Appalachian History

There is no more sacred spot in upper South Carolina than the Old Stone Church and its adjoining cemetery, where many of South Carolina's most distinguished dead lie sleeping. The old church stands as a silent tribute to the piety and heroism of our first settlers, many of whom came over the mountains from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina to make their homes in this beautiful but savage wilderness.

As was the custom with the Scotch-Irish, as soon as they were settled in their new homes, they banded themselves together for public worship and immediately set about the establishment of a church. Following the church, there was a school; for with them religion and learning must go hand in hand.

The old church has stood for more than a century and a quarter, and its gray walls have recorded the hardships of the sturdy pioneers and the march of progress. Some of her worshipers followed Pickens into the battles of Ninety-Six, King's Mountain, Cowpens and Eutaw Springs. The accurate fire of these men with their flint and steel rifles drove fear into the hearts of the British. The sight of the coonskin caps which these men wore made them quake.

It has witnessed the early days of the new republic, the tramp of the feet of an invading foe, and still continues, although without regular services for almost a century to witness for God and the right.

On October 13, 1789, the people of Seneca appealed to the Presbytery of South Carolina to be taken under its care. In compliance with this request the Rev. John Simpson of New Jersey was sent to preach one Sabbath in the month. In 1790 he was installed as pastor of the log church, which stood about 80 rods from the dwelling of the late Ezekiel Pickens on the north side of the road. A tablet now marks the spot, though doubtless overgrown with brambles.

The growth of the congregation soon made a larger and more commodious church necessary. The foundations of the present church were laid in 1797 on 16.94 acres of land given by John Miller, the printer.

The church was completed in 1802 and stands as an enduring monument to the workmanship of John Rusk, father of the late United States Senator Rusk of Texas. The church was built by public subscription and the session book records that the principal contributors were Gen. Pickens, Gen. Anderson, George Reese, William Steele, Capt. McGriffin, Hardy Owens, Messrs. Whitner, Calhoun and Earle. The seats and pulpit were of walnut and were contributed by Gen. Pickens individually. Unfortunately the interior of the church was destroyed by a forest fire many years ago.

The church was named Hopewell-Keowee for the home of Gen. Pickens, only a short distance away.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a distinguished scholar and patriot, was installed as pastor in 1792. He died in 1796 and was said to have been the first buried in the adjoining cemetery. The cemetery is enclosed by a substantial granite wall, and passing through the iron gate we pause at his grave. Ramsay, the historian, said of him in part: "That his admired essay on the Influence of Religion in Civil Society is an honorable testimony of the literature of South Carolina in 1788." His arduous pursuit of his studies shortened his life. He was the first South Carolinian to receive a degree from Princeton.

John Miller, the publisher of the famous Junius Letters, and many of his descendants, lie buried in the east corner. A native of London, England, he knew well the writer of the famous letters, but carried the secret to his grave. Settling first in Charleston, he published the South Carolina Gazette and Advertiser, which he sold, and moved to Pendleton, where he began the publishing of the Pendleton Weekly Messenger, using the old printing press of Gen. Nathaniel Green. His sons, John and Crosby Miller, were faithful members of the old church. His descendants continue to uphold the honor of the family. The family of one John Miller has furnished two foreign missionaries, one outstanding home missionary and two splendid physicians.


Excerpt from 'Historic Oconee County, South Carolina,' by Mary Cherry Doyle, written 1935, published by Old Pendleton District Historical Commission, 1967
online at http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/history/H-12.txt

Shortly after taking office in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt announced plans for creation of a "conservation army." FDR at first saw the Civilian Conservation Corps primarily as a forestry organization -- fighting fires, planting trees, thinning timber stands, stopping soil erosion and floods -- but the field personnel of the State and Federal agencies involved soon realized that CCC labor might also be directed toward the construction of forest improvements--particularly roads, trails, buildings, and recreation sites. The CCC men literally built the foundations on which the national forests now stand.

Camp Ellison D. Smith F-l, located near the Whetstone Road in Oconee County, was the first CCC camp to be located in South Carolina. This and two others soon to follow employed approximately 800 men at their peaks, and remained operational for nearly 10 years.

The men of these camps built Oconee State Park, Long Mountain Fire Tower, and Walhalla Fish Hatchery, and rebuilt Highway 107. There were many other less obvious projects. Millions of trees were planted; girdling to kill undesirable rotten trees was done on thousands of acres; growth plots for long-term forest inventory were established. Erosion control work was done on eroding fields which were on farms purchased by the Forest Service; property boundaries were surveyed, painted, and posted, in addition to wildlife being stocked.

Hard work, fresh air, and plenty of food were considered essential for CCC employees to accomplish one of the goals established by the office of education, "to develop an appreciation of nature and of country life." And to that third end, here is the 1938 Thanksgiving menu for Camp 1:

OLIVES
GIBLET GRAVY
CANDIED SWEET POTATOES
GUAVA JELLY
FRIED CORN
FRUIT PUNCH
SWEET PICKLES
CREAM OF PEA SOUP
SALTINES
ROAST TURKEY
CRANBERRY SAUCE
ROAST PORK HAM
HOT ROLLS
LETTUCE SALAD
BUTTER
CELERY HEARTS
OYSTER DRESSING
CREAMED CAULIFLOWER
GRAPE JELLY
CREAMED POTATOES
PUMPKIN PIE
FRESH FRUITS
PLUM PUDDING
CIGARETTES
ICE CREAM
NUTS
COFFEE
MINCE MEAT PIE
ASSORTED CANDIES
BRANDY SAUCE
CIGARS
FRUIT CAKE

Oconee State Park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 16, 2004.

sources: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/sc/oconee/history/MR-03.txt
www.nationalregister.sc.gov/oconee/S10817737015/index_2.htm

related post: "He is now in the C.C. Camp"

CCC Oconee+State+Park Oconee+County+SC appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+culture

The Keil Farm is significant as an example of the evolution of an antebellum farm house from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and also symbolizes the role that a German immigrant family played in the settlement and development of Walhalla and Oconee County in SC.

John Henry Keil, Sr. (1817-1900), was born Johann Heinreich Keil, in Stotel, Germany, and spent almost 10 years in Charleston after migrating there in the late 1830s or early 1840s. He was listed as a grocer in the City of Charleston directory in 1842. His naturalization papers also list this occupation. He and his family were members of St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church of Charleston. Keil married Margurethe Henrietta Sahlmann in 1847 there, and all of their three children (Katherine Sophia, born July 24, 1848; Johann Heinreich Keil, Jr., born June 12, 1850; Gessina Sophia, born September 21, 1852) were baptized there.

The German Colonization Society of Charleston, led by John A. Wagener, purchased a large tract of land from Col. John Grisham of West Union and laid out the town lots and agricultural area of Walhalla in 1850. Getting to the frontier of settlement in Oconee County (then part of Pickens District) in 1852 from Charleston required a seven hour ride on the SC Railroad to Columbia, another long train ride to Honea Path or Anderson, and finally a seven or eight hour carriage ride to Pendleton and Walhalla.

John Henry Keil and family, about 1853, took up residence in the Bear Swamp area of Wagener Township. In 1857, he purchased 203 acres of land in the Bear Swamp area from J.F. Leopold for $1,015. Part of this purchase contains the current property. Keil, his family, and their pioneer friends initially must have labored in near isolation in the area in which they settled.

When the family moved to Walhalla, they began by 1855 an active association with the newly formed St. John’s Lutheran Church. The family was active in Sunday School and Keil Sr was active as a vestryman from 1878 until his death in 1900.

J.H. Keil Sr planted a variety of legumes and vegetable crops as well as having "milch" and beef cows, swine, and sheep.

Economic resources diminished during the Civil War and during Reconstruction, but by the turn of the century, conditions had improved to the point where the residence had been expanded from its original 700 square feet downstairs and another 400 feet in the loft to usable space measuring over 2000 square feet downstairs and 1000 feet upstairs.

The initial expansion, sometime between 1894 and 1900, was an addition to the west and south of the original house. It provided additional bedrooms and expanded the dining area. The final addition came about 1900 in the form of a large parlor and entrance hall. By that time, J.H. Keil, Jr's family had taken over the house and farm from Keil, Sr. The elder's wife had died in 1884, and he had already moved into his town house, which he had purchased in 1879.

John Henry Keil, Jr. died in July 1914 after a team of mules dragged him across a field. His widow, Margaret Jane Keith Keil, took over active management of the farm until her death in 1939. Her records contain agreements with sharecroppers William W. Brewer and Winfield Morton dated 1884 and another with Isaac Allen dated 1887.

The Keil Farm tenant house, also known as "Merrit's House" in the 1930s and 1940s, was likely used for the purpose of providing housing to sharecroppers and may date to 1884 or before. Margaret J.K. Keil's records contain a receipt for a new buggy purchased in 1905 for $80. As late as 1940, a buggy shed stood several hundred yards from the main house.

By the Depression, John & Margaret's children had moved away from Walhalla. But when hard economic times spread throughout the country, the Keil Farm provided the haven to which many of these children, spouses and their children returned, for various periods of time.


From National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1998
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/oconee/S10817737013/S10817737013.pdf

The South in the days before the Civil War had despised manufacturing, but the men who rebuilt the war-ravaged Southern states were well aware of the importance of industrialization.

The new era began with the opening of the Piedmont Mill in the upper part of South Carolina in 1876. The textile industry grew quickly after 1880, and South Carolina was one of the leading textile-producing states in the nation for the next forty years. By 1892 there were fifty-one mills in South Carolina, making the state first in the nation in power looms and second in spindles. Textile mills became a major element of industry, commerce, and society in the upcountry.

William Ashmead Courtenay of Charleston was one of the pioneers of the industrial movement which transferred the bulk of the American cotton industry from New England to the Southern states where the raw material is produced. Courtenay served as mayor of that city from 1879-1887, where he was lauded for his handling of a major earthquake in 1886.

In weighing a location for the cotton mill he wished to build, Courtenay selected the Piedmont section of South Carolina for proximity to the growing fields, and narrowed his choice to Oconee County with its river resources flowing vigorously out of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Among other criteria he considered was the expanding rural population with its eagerness for "real pay" and more favorable living conditions. He knew that a new, clean village with more conveniences and steady pay would draw the sharecroppers. And indeed, many unsuccessful farmers did turn to the textile mill for employment.

Of a nervous temperament, his was an impetuous and in some respects aggressive nature, involving constant effort to restrain impulses and check too hasty action. He possessed quick perceptive power, tireless energy, strong facility for organization, wonderful capacity for work and marked executive ability. Impatient of unnecessary delays, this with some left the impression of needless austerity and impulsiveness, but under all this seeming brusqueness there was a genial disposition.

----Description of William Ashmead Courtenay from History of South Carolina, by Yates Snowden, Harry Gardner Cutler, Lewis Publishing Company, 1920

On April 21, 1893, Courtenay and his associates received a charter from the South Carolina secretary of state "to establish a factory in Oconee County for the manufacturing, spinning, dying, printing, and selling of all cotton and woolen goods." Courtenay built his cotton mill and a village of workers' houses along the Little River, naming the town Newry in memory of his ancestors’ original family home in Ireland.

There was a rumor about William Courtenay using funds allocated for earthquake relief in Charleston in order to start the mill community, says Henry Cater, who worked for Courtenay Manufacturing Company from 1952 to 1964, in an oral history. Even the location of the mill is key to the story, as it was claimed that the community was essentially “hidden” by its location in the valley.

Cater says the corporation formed by Courtenay with Frances J. Pelzer, William B. Whaley, R. C. Rhett, W. B. S. Hayward, and John C. Carey in fact raised stock aboveboard and was innocent of that charge.

"It was in a sparsely settled and unfrequented corner of the county," Courtney wrote of the new site to his stockholders. "Labor had to be brought there, shelters built for them; in fact all the primitive conditions of the distant border had to be dealt with, machinery for brick making and other purposes had to be transported from distant points, one and a half miles of railroad must be graded and built."

Courtenay Mill was constructed in a typical New England textile factory design. The design is attributed to William B. Whaley. On June 14, 1894, water first turned one of the mill power wheels. The mill was in full operation by the end of that year. The plant was originally operated by hydro power, but about 1905, steam engines and boilers increased production.

Many of the structures at Newry, including the mill, mill office, post office, store, church, supervisors' houses, and many of the workers' houses, were built between 1893 and 1911. The houses are excellent examples of buildings in a planned textile village.

Courtenay also built a house at Newry which he called Innisfallen and lived there until 1902. That year he told stockholders in the company’s annual report: “Under the Company's By-Laws it has not been possible for me to be absent for more than a few days at a time during these ten years. I may be obliged to have a vacation in the coming spring.” But it was more than a vacation. He moved to Columbia, the state capital, where he spent the last years of his life, dying in 1908.

The mill itself closed in 1975, and The Newry Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.


Sources: www.newrymillsc.org/
http://192.220.96.192/wac.htm
http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/history/FCH-10.txt
http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/oconee/cemeteries/c137a.txt
www.lib.clemson.edu/SpCol/findingaids/manuscripts/Mss278Wegner.pdf
www.oconeeheritagecenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25
www.nationalregister.sc.gov/oconee/S10817737008/S10817737008.pdf



William+Ashmead+Courtenay Newry+SC Oconee+County+SC cotton+merchants appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history

"From his father, my father Ira Jacob Butts learned how to mix certain roots and leaves of grass together for a cure for snakebites. He never told which weeds and roots he used, and I would not attempt to try to describe them. Anyway, he would boil the roots and leaves, and would then strain away the particles, leaving only the water in which they were boiled.

"This would be diluted with whiskey, and be given to the victim to drink. The whiskey, I am told, caused the blood to thin, allowing faster flow to the bitten area. Then too, it might have taken the whiskey to kill some of the taste until a person could drink the solution, who knows? One thing I am certain of, and that is, that the same medicine worked on all snakebites, and modern doctors seem to not agree with this today.

"Personally, I witnessed him curing his granddaughter, Vera Mae Butts, when she was bitten by a Copper-Head, and again curing Dave Pitts when he was bitten by a Rattle Snake. Once a victim started drinking the solution, he could drink a little or a lot, but once the bottle was taken away, another drink was sure death, for it was stronger than the poison from the snake.

"Samuel Burton, Ira's son-in-law, had a dog bitten by a snake. It was given the solution, then soon recovered. Sam said if a little helped, then some more would do better. No sooner had he poured some more solution into the dog’s mouth, then the dog died instantly.

"On one occasion, when Samuel Burton was fishing on Chauga River, he was bitten by a Rattler, and was then carried to his mother’s home on Rocky Fork. They sent for Ira, who lived some ten or more miles away, and he came to the scene, and prepared a solution from leaves and roots located nearby. At that time, Samuel's tongue had swollen out of his mouth, and very little hope was left. Within thirty minutes from the time he had been given the solution, Samuel Burton began to talk, and within an hour he was walking.

"Ira Jacob Butts (1868-1939) was raised in the upper part of Oconee County, SC, in a small community known as Brasstown, near Long Creek. As an adult he rented a place from his brother Silas Butts near Holly Springs, at the foot of Grassy Mountain, where he lived until his death."

Carlie Glen Butts
b. 1928

source: http://sciway3.net/scgenweb/oconee-county/cemetery-txt/c024.txt



Ira+Jacob+Butts snakebite+cures Oconee+County+SC appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"A few miles from Seneca, S. C. on the Blue Ridge Railroad there was a station called Perryville; now only a few rocks remain on the south side of the track to mark the spot. There was a bar-room, where doubtless many regaled themselves. One man who lived nearby would light his pipe with a one dollar bill. Let us hope he never regretted what had gone up in smoke.

"A family who lived across the road were fine businessmen, and their sons established the Tate Marble works of Elberton, Georgia. They were very successful in their enterprise and one of them built a large home of pink marble which was a show place in that vicinity.

"A few miles down the Railroad, established many years ago, and recently enlarged, is Shiloh cut where Mr. Calhoun Clemson, only son of Thomas G. Clemson [founder of Clemson University] and his wife, Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson, was killed on the Railroad. He was said to be an unusually handsome man with a promising future.

"The Blue Ridge was called the Old Blunder Buss in those days and the people seemed not to realize the importance and the great future of the railroads [ed.—SC statesman John C. Calhoun did! He was a member of the original surveying team.]

"The Blue Ridge was the bearer of the last shipment of Confederate gold, and the seal of state was said to have been thrown into the Savannah River.

"At Pendleton, during the War Between the States, the people eagerly gathered around the station when the train came to hear the news read, especially the Casualty List in which all were vitally interested.

"The tunnel, only a few miles from Walhalla, was begun in 1851 or '52 and is about one and one-third miles long. It was cut through Stump House Mountain and was intended as a link in the Blue Ridge Railway from Knoxville, Tenn., to Charleston, S.C., for the purpose of transporting the coal of the Tennessee mountains to the sea.

"While the work was in progress [the town, also named “The Tunnel,” had a population of] about 2,000 at this point. When the tunnel was about two-thirds finished, the war came on and the work was never finished. Two or more men lost their lives during its construction."


Mary Cherry Doyle
“Historic Oconee County, South Carolina”
Clemson, SC
January, 1935

source: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/sc/oconee/history/H-14.txt


Blue+Ridge+Railroad Oconee+County+SC Thomas+Clemson Confederate+gold Stump+House+Mountain appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+history history+of+appalachia