inherit the house from her.
Hillis said she loves her home and doesn't mind sharing it with friends, family, and the occasional reporter, but she does not want to open her inner sanctum to the public.
"I don't give tours," she said.
This is part of a continuing series on North Augusta's historic homes.
Reach Lisa Kaylor at lisa.kaylor@northaugustatoday.com.
