USA > South Carolina > History of South Carolina > Part 25
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In September, 1901, he entered the preparatory department of Clemson college, but by the close of the session he had exhausted his funds. He then began teaching, and for more than a year taught in the common schools of South Carolina and Georgia. He returned to Clemson College in the Fall of 1003 and during the four years that followed he studied and worked, paying his own expenses, until he was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Science with the class of 1907. After his graduation he held a posi- tion with the U. S. Department of Agriculture for about one year, resigning in the Summer of 1908. While well equipped by practice and training for agricultural work, he had an ambition to be a lawyer and in September, 1908, he entered the law school of the University of South Carolina, receiving his I.L.B. degree from that institution with the class of 1010. Although handicapped in his work by lack of funds
and lack of preparation for college work when he entered, he was nevertheless proficient in his studies and distinguished in college circles, He took a very active part in athletics and the literary societies. He won his college emblem in foot-ball at Clemson and at the University, playing a line position on the strongest elevens in the history of these institutions. At Clemson he was a member of the literary staff of the college monthly publication, was literary critic, vice president and president of his society, won the debater's medal and the trustee medal in the annual inter-society contest. At the university he was literary critic, vice president and junior speaker of his society, won the contest representing the uni- versity in the Southern Inter-Collegiate Oratorical Association, and was honor committeeman of his class.
Immediately after the completion of his law course Mr. Carter entered upon the practice of his profes- sion at Bamberg, forming a copartnership with his brother, J. F. Carter, under the firm name of Carter & Carter, which firm is now Carter, Carter & Kearse, Mr. J. C. Kearse having been associated dur- ing the past year. This firm now handles an exten- sive general law practice, covering the lower portion of this state; and in the decade just past Mr. Carter has established his name and reputation among the most successful members of the bar. Nor are his activities confined to his law practice alone, but he is interested in a number of business enterprises, and owns and operates a fine four-horse farm near Bamberg.
After getting his professional career well under way, Mr. Carter began to take an active part in politics. He has served two terms as a representa- tive from his county in the State Legislature, from 1915 to 1918 inclusive. As evidence of the esteem in which he is held by the citizens of his county it may be mentioned that in his first campaign, as one of six candidates, he received 1100 votes out of an approximate total of 1300, and was re-elected for a second term by equally as handsome vote. As a member of the House he served on some of the most important committees and was a very active and ardent supporter of the most important pro- gressive measures that came before that body during his term of service. At home he has ever shown himself an ardent and studious advocate of all sub- jects tending toward the uplift and general welfare of his town, county and state. He has a record of six years' service in the National Guard with the Bam- berg organization, serving as sergeant for one year and as 'first lieutenant for five years. During the World war he was very active in all the campaigns for auxiliary purposes and served as a member of the Legal Advisory Board. He is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, is a member of the Baptist Church, president of his Sunday School Rebecca Class, and is a consistent church worker.
On November 23, 1915, Mr. Carter was married to Miss Sarah Elizabeth Roberts, a native of Bam- herg County and daughter of Dr. J. H. and Mrs. Lottie Barber Roberts. Her ancestors were English and were identified with the Revolutionary history of South Carolina. Mr. and Mrs. Carter have two children, Sarah Elizabeth and Berte Dean.
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مكاتم مست هد خس
سجق الاح صيـ
Way Jacobs
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS lived a few months beyond the age of seventy-five, and his entire life was a singular consecration to work and service in behalf of his fellowmen.
He was born at Yorkville, South Carolina, March 15, 1842, son of Ferdinand and Mary Elizabeth (Redbrook) Jacobs. His great-grandfather, Press- ley Jacobs, was a native Virginian and was a mem- ber of the same Masonic lodge with George Wash- ington. The grandfather, Thomas Jacobs, was also a Virginian. Rev. Ferdinand Jacobs was a minister of the Southern Presbyterian Church, at one time was pastor of the church at Yorkville and was also head of the Yorkville Female College, which he founded more than three quarters of a century ago.
During the boyhood of William Plumer Jacobs his father removed to Charleston and established a school for young ladies at the corner of King and Vanderhorst Street. William Plumer Jacobs was graduated from the Charleston College in 1861, re- ceiving the Bachelor of Arts degree. He had already made the choice of his life work, and entering the Columbia Theological Seminary at the state capital he graduated in 1864 and was licensed as a Pres- byterian minister. ! In the same year he was ap- pointed to his first duties as pastor of a group of three country churches in Laurens County. The most promising of the three churches was in the little hamlet of Clinton, whose population was only about 250 souls. He was the only pastor in the town, and was the first pastor of that church.
At the close of the war and the beginning of reconstruction period Clinton was by no means an attractive home for a man of the cultured tastes possessed hy the late Doctor Jacobs. The village was full of bar rooms and gambling houses, and the entire commercial and civic morale of the town was declining under the devastating influence of the reconstruction period. Its single railroad was forced to stop operation for several years. With a great singleness of purpose and courage Doctor Jacohs went about doing his work, and in a few years made the critical choice of his career. He declined a flat- tering call to a much stronger church, and deter- mined to identify himself permanently with the people of Clinton. This decision suggests that many men in obeying the injunction not to put their light under a bushel have set a very small candle on a high hill, whereas Doctor Jacobs, choos- ing to let his light shine from a little village, in tinie made his radiance a lighthouse of Christian in- fluence and power extending well over the state and the South, For nearly half a century he was pastor of the little church, and in that time had the pleasure of seeing it prosper and grow to be- come one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the state and the mother of many churches.
One of the first objectives of his moral ernsade was the bar rooms, and after a severe struggle he got the town voted dry. This operation had to be repeated several times until eventually a petition from the townspeople caused the Legislature to enact a provision declaring the community dry for 100 years. Since that date no whisky has been sold legally in Clinton, and those of an older gen- eration disposed to drunkenness have gradually dis- appeared, leaving the town a model of sobriety.
While never neglecting an opportunity to influence men's hearts and character, Doctor Jacobs was equally active in constructive measures for the phys- ical well being of his community. He was a leader in securing the reconstruction of the old Laurens railroad and later of the Seaboard Air Line through Clinton. Perhaps the best monument to his enter- prise was founding the Thornwell Orphanage, which became the largest Presbyterian orphanage
in America. This orphanage is a model of enlightened charity and from the beginning has been operated under the theory of giving a real home as well as a school to orphan children and graduating its chil- dren to take useful places in the world as capable Christian men and women.]
Doctor Jacobs is also remembered as the founder of the Presbyterian College of South Carolina, long one of the leading denominational institutions of the state. Some years ago, after his official connection with the college had been severed, he was honored with the degree Doctor of Laws by the Presbyterian College. He received the degree Doctor of Divinity from Erskine College.
While his working days were filled with tasks he found time to remain a scholar to the end of his days. He developed a large private library and was a helpful influence in the establishment of various public libraries, at least three institutions of that nature being credited to his influence.
His career also served to call attention to the comparatively brief history of the science or art of shorthand. While various methods of shorthand writing have been in use for several centuries, the modern system is usually ascribed as the invention of an Englishman named Pittman. Doctor Jacobs was an early student of the Pittman method and became a regular correspondent of Mr. Pittman, who once complimented his American pupil as being the best shorthand writer in this country. In his earlier years Doctor Jacobs was a reporter for a number of publications. His historie work in that line was reporting the Secession Convention when South Carolina left the Union.
For many years he was historian for the Synod of South Carolina, was clerk of Enoree Presbytery, but the work which brought him the love and venera- tion of a wide circle was what he did in connection with the Thornwell Orphanage. Long before he died this was regarded as a model charity, and hun- dreds made pilgrimages to Clinton in order to study his methods of training and educating orphan chil- dren. While he loved all things human, his love of children was his dominant characteristic. The struggle he made to protect orphan children from the cold and brutal handling of the old style orphan asylum can well be selected as his very greatest achievement. On his tomb is engraved the words : "He loved God and little children," and few men have so well deserved that happy epitaph. A man of rugged convictions as to duty, fearless in carrying out his plans, he naturally made many enemies and in earlier years met with much opposition to his broad views of charity, but at the end of his life he was surrounded only with the deepest love and veneration. He was unusually unselfish, his life heing rich in good works, and for himself he gave little thought. He might have accumulated a for-
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tune through his remarkable business ability, but in the true spirit of his Master he went through life without accumulating material wealth and left noth- ing beyond the estate which his wife brought him.
Death came only at the very end of a busy career. It followed an extremely busy week of hard work which completed a book on the Immortality of the Soul, finished up his annual report of the Thornwell Orphanage and accomplished a great deal of other work. The day before his death he preached two very vigorous and intensely interesting sermons.
In his last years he was affected with deafness and the loss of his eyesight, but even with those handicaps he remained steadfast in his duties and responsibilities. While his death was widely mourned, it was especially regretted by hundreds of orphan children whose success in life was due to his kindly care. On another score the people of the Town of Clinton expressed their gratitude to him for the prosperity and improvement which his public spirited efforts and high ideals brought to that community.
Only a few months after his ordination as a min- ister and his arrival in his first pastorate in Laurens County he married Mary Jane Dillard, of Coldwater, Laurens County. They were married April 20, 1865. Their children consisted of one daughter, Florence Lee, and four sons, James Ferdinand, William States, John Dillard and Thornwell Jacobs.
The motto of his life selected in early manhood and often repeated in his diary, which he kept from the age of sixteen to the day of his death, was "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not." This motto is the key to his remarkably unsel- fish and wonderfully useful career.
JAMES FERDINAND JACOBS. While Clinton is one of the smaller cities of the South, it is the original home and headquarters of the largest complete ad- vertising establishment, specializing in service to the religious press of the entire country. The founder and active head of this business is James Ferdinand Jacobs, whose entire career has been spent at Clinton. He is a son of the late Dr. William P. Jacobs, whose inspiring life story is told on other pages.
Mr. Jacobs was born October 6, 1868. When he was seven years of age the Thornwell Orphanage, founded by his father, was opened, and he received his primary education in the orphanage schools along with the other children being trained there. He completed his classical education in the Presbyterian College of South Carolina, another institution founded by his father. He received his A. B. degree in 1888, and studied theology in the Princeton The- ological Seminary and Columbia Theological Semi- nary, completing his three years' course in the spring of 1891.
In that year he married Miss Mary Elliott Duckett, of Clinton, Their three sons are William Plumer, James Ferdinand and Thomas Dillard Jacobs. On completing his theological studies Mr. Jacobs was elected as professor of Biblical Literature and Philosophy in the Presbyterian College of South Carolina, and also financial agent of that institu- tion. Those duties made up his work for seven years.
The great business of which he is now the head is the result of his long experience in religious publi- cation work. On leaving his chair in the Presbyte- rian College he leased the Southern Presbyterian, the organ of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the southeast. He was its editor and publisher seven years, and three years after taking charge he bought the paper and after increasing its circulation 300% finally sold the publication to Dr. Thomas B. Con- verse of Louisville, who moved it to Atlanta, In the meantime Mr. Jacobs developed what was known at first as the South Carolina Religious Press Adver- tising Syndicate, later the Religious Press Advertis- ing Syndicate, and still later Jacobs & Company, the present title of the business. With an increasing clientele as advertising managers for standard religi- ous weeklies of white denomination in the South and lower Middle West, this became the largest special advertising agency in America, and the only im- portant religious press advertising agency. The ad- vertising management of about three-fourths of the standard religious weeklies of white denominations in the above area are vested in the unexcelled facili- ties and resources of Jacobs & Company.
The members of the firm besides Mr. Jacobs include his sister-in-law, Miss C. E. Duckett, and his three sons above named. The business has a much larger scope than the ordinary advertising agency. It has developed the technical facilities for service, including departments of commercial art, photo-engraving, electrotyping, nickeltyping and fine printing, including color printing. These graphic arts departments represent the only such combina- tion with an advertising business to be found any- where in the United States.
It is the distinction of the business that it main- tains offices in New York, Chicago and St. Louis as well as in many of the leading southern cities. All the general clerical as well as the manufacturing and graphic arts work is done in the home office at Clinton. The firm occupies its own fireproof office building with 30,000 square feet of floor space. Mr. Jacobs' firm initiated the idea of measuring adver- tising prices in ratio to circulation, also measuring quality of circulation by the ratio of the net cir- culation income of a publication to its theoretical circulation income. The first principle is now firmly established in American advertising methods.
The system and service furnished by this firm have been the means of saving many religious publications from extinction and have given others the needed resources for increased development. The company has also maintained the strictest ideals for the religi- ous press, and those in close touch with the finan- cial conditions affecting the religious press regard Jacobs and Company as one of the chief bulwarks of these institutions.
Mr. Jacobs has considered it a matter of duty, though it is also a manifestation of his personal character, to follow in the footsteps of his father in the latter's well known publie spirited attitude toward his home community and state. Trained as a minis- ter, he has always given much of his time to that vocation, and has filled many pulpits, especially in the country churches around Clinton. For all the demands made upon his time and abilities by his business his interest in church and church work is unimpaired.
Polk Moaunque
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
ROBERT MOORMAN has been in active practice as a lawyer about fifteen years and in that time has come to rank among the leaders of the Columbia bar.
Mr. Moorman is of English, Welsh and Scotch- Irish ancestry, and is numbered among the native sons of the Palmctto State. He was born in New- berry, South Carolina, November 14, 1873, a son of Thomas S. and Marie W. ( Wardlaw) Moorman. He attended the public school of his native place, also the graded schools of Columbia, following this earlier educational training by becoming a student in South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, graduating with the degree of LL. B., in 1893, since which time he has been an active figure in both professional and business circles and has well merited the success and honors which have come to him.
Mr. Moorman has not limited his efforts to the practice of law alone, but has been free to render service where his abilities could be made effective and has become an active and prominent figure in various fields of activity. For six years, ending De- cember 31, 1906, he served as a magistrate of the City of Columbia, loyally supporting every measure tending towards the advancement and betterment of the community. He is a director in no less than fourteen business corporations, being president of, or attorney for, most of them; a vestryman in Trinity Episcopal Church, of Columbia; president of one of the largest democratic clubs in the state; president of the Alumni Athletic Association of the University of South Carolina; formerly president of the Columbia Cotillion Club, a noted social organiza- tion of the city, and is now serving as a member of the Board of Governors of the Morris Plan Banks throughout the United States, and a member of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, for South Carolina. During the entire period of the World war, he served as chairman of the local Board of Exemptions.
On December 15, 1897, Mr. Moorman married Vir- ginia Celeste Talley, of Columbia, and their only child is Robert Moorman, Jr.
It is not the province of the biographer to attempt to influence opinion, or to draw final conclusion ; his duties end with the recording of fact, leaving to others to discern the thought and the lesson con- veyed. However, from this brief review of human endeavor can be drawn the deduction that the life portrayed has been a busy one, measuring well up to the standard set by the philosopher who said, " 'Tis not the good that comes to us, but the good that comes to others through us, that constitutes the true measure of human worth."
JOHN FLETCHER SHIRLEY, M. D. During an ac- tive professional career at Honea Path covering more than thirty-five years Doctor Shirley has also supplied enterprise, enthusiasm and capital to some of the city's leading business institu- tions. He possesses the public spirit for which this family is notable, and probably no other family group has done more for the upbuilding and progress of Honea Path than the Shirleys.
Doctor Shirley was born at Honea Path August 16, 1861, and is a son of John Jasper and Frances
(Mattison) Shirley. The Shirley family was founded in South Carolina from Virginia by John and Elizabeth (Fields) Shirley, early settlers in Abbeville County. Their son Obadiah Shirley was born im Abbeville County, and married Jane Armstrong. Hc settled on a farm hear Honca Path and reared five sons and three daugh- ters. Four of these sons, including the father of Doctor Shirley, were soldiers in the Confederate army. Doctor Shirley is a brother of the late R. M. Shirley, the prominent banker of Honea Path. In connection with a brief sketch of his career on other pages will be found some record of John Jasper Shirley, who was one of the foun- ders and the upbuilders of the Town of Honea Path.
Doctor Shirley received a high school training in his native town and in 1883 graduated in medi- cine from the University of Maryland at Balti- more. He at once returned home and took up the practice which has continued with unvarying success and faithfulness to the highest ethics of his profession. He did post-graduate work in the New York Post-Graduate Medical School in 1890. He is a member of the County and State Medical societies, is a democrat in politics, though without official record, and is a Master Mason and Knight of Pythias and a deacon in the Baptist Church.
Few of the larger business enterprises of Honea Path have not received some active sup- port from Doctor Shirley. He is interested in both banks and the Chiquola Cotton Mill. He is vice president of the Cotton Mill Organization. He also owns a large amount of good farm land, and has found both profit and recreation in su- perintending his country place. His home at Honea Path is one of the handsomest in Ander- son County.
In 1890 Doctor Shirley married Miss Emma Clinkscales, daughter of Fleetwood Clinkscales, an old and prominent resident of Anderson County. Doctor and Mrs. Shirley have three children: Harold Clinkscales Shirley; Vera, a graduate of Converse College and wife of Frank Thompson, of Dillon, South Carolina; and Lydia, a student in Converse College.
Harold Clinkscales Shirley was graduated from The Citadel at Charleston with the Bachelor of Science degree in 1913, took the Master of Arts degree from the University of South Carolina in 1914, and in 1918 was graduated in medicine from Johns Hopkins University. He also spent a year as interne in the hospital at Baltimore, and is now establishing a practice and reputation at Macon, Georgia.
WILLIAM AUGUSTUS SHIRLEY. In the Town of Honea Path, where his father was one of the chief constructive factors in its early building and progress, William Augustus Shirley has a record of more than thirty-five years of business service, as a furniture merchant and undertaker and as one of the community's best esteemed citizens.
He was born at Honea Path October 29, 1856, son of John Jasper and Frances (Mattison)
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Shirley, grandson of Obediah and Jane (Arm- strong) Shirley and great-grandson of John and Elizabeth (Fields) Shirley, natives of Virginia, who came to South Carolina and settled in Abbe- ville County. Obediah Shirley was a native of Abbeville County and settled on a farm near Honea Path, where he lived to the age of seven- ty-five.
William Augustus Shirley grew up in his native town, acquired a common school education, and at the age of eighteen became clerk in a mercan- tile establishment. He was a faithful worker for others several years, and then twenty-five years ago started in the furniture and under- taking business, and through that has rendered much appreciated service and has achieved a modest but satisfying success for himself. He has always been public spirited, is a man of unassuming nature, and has never sought the honors of politics. He is a member of the Meth- odist Church. Mr. Shirley married Miss Alice R. Lever, of Columbia, South Carolina. They became the parents of eight children of whom five daugliters and two sons are living.
HON. THOMAS LESTWICH CLINKSCALES, well known at Columbia as the progressive represen- tative from Anderson County, has been a promi- nent farmer, land owner and citizen of that county for many years. He was born in Martin Township of Anderson County May 3, 1855. son of Levi Newton and Elizabeth (Robinson) Clink- scales. His father was born in Martin Township January 7, 1831, and is still living at the advanced age of eighty-eight. The grandparents were Levi and Polly (Rice) Clinkscales. the former a native of Abbeville County, where his father was a pio- neer. Elizabeth Robinson, mother of Hon. Thomas L. Clinkscales, was born in Martin Township January 14, 1836, daughter of John Jasper and Assenctta (Grubbs) Robinson. She died more than thirty years ago. Thomas L Clinkscales was one of a family of six sons and six daughters that reached mature years. Their father served during the war between the states as a member of Orr's Rifles, and was in the army from 1862 until the close of hostilities.
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