The Hutchinson House is the oldest identified intact house on Edisto Island, South Carolina associated with the black community after the Civil War. It was the residence of Henry Hutchinson, a mulatto who, according to local tradition, built and operated the first cotton gin owned by an African American on the island from about 1900 to about 1920. The site of Hutchinson’s cotton gin lies about 100 yards west of the house. Hutchinson was born a slave in 1860, the son of James Hutchinson, a mulatto who made notable attempts as both a slave and a freedman to improve conditions for black residents of Edisto Island. Henry Hutchinson is said to have built the one and one half story frame house at the time of his marriage to Rosa Swinton in 1885 and to have resided there until his death around 1940.
