USA > South Carolina > History of South Carolina > Part 36
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Jason Barman
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became assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Clemson College in the fall of 1902, and later was made associate professor and in 1910 made professor of mechanical engineering and director of the engineering department. In the absence of the president he has also performed the duties of that office.
Mr. Earle is a full member of the American Soci- ety of Mechanical Engineers and of the National Association for the Promotion of Engineering Edu- cation. He is a member of the Baptist Church.
December 22, 1908, he married Miss Susan Hall Sloan. Her father was the late P. H. E. Sloan, who was secretary of Clemson College from its founding until just before his death in 1914.
JAMES N. PEARMAN, clerk of court for Ander- son County, is well known among the political lead- ers of the state and for a number of years was a successful farmer in Anderson County.
He was born in that county December 9, 1872. a son of Weldon C. and Sallie (Ricketts) Pearman. His grandfather was Nathaniel Pearman, of an old South Carolina family originally from Virginia and of English lineage. Nathaniel Pearman died before the war between the states. The maternal grand- father, Peter Ricketts, who died while in the sery- ice of the Confederate army, was born in Holland, was brought to the United States at the age of ten years and married a member of the Banister fam- ily, one of the oldest names in South Carolina. Weldon C. Pearman was born in Anderson County and his wife in Abbeville County. They were the parents of five children, James N. being the only son.
He and his sisters grew up on a farm in Ander- son County. His father died at the age of thirty -. eight, but his mother is still living and makes her home with her son in Anderson. Mr. Pearman at- tended the private school of Prof. W. J. Ligon at Anderson, hut at the age of sixteen circumstances compelled him to abandon his education and earn his living and contribute to the support of others. He became a farmer, and for a number of years was a hard-working agriculturist and still owns farming interests.
From 1899 to 1908 Mr. Pearman was desk clerk in the Lower House of the State Legislature. Later he was called to the office of trust and responsi- bility he now holds, that of clerk of court for Anderson County. He is a stanch democrat, is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias, and a Baptist in religion.
Mr. Pearman married Miss Savannah Ashley in 1899. Her father was the late Hon. Joshua Ash- ley, whose career as a man of affairs and figure in state politics has been reviewed elsewhere. Mr. and Mrs. Pearman are the parents of seven chil- dren.
CHARLES STARK SULLIVAN. One of the notable group of business men, and long associated with his brothers in the preeminent business known as .the Sullivan Hardware Company of Anderson, Charles Stark Sullivan was not only a successful business man but cheerfully accepted and carried forward
many responsibilities connected with church, educa- tion and civic affairs.
He was born in Anderson County May 26, 1868, son of Captain Nimrod K. and Emily K. ( Mattison ) Sullivan. His father was a captain in the Con- federate army. In the Sullivan family were four daughters and seven sons. One of the sons died in infancy and O. S. Sullivan at the age of twenty-one. The five sons who reached maturity were J. M., H. K., C. S., N. B. and William W. Sullivan. All at one time or another were factors in the growth and development of the present Sullivan Hardware Company. The business was established thirty-five years ago by J. M. and H. K. Sullivan.
Charles S. Sullivan grew up at Anderson and acquired a good education in the private school of Professor W. J. Ligon. In carly manhood he moved to Elberton, Georgia, where for two years he was manager of a branch house of the Sullivan Hard- ware Company. On returning to Anderson he took an active part in the affairs of the business, and succeeded his brother H. K. Sullivan as president of the company. All his business associates felt complete confidence in his ability and in the probity of his character. He was a friend of church and education, for many years an active member of the First Baptist Church of Anderson, and at the time of his death had been a deacon of the church for five years. Just before his death he was elected president of the adult class in the Sunday school.
He was a trustee of Anderson College. While on business at Columbia in connection with the col- lege he died suddenly of heart failure October 12, 1015. His death was the greater loss because he was at the time a comparatively young man, only forty-seven. He was a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner. In 1890 he married Miss Luta Bewley, a daughter of William Carter and Catherine Douglas (Hale) Bewley. Her parents were born, reared and married in East Tennessee and for a number of years lived at Anderson, where her father was a well known merchant. Mrs. Sullivan and children reside in a fine home on South Main Street in An- derson. Her five children are named Charles Stark, Catherine, Emily, Dorothy and Luta Barbara.
JOHN ELLINGTON WHITE, D. D., who has been pastor of the First Baptist Church of Anderson and president of Anderson College since 1916, is a Southerner by birth and training, and his work as a religious leader and educator has made him an honored figure in the Southern states.
Dr. White was born at Clayton, near the City of Raleigh, North Carolina. December 19, 1868, son of - James McDaniel and Martha ( Ellington) White. His father was also a Baptist minister, and his mother was a daughter of Rev. John Ellington, a Baptist clergyman. Rev. James McDaniel White was also an officer in Hampton's Legion and the Confederate army.
John Ellington White was educated in the schools of North Carolina and in 1890 graduated with lonors and the degree of Bachelor of Arts from Wake Forest College in North Carolina. Up to that time he had contemplated the profession of law. While teaching in Mars Hill College in Western No:il Carolina in 1891 he realized a definite calling
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to the ministry. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1892 and served as pastor of the church at Eden- ton, North Carolina, from 1893 to 1895. In 1905 Wake Forest College gave him the degree Doctor of Divinity. He was unanimously elected, and from 1896 to 1901 served as mission secretary of North Carolina for the State Baptist Convention. Under his leadership the mission work was more than doubled. In 1900 he was called to the pastorate of the Second Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia, and was engaged in the duties of that position from January 1, 1901, until 1916. During this period of hiteen years the Second Baptist Church of Atlanta becaine one of the very largest and most important corgregations of that denomination in the South. He resigned to become. pastor of the First Baptist Church at Anderson, this being the largest Baptist Church in South Carolina. In connection with his pastorate Doctor White is president of Anderson Woman's College. Under his direction this college has won a Southwide influence in Christian educa- tion.
Doctor White has been distinguished not only for fearless leadership but by a breadth of vision and clearness of thinking which make leadership worthy of the name. An eloquent preacher, he has been concerned primarily with inspiring the cultured audiences in his own churches with his own sense of responsibility for the education and enlighten- ment of the masses of people. He has long been identified with educational movements that have brought him to the remoter sections of the South, and is one of the recognized leaders of the South in the work of adjustment which seeks to improve and harmonize the relations between the white and black races.
While in Atlanta Doctor White served as head of the Law and Order Committee of the Atlanta Ministry Association, and was the first vice president of the Southern Sociological Congress. He has served as a trustee of Wake Forest College, of Meredith College of North Carolina, of Mercer University of Georgia, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Louisville, and in 1914-15- 16 was university preacher of the University of Chicago. He was president in 1909 of the Georgia Baptist Board of Education and served on the Boards of Control for the Georgia Baptist Orphans Home, the Home Missionary Board and the Georgia State Sanitarium and the Southern Baptist Con- vention. He is an independent democrat in politics and a member of the Kappa Alpha college fraternity.
Doctor White has found time in the midst of a busy career for the duties of authorship. His pub- lished works are "Silent Southerners," published in 1906; "My Old Confederates," published in 1908; "Prohibition, the New Task of Opportunity of the South," published in 1908; joint author of "The Man that Rum Made," published in 1912; and "Southern Highlanders," published in 1913.
October 12, 1892, Doctor White married Effie I. Guess, of Cary, North Carolina. They are the parents of two sons and one daughter.
REV. DAVID ETHAN FRIERSON, D. D., was born in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, February 14, 1818, and died in Anderson, South Carolina, August
29, 1896. He was a son of Daniel and Jane Martha ( McIntosh) Frierson. Ilis father was born in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, was a planter by occupation, a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church and a man of sterling piety and of great fumness and courage. He lived in this state until he was about fifty years of age, when he removed to Leon County, Florida, where he died a few years later. He sleeps on the banks of the Oklochnee. Daniel was a son of James and Margaret ( Frierson) Frierson, who were cousins, the former a son of James and the latter a daughter of John Frierson. Their fathers were brothers and sons of William Frierson, and they and their father were born in County Down, near Belfast, Ireland, whence they immigrated to America in 1730, along with other emigrants from Ireland, among them the Wither- spoons, Flemings and Jameses, all settlers in Will- iamsburg County.
William Frierson, the progenitor of the Frierson family in America, was of Scotch lineage, though born in Ireland. Besides John and James, William was the father of William, Thomas, Robert and Agnes, these last four having been born in South Carolina.
Daniel and Jane Martha (McIntosh) Frierson had the following children: James Henry, who was an eminent physician, died young and unmarried ; David Ethan, the subject of this sketch; William McIntosh, who was also a physician, removed to Leon County, Florida, with his father, where he married Mary Hale, and lived and died in Florida; Robert Manton was a planter in Florida, married Catherine Hale, and died a victim of the Civil war; Daniel Leland was a teacher and married Henrietta Bradford, of Florida, and died in that state; Edward Ogilvie became an eminent minister in the Presbyterian Church, was for years pastor at Norfolk, Virginia, later at Laurens Court House, South Carolina, where he died, married first Jeannette Cunningham of Marion County, after whose death he later mar- ried Lou Gordon of Williamsburg County; Sidney Burgess, who died young and unmarried; Martin Luther, who first practiced law at Decatur, Alabama, and then became a minister of the Presbyterian Church, was for years pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Florence, Alabama, and president of the Synodical College there, and his last pastorate was at Orange, Texas, where he died, was married to Margaret Gordon of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, sister. to the wife of Edward Ogilvie. Daniel had one daughter, Emmaline, who died in girlhood. All of his sons save James Henry and Sidney Burgess, who were then deceased, served in the Confederate army, Rev. David Ethan being a chaplain and Daniel Leland a captain.
Rev. David Ethan Frierson, the subject of this sketch, was reared in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, was given liberal education in the schools and academies of his youth, and graduated from South Carolina College in 1837, with honors, at the age of nineteen. He graduated in the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Columbia, and entered the ministry at the age of twenty-three years. His first ministry was as missionary to the Scotch settlers on the Little Pee Dee in South Caro- lina, and his first pastorate was that of the Presby-
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terian Church at Marion Court House, South Carolina, and later, about the year 1858, he accepted a call to the pastorate of Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Marion County (now embraced in the County of Florence). Here he served continuously, save while he was chaplain in the Confederate army in Tennessee, until some time in the year 1870, when he resigned his pastorate of Hopewell and preached at various places until January, 1871, when he became pastor of the Presbyterian Church at An- derson, South Carolina (now the First Church). This pastorate he retained for nearly twenty-five years, resigning therefrom about one year before his death.
On November 9, 1842, Rev. David Ethan Frierson was united in marriage with Rebecca Ellen Cros- land, of Bennettesville, South Carolina. She was the daughter of Daniel and Sarah ( Pouncey) Cros- land, of Bennettsville, South Carolina. She was through her mother was a direct lineal descendant of Colonel Kolb of the Revolutionary army. To her marriage with Rev. David Ethan Frierson there were born seven children, as follows: James Man- ton, who volunteered at the age of eighteen in the Confederate army and died a victim of disease contracted in the service at the age of twenty-one years, near the date of the close of that war, having never married; Sarah Jane, who never married, now living at Anderson, South Carolina, yet has lived a life of great usefulness and has nobly stood in the place of mother to her younger brothers and sisters. as well as the four orphaned sons of a deceased brother ; Ann Eliza, who married John W. Gordon, of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, who with his family removed to Decatur, Alabama, where he died, she, the widow, now living in Nashville, Tennes- see ; Martha Ellen, who married John W. Todd, of Anderson, and now living at Seneca, South Caro- lina ; David Elmore, Presbyterian minister, for some years pastor at St. Joseph, Missouri, pastor for many years at Shelbyville, Kentucky, now a resident of Winter Haven, Florida, married Sarah Sutphen, of Columbia, South Carolina; William Henry, a prac- ticing lawyer at Anderson, South Carolina, who was for six years county treasurer of Anderson County, for nine years United States Commissioner, and was the first recorder of the City of Anderson, married Nellie Bewley; Edward Cecil, deceased, who was a successful physician for many years at Anderson, South Carolina, married Mattie Evelyn Towers. Mrs. Rebecca Ellen (Crosland) Frierson, the mother of the seven children just named, was born at Bennettsville, South Carolina, January 15, 1823, and died at the age of thirty-six, during the early pastorate of her husband at Hopewell Church, on August 16, 1859.
For a second wife Rev. David Ethan Frierson imarried, April 24. 1861, Mrs. Adeline Allsobrook McIntyre, nee McCall, who died at Anderson, South Carolina, March 17, 1891. Unto this marriage were born eight children, two dying in early infancy. The other six grew to maturity and are all living, their names being Robert Ethan, merchant and farmer at Heardmont, Georgia, married Rebecca Crosland. daughter of William A. Crosland at Bennettsville; William Thomas, now of Chattanooga, Tennessee; James McCall, married and living at Cedar Springs, Vol. III-10
South Carolina, a teacher by profession ; Daniel Manton, professor of mathematics at the College at Arkansas at Batesville in that state, married Willie Joe Vance, of Clinton, South Carolina; Miss Neely Adeline, a trained nurse, volunteered in the Red Cross service and devoted two years to ministering to the sick and wounded American soldiers at Base llospital No. 18, France; Leland married in Missis- sippi and now living at Shawnee, Oklahoma. Mrs. Adeline Allsobrook Frierson was the mother of Richard H. McIntyre by her first marriage with Richard II. MeIntyre, Sr., and he was reared in the family with the children above named, married Ella McPherson and died about the year 1804.
Rev. David Ethan Frierson was acknowledged in his time to be a profound thinker and a man of scholarly attainments, as those of his sermons and public addresses which have found their way into print testify. He left no books to perpetuate him, and this may be accounted for by his native modesty and his zeal to serve his immediate generation. Some of his productions deserve more than a mere passing mention. His "Professor Drummond's Apology to Scientists," written as a criticism of Professor Drummond's widely read work, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," controverts that emi- nent author's attempt to range all religious thought and fact under the control of natural law. It ap- peared in pamphlet form about the year 1888 and was widely read and welcomed in orthodox circles, notably the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church, which adopted this defense of the old beliefs as a statement of the doctrine of the ' Presbyterian Church on the subject. His "Literary Merits of the Bible" was an address delivered before the literary societies of Davidson College and published by the societies at their request in 1858, and is the product of a master hand, abounding in literary and classic beauties-a piece of "cloth of gold." In recognition of his talents the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by the directorate of Erskine College in 1878. Dr. Frierson was in discourse a purist, and, although a profound classical scholar and master of ancient languages, his sermons were models of simple and vivid por- traiture of spiritual truth and the high moral, without attempt or pretense at the ornate.
It was his life, however, that has endeared him to his generation, and that entitles him to a place in the annals of his times. He was singularly free from all slavery to convention in its every exaction. His ministry was not more to his pastoral charge than to the needy within the reach of his help, to whom his was a special ministry. The prisoner be- hind bars, on whom the world had turned its back, the pauper at the county home with his fixed place to die, the sick, the afflicted everywhere-these were the subjects of his favorite ministry. It is recorded of him that he was "a friend of humanity, a preacher of righteousness and a servant of God." A life like his reflects the glint of gold that belongs to the nobler natures. About its close a halo hangs that lingers through the years that follow. It is like one of those roseate sunsets of autumn that follow on the death of summer, in whose after-glow, when the sun is down, nature fairly outdoes herself in tle exquisite coloring she throws about the place
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of the retiring orb, "as if some radiant angel bad left his glowing robe as he passed through the gates of Hesperus."
LEWIS MALONE AYER, who was one of the signers of the ordinance of South Carolina secession and a member of the Confederate Congress, was a rare and exceptional man, not only on account of his political distinctions, but for his essential char- acter and the varied services he performed as a lawyer, planter, educator and minister.
He was born November 12, 1821, at Patmos, his father's plantation near old Beaufort Bridge in the Barnwell district. He lived throughout a great and heroic period in the life of his state and died at Anderson March 8, 1895. He was the third child and only son of Lewis Malone Ayer, Sr., by his third marriage, to Rebecca Erwin. The senior Aver served as a boy courier to Francis Marion in the Revolutionary war, and distinguished himself for his quick wit and ready action on many occasions. Thomas Ayer, the grandfather, of Scotch-Irish line- age, came to this country in infancy and grew up in Virginia. In 1759 he moved to the Marlboro dis- trict of the Carolinas and for a time held a com- mission under the Crown. He was a member of the grand jury of Marlboro district, which so very carly declared for liberty. This declaration was one of the first in behalf of liberty. During the Revolution the Tories laid waste the estates of the Ayers, and Lewis Malone Aver, Sr., left Marlboro with his wife and one child, carrying them and all his worldly goods in a one-ox cart and settled in the Barnwell district. There he became a plantation manager for some wealthy planters, and with his unusual ability achieved independence as a merchant and planter and was regarded as one of the wealthy men of his time. For twenty-five years he repre- sented his district in the House and Senate of South Carolina, and lived to the advanced age of ninety- five. He was survived by two children, Lewis Ma- lone and Mrs. Alfred Aldrich, wife of the judge whose dramatic closing of his court when "the voice of justice was stifled" has passed into a classic.
Lewis Malone Ayer was born and reared on a farm, and had every opportunity to acquire a thor- ough education. For a time he was a student in Mer- cer Institute, a manual training school at Penfield in Green County, Georgia, but left there because of the cruelty of his preceptor. Later he attended the Mount Zion Academy at Winnsboro, then under the management of J. W. Hudson, and in that school had some of the most delightful associations of his life. He formed there what proved a lifelong friendship with Dr. F. Peyre Porcher, of Charles- ton, and became a lieutenant in the cadet company commanded by Preston S. Brooks, who was also his esteemed friend. He entered South Carolina College in 1838, but left before graduating to enter the University of Virginia, where he was one of the editors of the college magazine and otherwise dis- tinguished hy his student activities. He studied law at Harvard, attending lectures under the great masters of jurisprudence Greenleaf and Story.
His education completed, he returned to Barn- well and began the practice of law with Angus Pat- terson, who for years ranked as the master of the Barnwell bar. He married Miss Anna, a daughter
of Mr. Patterson, and of their children one daugh- ter and four sons grew to maturity. The son Frank Ayer became a lawyer at Barnwell, where he died unmarried, and the three other sons married and made names for themselves in business and pro- fessional affairs, Lewis becoming a physician, and died in Florida, where Alfred, the only survivor, lives. Thomas Ayer, another of the sons, died in Macon, Georgia, in 1918. The only daughter, Iris, married at Anderson, where some of her children still reside.
Mr. Ayer left his professional work for an un- usual reason and one that did him credit. It was suggested that the advancement of some of the young and struggling attorneys of Barnwell was pre- vented because of his continued work as a lawyer after he had attained considerable degree of wealth. He therefore retired and devoted himself to agri- culture for a number of years.
While a lawyer he had taken much interest in the State Militia, was colonel of the Forty-third Regi- ment and later brigadier general of the Third Brigade, being the youngest of the commanding officers of that organization. He represented his district in the Lower House of the State Legislature several times, and in the Legislature distinguished himself by his independence of thought and action, frequently parting with his associates in defense or opposition to some measure.
The late Mr. Ayer organized and equipped at his own expense a company which he led out to the western prairies of Kansas in 1856 at the height of the free soil movement. He and his men did what they could to safeguard and promote the interests of slavery in that territory, and it was a campaign rich in experience as well as personal hazard to the individual members. While he was absent his brother-in-law, Judge A. P. Aldrich, wrote asking consent to use his name as nominee for governor of South Carolina. He refused this request, since he thought the nomination was due to Preston S. Brooks, his old school friend and associate. Later he entered the campaign for nom- ination against Mr. Owens of Barnwell for con- gressman from the Third District, and overturned political tradition and precedent by disputing Mr. Owens. He was elected, but did not take his seat in Congress because of the breaking out of the war between the states. A firm adherent and admirer for many years of John C. Calhoun, Mr. Ayer was leader in his district for the principles of secession, and received the highest vote of the five delegates from Barnwell district to the seces- sion convention. As noted above, he was one of the signers of the ordinance and left the conven- tion to take an active part in the organization of troops to defend the state. On the advice of friends he resigned his ambition for a military career in order to serve the Confederacy in its Congress. He was candidate against D. F. Jamison, president of the secession convention, for a seat in the Con- federate House and was elected by a large major- ity. In his second campaign he was opposed by Col. R. Barnwell Rhett, the editor of the Charles- ton Mercury. Mr. Ayer as a congressman was one of the stanchiest supporters of President Davis and was a warm personal friend of the great south- ern leader.
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