The plantation was established in the 1820s, when Thomas Jefferson Johnson built the first house.[2][3] After his death, the plantation was inherited by his daughter, Julia Ann, and her husband, John H. Mitchell.[2] They hired English architect John Wind to design a new mansion.[2][3] Their slaves grew cotton, tobacco and rice.[2]
The plantation was purchased by Howard Melville Hanna in 1896.[2] It was passed on to his daughter Kate in 1901,[3] who turned it into a hunting estate.[2] After the main house burned down in 1934, architect Abram Garfield designed the new mansion, completed in 1936.[2][3] After Kate's death, the plantation was inherited by her daughter, Elizabeth "Pansy" Ireland.[2]
Through the Pebble Peach Foundation endowed by Pansy Ireland, the plantation is open to the public.[2]
The Pebble Hill Plantation Film Collection at the University of Georgia's Brown Media Archives is thought to contain the earliest known moving image recording of Georgia, dating to 1917.[4]