John Mark Verdier House
This Federal-style mansion was built around 1804 by John Mark Verdier, a wealthy French Huguenot merchant, and it hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during his 1825 Southern tour before Union forces seized it as headquarters for General Rufus Saxton when they occupied Beaufort in the 1860s. Today the Historic Beaufort Foundation runs it as the town's only historic house museum open to the public.
Its ghost is said to be Verdier's son, mortally wounded in a duel he reportedly entered knowing he would not win; docents and visitors describe an oppressive sadness and sudden cold in the upstairs room where he died of his injuries. A regular stop on Beaufort's ghost walks, it folds real history and the grief of a needless death into the town's antebellum lore.
📍 801 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC 29902, Beaufort, SC · Get directions