This early Victorian home, completed in 1859 for James Henry Mims, is very unlike other homes in Edgefield in that it is primarily one-story with five main rooms across the front.  It bears unique Victorian architectural features, including gingerbread trim around the front porch and wide openings between the rooms, with multiple hinged doors.  The house was purchased by General Matthew Calbraith Butler in 1870.  Butler had been a Major General in the Confederate Army and played a leading role in the 1876 Red Shirt Campaign to restore Democratic government to South Carolina.  He was elected to the United States Senate in 1877 and served until 1895.  Afterwards he was commissioned as a Major General in the Spanish American War.  In 1904 the house was purchased by Senator Benjamin Edwin Nicholson whose family continues to own the house today.