USA > South Carolina > Spartanburg County > A history of Spartanburg county > Part 17
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Religious Special exercises were held in connection with the fif-
Celebrations tieth anniversary of Cannon's Camp Ground, beginning Friday, September 24, 1875, and continuing through the following Tuesday. Several ministers participated in the exercises, besides Mr. Mood, presiding elder, and Mr. Porter, preacher on the Cherokee Circuit. Dr. James H. Carlisle, president of Wofford College, made the outstanding address on Sunday afternoon, when between two and three thousand people gathered in the Camp.
In 1861, with the news of war in the air, the Nazareth Church congregation planned and carried through successfully the "Centennial Celebration of the First Settlement on the Tygers." In 1872, when again the county was filled with tumult and unrest, they celebrated -- even more elaborately-the centennial of the formal organization of Nazareth Church. The distinguished New Orleans Presbyterian preacher, Dr. Benjamin M. Palmer, made the oration on June 15, 1872. Dr. R. H. Reid read a historical sketch of the church. Sons and daughters of the church and of the seven churches calling Naza- reth mother, participated in the celebration. The church had been repaired and adorned for the occasion, and surrounded with awnings and improvised seats to accommodate in comfort the large attendance expected.
The Grange The Grange, officially "Patrons of Husbandry," played an important part in organizing social life in farming communities during the decade of the seventies. Its objectives were to promote culture and improve farming methods, and to provide for a sys-
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tematic exchange of ideas among farm families. It had also a policy of cooperative buying and selling of farming implements and supplies. The programs at regular Grange meetings often included debates on such subjects as "The No Fence Law," or "The Merits of Com- mercial Fertilizers," or "Immigration as a Solution of the Labor Problem." The Grange also secured visiting speakers of distinction, and held public meetings. Social features, with entertainment and refreshments, characterized most of the Grange meetings. An im- portant aspect of the Grange movement was the inclusion of women in the membership.
Twentieth Com- During this entire period Wofford College held its mencement at Wofford College own in spite of the fact that the war had swept away all of its endowment. In 1872 a "Ladies' Bazaar," conducted for the purpose of repairing the steps, yielded $800. Wof- ford's sophomore exhibitions and commencements and public lec- tures offered from time to time provided social and intellectual stim- ulus for the entire community and even the county. In July, 1874, an imposing array of dignitaries appeared on the twentieth com- mencement program; and not only the Palmetto House and the Pied- mont House, but all the available private homes of the village were taxed to entertain the throng of visitors. The novelty of being able to make the trip by rail-at special rates, too-and the fact that the Spartanburg Dancing Club seized the occasion for its initial "Ball," no doubt swelled the attendance. Possibly some visitors were drawn by the Latin and Greek orations which continued, in the seventies, to have their place in every Wofford commencement program.
Last Days of the Spartanburg Female College, reopened in 1866 and Female College making a valiant but vain struggle for continued existence, was characterized in 1868 by the Spartan as the "oldest female college now in operation in the State." Early in 1870 the Rev- erend Dr. S. B. Jones and the Reverend James F. Smith bought from the referees in bankruptcy "the Spartanburg Female College free of encumbrances of debt." Smith soon sold his interest to the Reverend Samuel Lander, who within a very short period sold it in turn to Jones. Lander himself removed to Williamston, where he founded a female college which later received his name. Doctor Jones held his last commencement exercises the week of November 5, 1872, at which time the announcement was made that the faculty and most of the students would go with him to Columbia Female College, of
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which he had accepted the presidency, and which would open January 1, 1873.
Educational In August 1872, the Female College property was again
Ventures sold-this time to the Reverend R. C. Oliver, to be used for the Carolina Orphans' Home. This institution started off well. By fall Oliver was publishing The Orphans Friend, a "family newspaper designed primarily to teach the children printing." In 1873 the buildings of the orphanage were sold to Wofford College for use as a "Fitting School." The paper was sold, in 1875, to the founders of the Spartanburg Herald.
The Theological Seminary, with a faculty of three, was located here in October 1866, by the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but in less than three years was removed to Sewanee, Tennessee. In January 1873, Dr. John D. McCollough opened St. John's Hall, a boarding school for girls. The grounds of the Seminary reverted thus to the use for which they were first acquired by McCollough twenty years earlier.
Private Throughout the war period and afterwards excellent private
Schools schools were maintained. Among the teachers were Mrs. Sarah L. Butler, the Misses Harlow, Mrs. M. C. Massie, Mrs. Baker, Miss Emily K. Lee, Miss Perry, Miss W. H. Girardeau, the Misses Gamewell, Mrs. J. W. Webber, Misses Lomax and Shipp, W. L. Johnson, and J. S. Henderson.
Vicissitudes of the School for the Deaf and the Blind In 1873 the State Superintendent of Education, J. K. Jillson, ordered that no distinction based on race was to be made among the pupils of the School for the Deaf and the Blind at Cedar Spring, but that "whites and blacks should sleep in the same beds, eat at the same tables, and be taught in the same classes." The faculty and staff resigned, and in the impossibility of replacing them Jillson officially closed the school, and it was not reopened until 1876. Some of the teachers and pupils continued ther work together privately during that period. Previously the school had been twice closed and reopened because of war conditions and lack of appropriations.
The Reidville The Reidville Schools, founded just before the war, Schools survived and rallied surprisingly from the ordeal. The Reverend Dr. R. H. Reid, their founder, in an address at Bullock's Creek in 1872, said of them :
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The institutions received a baptism of blood at their birth. Three of their first teachers were soon lost in the war; two were killed in battle, and one died of disease. We have had pupils from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Vir- ginia, as well as many from the lower counties of our own State. They have done noble work in the past. They are today well officered with a full corps of teachers. One hundred and forty-five pupils were enrolled during the last scholastic year. They were founded by farmers and have been chiefly sustained by them. They were founded in faith and prayer, and I have an abiding faith in their continued prosperity.
His faith was justified. His schools survived until they evolved in the nineties into public schools.
Changes in the The public school system was elsewhere to absorb the old academies and private schools. In time
Limestone Springs Schools the two institutions at Limestone Springs lan- guished. The Curtis property was sold in 1871, and Doctor Curtis died in 1873, but Charles Petty continued a school there very suc- cessfully for a number of years. Finally, in 1880, the Limestone Springs property, mortgaged to Peter Cooper of New York, was given by him and Thomas and M. M. Bomar-who were joint owners with him-to the Spartanburg Baptist Association; and the institution, which had, since 1845, been the outstanding girls' school of upper South Carolina, took on new life, as the Cooper-Limestone Institute.
R. H. Reid and The public school system as it is organized today the Public School System was the outgrowth of the despised Constitution of 1868, and in its beginnings encountered resist- ance because of this association with the "Nigger Convention." Very fortunately for the county, its first commissioner of education, R. H. Reid of Reidville, was a gentleman and a scholar and an experienced educator. The constructive part he played in the discharge of his duties was of a quality to command honor to his memory.
In undertaking the office of the Commissioner of Education, Reid entered on a delicate task. His attitude to it and aptitude for it were soon displayed. The first County Teachers' Convention in South Carolina was organized by him at Nazareth Church, August 5, 1870. At the second County Teachers' Convention, held in New Prospect, August 29, 1871, Reid made a carefully organized address which in very sane and practical language explained the law and machinery of the new system. He analyzed the obstacles to its successful initia-
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tion, and thought no one should be surprised that seven or eight dis- tricts had refused to vote the supplementary tax required for its local operation. The obstacles he pointed out were: first, the novelty of the scheme in this section ; second, the prejudice growing out of its Yankee origin; third, the impossibility of finding for the Negroes teachers of their race capable of securing even a third grade certificate ; fourth, the prejudice against white teachers for Negroes; fifth, the general contempt for women teachers. This last attitude he treated with gentle derision. In regard to the fourth, he felt that Christians should welcome the opportunity to educate the Negro.
Musical "Singing Billy" Walker, A. S. H .- Author of Southern Interests Harmony-exercised a marked influence on the cultural life of Spartanburg-direct and indirect. He was especially noted for the excellence of his private library, and his familiarity with lit- erature. "Singing Billy" bargained with Northern publishers to give him in exchange for copies of his songbooks, an assortment of books with which he stocked the book store he maintained for a time in Spartanburg. He died in 1875, but even before his death the music teachers of the female colleges and girls' schools had become leaders in the musical activity which was always characteristic of Spartan- burg society.
Authorship Mrs. E. L. Herndon produced, in May 1873, an original tragi-comedy play entitled Bluebeard, which had three performances and was highly complimented in the paper. Original poems appeared in the Spartan by "Coralie Clyde of Enoree Vale" and "Harry Hope- ful of the Brick House" and other amateur writers. B. F. Perry, during the seventies, contributed a series of Revolutionary Incidents, the materials for which he had secured chiefly by interviewing old citizens on his rounds as a lawyer. One feature of the Spartan and the Herald during the seventies was the appearance in them of several romances-written, of course, under pen-names-by some of the county's "gifted ladies." While not of intrinsic literary value, one or two of these have interest because they describe contemporary scenes and customs. One story, The Fortunes of Magdalene and Miriam Walton, began in the Spartan, January 21, 1874, and con- tinued through nineteen chapters, closing in the issue of April 26, in a thoroughly conventional manner. Its author, "Lila Moore," had her characters attend school at "Good Spring," go to Greenville for "race week," attend a "race ball," and stay at "the hotel." An editorial com-
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ment said that this story was "a first effort" and was "written by one of the most gifted ladies in our town," and that the papers containing it had been in demand.
Certainly, in art, music, letters, social intercourse, the people of Spartanburg County found solace and enrichment of life during the decade after the war closed. Their social and spiritual growth kept even pace with their phenomenal economic and industrial expansion.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Plows and Progress
Changed Conditions for Farmers
During the years following Reconstruction,
three things profoundly influenced the lives and activities of Spartanburg farmers-the railroads, the introduction of commercial fertilizers, and those organizations which stimulated in farmers a class consciousness. The emancipation of their slaves was of less moment to them than were those three developments, for in Spartanburg County white labor had always been usual on the farms. The Negroes in 1860 constituted only 34 per cent of the total population, and there were few if any farms in the county which had at any time depended exclusively on slave labor.
Effects of Com- The use of commercial fertilizers in Spartan- mercial Fertilizers burg began about 1874. Different men have claimed the honor of introducing their use. The educational pro- gram of the Grange was influential in this as in many phases of farm experimentation. When commercial fertilizers made it pos- sible for Up-Country farmers to produce cotton in competition with the old cotton-producing counties, a revolution in farming methods set in. The farmers began to buy hay, bacon, even occasionally corn, shipped over the railroads from points where it could be procured at lower prices than prevailed at home. These farmers concentrated on cotton-a "money crop." Cotton truly became King, when land was rented for so many bales of cotton, and a man's wealth was estimated by the number of bales he produced.
New methods of farm finance grew out of this changed view- point. The merchants "carried" the farmers-that is, they extended credit for the year's supplies, depending for their pay on the sale of the cotton crop. In Spartanburg County, many farmers had already pledged from one-third to three-fourths of their cotton be- fore it was even planted. Too often the merchants seemed to take advantage of the farmers' necessity, forcing them to take all the risk of bad weather conditions and short crops. The result was class antagonism.
Hammond's Handbook Compared with Mills' Statistics Robert Mills, in 1825, in his Statistics, pro- vided the first detailed account of Spartan- burg on record. In 1880 a similar survey was made by Harry Hammond, a special agent of the United
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States Department of Agriculture. This report, with supplementary details, was the basis of the 1883 Report of the South Carolina De- partment of Agriculture, which is familiarly referred to as "Ham- mond's Handbook." Hammond's report gave the area of the county as 950 square miles, the number of acres under cultivation as 148,741. Spartanburg ranked seventh among the thirty-three counties in acreage and twelfth in production of cotton, third in corn and wheat ; and it produced respectable quantities of oats and sweet potatoes. Some experimentation in rice culture was recorded-five acres with a production of 3,356 pounds. In 1880 less than ten per cent of the farm lands were planted in cotton. At this time Spartanburg was fourth in total population, second in white population, second in wealth, and first in the total value of country real estate among all the counties.
Spartanburg Farming in 1880 Hammond described in detail farming conditions and methods in the county in 1880, naming S. C. Means as his informant from this county. The average size of farms ranged from two hundred to five hundred acres, and three- fourths of the farmers used "mixed husbandry," only a minority buying shipped supplies of bacon, corn, and hay. One-horse plowing was usual, two-horse plows being used occasionally. Fallow lands were left uncultivated for eight or ten years, and then were often replanted to advantage. No sub-soiling was practiced, nor any systematic rotation of crops. "The washing of hill-sides does not amount to a serious evil, and it is reported as easily prevented and effectually checked by hill-side ditching when necessary," ran one sentence in this report.
Two-thirds of the field labor was performed by whites: "Even where the colored population largely preponderates a considerable amount of it is done by whites, not infrequently a much larger pro- portion than one would infer from the ratio between the races," the report ran. The prevailing wages of field labor was $8 by the month, $100 by the year; and in all cases the laborer was furnished with shelter, rations, and firewood, and almost invariably with a garden, and the privilege of raising poultry and some stock-a cow or a hog. Great care and consideration were shown labor. Share- croppers got one-third to one-half, or more if they owned the tools they used. It was easy to rent land, but not much of it was for sale. The general valuation was $10 per acre.
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A good deal of commercial fertilizer was used, and stable manure was always used; but the basic fertilizer in 1880 was cottonseed, which had a market value of ten to fifteen cents a bushel, and was broadcast "green" on the fields for wheat and other small grain, and plowed under. For corn it was "killed" with heat and applied in each hill. It was composted with stable manure and acid phosphate- with sometimes litter and lime added-for cottonfields. Some cot- tonseed was fed to the stock. The best was saved for planting. In the nineties oil mills were to provide a market for cottonseed ; but in 1880 Charleston had the only such mill in the State. Spartanburg in 1880 used more commercial fertilizer than any other Up-Country county, averaging $3.33 outlay per acre for it. Abbeville, with an average of 92 cents, used least, of the upper counties. The chief ad- vantage of commercial fertilizer was that its use hastened maturity of cotton-an important consideration in the Piedmont climate, since cotton requires a long growing season. Green manuring-pea vines plowed under-was being experimented with.
Farm Financing
Hammond's comments on the methods of farm financ- ing show the existence of a dangerous situation :
Purchasing supplies on a credit prevails to a considerable ex- tent, especially among the small farmers. The exact rate at which these advances are made cannot be given, as it is not charged as interest, but is included in an increased price asked for supplies purchased on a credit. It varies from 20 to 100 per cent above the market value of the goods, according to the amount of competition among the storekeepers, who here, as elsewhere in the state, are by far the most prosperous class of the community, in proportion to the skill and capital employed.
The better class of farmers do not approve of this credit system. It furnishes facilities to small farmers, encouraging them to undertake operations they cannot make remunerative to themselves ; it reduces the number of laborers, and precludes high culture. The rental of land is thus increased, and land which could not be sold for $10 may be rented for $5 .. .
The records of the courts show that the number of liens on the growing crops is greatly on the increase, the rate of increase being 23 per cent per annum for the last two years.
They are mostly taken from the smaller farmers, usually renters, for advances made by the landlord, or more fre- quently by the store-keeper.
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Rise of the Town Merchant Class This system of farm financing was the basis on which a new class rose to leadership in South Carolina -the town merchants, who often made small fortunes out of their profits, and who often in- vested their gains in agricultural lands, or came by foreclosure into possession of lands which they rented to tenants or share-croppers. Often one-time owners became embittered tenants. The farmer was too often out of money, and forced to live on credit most of the year, while towns-people drew salaries and wages, and usually had money in their pockets, even though they might have none in the banks and quite probably owned no land or real estate. The farm- er's family, limited to use of home-made products, resented the ap- parent luxury of the non-property-owning town family. The town family was prone to view with condescension a class deprived of comforts and pleasures which had become to it essentials. This feeling did not apply to the prosperous farmer-who in Spartanburg County was also usually a stockholder in cotton mills and railroads, and a power in county politics.
Class Spartanburg has had from its very beginning a truly Feeling democratic spirit, and the history of its influential fam- ilies is a history of men and women who themselves labored with their hands as readily as they directed the labor of others-whether in stores, mills, and offices, or in homes and on farms. However, out of the conditions described, class feeling did rise among the farmers, and by 1885 their growing discontent with their lot became a matter of general concern, as is indicated by a short editorial in the Carolina Spartan entitled, "Does Farming Pay?" Of course it pays, was Petty's thesis: "If farm operations should stop for one year, banks, factories, stores and professions would all go under. The question is not whether it pays or not, but how to get larger re- turns for labor. ... Farming does pay even here on the old red hills of Spartanburg. It keeps alive more than 40,000 people, and builds fine houses, and pays interest on railroad debts, and keeps up the state government, and is the grand motive power which keeps all the other wheels in motion."
Farming Outlook The Charleston News and Courier, during 1885, in 1885 published a series of "full reports as to the outlook of the farmers in 1885," excerpts from which the Spartan
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published, with editorial comment, January 28, 1885. One article entitled "Farmers to the Front," ran, in part, as follows :
In Spartanburg there are special marks of growth and im- provement. The white farmers live better than formerly, dress better, and have more comfortable houses. This is a good sign. . . The people are no longer satisfied with bare existence -- bare eating and drinking . .. our farmers are learning to be more economical. Those that are accumulating a little, year by year, go in debt much more cautiously than they did a few years ago. They are also beginning to learn the value of a dollar, and many of them are now laying in their supplies for the year, while bacon, flour, and sugar are cheap. The poor unfortunate tenants, that live from hand to mouth, and to whom good and bad crop years are about the same, are in their usual condition. They have nothing, but they pull through in some way. Our county has some of this class, and they will always be with us, though the years should be as plentiful as the seven fruitful years of Egyptian history.
The hireling class is very limited. There are two reasons for this: In the first place, the negro thinks it looks a little like slavery to hire out to a man for a year. It makes him feel as though he belonged to his employer. He likes to have Saturday evening to himself, and then his church and societies make de- mands on him, and he does not feel as if he is free unless he can go and come when he pleases. The white boys generally work with their parents until they are able to set up for them- selves ; consequently there is little hiring amongst them. The other cause is that farmers, as a general thing, do not have ready money to pay hired hands at the end of each month, and it is impossible for them to work unless they are paid. A better class of employers, with ready money and provisions at cash prices and prompt settlement at the end of each month, would soon evolve a set of first-class hirelings. This would lead to a better system of farming, where all the operations would be under one head, and where the labor could be concentrated and rendered doubly effective.
Our people are using better implements than they did in former days. They are buying harrows, cultivators, seed planters, reapers, mowers, and improved ploughs. The change from the old to the new is slow, but it is taking place all over the county. Our people are building better houses and buying better furni- ture. There are signs of comfort, and even of refinement, in many of the humble homes of our people. Of course there are many houses with unadorned walls, scanty furniture and bare rooms, but the spirit of progress is abroad in our county, and the paint brush is making its way, and flowers find a place in the
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front yard and papers are found on the centre table. The culti- vation of small grain and orchard fruits is on the increase.
There is also a social uplifting among our people. Many of the ladies, wives, and daughters of our farmers, dress with taste and style, and they are striving to be somebody. General intelligence is also increasing, and many of the boys and girls in our country homes are as well informed as those who live in the cities and towns, and the marks of good breeding are as apparent in the highways and hedges as on the street corners. . .. Many of them are dignifying their occupation and making farming as honorable as the trades and professions. .
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