Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
From the record
“Thorntree, also known as the Witherspoon House, is a historic plantation house located at Kingstree, Williamsburg County, South Carolina. It was built in 1749 by immigrant James Witherspoon (1700-1765), and is a two-story, five-bay, frame "I-house" dwelling with a hall and parlor plan and exterior end chimneys.”
Wikipedia article Thorntree (Kingstree, South Carolina), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 12 National Register listings published here for Williamsburg County · listed in 1970 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.70000606- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
788 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 788 fires within 5 miles of Thorntree
between 1992 and 2020, burning about 4,601 acres in total. 4 started naturally. 189 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
307
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
253
Arson/incendiarism
189
Misuse of fire by a minor
11
Smoking
9
Equipment and vehicle use
9
Natural
4
Power generation/transmission/distribution
3
Railroad operations and maintenance
2
Recreation and ceremony
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Thorntree: 2 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Kingstree, the town this property stands in, in 35 storm reports between 1995 and 2017: 15 hail, 14 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 2 flood.
The reports record 15 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A NWS storm survey concluded a downburst rolled a manufactured home (that was not tied down) 75 feet over a car and into a ditch. Four people were in the home and were treated for minor injuries.
Around 10 to 15 inches of rain fell over a three day period, causing the Black River at Kingstree to rise to a major flood. The river crested at 22.65 feet, beating the previous record crest in 1973 by nearly three feet. Several hundred homes were evacuated due to inundation. The town of Quinby had moderate flooding.
A storm survey concluded straight line winds peeled back the roofing on three small and open hangers. A small Cesna plane was tipped onto one wing. A cotton trailer was overturned. Trees were also blown down.
Trees and power lines were reported down along Red Road. The report was relayed via South Carolina Department of Transportation and Santee Electric Cooperative.
1 paper published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 1,411 issues,
12,243 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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