USA > South Carolina > Men of mark in South Carolina; ideals of American life: a collection of biographies of leading men of the state, Volume II > Part 9
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In 1885, Geraty & Towles bought the Yonge's Island planta- tion just across the Wadmalaw river from the Martin's Point plantation. Mr. Geraty then devoted himself at once to the effort to have built a branch railroad line to the wharf, to secure quick railroad transportation for fresh vegetables to New York city. This was accomplished in the spring of 1886; and from that time dates the rapid growth of the industry of raising vegetables on the sea islands for shipment to the New York market. For twenty-five years, until 1893, Geraty & Towles continued partners,
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and they dissolved partnership without any breach in their kindly relations, only because each now had grown sons to join him in an independent business along the lines they had together developed.
The industry which Mr. Geraty began to develop in 1892 is in line with the great discoveries made in recent years by the traveling agents and explorers sent out by the agricultural department of the United States to secure for introduction into American agriculture plants and fruits which by many years of growth under peculiar conditions of soil, climate and moisture have developed through successive generations a hardiness which so influences them that they give remarkable results in early and abundant fruitfulness when transplanted to or sown in new soil similar in climate and conditions of moisture to that in which their plant-ancestors have been growing for decades. All who follow the more recent developments of agriculture know some- thing of the marvelous results which have been produced in our arid lands of the West by planting there wheat which had grown for centuries in other continents under similar climatic condi- tions; and the still more wonderful hardiness and productivity of the cereals, wheat, barley and oats, which have been imported from the cold uplands of Russia and Siberia and are sown and raised in the newly developed Northwestern lands of the United States and Alaska.
Mr. Geraty made similar discoveries with reference to the development of singularly hardy and early young plants of cab- bage. He writes: "In 1892 relatives of my wife from Orange- burg, South Carolina, visited my place in February, and were much surprised to see cabbage growing thriftily in the open field at that season of the year. When they were to return to their home I requested them to take some of these hardy sea island plants and set them out in their own garden. The result was cabbage well headed three weeks earlier than it could be grown from hothouse plants raised there for an early transplanting." Mr. Geraty then sent out plants for tests in nearly all the states east of the Mississippi river; and it proved that cabbage plants grown on the sea islands in the open air were exceptionally tough and hardy, resisting the late freezes and the spring frosts in the states at the North when hothouse or coldbed grown plants raised there were killed.
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Since the price of early vegetables grown for market is so much higher for those which reach the market two or three weeks before the average crop, the advantage in growing these hardy sea island plants is at once evident. A rapidly developing and very prosperous business has resulted for Mr. Geraty. "Ten years ago," he writes, "sixty pounds of cabbage seed sowed on two acres of land supplied the demand for these early plants. In 1906 I have sowed two tons and a half of cabbage seed on one hundred and twenty-five acres of land, and orders are already booked for more plants than I can possibly supply this coming spring." In 1907 three tons of seed was used and the demand for plants could not be fully supplied. Plants are shipped by the full carload to all states east of the Mississippi river, and in some cases to points west of the river. Until the last five years Mr. Geraty was the only man who dealt in these sea island plants. There are now about forty other dealers.
On the 8th of February, 1872, Mr. Geraty married Miss Sarah Ann Ray, daughter of John D. Ray and Maria Smoak Ray. They have had one daughter and seven sons, and three of their sons are living in 1907.
Mr. Geraty is a communicant of the Roman Catholic church. He is a member of the Calhoun lodge of the Knights of Pythias, connection with which he retains by special dispensation from Leo XIII. In politics he is a Democrat. His favorite sport, amusement and mode of relaxation, he writes, has always been "reading." "I spend all my spare time reading, and besides scientific agricultural reading, I find my keenest pleasure in history."
In order to perpetuate the business, the William C. Geraty company has been formed. Of the stock of this company, which is held entirely by the family, the eldest sons, John W. Geraty and Charles Walker Geraty, own a majority, and after the death of their father, which occurred on Tuesday morning, December 17, 1907, they assumed absolute control of the business.
The blessing pronounced upon the man who "makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before" is evidently deserved by one whose life-work has developed so peaceful and beneficent an agricultural industry as Mr. Geraty has developed in vegetable growing on the sea islands of South Carolina.
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To the young people of his state he offers this advice : "Devote your time and energy to some one line of work which you find congenial; then make a specialty for yourself in that line, and do your best to produce an article well above the average. Do not let the gaining of money be the greatest consideration; but work for the general good of your community and your race."
THOMAS BENTON GIBSON
G IBSON, THOMAS BENTON, banker, and vice-president of the Marlboro Cotton mills, is a type of what deter- mination and patient perseverance can accomplish in these years when the rapidly developing manufacturing interests of South Carolina offer rich rewards for business enterprises and good judgment.
He was born in Richmond county, North Carolina, January 17, 1851. His father, Nelson M. Gibson, was a farmer and served as captain in the Confederate army during the War between the States, descended from a sturdy line of Scotch ancestry; and while a devout Methodist, not narrowly sectarian in his religious views. Thomas and Nelson Gibson, brothers, who came from Virginia about 1760 with their widowed mother, settled ten miles northeast of Rockingham, in Richmond county. Their family was originally from Scotland.
One of the brothers of Mr. Thomas Benton Gibson's father was an able and conscientious Methodist minister. Another brother, Nathan Gibson, about 1830 moved to Ohio; but before he left North Carolina he had represented Richmond county for several terms in the state legislature.
Born in the country and living as a boy upon a farm, T. B. Gibson nevertheless had a mechanical turn of mind, and "was never satisfied at spare moments unless he could be in his father's shop tinkering on something." He feels that the systematic life to which his father trained him on the farm had much to do with the development of traits of persistent, systematic toil which have given him success in his business undertakings. He had great difficulties to overcome in acquiring even a common school education. The "old-field schools are all I ever attended, and these I attended very little after I was fifteen years old," he says.
He was but ten years old when the war broke out. His father and his older brother were both in the Confederate army. He was the support of the family-the only one to whom his mother could look; and he took care of a family of six girls and a younger brother, besides the negro women and children. "When General Sherman passed through, in 1865, the Seven-
yours truly I. B Gibrm.
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teenth army corps, under General Blair, camped on my father's plantation. They destroyed everything above ground, and took off all the able-bodied negro slaves, leaving only the negro women to be taken care of."
The War between the States and its consequences thus made it impossible for Mr. Gibson, who was but fourteen when the war closed, to secure a college or even an academic education. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age. The next year, he writes, "I hired to my father for eight dollars per month, furnishing my own clothes, and I saved out of that year's earn- ings about seventy-five dollars. The next year he gave me a one-horse farm of poor land, which he valued at a thousand dollars, and I made the crop that year, hiring the crop gathered."
For the six years immediately succeeding he was a clerk in the store of R. J. Tatum (where the town of Tatum is now situated). In 1879 failing health led Mr. Gibson to return to his farm, and two years of farm work restored his health. He began the mercantile business with his cousin, F. B. Gibson, at Laurel Hill, North Carolina, where he remained four years, returning in 1885 to his old homestead, which is now in the center of the village of McColl. In 1884 the South Carolina Pacific railway, the first railroad built in that county, was constructed from the state line to Bennettsville; and the town of McColl was located on Mr. Gibson's plantation. The village grew slowly until 1891, when the ground was broken for the first cotton mill. This modest venture in manufacturing, which started with a capital of about fifty thousand dollars, was the beginning of a company which today keeps forty-five thousand spindles whirling and is capitalized at one million dollars, "chiefly home capital, very few shares being owned north of the Mason and Dixon line."
Mr. Gibson has been president of the Bank of McColl since it was organized in 1897. He is now vice-president, has been president, and president and treasurer, and secretary and treas- urer, of the cotton mills at McColl since their organization; and since the five cotton mills were consolidated into the Marlboro Cotton Mills company, he has been president of the company.
He is identified with the Democratic party. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and has served as a steward in that church for over ten years. He has been a director of the South Carolina Pacific Railway company continually since the
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road was built in 1884. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the public schools of McColl, and was one of the principal contributors to the erection, recently, of a central graded school building, erected by public subscription at a cost of over twelve thousand dollars. While Mr. Gibson's spirit of enterprise, hope- fulness, and ambition for the town has had a strong effect for good upon the development of McColl, the gradual cutting up of what he styled his "one-horse farm" into village lots has given to Mr. Gibson a large part of the benefit of that "unearned increment" which comes from the massing of population upon small areas of land. A population of over twenty-five hundred people, with one bank, three churches, a good school building, has grown up rapidly upon Mr. Gibson's old cotton field; and the prosperity which has come to Mr. Gibson as a consequence his fellow-citizens rejoice in, because he has shown from the first a disposition to inaugurate and administer important business enterprises with a public spirit which has brought a degree of prosperity to all the inhabitants of the place, and not to himself alone.
In his own childhood, and since he established a home of his own by marriage, Mr. Gibson has enjoyed deeply and steadily the influences of home; and he does all that lies in his power to promote the erection of comfortable and commodious dwellings and buildings of all kinds, and to encourage the beautifying of the grounds and houses of the community.
He was married May 12, 1886, to Miss Sallie Belle Tatum; and of their seven children, six are now (1907) living.
To the boys of South Carolina who are planning to make their lives not only successful for themselves, but useful to the community, he offers this advice: "First, get an education at any cost (except at the cost of health) ; let tobacco, cigarettes and whiskey alone; learn to depend upon your own careful judgment, knowing that without well-wrought plans, thoroughly studied, there can be no permanent success; and when you have decided upon the work in life for which you are best suited, stick to it. There is nothing like perseverance."
His address is McColl, Marlboro county, South Carolina.
WILLIAM GODFREY
G ODFREY, WILLIAM, of Cheraw, Chesterfield county, South Carolina, vice-president of the Cheraw and Lan- caster railroad, and senior member of William Godfrey & Company, lumber manufacturers, was born near Cheraw, in Chesterfield county, on the 2d of November, 1870. His father, Samuel G. Godfrey, was engaged in railroading. His mother was Mrs. Harriett E. (Powe) Godfrey, the great-granddaughter of Thomas Powe, who in 1740 removed from Virginia to Cheraw, South Carolina. His father's great-grandfather was also of Virginia birth, and removed to Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1750.
His boyhood was passed in the country, and from early years he worked systematically upon a farm; but during four years of his youth, from sixteen to twenty, he was a student at the South Carolina Military academy, from which institution he was grad- uated in 1890. In January, 1891, he took the position of agent for the Seaboard Air Line railway at Hoffman, North Carolina, thus beginning the work of life in the occupation which had been that of his father. In 1894 he began business for himself at Cheraw, organizing and rapidly building up a large business for the manufacture and sale of lumber. He organized the Cheraw and Lancaster railroad, in 1900, of which he is now a vice- president. As his business grew he took in partners for its further development; and he is now the senior member of the firm of William Godfrey & Company, lumber manufacturers. This company has seven plants in Chesterfield county, two in Kershaw county, and one in Cumberland county, North Carolina, and employs from three hundred to four hundred men. He has recently become interested in establishing a line of steamers between Cheraw and Georgetown. Mr. Godfrey has been promi- nent among the large lumber manufacturers of the South, and has served as president of the South Carolina Lumber association. He was one of the originators of the rules of inspection of yellow pine lumber, and he compiled the collection of rules known as "Rules of 1905," under which all yellow pine lumber in the United States is now bought and sold. Mr. Godfrey is allied with the Democratic party, and whatever the issues in his state,
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he has uniformly supported the principles and the nominees of that political organization.
In religious belief he is identified with the Protestant Epis- copal Church.
On the 29th of December, 1897, Mr. Godfrey married Miss Cora H. Page, daughter of A. H. Page, of North Carolina. They have had three children, all of whom are living in 1907.
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Truly M.J. Gooding
WILLIAM JAMES GOODING
G OODING, WILLIAM JAMES, of Crocketville, Hamp- ton county, South Carolina, member of the state legis- lature from 1858 to 1861; sheriff of Beaufort district, 1866 to 1868; county treasurer of Beaufort county, 1877 to 1878; treasurer of Hampton county, 1878 to 1880, and a member of the Constitutional convention in 1895,-was born near the Savannah river in Barnwell county, South Carolina, on the 9th of Novem- ber, 1835.
His father, James Alexander Gooding, was a planter who had served from 1840 to 1848 as tax collector for Prince William parish in the Beaufort district, and is remembered throughout that region for his fair dealing and his industrious, upright life. He traced his descent from Thomas Gooding, who came from England about the middle of the seventeenth century and settled at Dighton, Massachusetts. His mother was Mrs. Mahala (Gray) Gooding.
A sturdy and vigorous boy, passing his early years in the country, he was fond of study and equally fond of out-of-door sports. While still a small boy he was taught all kinds of farm work which he had the strength to undertake; and while he was not constantly engaged in this work, he grew through boyhood to manhood, developed and trained by working with his hands, until he was familiar with all kinds of labor on the farm and knew something about managing other laborers. Meanwhile he had attended the home schools and Ligon's academy, at Sandy Run, Lexington district, South Carolina. He passed one year in the South Carolina Military academy, at Columbia, South Caro- lina; but his father's death made it necessary for him to return to his home in order to help his mother in the management of the plantation. His opportunities for regular attendance at school were thus shortened, but he had acquired a taste for study and for reading ancient as well as modern history; and throughout his life he has shown an interest not merely in the current news, but also in the current literature of the land.
In 1857 he established himself as an independent farmer in Beaufort (now Hampton) county. He took an active interest in
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the discussions which preceded the outbreak of the War between the States. In speaking of his life, he says that he was "drawn to choose planting and farming as a profession, because the country offered at that time few occupations outside of agricul- ture; and love of country life, with the independence assured the farmer, together with the examples of men who, while they lived by managing farms and plantations, had risen to eminence in various walks of life, led him to make it his constant hope and endeavor to be a useful citizen of his state as well as a farmer." Two years after he established himself in Beaufort county he was elected by his fellow-citizens to represent Prince William parish in the state legislature, filling this position from 1858 to the outbreak of the war in 1861. In the militia of South Carolina he had served as adjutant of the Twelfth regiment of infantry from 1856 to 1858, and as major and lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment from 1858 to 1861. Becoming a volunteer in the Confederate army, he served as captain of Company D of the Twenty-fourth infantry, South Carolina volunteers, resigning in 1862. From 1863 to 1865 he served as lieutenant in Company D, Eleventh South Carolina infantry. He was severely wounded in the head on the 9th of May, 1864, in the engagement of Swift Creek, between Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia; and as a consequence he was detailed for duty in the war tax department as assessor of war taxes for Beaufort district, South Carolina, in the winter of 1864, and he served there until the close of the war.
In 1866 he was elected sheriff of the Beaufort district, serving until 1868. Nine years later he was chosen treasurer of Beaufort county, filling that position from 1877 to 1878, and he was treas- urer of Hampton county from 1878 to 1880.
A Democrat in politics, he was county chairman of the Democratic party from 1882 to 1886; and he was a member of the Democratic state committee during the same years. In 1895 he was elected a member of the Constitutional convention of South Carolina, taking an active part in the work of that con- vention. During the forty years from 1856 to 1895 he served on many local boards in various capacities, evincing a public spirit and an interest in the public welfare which led to his choice by his fellow-citizens repeatedly for such positions.
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Of his religious convictions he says: "In my youth I favored the Baptists, but I now prefer the Presbyterians, although I am not affiliated with either."
On the 4th of September, 1856, he married Miss Elizabeth Annie Terry, daughter of Michael and Elizabeth Terry, of Beau- fort district. She died on the 22d of May, 1894. Of their four children, two sons and two daughters, all are living in 1907.
He is a Mason and has been master of his lodge, and he was at one time a Dictator in the Knights of Honor, although he is not now affiliated with either of these orders. His favorite forms of exercise and recreation have been fishing, shooting, "and a little work and study."
To the young he commends "a definite object set before one for attainment; truthfulness; honesty; and healthful physical exercise in congenial work."
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ROBERT PICKET HAMER, JR.
H AMER, ROBERT PICKET, JR., was born in Darling- ton county, April 10, 1863. His father is a planter and manufacturer. On the father's side descent is traced to English immigrants who settled in Maryland about 1750. The mother, Mrs. Sallie McCall Hamer, who has exerted a most powerful and beneficent influence upon the life of her son in every way, is of Scotch-Irish descent, and her first ancestor in America was William McCall, who came from Ireland to the colonies in 1770.
From his earliest boyhood his ambition was "to make of himself a good farmer." He lived in the country, twenty-two miles from a railroad and the county-seat. He had excellent health and high spirits. Daily duties were assigned him about the home, and he was also required to work on the farm as a training for later life. When a boy he was given a small piece of land that he might work it for his own profit. He was required to keep a strict account of the outlay upon that land and the income from the crops. He had to pay for all the fertilizers used on it and for all labor done on it other than what he himself chose to do; and his father gave the son his note, bearing interest for whatever was due him from the crop above the expenses incurred in making it.
He attended the Little Rock high school and the Bingham school, in North Carolina, and was graduated from South Caro- lina college with the degree of A. B. in June, 1885. On Feb- ruary 4, following, he entered formally upon the active business of life by engaging in farming at Little Rock. His own decided preference led to the choice of this life work. That he has made it a decided success is evidenced by the fact that he is now the most extensive planter in South Carolina. He cultivates land in four counties in this state and in two counties in North Carolina, and runs, in the aggregate, one hundred and sixty plows. Soon after commencing planting on a large scale he became interested in the manufacture of cotton. He became a director of the Dillon Cotton mill, and president and treasurer of the Hamer Cotton mill. He has been postmaster at Hamer for the last fifteen years,
Men of Mark Publishing Co Washington, DC
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general manager of the South Atlantic Cotton Oil mill at Hamer, and agent for the Atlantic Coast Line railway at Hamer for fourteen years. Indeed, the town of Hamer was named for him in 1891. While he has interested himself primarily in agriculture and in manufacturing, and has not devoted himself to politics, he is identified with the Democratic party and has never changed his party allegiance, except that he was not a "sixteen to one" Democrat. He has been for twenty years the chairman of his township Democratic committee, and, for the same period, a member of the county executive committee. He is now (1907) commissary-general, with the rank of colonel, on the staff of Governor Ansel.
His own liberal education, and the breadth of his outlook upon the educational life and the social tendencies of his state, have led him to take an active interest in the higher education of South Carolina. He has been a member of the board of trustees of the South Carolina college since January, 1904. Since February, 1905, he has been a member of the board of trustees of Clemson college, and was made chairman of the board in April, 1906. He has also been for ten years a member of the executive committee of the South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical society (the state fair) ; and he was president of that society for the year 1903, and again for the year 1904. During his administration the state fair grounds were moved from the west to the east side of the city of Columbia, and the change, effected in less than six months, was followed by the largest and best fair ever held in the history of the society. There have not been lacking frequent newspaper paragraphs from admirers of Mr. Hamer, suggesting that he is the logical candidate for governor of the state at an early date.
In college he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega college fraternity. He is also a Mason and a Knight of Pythias. While he is not a member of a church, his associations through his family are with the Presbyterian and Methodist churches, and he is interested in the support of churches of all denominations. While he finds his amusement and relaxation "in attention to his business," he has all his life been fond of the exercise of walking, driving and horseback riding; and he is especially fond of exer- cise in the saddle. To help young people who ask for suggestions that will lead to success in life, he recommends: "Thorough
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