USA > South Carolina > Williamsburg County > History of Williamsburg; something about the people of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, from the first settlement by Europeans about 1705 until 1923. > Part 24
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on this day great barbecue feasts were enjoyed and usually the Governor of South Carolina delivered a patriotic address. On nearly every regimental muster day at Willtown the governor came, since it was a valuable opportunity for his own political future as well as the inculcation of patriotic principles. The Declaration of Independence was always read and patriotic songs were sung.
After the official and formal social events of the day had concluded, the "bullies" tried their strength and the district champion for the year was determined. Every section of the district had its "bully," the man who thought he could whip every other man in his community, at these regimental musters. The several communities brought out their respective champions and by a process of elimination in actual fist fights, the "bully" for the whole district was determined. These "bully" contests excited intense interest and formed the subject of con- versation for the district for many moons. Sometimes, brigade reviews were held and the "bullies" from each regiment would meet in combat and the brigade "bully" would receive his laurel wreath.
On these regimental muster occasions at Willtown, the Governor of South Carolina was usually the guest of Cleland Belin. Mr. Belin was wealthy, had a beautiful home, and was one of the most unique characters that Williamsburg ever produced. His home was a splendid structure, finished and furnished in the similitude of a palace. He had considerable mechanical ability and supervised the erection of his residence. He required the builders to finish even its hidden corners with greatest care. Probably no other building erected in South Caro- lina up to that time was, from floor to roof, more nearly perfect. In his home, he gathered many objects of art and beautiful books and curiosities from the four corners of the globe. There were twelve bedrooms in his house.
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THINGS, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, 1830-1860
In each one of these bedrooms, he had a grandfather's clock out of which fairies came at the end of each hour and danced and played on their little stages. These clocks in the several rooms were set successively five minutes ahead of each other so that every five minutes in the day in some room in the house fairies played. Mr. Belin's home excited great interest in this section of South Carolina. Thousands of people visited it every year and all of them, prince and peasant alike, received a cor- dial welcome.
Mr. Belin was a very successful business man and a man of considerable natural mental ability. His educa- tion was limited, yet some of his manuscripts and the in- scriptions which he placed on monuments show a remark- able depth of thought and an excellent command of language. Governor Gist, after he had been entertained in Mr. Belin's home on one occasion, when returning to the Capitol, said in Kingstree, "If Cleland Belin had re- ceived a liberal education in his youth, he would have become the most powerful man in South Carolina."
Battalion musters were held in Kingstree and near Lenud's Ferry every year. On these battalion muster occasions, the Declaration of Independence was read and patriotic songs were sung. From the Revolution until the War between the Sections in 1861, it is probable that no part of the United States loved or regarded with greater veneration and respect than did Williamsburg what it regarded as the Constitution of the United States. That its interpretation was over-ruled by the supreme court of war detracts nothing from the splendor of its homage.
In 1837, when the Seminole Indian outbreak occurred, the Williamsburg Regiment of Militia furnished its quota of men. Among the volunteers at the first opportunity for service may be mentioned: John F. D. Britton,
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Thomas R. Greer, J. L. Brown, W. G. Cantley, Samuel McGill, Winfield Scott, and E. P. Montgomery.
When war was declared with Mexico in 1844, a large number of the young men of Williamsburg volunteered and won everlasting fame as soldiers in the Palmetto Regiment. This Regiment was in the severest fighting at Buena Vista and Cherubusco, and sharpened its sabers on the walls of old Chapultepec.
Among the officers of the militia during this period, the following are outstanding : Colonels, D. D. Wilson, Washington Cockfield, William Cooper, and S. J. Mont- gomery ; Captains, S. J. Snowden, John E. Scott, John G. Pressley, John Coachman, Leonard Dozier, John Green, and William G. Flagler. These men were very influen- tial in civil as well as military affairs. Colonel Mont- gomery was commanding the Regiment at the beginning of the War between the Sections. He was also Senator from Williamsburg and died holding this high place. Colonel Washington Cockfield seems to have been one of the most spectacular officers of the day. The old men of present Williamsburg, who were then boys, remember him in full regimentals, his long waving plume and flash- ing sword, dashing about the Willtown muster ground on his coal black charger.
The one great curse of this halcyon period in Williams- burg was fever. Almost every year at least half of the people were incapacitated for business and for social ac- tivity on account of this malady. A few times typhus became epidemic and took a tremendous toll of human life. In 1815, the first epidemic occurred and hardly a home in the district was left untouched by the death angel. Again in 1854, it raged. At the spring term of the court in 1857, the district officers were ordered by the court to occupy their new quarters which had been re- cently added to the Court House. This order had not been obeyed when court convened in October. When the
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offending officers were served with the rule to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt, they showed to the satisfaction of the court that for three months prior to that time there had not been a sufficient number of people in the town of Kingstree unafflicted by fever to care for the actual needs of those who were stricken. But the great continuous curse of this period was malaria. Infected mosquitoes clouded the country. Dr. Isaac Graham says that when he was a small boy on Santee frequently he found difficutly in drawing a "bead" with his rifle on a squirrel up a tree on account of the mosquitoes swarming in the air.
Everybody in this country then had two residences. The house in which the family lived in winter was called its home. The place it lived in summer was either far removed from the swamps, or in the mountains of North Carolina. Women and children who lived near the swamps in summer were in great danger.
The old family graveyards filled during these periods tell fearful tales. Planters usually selected a square plot of about one-fourth an acre for their burying ground and there only the members of the family were interred. There are now hundreds of these old graveyards that show the father, mother, and five or more of their children of less than five years old buried by their sides. Diphtheria and malaria did their deadly work, so that in few families half of the children born reached maturity. The most pathetic tale told by these old tombstones is that of Cle- land Belin and Sarah Margaret McFaddin. To them were born thirteen children before she died at forty years of age. Eleven of these thirteen are all buried in a row beside her, not one of the eleven having reached the age of five years. Mrs. Belin died before her husband and he placed a tomb- stone to her and one to each of their eleven dead children. He wrote the following inscription on the stone erected to her memory, "Sarah Margaret Belin, daughter of Mr.
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William McFaddin, beloved wife of Cleland Belin, born 27 August, 1811, died 3 October, 1851. She was indus- trious, careful, and domestic in her habits, retiring in her manner, calm and tranquil in her demeanor, hospitable in her feelings, forgiving in her temper, and Christian in her principles."
It is said that when the French Huguenots first settled on the Santee River in Williamsburg, there were then quantities of mosquitoes infesting the section but that they were not infected with the germs that produced malaria. For many years these mosquitoes were not a serious men- ace to the community, but that some years after the in- troduction of African slaves, the malaria germ began to threaten the whole section, and, sooner or later, the pest made the section almost uninhabitable for Caucasians. It is believed that the malaria germ came into Williams- burg by way of the slaves imported from Africa.
Malarial fever, as it developed in the fifties, on the San- tee, surpasses human capacity for description. When the germ once overpowered a human system, it was relentless. It took away life slowly and certainly. A man might be plowing in the fields when he first felt its force and from that moment he gradually failed. Some of the men and women of this period who overcame this malignant germ showed ever afterwards remarkable resistance to all the ills to which flesh is heir. One hears now the statement made, in opposition to the use of vaccines and mosquito exterminators, that a great many people who dwelt in the Santee swamps lived to be a hundred years old. These relators overlook the fact that nine average persons per- ished where one extraordinary physical specimen survived. Many years ago the mosquitoes were conquered, the fevers ceased to burn.
CHAPTER XXV.
TRANSPORTATION, 1830-1860.
Men called the ways over which they travelled in Wil- liamsburg during this period roads. It is strange that men of their intelligence and their patriotic impulses and unlimited quantities of slave labor built no highways, but continued to worry along with ways over which they might go only at certain seasons of the year. The roads of this period wound in and out and around about the swamps. Much of the time they were half covered with water and boggy to an impassable degree. Perhaps these men of the prewar period had on their plantations about everything they wanted and did not see the necessity for roads.
With the slave labor at the command of Williamsburg during this period, and without effecting its production of cotton one bale, the district could have constructed roads that would have lasted like Indian mounds and have been for the good of a hundred generations. These planters usually had small boats that carried their cotton down the winding Wee Nee River to Georgetown. They seemed not to care that the courses these boats had to follow were a hundred miles. They could have, with a minimum amount of cost, straightened the river and made the distance less than half. Nor did they ever make any effective attempts to dredge the river. It is true that sometimes they would cut long pine trees that had fallen into the river and had become serious menaces to their sloops and flat boats, but this was about all that they did to improve the navigability of this natural highway. Black River has run by Kingstree for two hundred years without any businesslike effort undertaken to make its use valuable to the district.
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The planters of Williamsburg marketed their cotton and tobacco at Georgetown since they could float these products down the river. Bringing back things up the river was a more difficult task and possibly this was a factor in the increasing wealth of the Williamsburg Dis- trict during this period. It was much easier to carry things to market than to bring things from the market home. Always, except in emergencies, Williamsburg has chosen the easier way.
Some of the planters of Williamsburg lived at such a distance from the river that they transported their cotton and tobacco overland, crossing Black River at Brown's Ferry. A few marketed their products in Charleston, crossing the Santee at Murray's and Lenud's Ferries. All the district north of Williamsburg as far as North Caro. lina used the Murray's Ferry road through Kingstree and crossed the Santee there in going to Charleston and re- turning. Murray's Ferry was for a century one of the most important points in South Carolina. Usually in history rivers proved great blessings to the communities through which they flowed, but not so the Santee. It is a treacherous river, uncertain and dangerous. It was a barrier to eastern South Carolina for two centuries. Often passengers could not cross it at Murray's Ferry, and had to wait until its floods subsided. Sometimes when a crossing could not be effected at Murray's Ferry, it could be accomplished at Lenud's Ferry forty miles down the river. Lenud's Ferry was not used, however, from 1830 to 1860 so much as Murray's Ferry.
In 1856, the Northeastern Railway was built from Charleston northward through the Williamsburg Dis- trict. The building of this railroad proved at once that it was an enormous factor in the life of Williamsburg Dis- trict. On this railroad, planters could ship their prod- uce and could go themselves in a few hours over the same distance that theretofore had required several
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laborious days. Very soon, the greater part of the busi- ness of Williamsburg was done in Charleston, and George- town ceased to be the trading seat of this district. Plant- ers from Williamsburg shipped their cotton to factors in Charleston every fall. These factors sold their cotton and accepted their drafts from time to time. All of the cotton was thrown on the market about the same time and sold at such prices as the factors determined.
Planters of Williamsburg secured their supplies from merchants in Charleston almost entirely after the build- ing of the Northeastern Railroad. These planters knew and were known to certain merchants in Charleston who filled the orders of the planters all during the year. If the cotton crop had been a good one, these merchants ac- cepted their pay about November first. Nobody ever thought of paying bills oftener than once a year. If the Williamsburg planter had failed to make a good crop, the merchant permitted him to postpone payment until the following November. It was so easy to buy on order and pay days were so far away that just about the begin- ning of the War between the Sections, Williamsburg was enjoying a season of riotous living.
Bridging the Santee and completing the railroad through Williamsburg District was a tremendous task in those days when practically all labor was done by man power. Such engineering projects were also attended with great danger and several men lost their lives while this work was being done. Railroading was extremely hazard- ous in that experimental stage and often railroad men were killed in accidents. The supervising constructor of the Santee trestle, Mr. Littlefield, lost his life before com- pleting his task. The first bridge built there in 1856 was a wooden structure and many miles of trestle work were required before the embankments were placed many years later. The first section boss was killed on this trestle
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within a year after trains began running. The first sec- tion boss in the Cades community was also killed in 1857.
The first train that ran through Williamsburg County is remembered distinctly by many persons now living. Celebrations were staged at its several stopping points in the district and multitudes of people, brass bands, and barbecue feasts greeted the day the locomotive whistle first startled the denizens of these swamps. Dr. D. C. Scott, then a six-year old boy living in the Cedar Swamp community, was brought by his father to see the first rail- road train come into Kingstree. Dr. Scott's father had bought him a hobby horse in Kingstree that day and as the train was approaching, his father cautioned him to hold his horse or the train would frighten him. Every real horse in Kingstree that day was securely tied far away from the railroad.
At that time, people in Kingstree enjoyed seeing the trains pass. Some built their houses on Railroad Avenue for the purpose of witnessing railroad trains pass morn- ing and evening. Seventy-five years later, when the great Atlantic Coast Line Railroad runs almost a continuous line of trains over its double tracks along Railroad Avenue in Kingstree, the descendants of these same people, who live in the houses which they built, are much disturbed by the passing of so many trains.
Up to this time, probably no other event in the history of Williamsburg, save the War of the Revolution, had such an immediate and far-reaching influence on the district as did the building of this Northeastern Railroad. The innkeepers in Kingstree and at Murray's Ferry and the ferrymen viewed the situation with alarm. All at once the line of travel from the North ceased coming through Kingstree and passing over Murray's Ferry, and it was not many years before the last ferry boat on the Santee had sunken and the ferryman's song forever hushed.
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TRANSPORTATION, 1830 TO 1860
The building of the Northeastern Railway inflicted a serious blow on Georgetown. Up to that time, a consider- able part of its trade had come from Williamsburg. This trade moved to Charleston almost at once after the rail- road service began. Henceforth, Charleston and not Georgetown was the center of the commercial interest of Williamsburg.
Immediately after the Northeastern Railway was built through Williamsburg, there came "down here from North Carolina" a multitude of turpentine workers and dis- tillers who began to develop the lumber and naval stores industries. These immigrants for the most part were a vigorous, hardy, and energetic people. They were about the first white people whom that generation in Williams- burg had ever seen who worked with their hands as well as their heads. This working of white people with their hands produced uncertain and conflicting opinions of them in Williamsburg. Some regarded these turpentine workers simply as "poor white trash" unworthy of notice. Others were not so sure. Williamsburg sold them turpen- tine rights at first for a song, but soon learned from the fortunes being made by these turpentine workers the value of a pine tree.
Richard H. Kellahan came into Kingstree without a dollar in the world. He was a likely looking youngster. M. J. Hirsch, Esq., a lawyer in Kingstree, took a fancy to him, bought him a pair of shoes and an axe and grub- staked him for three days. Mr. Kellahan went into the woods and chipped turpentine trees until he became a millionaire. Ferney Rhem "came down here from North Carolina" about 1847, settled on the Georgetown-Wil- liamsburg County line and began to work turpentine. A few years later, he had a small empire in that section. When he died, he was one of the largest land owners in South Carolina and his descendants have been contin- uously adding to their estate. There were many others
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of these men who made fortunes and were influential factors in Williamsburg.
Among these "Tar Heels" who came to Williamsburg, Dr. McGill mentions J. F. Carraway, P. H. Bufkin, Isham Hinson, R. P. Hinnant, Augustus Haddock, John, James, and Edwin Harper, James, William, and Walter Bryan, James E. David, Thomas Edwards, Edward and Henry B. Johnson, S. B. Newsom, S. W. Mills, Hardy Hallimer, Samuel Moore, W. Lee, R. H. Kellahan, N. G. Pitman, Augustus Perkins, E. J. Parker, Jessie Turner, F. Rhem, W. T. Willoughby, Cicero and Hagard Whitfield, and W. K. Lane.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SLAVERY AND SECESSION.
There were two great ideas obtaining at the time of the creation of the American nation. For twelve years, there had been thirteen independent states along the At. lantic coast. It was realized that some form of union was necessary for the mutual protection of these states and for their highest opportunity for development. Until this time, a state had depended most largely on the per- sonality of some individual leader, or king; and about him, the personalities of several lesser leaders, who domi- nated sections of the country, gathered. A strong king made a strong nation but the making of a strong nation usually worked unnecessary hardships upon the indi- viduals composing this state.
The founders of the American Union were learned men. They knew the history of nations and had followed them as they rose and fell. One faction of the founders honestly believed that these thirteen states, along the Atlantic sea- board, should unite, surrendering to the Federal Union all of the powers inherent in a state and thus make the union one great state wherein all the powers of these thirteen smaller states should be amalgamated. This fac- tion realized the practically unlimited possibilities of this great union existing in their minds. The individual leaders of this faction lived in the northern portion of these colonies where commerce and manufacturing pre- dominated. They had much relationship with the other states of the world and saw very clearly how much better for them would be such a powerful state as the com- plete fusion of these thirteen states would make.
The other idea as to the formation of the American state obtained in the southern portion of the territory. The Southerners were planters and stock raisers. They
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lived largely on their plantations and had but little actual need for anything which they did not produce. The dominant element in this southern portion were extreme individualists by inheritance. They wanted to be let alone. They saw that economic conditions in so large a territory would result in inevitable clashes of interest and believed that the best thing for them would be to preserve, as far as possible, states' rights in their own section.
Sentiment, however, was by no means unanimous in either the northern or the southern sections of the Ameri- can territory. The strong central government idea, how- ever, predominated in the North, while the sectional rights idea maintained the ascendency in the South. Sentiment in the State of South Carolina was overwhelmingly in favor of the retaining all rights possible in the forma- tion of the Federal Government.
Sentiment in Williamsburg District, however, was com- paratively evenly divided. In the Constitutional Con- vention at Columbia, in 1788, when South Carolina joined the Union, Wiliam Wilson was one of the leaders in the promotion of the strong central government idea in the convention, while Patrick Dollard was equally enthusi- astic and effective in his efforts for retaining everything which South Carolina could before adopting the Federal Constitution. Mr. Dollard eloquently opposed to the end the adoption of any Federal Constitution.
For several decades, Williamsburg had close relations with Charleston and Georgetown, where commerce and shipping interests predominated. In these two cities the strong federal union idea was in the ascendency in the beginning, and probably from them came the force that inclined Williamsburg until the tariff became unreason- able.
When the cost of maintaining the Federal Government became considerable and the levying of indirect taxes,
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popularly known as the tariff, became burdensome, senti- ment in Williamsburg began to change; and later when the tariff in the beginning levied for the support of the Federal Union began practically to subsidize manufactur- ing and commercial interests and lay grievous burdens on stock raising and agriculture, the sentiment towards states' rights grew rapidly.
The first state action in South Carolina was the Nulli- fication Convention in 1832. Sentiment about that time in Williamsburg was by no means unanimous. In fact, the more substantial element in the district did not favor the proceedings of the Nullification Convention.
When the manufacturing section of the United States secured control in the Congress and began to use a giant's strength like a giant, agriculture of South Carolina arose and asserted what it believed its rights under the Ameri- can Constitution as adopted in 1789.
In the beginning and until the production of cotton in large quantities began about 1800, slave labor was not profitable in South Carolina, and up to this time the State had often considered the abolition of slavery. Gradually, from 1800, African slaves grew in value in South Carolina, since slaves had produced cotton and rice at a profit. African slaves were not profitable in the northern sections of the country. From about 1800 until 1860, the northern section of the country was just as eager to sell its slaves as the southern portion was anxious to buy, and it did not take many years of eager sellers and anxious purchasers to shift slavery to the South.
The conflict of these two ideas as to the American Union, the strong states' rights idea and the strong fed- eral union notion, had inextricably mixed in it serious economic conditions due to differences of sectional in- terest. Each section soon began to consider only itself
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