Do you have info on the history of Heather Lakes/Little River??

Please send it to me as I would like to continue my quest for a "History of Heather Lakes"!!

Bob

**************************

ATTENTION!

A Historical Look at Horry County 

The northeastern corner of South Carolina, known as Horry (pronounced O-REE') County, is a diverse land of rivers, beaches, forests and swamps. Horry County is bordered on its eastern side by the Atlantic Ocean and on its western side by Georgetown County, the Great and Little Pee Dee Rivers and Drowning Creek, also known as the Lumber River, and on the north by North Carolina. The Waccamaw River runs through the eastern half of the county. In the middle to late 1800s, the county was sometimes referred to as "the Independent Republic of Horry", a nickname that had a humorous beginning and referred to politically independent minded people.

Horry County has been inhabited for at least ten thousand years. The area that is today Horry County was once the home of the Waccamaw tribe, a Siouan people.

In 1663, the area we now know as South Carolina and North Carolina was part of land granted to eight powerful Englishmen, known as the Lords Proprietors, by King Charles II of England. The western boundary of the land grant was the "South Seas". In 1729, all but one of the Lords Proprietors sold their interest in the grant to England's King George II who later dispatched surveyors to lay out eleven townships in South Carolina in order to develop the "back country" of the Carolina Province. Kingston Township, located on the Waccamaw River, was one of those original townships. The village located within the township was called Kingston, now known as Conway.

Early surveyors found a wilderness that would draw fur traders, second sons of English nobility, and adventurous settlers seeking land. Many went seeking religious freedom. Those of wealth and consequence bought or were granted large tracts of land.

As these settlers slowly moved into the Horry County area, then known as Craven County, some settled along the coast to fish the Atlantic Ocean and its inlets. As a result, the coastal fishing village of Little River developed and is one of the oldest settlements in the county. The fur trade continued to flourish but the naval stores industry and farming eventually became prevalent. In the 1700s and early 1800s, indigo was a major cash crop for the coastal area. The indigo was harvested from plants introduced to the area and from them a dye was made that was very much in demand in Europe. Several indigo plantations were situated along the Horry County coastline. Cattle and pigs were also important commodities in this area, just as they were throughout early coastal South Carolina.

From the earliest days of Horry County's history up until the latter half of the 19th Century, the naval stores industry was prominent in Horry County. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of pitch, pine tar, turpentine, and a variety of other naval products supplied many Horry County citizens with the majority of their income until the industry tapped out all of the natural resources needed for the production of naval stores and moved southward in the late 1800s.

Horry citizens, like other colonists, could be separated into two main groups as the British American colonies approached 1776. Those known as Whigs wanted to break all ties with England. On the opposite end were the Tories who remained loyal to the throne.

The Horry County area saw small skirmishes during the Revolutionary War. General Francis Marion, known as the "Swamp Fox" for his ability to disappear into the swamps, had relatives in the area and passed through on occasions. Many of "Marion's Brigade" came from the Horry County area, which was then a part of Georgetown District. Col. Peter Horry served under General Marion, and the two combined to eventually rid the area of the British.

A planter of French Huguenot descent, Peter Horry (O-REE') was born in SC ca. 1747. A lieutenant colonel in the Revolution and later brigadier general in the SC Militia, he represented Prince George Winyah and All Saints parishes in the SC House and Senate. In 1801, Kingston County, which had been formed from Georgetown District in 1785, was renamed Horry District for Peter Horry. He died in 1815 and is buried at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia, SC.

The years between the Revolutionary War and War Between the States were peaceful; new commerce and settlers entered the county. The Tariff of 1828, enacted to protect northern industry by imposing duties on imported goods, enraged southern cotton growers who mostly traded with England. This, along with the famous 1857 Dred Scott decision, a Supreme Court case that ruled against the exclusion of slavery in states, served to further divide the country.

These issues brought three ideologies to the forefront, Secessionists, Unionists, and Cooperationists. The Secessionists strongly believed a state that had joined the Union voluntarily, should, at will, be able to withdraw. The Unionists, on the opposite side of the issue, just as strongly believed that a state may have the legal right to withdraw, but it was not morally correct to do so. In the middle of this heated debate, were the Cooperationists. This group agreed that a state had both the moral and legal right to withdraw, but felt that cooperation was more productive.

In 1860, southern states sent delegates to a convention to discuss the issue of Secession. In December of that year, South Carolina, a staunch state's rights supporter, was first to adopt an Ordinance of Secession. Horry County, while not aggressively Secessionist, joined the "Cause" as soon as South Carolina seceded. On April 12, 1861 cadets from the Citadel, SC's military college in Charleston, fired on Federal forces at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor as they were attempting to re-supply the fort which SC argued was state property. The War had begun. The thundering sound of the bombardment in Charleston Harbor could be heard in Horry District.

Although no major battles were fought in Horry, the Civil War had a major impact on the county. Somewhere around 90 percent of the county's white male population marched off to war. They saw fighting on nearly all of the major battlefields. Many of these men, young and old alike did not live to return to Horry District again. Most military activity in the area during that time involved the Union naval blockade of our coast.

While Horry's men fought for Southern independence, the women, left alone, faced outrageous prices, a Diphtheria epidemic which killed many children, and, in the closing days of the war, roving bands of deserters. The county seat, which had originally been named Kingston but renamed Conwayborough after another Revolutionary War figure, Robert Conway, was raided early in 1865. Also, early in the year of 1865, Union troops aboard gunboats, fresh from Maine, sailed up from Georgetown to Conwayborough and occupied the county seat.

After the War Between the States economic progress gradually returned to the area. The first train pulled into Conway in mid-December of 1887. This era also saw an end to the naval stores industry that the area's economy had depended on since the arrival of the first settlers. With the profits of cotton falling, the farmers of Horry started turning to tobacco as a cash crop in the late 1890s.

In 1900, the Conway & Seashore Railroad was established from Conway to the seashore at Long Bay and the new town at the end of the tracks was named Myrtle Beach, named after the native Wax Myrtle shrub which grew behind the dunes. Burroughs & Collins Co. built the first hotel at the beach and named it the Seaside Inn. The new resort was first used by Conway residents.

In 1898, Conwayborough shortened its name to Conway and was finally incorporated after being founded 166 years earlier in 1732. Loris, a stop on the railroad leading to Chadbourn, NC, grew quickly as a market for the tobacco growers. It was incorporated in 1902. The town of Aynor was laid out in 1911 in the western section of the county and connected to Conway and Myrtle Beach by the Conway Coast & Western Railroad tracks. It was incorporated in 1914.

Several important events for Horry County occurred in the period between the dawning of the 20th century and the start of World War I. The first automobile was seen in Conway in 1906 and Paul Quattlebaum, the son of a local leader, brought electric lights to the area. A new Horry County courthouse was dedicated on May 22, 1908. It was the third courthouse to serve the area. The former one, located on Main Street in Conway and completed in 1825, was designed by Robert Mills, the designer of the Washington Monument, and is currently used by Conway city government as the Conway City Hall.

In response to German submarines that had patrolled off the cost of the eastern United States during World War I, the United States Congress commissioned the Intracoastal Waterway in 1919. When finished in 1936, the Waterway stretched across the coastal section of the county, connecting Little River to Socastee Swamp and the Waccamaw River. The final portion of the Waterway to be completed was in Horry County. The official national dedication and opening of the Waterway was held in Socastee at the site of the existing turn-bridge.

Even though the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and the great Depression followed in 1930, most county residents persevered. The average resident was a farmer, used to the daily struggle to survive. Myrtle Beach continued to grow and was eventually incorporated in 1938. Other improvements to the area at that time included the establishment of the Myrtle Beach State Park which opened in early 1934.

When war once again came to the U.S. on December 7, 1941, Germans once again patrolled off of the South Carolina coast. It was not uncommon to hear explosions or see oil slicks and debris along area beaches. The Intracoastal Waterway became an important means of marine transportation as it provided a safe route for boats. It was common to see German soldiers on the streets of Myrtle Beach and Conway. These soldiers were German prisoners of war being held at a camp in Myrtle Beach. The soldiers were often allowed much freedom and many worked in the local communities. In the name of national defense, the United States Army took over 100,000 acres between the Intracoastal Waterway and present day Highway 90, forcing over 300 families to relocate. The land was used to establish a bombing range and flight school.

Horry's men, never ones to wait for a draft, volunteered in droves to fight for their country. The ladies, most of which were left behind as in other wars, formed a branch of the USO in Myrtle Beach, while some enlisted and served overseas in various capacities. Horry's men and women served their country in exotic places and many made the ultimate sacrifice.

During the 1950s, the Grand Strand continued to grow into a family vacation destination. Growth was stunted temporarily by Hurricane Hazel which came ashore north of Myrtle Beach in October of 1954. The devastation was compounded by its arrival during high tide. The category 4 hurricane left much of the Grand Strand in ruins. The rebuilt Grand Strand was little like its southern, ocean side resort predecessor. Investors with large capital discovered the investment potential and took the opportunity Mother Nature offered to replace the single family cottages and small oceanfront hotels with large hotels and golf courses.

Since 1950 a multitude of new residents, businesses, and increased tourism has changed the face of the Grand Strand and Horry County in general. The Myrtle Beach of yesteryear, with its railroad and quaint seaside cottages disappeared into antiquity only to be replaced by multi-million dollar resorts. From 2005-06 the Myrtle Beach area was the fourth fastest growing area in the nation. It attracts millions of visitors each year.

Horry County has plan to find, preserve old graveyards

By Claudia Lauer
Posted on Sun, Jul. 19, 2009

Every fourth Sunday of the month, Edward Altman carries bunches of flowers into the woods where seven of his relatives, including his great-grandparents, are buried.

Altman didn't know the cemetery in the New Hope community existed until his mother, Levoda Altman, who was in her 80s and starting to get sick, asked to see it again before she died. But when he first went looking in 2006, the cemetery had disappeared.

Altman wasn't looking in the wrong place; the cemetery had been plowed over, the broken remnants of headstones heaped in a pile of dirt to the side. The current owners of the property had no idea a cemetery was ever there, Altman said. The property had changed hands so many times, no one knew when the damages occurre, and Altman said he wasn't interested in placing blame.

"There's no telling at this point who did what. I just wanted to restore it, to put the headstones back," he said. "My mother told me when she was a girl she would play in the cemetery because she was too little to work in the fields with everyone else. She would get little seashells and lay them on her sister's grave."

Missing cemeteries are a common story for state and county officials, with no way to accurately count how many older cemeteries have been lost to time or development. Horry County has started a plan to prevent future damage to historic cemeteries including slave cemeteries, which are often hard to identify because of differences in burial rituals.

Adam Emrick, a senior planner with Horry County, is cataloguing cemetery boundaries to add to the county's historic registry and make sure the properties are protected. He has been able to use a list of 236 cemeteries created by the Horry County Historical Society as a start, and every year that number grows as Emrick adds old family cemeteries, slave cemeteries, old generational African-American cemeteries and those found by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans. The list has grown to more than 400, and Emrick said the county has surveyed about a third of them.

"Before this project there was no mechanism at the county level to make sure they were not destroyed. We had no idea where a lot of them were, or how many graves there were," Emrick said. "We're getting a baseline, so in 10 years, if someone comes in and does the wrong thing, then we can do something."

The right equipment

The task of preservation in Horry County has been made easier with a federal grant that bought a ground-penetrating radar in 2007. The radar, which looks like a push lawnmower, detects grave sites by monitoring the speed of a signal sent into the ground, which changes when there is an object or disturbed soil. At the peak of surveying, Emrick was finding 70 unmarked graves a week. On Tuesday, more than two dozen cemeteries were added to the registry by the Horry County Council.

Emrick said an even bigger help to the project and to the historic registry as a whole has been the slowing of development in the county because of the downturn in the economy.

"It may be the only good byproduct, but with things slowing down in development, we've been able to catch up. With the market the way it is people are more willing to let go of development rights in favor of preservation," he said.

When a developer or landowner applies for a permit to build on a property or change the landscape, thanks to the county's Geographical Information System, which links different layers of information, the maps will be tied to red flags on the historical registry. County officials will not issue permits for renovations on registered cemetery property.

In Altman's case, there wasn't development on top of the spot his mother remembered. With some help from his daughter who's a Realtor, he found a property map from the 1930s that showed the cemetery. That was enough proof to have Emrick step in to conduct a land survey in the small patch of land hidden in undergrowth and forest.

It took three years, but Altman was allowed to restore the cemetery. He replaced the headstone of his great-grandparents and an aunt he never met. He placed simple stones on the graves of the four unknown family members as well. The county has funding to conduct the surveys, but it cannot help individuals pay for grave markers.

"Very rarely does government give support for churches or religious affiliations. Family cemeteries are tricky too, because there's one family getting support," Emrick said. "The best hope for help is to contact nonprofits."

A soldier's burial

As land changes hands over the decades, time acts like water running through people's memories, dulling the sharp edges. Altman, who is also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, spends a great deal of his time looking for lost cemeteries with his friend "Big Ed" Thompson, who got the group's cemetery program running.

The two retired S.C. state troopers knock on doors to find the oldest residents in small communities and ask where they remember graveyards. Step two is looking at historical records such as death certificates, old newspaper obituaries and property maps. Still, even finding the graves of Confederate veterans has been difficult.

Over a drainage ditch at the side of a dirt road, a metal sign about the size of a parking regulation sign points to the Sessions Cemetery. To get to it, Altman and Thompson climb over the drainage ditch, part the thick foliage and climb carefully across a two-by-four stuck in the bank of a riverbed. Only two graves have headstones in the cemetery and one is that of a former Horry County sheriff who served in the Confederate Army.

"It's hard to believe that people would let this happen to someone who was that prominent in our history. It's a shame," Thompson said. "We go out looking for these graves to help people who may come to the area looking for their ancestors and to honor the soldiers."

In addition to fighting complacency, sometimes Altman and Thompson, and even Emrick, have to fight against state law.

Legal matters

Mike Trinkley, director of the Chicora Foundation in Columbia, works all over the Southeast to preserve heritage. The foundation has a special division for cemeteries.

"The problem is ... the property goes through several changes in ownership and within a relatively short frame of time, the cemetery has been forgotten," Trinkley said. "That leads to serious legal and financial problems, people buy that property, perhaps for a home ... it almost always ends up in court of some kind."

Altman had to go to court to gain access to his family cemetery because it's on a private drive on private property.

Trinkley, who has been called as an expert witness on grave and cemetery anthropology, is involved in a case in Campfield Cemetery in the Choppee community of Georgetown. A historical African-American cemetery in the community was allegedly reduced to only a handful of graves on a hill that previously had not existed. An anthropologist from Clemson University identified only one grave that he said was in its original place.

Trinkley couldn't talk about the case because of his role as a witness. Morgan Templeton, the lawyer for several of the families, said he does not have permission to speak to the media about the case, but said civil litigation is ongoing.

The alleged disappearance of between 40 and 200 grave sites was investigated by the S.C. Attorney General's Office and the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division. Both offices concluded that state archaeologists and other investigators found no solid evidence that tampering had occurred, and the case was closed, said Gene McCaskill, senior executive assistant with the attorney general's office.

Trinkley said South Carolina laws are not written with preservation in mind. He said in cases where it is proved that the emotional and monetary cost of moving graves is necessary, Georgia and North Carolina require a forensic anthropologist's help during the moving of the graves, which are often in numbers more than maps show or landowners expect. State law in South Carolina mandates that a mortician be present, but is not in charge of moving graves. When they are moved, Trinkley said, the families have little say in how it is done.

"The law says, [people who want to move cemeteries] have to go to the county or city to get permission to move them and advertise for 30 days. If descendants come forward, they have to respect their wishes in terms of where they want them moved and paying for it. But, how many people read the legal ads?" he said.

Emrick is hoping that more people will come forward to preserve family or community cemeteries before legal issues arise. He said the program has gained the attention of some people looking to find family cemeteries but many more need to come forward, and Trinkley agreed.

"What Horry County is doing in recording the cemeteries now is unheard of in South Carolina. In the long run, it's going to save them and the development community a lot of time in court," Trinkley said.

"In terms of cemeteries, it's not just a loss of history, or a disrespect to the dead. I think it's so often that African-American cemeteries are the ones that are being destroyed. ... It may just be a coincidence, but it's a coincidence that doesn't need to occur, and I think Horry County is being very forward thinking in it's approach."

South Carolina Tea:

Steeped in History

After water, tea is the most popular beverage on Earth. People drink it far and wide, on every continent and in every country, and it's often associated with such exotic locales as China, Kenya, India, and Peru.

Thanks to a small farm on Wadmalaw Island, we can now add South Carolina to that list. The Charleston Tea Plantation, owned in part by the renowned R. C. Bigelow & Company, is the only place in North America that produces black tea commercially.

Tea, South Carolina's official state hospitality beverage, has a long and colorful history in our state. In 1799¹, French botanist André Michaux brought the Camellia sinensis plant to his friend Henry Middleton, future governor and heir to Middleton Plantation in Dorchester County. Tea has since become a relative staple in the Lowcountry, where the soil is sandy, the air is humid, and tropical temperatures prevail.

Of course, this doesn't mean growing tea in these parts has always come easily. Farm after farm collapsed before finally - after nearly two centuries of trial – horticulturalist Mack Flemming and his partner William Hall claimed success with their brand, American Classic. Together the two men took over the former Lipton Research Station on Wadmalaw, cultivating cuttings from plants once grown at Pinehurst Tea Gardens in Summerville.

Interestingly, though Pinehurst ceased operations nearly a century ago and the land has long since been carved into neighborhoods, residents still find tea growing wild in their backyards. Because the plants have acclimated to our climate over time, their cuttings are stronger and more likely to survive than those from imported varieties.

Fleming and Hall split their company several years ago, and Hall, a third-generation tea taster trained in England, approached the Bigelow family to help save the land from developers. Ruth Bigelow's daughter flew down from Connecticut to bid on the plantation at auction, and its future was secured. Today Hall and Bigelow manage the plantation jointly. It is open to visitors, who can view the factory, take a trolley tour of the fields, browse the gift shop, and best of all - sample the tea themselves. After all, tea tastes best when it's fresh, which gives a cup "born and brewed" right here in South Carolina a distinct advantage.
 

GREAT SITES ABOUT OUR STATE

South Carolina Fast Facts

 State Songs

State Dance

SC State Stone: Blue Granite

SC State Fruit: The Peach

....AND MORE TO COME!!

*****************************************************

Historic Little River
A Brief History of Little River

Crossing the state line from North Carolina into South Carolina on Hwy. 17, you find yourself in Little River, South Carolina, the farthest northeast community in the farthest northeast county in the state. Little River is the oldest village in Horry County dating back to the early 18th century. This unincorporated town is loosely bordered on the east by the Intracoastal Waterway, on the south by Hwy. 9, on the west by the Waccamaw River, and the north by the state line.

In the late 1600's and the early 1700's fishermen and farmers settled along a stream called "Little River" which emptied into an inlet before going to the ocean. This inlet provided a sheltered port, attractive to pirates and smugglers. Legend has it that pirates such as William Kidd, Edward (Blackbeard) Teach, and Anne Bonney visited the area. The early settlers lived on the bounty of the sea and the surrounding pine forests that provided lumber and naval stores. These products were sent out of the port to northern markets, since there was very little contact with the inland part of the country.

In 1791, president George Washington visited the South Carolina coast on his southern tour. He passed through Little River and had lunch with Revolutionary War veteran James Cochran. He spent the night nearby with local resident James Cochran. He spent the night nearby with local resident Jeremiah Vereen, an ancestor of the donor of the Vereen Memorial Historical Gardens.

On Tilghman Point in Little River Neck, which is across the river from the port of Little River, there are the remains of a Confederate battery that defended the entrance to Little River Harbor. It was called Fort Randall and was captured in 1863 by a Yankee naval landing party commanded by Lt. William B. Cushing. The Confederates counter attacked and drove the invaders out.

While the Civil War brought a halt to the industries of lumber and naval stores, local salt works became important to the Confederate forces. These, however, were eventually destroyed by Union troops.

In 1906, Thomas Philip Hammer leased an eight-acre tract of land on the north side of Little River Neck from Louis Randall and his wife, Lillian Bessent Randall. This was the site the Hammer Lumber Company. In its heyday, the Company employed fifty men before shutting down operations in the 1920's Barges and gasoline boats transported the workers over the mill. The men thought they were rich – they made a $1.00 a day. Some accounts claim this site was part of the area where 9,000 Revolutionary War soldiers, including the legendary Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, camped during 1776.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the pine forests had been largely depleted. Road building in the area was very slow. An early unpaved road from Loris to Little River later became Route 9. Highway 17 was not paved until 1941. The Intracoastal Waterway (running from Maine to Florida) was completed in 1936, absorbing the original "Little River".

During the prohibition years the sheltered port at Little River offered the same protection to bootleggers as it had to pirates. Today Little River is a center for sports fishing with numerous boats for hire. It continues to grow today attracting golfers, fishermen, boaters, and retirees, always with the lure of its beauty and its historic background. 

 

 A Bridge to the Future

It's nearly three-quarters of a century old,
but the Little River swing bridge hasn't retired yet.
By Mike Essian, WPDE

It's 73 this year and still works a full schedule with about 10,000 cars crossing it every day. It was one of the first of its kind in the nation. A single pivot-wheel swing bridge that turns like a turret on a tank. And now, the Little River swing bridge is one of the last of its kind remaining.
Built in 1935, the Little River swing bridge is one of just two state owned and operated swing bridges in our area.
R W Wood was born the year it was built. He owns a general store less than a quarter mile up the road. He credits the bridge for his 48 years in business. "Well, at one time, we had it in our minds they'd probably take it down, but thank goodness it's still there. Local people need to use it."
And use it they do. Keeping his store and his son's grill busy most days, except when the bridge is shut down for maintenance. Then, it's a different story.
"They can't come this way. They have to go the other way or don't even come," said Wood.
The other way is the overpass bridge, built in the 1970's as an alternate route across the Intracoastal Waterway. Locals consider the swing bridge the quickest route most of the time.
"It used to back right up to several miles down the road, before that new bridge was built," Wood said.
But, even with the new bridge, traffic still backs up on the swing bridge each time it turns.
Gregg Stegall fishes in the area. He has to cross the bridge often for his catch, but many times, he's the one caught sitting in traffic. "Sometimes you could sit 15, 20 minutes, depending on the boat traffic."
Even with the delays, Stegall likes the bridge, if not for the fishing, for the bridge's place in community. "It's a beautiful historical bridge."
Beautiful and historical, the swing bridge is an important part of Little River for the past 73 years.
The question is how much longer will it last.
It has cost $10-million over the past few years to repair the Little River swing bridge and its sister bridge in Socastee.
Eddie Hughes has operated the Little River swing bridge for nearly 27 years. With the turns it makes and 10,000 cars a day, he says the bridge sees its fair share of wear and tear.
One reason it costs so much to repair and maintain the bridge is because if something on the bridge breaks, the replacement part has to be custom made.
Locals understand it's a historical bridge, but they also know it has a history of breaking down. "During the season, it opens and closes a lot. It's broke down a few times, and I don't know when or if we will ever build a bridge over that," said Gregg Stegall of Little River. "When it's broken down, it stays broken down for a couple of weeks. Something like that."
"I tell you what, it makes a difference when it's closed, too. You better believe it does," said R W Wood, who owns a store near the bridge.
Hughes says the reason for the recent costly repairs was a complete overhaul of the bridge including a new bridge house and a backup generator. The generator provides uninterrupted power to the bridge. It hasn't had any major breakdowns since that major upgrade, and because of the recent rehabilitation, Hughes says the DOT doesn't expect any major repairs in the near future.
One option officials have talked about is putting the swing bridge on a schedule. Right now, it opens for boaters on demand. A schedule would mean less turning and less of a chance for the bridge to break down.
A schedule also has the added benefit of allowing drivers to predict when traffic on the bridge will be backed up.


&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The Following Are Courtesy of BEN BURROUGHS

(expert on Horry County history)

Techniques Boosted Rice Culture
Posted on Sun, May. 11, 2008
C.C. BOYLE HISTORY


Some history buffs believe one reason the Old South lost its bid for independence from the United States in the American Civil War was its failure to mechanize. This is incorrect. The Southern states used technology just as the industrial North did; however, the South used it to complement its pre-industrial agricultural society rather than create factories and cities.
During the 1780s, the rice industry underwent a revolution. In 1783, Gideon DuPont perfected the tidal-flooding method of growing rice, which allowed planters to use fertile flood plains for cultivation.
With the tidal-flow method of irrigation, fields were flooded by freshwater rivers, which pushed water upstream during high tide and dropped it during low tide. Soon, planters expanded rice production to the tidal lands on each of the Lowcountry's rivers.
In 1787, Jonathan Lucas built the first water-powered rice-pounding mill and, in 1792, the first tide-operated mill. J. Motte Alston, a Waccamaw River rice planter, recalled the function of these mills. He wrote:
"The mill was erected near the river, and the fields in the rear were flooded at high water. Then the floodgates were closed, and when the tide fell in the river, the water held back in the fields was some four or five feet higher then the river.
"This then was the motive power which set the machinery of the mill's water wheel in motion; huge stones to rotate and the heavy pestles to pound. "The grain, when under the rapidly rotating stones, would not lie side-wise but on end, and so escaped being broken. The former [the stones] were [so] set as only to grind off the outer hull of the grain, called chaff, and the latter [the pestles], the inner coverings, which was the coarse flour used for feeding stock. The flinty grains of rice were then carried by elevators through screens of various dimensions and, last, polished on rapidly revolving drums, covered with prepared sheep-skins."
Prior to Lucas' inventions, slaves used the ancient African mortar and pestle method of removing the outer hull from the grain. A few animal-powered rice pounding mills, mostly oxen, had been used before Lucas' inventions.
Most Lowcountry historians agree that Lucas' mills had an impact on the rice industry comparable to the impact Eli Whitney's cotton gin had on the cotton trade.
During the late 1830s, planters built steam-powered threshing mills to remove the tailings from the grain and the grain from the stalk and steam-powered pounding mills to polish the rice and prepare the crop for market. Some planters also used steam-powered pumps to help drain water from the fields.
With these and other advancements in rice production, such as improved seed and fertilizers, Georgetown soon became the center of American rice production, cultivating almost half of the nation's annual rice crop on 46,000 acres. The number of slaves rose proportionately. Eventually, nearly 90 percent of the district's population were slaves.
The new profitability of rice planting also brought a sudden rise in land prices. Improved rice land sold for $200 to $300 per acre, virgin swamp land sold for roughly $100 per acre, as compared with pine land, which sold for 25 cents per acre.

Forward Finding Way
Child of Georgetown Fights Discrimination with Education
By Dave Baity
For The Sun News

Posted on Sun, May. 11, 2008
Minnie Kennedy, 91, grew up surrounded by opulent wealth at Hobcaw Barony.
But her life was a sharp contrast to the privileged existence of Wall Street multi-millionaire Bernard Baruch and his family who entertained presidents, prime ministers and powerful generals in the big house up the way.
Minnie's parents, William and Daisy Kennedy, were servants. Treasured servants, to be sure, but servants nonetheless. And black servants, at that, which Minnie observed at an early age marked them for less than equal treatment in the segregated South.
Even in the one-room schoolhouse on the Barony that she attended to the fourth grade, she simply couldn't say the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. The words "with liberty and justice for all" simply didn't ring true for anybody but folks who were white, she said.
But poring over the tattered, hand-me-down books that black youngsters used at the little school, she came to a revelation: Education was the key to achieving the respect and dignity that all people deserved. And so she read and studied, determined to rid herself and others of the discrimination she chafed under.
William Kennedy was a valued member of Baruch's staff of servants. He was the Barony handyman and served as a duck-hunting guide for Baruch's powerful buddies who gathered there during the hunting season.
His wife, Daisy, was the cook who planned and prepared the sumptuous meals the Baruchs served their guests. The couple and their 13 children lived in a two-story tenant house outside the fence that surrounded the posh Baruch mansion. Other servants lived nearby in a village of smaller homes.
Daisy Kennedy was a strong-willed woman who sometimes smarted from being treated as a second-class citizen. And she often muttered retorts just out of earshot to demands made by her white bosses. Once, she adamantly refused a request to enlist her daughter to join her and dance for a gathering of white guests at the Baruch home.
When Minnie and her father visited Georgetown in her youth and she asked him to take her into a restaurant to get a sandwich, she was dismayed by his answer.
'"We can't go in there,' he said, 'that's for white folks,'" she recalled. And when she questioned her parents about why books - and the U.S. Constitution - declared that all people were created equal but they had to tolerate substandard treatment, her father always told her to calm down.
'"That's just the way it is,' he would say, and then I'd say, 'But it doesn't have to be that way,'" Minnie Kennedy recalled.
Even though his acceptance of the way things disappointed Minnie, William Kennedy quietly supported her quest to get an education. He scraped together enough money to buy a house on Queen Street in Georgetown and move his family there so that she and her sisters could attend Howard High School, the town's all-black high school that went through the 10th grade.
The black school on the Barony ended at fourth-grade, Minnie Kennedy said, and the only way to get to Howard High was to take the ferry to Georgetown - which was a privilege denied to blacks.
And when she graduated with honors and wanted to attend college, William Kennedy put together the $30-per-semester tuition and $12-a-month room and board she needed to get a degree from S.C. State College in Orangeburg that would allow her to become a teacher. Bernard Baruch had told her father he would pay for Minnie's education, but failed to keep the promise until she sent him a letter after graduating that totaled up her expenses.
"He then sent my father a check for a little over $600," she said. "He congratulated my father on my graduation, but also said in the letter that I was a rude girl. I always was a rebel."
With her degree in hand, Minnie Kennedy returned to Georgetown and joined the faculty at Howard High. But after World War II broke out, she ventured North to seek better pay and new opportunities. She quickly learned that discrimination wasn't limited to the South. When she wanted to use the money she made at the Brooklyn Naval Yard to buy a new dress at a well-known department store, she learned that women of color could buy the clothes there, but weren't allowed to try them on. Black women had to enlist white women who wore the same size to model the clothes for them, she said.
And, when she applied for a teaching job with the New York educational system, she was turned down because she hadn't shed her Southern accent.
When the war ended, she used savings from her defense job to return to college and eventually earn a master's degree in early childhood education. That led to a series of teaching positions in experimental schools where she had the opportunity to work with whites and blacks of all economic backgrounds. One was in Westchester County, N.Y., where she shepherded a kindergarten class that became a model for others in the school district. Based on her success there, she launched workshops for other teachers that demonstrated their need to have a democratic outlook about their charges, an open, unforced acceptance of other races and a willingness to set loving rules for hard-to-teach kids.
The notoriety of her philosophy landed her a job as an adjunct professor at New York University administering an early childhood program for college students interested in joining the field that was funded by a Head Start and a New York state grant.
She refused to allow youngsters taught in the experimental program to be identified by income, and insisted that parents of the young students be available to come to the school to discuss their children's progress and serve as volunteers when possible.
As a result, she wound up as a Head Start regional training officer that required her to give workshops in many of the New England states.
During summer months, she became a world traveler by attending education workshops in Europe and Asia and earning extra money by serving as a counselor at private camps that often had only well-to-do white students. At one, she had the opportunity to arrange for her campers to set up their tents on former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's Hyde Park lawn.
Minnie Kennedy had campaigned for John F. Kennedy and was invited to his presidential inauguration, where she had met Eleanor Roosevelt. So, when she called to ask if she might bring her 13 youngsters there to meet her, the former first lady agreed.
"She was most gracious," Kennedy said. "She came out, greeted the children, talked with them and answered their questions. It was a very nice experience."
And when the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s got under way, Kennedy joined the fray. She joined a group of activists who headed to Louisiana to help register black voters. Kennedy's job was to teach illiterate blacks in Plaquemine, La., enough about the U.S. Constitution to pass the oral test required to get them on the voter rolls. She also accompanied them to the county courthouse to take the test, which many activists complained had been designed to prevent them from voting.
She and the racially mixed members of her group landed in jail when they decided to take a ferry from Plaquemine to New Orleans for an outing. When they drove their cars onto the ferry and got out to stand by the ferryboat's railing to enjoy the scenery, the captain ordered them to the other side. They were standing at the railing reserved for whites, he said, and had to head to the black side.
Most were New York and New Jersey residents who'd never experienced such treatment. Kennedy jokingly made a comment that she didn't understand the captain's complaint because he obviously couldn't distinguish colors. She quipped that he wasn't white, he was pink, never expecting anybody to take that to mean he was a communist.
In any event, the captain turned the boat around, headed back to Plaquemine and radioed for police to be at the dock to haul the group to jail for violating the boat's segregation rules. It took days for them to finally be released.
Shula Chernoff, 85, and professor emeritus at Southern Connecticut State University, said Kennedy was reluctant to discuss the incident or her work with the late Dr. Martin Luther King with students when Chernoff enlisted her first to fill in for a professor at the university. She finally talked about it, however, while conducting a program when students asked her if she'd ever been to jail.
She figured parents would react badly when students told them she'd said yes, but was delighted when they returned to class to proclaim that their parents had "declared that Minnie is a heroine."
"Then she began sharing her life story with the children," Chernoff said.
"She had worked with Martin Luther King and took a lot of risks. Young people and children at the time knew little about that era. She brought them a very powerful message."
Ojetta Parker Smith, 90, of Georgetown, was Kennedy's classmate at Howard High. She graduated from Morris College in Sumter with a degree in elementary education and taught 43 years in the Georgetown County schools, several of those at Howard High with Kennedy.
The jailing story doesn't surprise her.
"Minnie always was a fireball," she said with a chuckle." She's a fighter for what she thinks is right. She's one of those people who truly believes what she believes in.
"She's still politically active," Smith said. "She invites political candidates and her friends to her home so they can come in, meet the candidates and question them about the issues they feel are important. Everybody in Georgetown knows Minnie Kennedy as well as lots of people in New York."
Norma Johnson, an 83-year-old former teacher turned human resources administrator in New York City, spent years teaching alongside Kennedy at several schools and as an adjunct professor at NYU.
"Minnie influenced me so much," she said. "I've never met anyone so selfless and so humane. She knew how to help children be who they needed to be. Parents really loved her and knew that she wanted what was good for their children. She provoked children to really think. That's what education is all about."
Kennedy said her view on "civil rights" has been tempered by age and maturity. She has come to realize the full import of Martin Luther King's message, she said.
The thrust of what King was talking about wasn't simply civil rights, she said. It's about humanity and human relations.
"Civil rights is a manmade thing, a thing for the government," she said, that speaks to a manmade problem. "Human relations is of God. We are all God's children. It's only when we see each other for what we are and give each other respect that we will finally get past seeing only color and how it divides us."

RICE CULTURE
C.C. Boyle

Posted on Thu, May. 01, 2008
The history of South Carolina's rice culture is one of the most colorful stories in American history. It reminds us of simpler times when agriculture controlled the economy and rice was in its golden age. How rice initially got to America, however, is a question historians have argued over for decades.
One theory is that the Duke of Albemarle, one of King Charles II's eight Carolina proprietors, originally set up the colony to produce rice. Other historians claim that Dr. Henry Woodward started the rice culture in the 1680s with a single bag of Madagascar rice. Still others claim West African slaves brought rice to America.
We do know that beginning in 1691, the general assembly of South Carolina permitted colonists to pay their taxes in rice, and in 1700, Charles Town exported 330 tons of the staple to England and the West Indies.
During its experimental stage, planters grew rice in river swamps around Charles Town. Preparing the land was difficult. Cypress, tupelo and gum trees had to be removed and the land ditched and dirked. Planters increased their slave holdings to perform these chores since a sufficiently large labor force was not already on hand. The crop was responsible for a drastic increase in the slave trade.
Throughout the first century of S.C.'s settlement, rice was an important crop, but it was not the colony's most important export. Tar, pitch, timber and the Indian-assisted deerskin trade controlled the early colonial economy. Not until the 1720s and 1730s did the rice industry experience its first boom. At that time, production of the crop advanced to creek bottoms and inland swamps throughout coastal South Carolina. Then, during the 1730s, rice planters began to grow rice on every river in the Lowcountry and experiment with tidal flooding, using the ebb and flow tides to flood and drain fields.
The expansion of the crop led directly to an increase in the number of slaves. Most bondsmen came from the west coast of Africa where rice growing had been a dominant part of African culture since 1500 B.C.
In 1740, Charles Town merchants exported 80,000 barrels of rice, while the districts north and south of Charles Town - George Town and Beaufort - exported a combined total of 4,795 barrels.
Due to rice crop failures between 1740 and 1746, and interference in shipping due to war with France, prices dropped, and insurance rates increased. Exports remained small throughout the 1740s, and the 1710 shipping figure was not surpassed until 1755.
After a few years of peace, France and England went back to war in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Finally in 1766, after 25 tears of inconsistency, the rice trade stabilized.
As the English and French battled, South Carolinians worked on improving the rice culture. In 1758, McKewn Johnstone used the ocean's ebb-and-flow tides to flood and drain his rice fields with river water. Planters had been damming rain and creek water into reserves to systematically flood their rice fields since 1748 without great success. Johnstone's method held out hope to the rice industry.
On the eve of the American Revolution, Northern Europe, mainly Holland and the German states, imported as much as 65 percent of the rice exported from South Carolina and Georgia.
In South Carolina, almost everything consumed rice. The parts not consumed by people were used as bedding for the slaves and fodder for animals. Horses, pigs and cattle ate the straw and bran, fowls the refuse.

 

English Minister's Travels to Area in 1700s Recounted

There are several written accounts of traveling ministers visiting in the 1700s what is now the Horry County area.
One of these visitors was the Rev. Francis Asbury. Asbury was a Methodist minister. He was born near Birmingham, England, in 1745. In 1771 he came to America to spread the word of God.
During the American Revolution, Asbury remained politically neutral.
To avoid signing an oath disclaiming his allegiance to England and to dodge the American draft, he went into hiding for several months.
"I am considered by some as an enemy," he wrote, "liable to be seized by violence and abused," he wrote.
By war's end, he had retained his credibility with the victorious Americans and was able to continue his ministry among them.
Organization was Asbury's gift. He created "districts" of churches, each of which would be served by circuit riders-preachers who traveled from church to church to preach and minister, especially in rural areas. In the late 1700s, 95 percent of Americans lived in places with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants, and thus most did not have access to church or clergy.
From 1785 until 1815, Asbury visited the Horry County area many times.
On March 13, 1785, he wrote in his journal, "From Georgetown we came by Kingstree [Kingston, now Conway] and got to Mr. Durant's, who, I had heard, was a Methodist: we found him, in sentiment, one of Mr. Hervey's disciples, but not in the enjoyment of religion: I delivered my own soul before I took my leave of him."
Asbury would often stay at the DuRant plantation, just northeast of Kingston.
Another journal entry tells of a Christmas Eve service in 1795 that Asbury preached in the old colonial Presbyterian meeting house in Kingston, adjacent to the site of the present-day Kingston Presbyterian Church in Conway. He wrote: "I spent the evening with W. Rogers, formerly of Bristol, where our wants were richly supplied: thus, sometimes we abound and at other times suffer want; and we may balance the one with the other."
Some of the other homes in the area he visited were those of Richard Green, "Brother Hawkins [Hankins]," William Williams, Richard Woodbury, Robert Anderson, "father Kullum," William Norton, "Brother Frink," William Gore, Mr. Wilson, Bethel DuRant and William Gause.
According to one source, "Under his leadership Methodism had grown from 5,000 members in 1776 to 214,000 at his death. Little wonder that in 1787 a letter addressed to "The Revd. Bishop Asbury, North America" had found its way to him."

 

War Reminiscences of Horry Soldier

In April 1861, S.C. Gov. Francis W. Pickens sent out a call for troops to defend South Carolina. Throughout Horry District, able-bodied men responded by joining together and forming military companies. One such group met at Cowford Springs, located near Bucksport. Here, about 80 men joined up to defend their home state from threatening forces. Among them was Samuel S. Sarvis.
In the fall of 1928, Sarvis wrote five consecutive articles for the Horry Herald newspaper describing his wartime experiences in the Confederate Army. We are fortunate to have this firsthand account from one of our own men. According to a note in the Horry Herald, "Cowford Springs here referred to, the author states, was near Klondyke in this County, which was quite a notable gathering place in those days. A spring was there, near which was an old-time inn or boarding house to which people from far and near resorted for weekends and special occasions for an outing. The new Georgetown Highway [Hwy. 701] passes near this point, but all traces of the spring and its hostelry have since disappeared."
At Cowford Springs, Sarvis said, "We uniformed ourselves and were armed with our shotguns and rifles and, in August, were ordered out in state service. We carried our old shotguns with us; got on a boat at Buck's Mill [now Bucksport] and went to Georgetown; from there were sent into camp [Camp Lookout] on the coast near Murrell's Inlet."
Sarvis goes on to describe the battles that he participated in and his experiences after he was captured at the battle of Secessionville, near Charleston. He was first taken to a Union Army prison on Hilton Head Island where he recalled that, "I was approached to take [the] oath of allegiance to the U.S. and told that if I would, that any property that I would become heir to would be made good to me when the war was closed. I refused all these invitations and told them I'd take my chances." From Hilton Head, he was sent north to a prison in New York. From there, he was moved to New Jersey and then sent by rail to Pennsylvania, where he and other Confederate prisoners were then loaded aboard a steamer in Philadelphia.
He states that, "While we were lying at the wharf, we noticed several boats loaded with peaches and other fruits and boys with baskets selling fruit. We had no money and could not buy, but I noticed a man who kept wal[k]ing about the wharf and seemed to keep to himself all the time but kept his eye on us prisoners. He was well dressed and had every appearance of a Southern man. He beckoned one of the basket boys to him, and soon he walked off some distance and stopped. The boy had his basket full of peaches and came aboard the boat, walked in among us prisoners as we stood on the side of the deck next the wharf and told us in a low tone of voice to help ourselves, that they were all for us. The gentleman, when he saw the boy giving us the peaches, turned and walked hurriedly away."
The Confederate soldiers were then carried on by steamer to Fort Delaware. It was here that Sarvis was held in a large room shared by many political prisoners. "I told them that I was a Confederate soldier captured at the battle of Secessionville near Charleston; that I'd been kept at Hilton Head [S.C.], N.Y., and then sent there. They asked me more questions than I could answer about how I had fared, what I thought of our cause, etc. When I answered them and told them that I was a South Carolinian, every one of them had to shake hands with me and make quite a lot of demonstrations."
"I remember the ladies used to come and stand upon the ramparts of the Fort and look over in the barracks at the Confederate prisoners. One day, John Hamilton, a Virginian, and myself were standing near the gates of the barracks when the ladies came up and waved their handkerchiefs to us. We waved our hats and commenced singing the 'Bonnie Blue Flag,' which the ladies cheered. Pretty soon, the barracks gates were opened, and in came a crowd of soldiers with fixed bayonets and drove us back to our quarters. The ladies were then sent to the steamers they came on and left the island."
Eventually, Sarvis was paroled and returned to military service. He took part in the Defense of Charleston and the Siege of Petersburg, Va. He participated in the Battle of the Crater.
He survived the war and returned to Horry District, where he eventually settled in Socastee. The home that he built just before he married is still in existence in Socastee, on Peachtree Landing Road, near the old Socastee Swing Bridge. It is part of the Socastee Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

BEN BURROUGHS March 13, 2008

 

Steamboat 'Maggie' Lost in Big Fire

On May 13, 1897, the Horry Herald newspaper reported that the steamboat Maggie caught fire and was burned on the previous Saturday night, May 8, around midnight at the wharf in Conway. The "Maggie" was the pride of the town. It was a new steamboat, about 8 months old. Her first voyage had been made the previous October.
The Maggie was a freight and passenger sidewheel steamboat. It was one of several owned by the Waccamaw Line of Steamers. It made regular runs from Conway to Georgetown. The newspaper article states, "The fire started about 11 o'clock. By 12, there was an immense crowd at the water's side all too willing, few waiting, to do what could be done to save the pride of the town, the new Maggie."
As the fire raged, the townspeople turned out to fight it. At that time, most of the buildings in downtown Conway were constructed of wood, and a fire could wipe out a large section of close-built wooden buildings. Little did they know that in the not-too-distant future, they would lose a large section of downtown to a fire. The result of that fire was that brick buildings were built to replace the destroyed wooden structures. It is these buildings that can be seen in the historic downtown today.
The 1897 article stated, "The fire raged the fiercest in the after part of the boat first, putting the upper wharf and warehouse in greater danger; but the end of the wharf next the fire was kept thoroughly wet, and the slight breezes stirring being favorable to saving it, it was scarcely scorched.
"The fire on the boat spread with extreme rapidity, and soon the middle and forward parts of the boats were blazing fiercely. Great sheets of flame flared up to immense heights. Roaring whirls of fire threw glowing cinders and blazing chips far up in the air ... "
The fire threatened the upper wharf and the warehouse of the Waccamaw Line of Steamers. Both were saved, but another old riverfront warehouse and a smaller boat called the Free Silver were consumed in the fire. The Free Silver had been launched at the same time as the Maggie.
The townspeople formed a bucket line to fight the fire as it threatened the main warehouse. Buckets of water were passed from hand to hand to a man covered in wet blankets who was positioned up close to the flames. According to the paper, "Below on the wharf, nearly every business and professional man, clerk and workman, in town could be found working like Trojans, every man of them, passing water upward to Wineglass or around to Old Jack Godbold, the Maggie's fireman, and the few others who could stand the terrible heat. Time and again the main house caught; but time and again the man and bucket of water was there to put it out. The fight was fierce and hard. At last about 1 o'clock, the old warehouse fell in, and heat somewhat subsided."
Sometime after 1 o'clock a.m., "Men with axes and augers put a hole in the bow and had come around to knock one in the stern, when the boiler dropped through the deck, the smokestack leaning over to the east, and the new Maggie sank ... "
The article concludes, "The Maggie was the pride of the company and was certainly one of the neatest-kept boats on any river freight line. For this reason, it was in great demand during excursion seasons.
Today, two riverfront warehouses, relics of when steamboats regularly traveled the Waccamaw River carrying freight and passengers, can still be seen in Conway.
Visitors can stroll along the River Walk and get a feeling of what it was like here in the days when the river provided the county with the best means of travel.
With a little bit of imagination, you might even be able to hear the once familiar call of "Steamboat coming!" echoing down the river.

 

The chronicle of Horry County

Horry County has a rich and interesting history. It is where I was born and raised, and where many of my ancestors have lived going back as far as 1730. I have always enjoyed trying to figure out what life was like here in days gone by. One thing I have realized is that one would be wise not to generalize when describing Horry County. Because of its large size, its different sections have varied histories.
The area of South Carolina that we now call Horry County was once part of old Craven County, established in 1682, 12 years after Charles Town was settled by the British in 1670. During this time, South Carolina was owned by eight Lord Proprietors, British noblemen, who had received it by a royal grant from King Charles II of Great Britain. Craven County eventually consisted of the land above Seewee Creek (present-day Awendaw Creek) where it emptied into Bulls Bay, up to the N.C. border.
It was a huge area, comprising about one-half of the area of present-day South Carolina.
In 1769, the increasing population necessitated the creation of smaller judicial districts within the early counties. At that time, the Georgetown Judicial District was established from part of Craven County. This district included the area that would one day be Georgetown, Horry, Dillon and Marion counties, about half of Florence County and all but a very small portion of Williamsburg County.
Two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, in 1785, the present-day boundaries of Horry County were drawn out of the old Georgetown District and given the name Kingston County. However, a local government was never set up, and Georgetown continued to be the court house for this area.
In 1801, Kingston County was finally removed from Georgetown jurisdiction and renamed Horry District.
A courthouse was established in the village of Kingston, later renamed Conwayborough.
This marked the beginning of the county government that we now have in Horry County.
In 1868, after the upheaval of the War Between the States, Horry District was renamed Horry County.
As you can imagine, it can be difficult finding early records that contain the history of our area of South Carolina.
Unless you know where to look, records can appear to be nonexistent.
In many cases, they are just waiting to be discovered and tell their story, the true history of Horry's land and people.
Source | www.scstatehouse.net/man05/48_CountiesInSC.pdf

Local salt works targeted in Civil War

During the War Between the States, most of the military activities between Union and Confederate troops that took place in our area occurred along our coastline and involved both the North and South Atlantic Blockading Squadrons of the Union Navy. Confederate military fortifications were constructed in the Murrells Inlet area, Singleton Swash (then known as Lewis Swash) and at Little River Inlet.
While the defenses at Murrells Inlet and Little River Inlet were built to protect those small ports and help provide a safe haven for blockade runners, the blockhouse, or fort, at Singleton Swash seems to have been constructed mainly to protect the large salt works operated by Peter Vaught Sr. and Peter Vaught Jr. on their 4,628-acre plantation, located just north of the swash. A salt works was basically a facility that extracted salt from ocean water by means of evaporation. The much-needed salt was a valuable commodity and became a very profitable and important business as the Union blockade shut down the importation of salt. As a result, salt works popped up all along the Southern coast. The importance of this large facility is evident by the existence of a blockhouse that was built on the site.
The fact that there was a fort at the Singleton Swash site has often been overlooked. However, Acting Master Pennell, commanding the U.S. Bark Ethan Allen, reported the following on April 23, 1864, after destroying the Vaught salt works operation at Singleton Swash: "On examination, we found the works much more extensive than I expected, they being partly concealed from the ship by a high sand ridge. There were four separate works, each containing 12 large pans, the water being raised from the beach by horse power, leading into a cistern large enough to contain 100,000 gallons, built of timber planked and caulked on the inside. There were 12 pans ready for setting, also timber and materials for extending the works to double its size. There were about 30 buildings, three of them large warehouses built of heavy logs, containing about 2,000 bushels of salt, a large quantity of rice, corn and bacon. One of the warehouses was constructed as a blockhouse, with loopholes on all sides."
The blockhouse at the Vaught plantation that was mentioned by the Union officer was essentially a fort, similar to Fort Randall at Little River Inlet, which was also described as a blockhouse and was named for the Randall family on whose plantation it was situated. Protection of the area was a concern for Peter Vaught Sr., who wrote the governor of South Carolina requesting additional troops to defend the area. When the Union Navy destroyed the salt works and blockhouse in 1864, they were very thorough. The Union officer reported, "Having no other way of destroying the salt, I had it mixed with sand as far as time would allow, then set fire to all the buildings, also to about 50 cords of pine wood. The buildings, being built of pine logs, were soon enveloped in flames."
In 1897, while visiting one of his daughters living in Chicago, Peter Vaught Jr. passed away unexpectedly. According to his obituary, which appeared in a Chicago newspaper: "He was one of the men who were loyal to their state, a true southerner. He served on a gunboat for a time in the service of the South." It is interesting to note that his obituary also says that his pall bearers were "members of the G.A.R. [Grand Army of the Republic]," his former adversaries.

Conway has history of movie houses

Recently, a new 12-screen movie theater opened in Conway. While Conway has been without a movie theater since August 1986, that was not always the case. The first movie theater in Conway opened approximately 100 years ago or more.
An excellent source of Conway's movie theater history can be found in an article in the Horry County Historical Society's publication, "The Independent Republic Quarterly," Vol. 29, No. 4, pages 5-16. That article, titled "Heyday of the Movies in Conway," was written by William T. Goldfinch in 1995.
To summarize a few of the interesting facts in that article:
The first known record of a movie being shown in Conway was in an open lot at the rear of the old Kingston Hotel on Main Street, located approximately where the old Holliday Theatre (now called the Main Street Theater and home to the Theatre of the Republic) now stands. This was around 1900.
The Casino Theater, located on the east side of Main Street north of Fourth Avenue, operated until the Pastime Theatre was built on the west side of Main Street north of Fourth Avenue sometime before 1919. When the Pastime Theater opened, it was said that it was a modern playhouse equal to any in a town the size of Conway. It was here that the first sound, or "talkie," movie played in Conway. The interior of the theater had "an ornate stamped metal ceiling" and "side lights that protruded from each side wall with scalloped frosted shades." The Pastime Theater building was torn down in 1947.
In 1936, the Carolina Theater opened in downtown Conway, across the street from the Pastime Theater. It was said to be the third-largest motion picture theater in South Carolina at the time. There was a 120-foot lobby leading to the theater, and according to the opening announcement, the sound system was the same kind used at the time in Radio City Music Hall in New York City. That building is still in existence.
The Holliday Theater was built in 1947. The front of the building contained a marble facade at street level. In 1965, it was renovated, and the marble facade was replaced. The last movie was shown at the Holliday Theater in 1986.
In 1947, an article appeared in the local newspaper announcing the opening of the Hillside Theater on Race Path and Highway 378.
The first drive-in theater in the Conway area, the Conway Drive-In, opened in the late 1940s on S.C. 701. The 501 Drive-In Theater opened in 1951. Both of these drive-ins were located just outside city limits.
Since movies on Sunday were not allowed within the town limits until the 1960s, these drive-ins could operate on Sundays.
In addition to the above-mentioned theaters, I have been told that in the early 1900s, movies used to be shown upstairs in the old City Hall. The shifting population patterns dictated which theaters would survive and where the new ones would open. After a long period of not having a movie theater in Conway, moviegoers now have a choice of 12 movies to choose from at one location.
While the old Holliday Theater on Main Street is no longer a movie theater, the Theater of the Republic has done an excellent job in preserving that building while finding a new use for it.
It is a welcoming sight at night to come over the Waccamaw River Memorial Bridge into downtown Conway and see Main Street lit up by the marquee.
It is also a fitting monument since that is the location of the first known showing of a movie in Conway.

Courthouse, jail built in 1802-03

The Journal of the Horry District Board of Commissioners (1802-1851) is an interesting book filled with details about the beginnings of Horry County government. These commissioners were "appointed to inspect and Erect the Public Buildings in Horry District." The leather book measures about 9.75 inches by 7.5 inches and written on one cover in bold script is the title "Bethel Durant's Plantation Book. 1804."
The inscription on the book seems strange. However, hidden within the pages is an explanation for the title. On Sept. 7-8, 1804, there are two entries that read, "The Board do agree to pay Henry Durant three Dollars for a Blank Book." and "The Board do agree to pay William Hemingway three Dollars for to bring up their Journals." Henry Durant and William Hemingway were both on the Board of Commissioners for Horry District at that time. Apparently, Henry Durant furnished the commissioners one of Bethel Durant's blank Plantation Books and William Hemingway then copied all commission proceedings into that book.
It is a fascinating book full of details about what had to be done in order to set up the new county government. It also paints a mental picture of what Conwayborough (now Conway) would have looked like in the early 1800s as well as revealing the names of many of the inhabitants of Horry District (now Horry County) in the early 1800s, many of whose descendants still live within its borders.
Mentioned in the book is the construction of the first Horry District Court House and Gaol (Jail).
An entry dated Jan. 30, 1802, states, "The Board of Commissioners met, and was present Thomas Livingston, Samuel Floyd Junr, Samuel Foxworth, William Hemingway, William Williams, John Graham Senr, Thomas Fearwell and Robert Conway - to fix and ascertain the Local Station of the Court House and Gaol in Horry District--."
On March 23, 1802, it was recorded that, "the Court house to be built of Wood and fixed on Brick Pillars, Twenty Eight by Thirty six feet of as Good Materials as the Court House in Marion District and finished in as Workmanlike manner with the Addition of Lathing, Plastering and Whitewashing all the Rooms in said Building, the said Building is to be Compleated by the 22nd Day of April in the Year of our Lord 1803 and the above undertakers [Richard Green & William Snow] doth further Agree to Build a Gaol of Brick at the place aforesaid thirty by Thirty Six feet from out to out to be builded of as good Materials as the Gaol in Marion District and finished in the same Manner as the Gaol aforesaid the said Building to be Compleated by the first Day of April 1804..." Detailed construction specifications then follow for both the courthouse and jail.
The entire first story of the courthouse contained the court room and the plans for the room called for it to be, "finished as near possible like the Court House in Georgetown." The walls and ceilings were plastered and painted. Wainscoting in the court room was five feet high while upstairs it was "chairbord high." The upstairs contained a 12-foot wide hallway, a room for the use of the Sheriff and Clerk of the District and two jury rooms. The Gaol had several rooms, one of which was designated as a "Dungeon."
The location selected for the first courthouse and jail was on the north side of what we now call Fifth Avenue, between Laurel and Elm Streets in Conway. That location is at the top of an incline that rises gradually from the Waccamaw River. The commercial area of Conway stretches out below. Both buildings were destroyed sometime between 1825 and about 1850.

Architect Mills designed courthouse

On April 12, 1824, the following entry is recorded in the Journal of the Horry District Board of Commissioners 1802-1851: "The subscriber will contract to erect a court house in Horry District according to the plan & drawings exhibited, finding all materials, for the sum of nine thousand five hundred dollars." This bid to construct the building was signed in Georgetown by Russel Warren.
The courthouse that this document is referring to was to be the second for Horry District. It still stands today and is the most architecturally significant building in Horry County for it was designed by Robert Mills.
Mills is regarded by many as the first professionally trained architect born in America. He was born in Charleston in 1781. Mills studied architecture in part under the guidance of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. The Horry District Court House built in 1824-25 exhibits Jefferson's influence on Mills. It is also the best preserved of all of the courthouses that Mills designed in South Carolina.
While Robert Mills designed many famous public and private buildings, including the nation's first Washington Monument in Baltimore, which was built in 1815-25, he is most known for winning in 1836 the privately organized competition for the design of the Washington Monument in Washington. His proposal for the monument was for "a 600-foot-high square shaft, barely tapered and almost flat-topped, rising from a huge Greco-Roman peristyle (circular colonnade) wreathed with thirty-two Doric columns plus porch." That winning design was later altered after the death of Mills and the interruption of the erection of the monument during and after the Civil War.
On May 4, 1824, the commissioners of public buildings for Horry District awarded the contract to build the new Horry District Court House to Maj. Russel Warren. On May 20, 1824, a detailed contract for the court house was agreed to between Warren and the following commissioners: John Servis, A.W. McRae, Samuel Willson, Benjamin Gause Jr. and William Johnston. The contract called for Russel Warren to "build the court house now to be built for the District of Horry, finding all the materials of the best quality and doing the work in a workmanlike manner according to the plan & specifications thereof, forming a part of this contract, and to finish and complete the same on or before the fifteenth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five."
The balance due on the contract for the construction of the Court House was paid to Russel Warren on April 18, 1825.
The commissioner's journal does not give specifications for the jail that was built to accompany the courthouse. It, too, was designed by Robert Mills. On July 9, 1825, Capt. Henry DuRant was appointed to build the new jail. It was to be finished by March 1, 1827. On June 28, 1828, the jail was apparently not completed to the satisfaction of the commissioners. The cost to build the new jail was $8,000. It was erected on a lot adjoining the courthouse.
The second Horry District Court House still stands today. In 1908, it was purchased by the city of Conway for use as City Hall. In recent years, it has been carefully restored. It is an excellent example of the S.C. courthouses designed by Robert Mills while he served as superintendent of public building for South Carolina.
The Robert Mills-designed jail was eventually incorporated into part of the Grace Hotel in 1914.
In 1968, the hotel was demolished with the exception of the old walls of the jail. At the time, it was hoped that the remnants of the historic jail would be converted into a museum for Horry County. Unfortunately, the building was destroyed in the 1970s.

Life on the Grand Strand in 1784

Horry County has had many interesting visitors pass through it since it was settled by Europeans in the early 1700s. What brought many of these visitors to our area was the main north/south coastal road, which passed through the county. That road, called variously the King's Highway, the Broad Road, the Long Bay Road and the Lower Road, was located in approximately the same location where U.S. 17 is now located. One visitor who traveled this road, in what was then All Saint's Parish of Georgetown District, and left us an account of what he saw was Johann David Schoepf.
We are fortunate to have had such a visitor as Schoepf. He left us a written account of what he saw along the coastline of Horry County in 1784. According to the book, "Travels in the Confederation," Schoepf was born in 1752 in the German principality of Bayreuth. He was educated as a physician and as a natural scientist. In 1777, he came to New York as chief surgeon of the Ansbach troops. These troops were fighting for King George III of Great Britain during the American Revolution.
Traveling from Wilmington, N.C., Schoepf entered South Carolina circa Jan. 9, 1784. He does not tell us exactly where he stayed his first night in South Carolina, but it was most likely in the Little River area. He mentions that the cost of the accommodations for three horses and three riders was six Spanish dollars. After an overnight stay at the tavern, the small party then traveled 16 miles to the plantation of Jeremiah Vereen.
Vereen's plantation was an indigo plantation. It was located about two miles above Singleton Swash and bordered the coastline. Schoepf records that, "At Mr. Vareen's we saw for the first time the staple South Carolina dish, rice in place of bread; for such use it is baked compact and dry, a pound of rice to two pounds of water, so that it may be cut in the dish. Customarily, no other sort of bread is seen in the country, and the inhabitants of these southern provinces are so used to rice that now and then it is served in this form in towns, and is preferred to bread. For a change, small, thin cakes are baked, either of rice alone or mixed with maize, and served warm. For the people of the hither Carolinian country, rice is the most important food and for their negroes almost the only food. The lands of our host being dryer and sandier, were not suitable for the culture of rice; therefore he occupies himself chiefly with Indigo."
Schoepf goes on to explain how indigo was cultivated along the Horry County coastline. Thanks to his scientific background, he was able to describe the plant in its accurate scientific name and therefore we know exactly which type of indigo was being grown here. The area of present-day Myrtle Beach was then largely an indigo plantation owned by the Withers family and the Surfside Beach area was an indigo plantation owned by the Tillman family and called The Ark Plantation.
Another interesting observation that Schoepf makes is, "At Mr. Vareen's house I saw the skin of a female red tiger or cugar (Felis concolor Linn), which had been brought down in the neighborhood a few days before. The length of the stripped, and now somewhat shrunken, skin was over five foot from the muzzle to the beginning of the tail, the tail itself somewhat more than three foot long. The back, the sides, and the head were uniformly fallow, nearly fawn-colored, but the flanks and the belly whitish grey. The individual hairs were of one color throughout. The end of the tail verged somewhat on black, but the rest of the tail was of the color of the body. A paw had been preserved; the claws were crooked and very strong, but there were no bony cases, (as with other varieties of this species), into which they might be withdrawn; they stood free, but so that they could be out-stretched and bent upwards and backwards. Several of the negroes ate of the flesh of the animal, and found it not at all distasteful. The man who killed it came almost upon it in the woods, before he observed it; it fled before him from tree to tree, until he could bring it down with his gun."
Schoepf stayed overnight at the Vereen plantation and then traveled south via the alternate Long Bay Road along the Strand. As he traveled the beach, he remarked that the road was "by no means a tedious road." He seemed to find great interest at what he saw and remarked that the objects that "strew the beach, engage and excite the attention of the traveler at every step."
As Schoepf road along the wide strand at low tide, he seemingly was unaware of the Withers' indigo plantation that he passed. At that time, there were large sand dunes that lined the beach, making the uninformed traveler unaware of what lay just inland behind the dense oaks and wax myrtles.

Waties Family Came from Wales

Several years ago, while reading a grammar school textbook about South Carolina that was printed and used in the early 1900s, I was surprised to read that the book stated that Horry County was unusual in that it was the only coastal county in South Carolina that did not have a barrier island along its coast. Knowing that this was untrue, it was irritating to read this incorrect statement in a book that was being used within our state's educational system.
The truth was that at the time that book was printed, Horry County had two barrier islands located along its coastline.
They were Futch Island and Waties Island. Both of these were located just south of Little River Inlet.
Futch Island has been known over the years by several different names. These include Minor's Island, Bellamy Island and Futch Island. All of these names are derived from the names of early settlers of that area. In 1950, Cherry Grove Inlet, which separated Futch Island from Cherry Grove Beach, was filled in. After that, the area that had once been an island became known as East Cherry Grove Beach.
Just north of East Cherry Grove Beach is Hog Inlet. (In colonial days Hog Inlet was known as Master's Inlet.) On the other side of Hog Inlet is Waties Island. Waties Island is named for either William Waties Sr. or junior. Originally from Wales, William Waties Sr. settled near Charleston around 1694. In 1716, he was appointed as a factor for trading with the Indians north of the Santee River and established a trading house at Uauenee (Yauhannah), otherwise called the Great Bluff.
In 1735, his son, William Waties Jr., also a former Indian trader, helped survey the boundary line between North Carolina and South Carolina in the area of present-day Horry County. Waties senior, junior and III accumulated large tracts of desirable land along the Waccamaw, Pee Dee and Little rivers in Horry County, as well as along the coast and in the Georgetown area.
The oldest known plat for Waties Island is a survey dated May 7, 1754, and certified July 31, 1754. On the document it states, "South Carolina. Pursuant to a precept from George Hunter Esq. Surveyor General, dated the 7th day of May, Anno Domini, 1754, I have admeasured and laid out an Island known by the name of Waties Island, in Prince George Parish, Craven County, unto William Allston: Butting and bordering S.E. on the sea, N.E. on Waties Inlet, N.W. on a creek running through a Salt Marsh, and S. on Master's Inlet, and containing Seventy one and a half acres; Having such shape and form as the above plat represents. Certified this 31 July 1754. Zech: Brazier, D.S."
This plat would have accompanied a King's grant issued by the royal governor of South Carolina deeding the property to William Allston.
It is interesting that the island was already called Waties Island, yet there is no evidence known at this time that William Waties ever owned the island. It is possible, but there is no evidence, that he had a proprietary grant for the island, but he never recorded it and that Allston purchased the land from Waties' heirs but still applied for a King's grant for the property to make sure he had a clear title. William Waties Sr. left a will, but it has been lost.
It is possible that Waties Island may have been named for William Waties Jr., not senior, who, according to records, owned 1,150 acres in the area as of 1733. Five hundred acres bordered the creek that ran behind the island, and at least two maps call that creek Waties Inlet.

Visitor Center on National Register


The Col. C.P. Quattlebaum Office is believed to have been built in 1860 for Dr. Joseph M. Harrell, formerly of Whiteville, N.C. It was originally located on Main Street in Conway. In 1876, it became the Conway law office of C.P. Quattlebaum, who partnered with the law firm of W.D. Johnson and J. Monroe Johnson of Marion. In 1882, Col. Cephas Perry Quattlebaum purchased the building from Harrell.
The architectural style of the building seems to have been typical of the village of Conwayborough in the years prior to 1861. Historic photographs show that several other downtown buildings had architectural similarities to Harrell's office. It is known that some of the other buildings with similar details were built in part by ship carpenters. These carpenters had come from Maine to Horry District to work for Capt. Henry Buck. Buck had large plantations along the Waccamaw River and was engaged in the timber business.
On Aug. 1, 1891, the first bank in Horry County, the Conway branch of the Bank of the Carolinas, which was based in Florence, is thought to have opened "for the transaction of ordinary banking business" in the front room of Quattlebaum's law office. On May 3, 1893, a national financial crash began, which is known as the Panic of 1893. As a result, on May 16, 1893, the doors of the Bank of the Carolinas and its branches were shut and never reopened.
On May 26, 1893, the first locally owned bank in Horry County, the Bank of Conway, was formally organized in Conway. It was chartered on May 29, 1893, and began business on June 12, 1893, and was also located in the front room of Quattlebaum's law office. Quattlebaum continued his law practice out of the rear office. This arrangement continued until 1899 when the Bank of Conway relocated to a new building on Main Street.
In 1898, Quattlebaum became the first mayor, or intendant, of the town of Conway when it was incorporated. The Quattlebaum Office was moved to Third Avenue sometime around 1900 where it continued to be the law office of C.P. Quattlebaum until his death in 1929. It then became the office of his son, Paul Quattlebaum who is responsible for bringing electric lights to Conway in 1908. His company was later called the Quattlebaum Light & Ice Co. and was located nearby on Kingston Street. In 1995, Paul Quattlebaum's daughter, Laura Quattlebaum Jordan, bequeathed the property to the Horry County Historical Society.
In August 2002, the Horry County Historical Society began restoring the Quattlebaum Office with financial help from the city of Conway, the Conway National Bank and a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior. Every effort was made to stay true to the building's architectural integrity. It is significant locally as the only surviving example of downtown Conway's antebellum wood-frame buildings, as the building which housed the first and second banks in Horry County from 1891-1899 and for its association with the Quattlebaum family from 1876-1995. Restoration was completed in July 2003and the building was reopened as the Conway Visitor Center.
The Quattlebaum Office is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources | The Independent Republic Quarterly, National Register Nomination Form for the Col. C.P. Quattlebaum Office, So Much to Be Thankful For, the Conway National Bank, the Economic History of Horry County by Dr. Roy Talbert Jr.

Earthquake shook things up in 1886
posted on Dec 20, 2007

On Aug. 31, 1886, around 9:50 p.m., a major earthquake, centered in Charleston, shook Horry County.

As in Charleston and other places, some people in Horry County wondered if the world was coming to an end.

In an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 6, 1906, following the San Francisco earthquake and fire, Paul Pinckney, who witnessed the Charleston earthquake as a young boy, told of the event.

"The temblor came lightly with a gentle vibration of the houses as when a cat trots across the floor; but a very few seconds of this, and it began to come in sharp jolts and shocks, which grew momentarily more violent until buildings were shaken as toys. Frantic with terror, the people rushed from the houses, and in so doing, many lost their lives from falling chimneys or walls. With one mighty wrench, which did most of the damage, the shock passed. It had been accompanied by a low, rumbling noise, unlike anything ever heard before, and its duration was about 1 minute."

He continued, "To add to their dismay, the people were cut off from the outer world, all wires being down, and it was not until next day that a courier rode to Summerville, nearly 30 miles away, and gave the world its first news of the disaster. At the same time, he brought back the cheering message that the world was not utterly destroyed, as many had believed. The rumors current on the outside were to the effect that Charleston and all the coast country had been swept away by a mighty tidal wave and that the Florida peninsula had snapped off from the continent in the general cataclysm and fallen into the sea."

At Pineville, near the rural community of Cool Springs in western Horry County, Noah W. Cooper was boarding at the home of Mayberry Mishoe in August 1886.

Although only in his late teens, he had taken a position as a teacher at a small rural school. On the night the earthquake struck, Noah recalled, "about 10 o'clock, I was awakened by a terrible noise. The house seemed to be breaking up. It was cracking and twisting and moving up and down. The noise sounded like the earth bellowing in mighty pain."

Realizing they were experiencing an earthquake, Noah calmed the others in the home.

"Another great roar like thunder underground and a movement of the earth made us dumb with fear. We ran out on the ground. The oaks in the yard were swaying back and forth, although there was no wind. I feared that the earth would open up and swallow us. We huddled together till the great roar subsided."

Amid the several aftershocks that night, Noah could hear some distant neighbors "crying and shouting and praying."

He decided to go to the terrified neighbors and try to calm them down. About 1 mile down the road, he found a friend on his knees near the front gate of the house where he lived.

"He was praying very loud, and sweat was pouring from his face. His mother-in-law was sitting in the middle of the yard in an old rocking chair praying aloud but without fear. She was saying, 'Oh, Mr. Cooper, the world is coming to an end. God is disgusted with the wickedness of the people. I am not afraid. I am ready to go, and I expect the world to be ended before daylight. I'm going home. Glory to God! Hallelujah!'"

The world did not end that night, but tremors continued for about one month.

News reached Horry County that Charleston had been destroyed by a tidal wave.

Churches throughout Horry and other nearby counties were never more crowded than on the following Sunday.

Some preachers suggested that the grape vineyards be cut down, to stop winemaking and wine drinking.

All in all, people found religion, if only for a brief period, after the great earthquake of 1886.

Henrietta last of Horry's ships

In 1874-75, the ship Henrietta was built at Bucksvilleon the banks of the Waccamaw River in Horry County, just north of present-day Bucksport.

The bustling town was the result of the large timber business done in that area by Capt. Henry Buck in the 1800s. Today, the only trace of the once-thriving town is a tall, lone brick chimney that once served the large steam-powered sawmill. Buck owned several large plantations and had three sawmills in the area: Lower Mill, the site of present-day Bucksport; Middle Mill, the site of Bucksville; and Upper Mill, located at his home, Upper Mill Plantation.

The building of the ship was the project of W.L. Buck & Co. W.L. Buck was a relative of Capt. Henry Buck. According to Charles Dusenbury, "Capt. Jonathan Nichols and Master Builder Elishua Dunbar came from Maine with one hundred and fifteen ship's carpenters, blacksmiths, joiners and riggers, arriving at Bucksville in September 1874, and soon laid the keel for a ship ... it took right about 1,300,000 feet of lumber to build her, and it took the men from Maine with ten to fifteen laborers picked up here all winter to build her. ... The cabin was built of long-leaf pine and was one of the most attractive pieces of workmanship of the kind that I ever saw."

The ship was launched in May of 1875. The launch was a big affair. Steamboats full of interested spectators came to partake in the launch parties and to view the ceremony. After the successful launch, the ship was soon "gotten ready for sea, and when she got her spars, rigging and what she actually had to have on board, she drew thirteen feet."

At that time, the Georgetown bar was about 12 feet at high water, leaving only 1 foot in excess for the Henrietta to cross over. To do this without damaging the ship, Capt. Nichols built a "cradle" for the ship. Dusenbury described it as, "a network of ropes holding two hundred empty spirits of turpentine barrels, which they put under the ship and raised her up. They filled the barrels with water and put them in place, then pumped the water out and bunged the barrels up, and they did the work. They had lines across the ship, and one fastened to the bow, and when they got into deep sea, they let go the lines, and the tug that towed her to sea picked up the cradle and towed it back to town. The barrels were as good as ever."

At the same time that the Henrietta was being built, an identical sister ship was being built in Maine by the same owners to test which place was the most profitable for shipbuilding.

The Henrietta ended up costing $90,000, and her northern counterpart cost $115,000. In spite of the more favorable Southern experience, the Henrietta was the last of the large oceangoing ships to be built in Horry County. Some say that when the northern shipbuilders that W.L. Buck & Co. did most of their business with learned of the results, they "to a man notified W.L. Buck & Co. that if they continued shipbuilding at Bucksville, they would do no more business with them. After due consideration, W.L. Buck & Co. decided that the Northern trade was worth the most." Thus ended the shipbuilding industry of Horry County.

The Henrietta, built of the native wood of Horry County, sailed the oceans of the world. She finally met her end after being struck by a storm off the coast of Kobe, Japan, and wrecked. It is said that the citizens of Kobe salvaged her wood and incorporated it into the construction of buildings in Kobe.

A Visitor's Take on Conway in 1862

"On Friday the 13th of June [1862], I arrived at the place of refuge [Conwayborough, SC] ... " wrote the Rev. William Wyndham Malet about his visit to Conway in the summer of 1862.
The Rev. Malet was an Anglican minister from Ardeley, Hertfordshire, England.
He had come to South Carolina on a mission to bring family news to his sister, Emily Frances Esdaile, wife of S.C. Lt. Gov. Plowden C.J. Weston.
The Westons had moved to the home known as Snow Hill, on the banks of Kingston Lake, in Conway (then known as Conwayborough).
It was to be their refuge from the invading Union Navy that was threatening the homes along the lower Waccamaw River.
Malet's account of his visit is an interesting, firsthand description of Conway in war-time 1862.
He describes Conway in the following extractions from his book, "An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862."
"Conwayboro' is the county town, having the county courthouse and gaol [jail], with its sheriff and mayor, &c.; the population about 350. There are two churches - one Presbyterian [Kingston Presbyterian Church], one Methodist [Conwayborough Methodist Episcopal Church, South]; the houses are never more than two stories high - most of them only one - all built of wood, with brick chimneys; raised on brick or wooden piers 2 feet or more high ... "
"The houses are far apart, placed in their own gardens ... Thus Conwayboro', though of small population, is of considerable extent, fields lying between some of the houses. The courthouse and gaol [jail] are of brick, the former having the usual facade of Doric pillars. Evergreen oaks [Live Oaks] cast their welcome shade in all directions; fig trees and vines cool the houses; peach orchards yield their delicious fruit. The treatment for these peach trees is very simple; viz., baring the roots in winter and just before spring covering them with a coat of ashes and then with earth: with this they beat any wall fruit I ever saw in England. The gardens produce abundance of tomatoes, okras, eggplants, &c. Tomatoes in soup and stewed are the standard dish; and they are also eaten as salads."
"Every house was full; many refugees from the coast about George-Town, 50 miles distant, having obtained lodgings. The house I came to is on a bluff [Snow Hill], looking over a "branch" [Kingston Lake] of the Wakamaw river ... these buildings being ready, besides stabling, &c. for four horses, and about 50 acres of land, made it convenient for Mrs. Weston's purpose, whose plantation [Hagley] too was within a drive, about 42 miles down the river ... "
"Now I hear the sounds peculiar to this region, the land of sand, of woods, of 'branches,' of creeks, and swamps: - the hollow bark of the crocodile; the bellowing of the bullfrog, all night long - the note of summer, just as the cuckoo's is in England; also, breaking the silence of the night, the mournful cry of the 'whip-poor-will.' I had feared, from this latitude being about that of Morocco, it would be too hot for singing birds; but, on the contrary, the mockingbird, plain to eye but charming to ear, sent forth its varied song by night and by day; the nightingale's notes at night, and the thrush and the blackbird's warble by day. Some told me they imitate caterwauling, but I was glad not to hear that phase of their song ... "
"On the 19th June [1862], the thermometer at Conwayboro' was 80 degrees at 11 a.m., and 76 degrees at 9 p.m.: during the day, a heavy thunderstorm echoed through the forests; the wind here blowing over lofty pines, sounds like the wind at sea ... "
We are fortunate to have Malet's book, for it gives us insight into what life was like in Conway in 1862.
He goes on to describe visits with the town's people and quotes conversations with them on topics such as slavery, religion, the war for Southern independence and agriculture.
In October 1862, the Rev. Malet returned to Ardeley, England.
By the end of the war in 1865, Plowden Weston had died, and Mrs. Weston, heartbroken from the death of her husband and distraught at the fate of the South, had also returned to her native England.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Ben Burroughs

Research Specialist

http://ww2.coastal.edu/ben

Burroughs & Chapin Center for Marine and Wetland Studies www.coastal.edu/cmws

Coastal Carolina University www.coastal.edu


THANK YOU BEN!!