Shaw's of Sumter County South Carolina:

from 1772...

Their Story is Typical of the Times

by Ervin B. Shaw, Jr., M. D.

[skip to page of family tree links: Shaw, Brown, Kolb, Pringle, Williamson, Rembert, etc]

Matthew 6:33 implores us, and has done so since written in about 80 AD., to seek first the Kingdom of God: look and work first toward the things of ETERNAL security. [quickly check out God's great good news for mankind] And, Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

The earthly component of the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus focuses on "right relationships" (righteousness). History is an ongoing testimony as to the playing out of the general status of the quality of relationships at different times. Mankind, biblically fallen, is innately self-centered. Trouble & distress are, therefore, woven into the fabric of life on Earth. The quality of life in different times and different places depends on the general quality of a population's relationships. Relationship quality depends on the general awareness of the people as to the tie between (1) actions or inactions and (2) resulting future consequences. That awareness depends on (1) the general knowledge of the people, (2) the general vision of the people, (3) the general ability of the people to delay gratification, and (4) the general ability of the people to see that each one's own best self interest is most enhanced when attending to the best interests of the greater community. Then, the greater the level of all of these, the greater the overall wisdom of the people at . Elevations of general societal well being (incuding such as social justice) NEVER happen by force or legal systems. Rather, elevation of betterment ONLY happens by a general societal will and then the elevated interpersonal skill at right relationships. Especially with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, people have the means to truly see, when mature, that their OWN best self interest is greater served when folks do what it takes to have the best outcome for the greater general community!

The story of humanity is one of recurring desperations: the desperate (1) search for post-famine food, (2) dealing with the effects of natural & other disasters, and (3) the need to escape from oppressions. Counter to the dastardly accusation of modern-day (early 2000s) liberal-progressive academics and those easily influenced into their "progressive" ways of nonrealistic thinking, the European "white man" did not hatch a satanic plot in a smoke-filled room to conquer the western world! Rather, the Vikings, Spanish, and others pushed around or across the great Atlantic Ocean in search of food and in fear of falling off the edge of the flat earth as they fled hunger and/or religious & other oppressions with hungry stomachs. Modern folks also make hugely dislocating geographical moves for similar reasons and then compete for space and jobs where they land.

The story of the Shaw family is "Scotch-Irish" (as we heard our elders say when I was growing up...but, in Europe, Scots-Irish or "Ulster Scots people") and traces from the age-old struggle to do the above: the struggle for religious freedom. This was preceded by the Scottish development of just the notion of freedom³⁴. The Spanish were the first non-natives in the Southern USA. The Reformation began in 1517. Missionaries and religious groups from English, Dutch, and French origins began to arrive38. Moravians were early, to include John & Charles Wesley arriving in Savannah aboard the London Merchant with a group of 27 in 1735³⁸. Germans & Swiss began arriving in S. C. in 1734³⁸ (Jacob Drafts about 1743).

Can you imagine the disappointment and desperation of the times, and the faith required, to lead to a decision in 1772 (John Shaw) to cross an ocean in a small crowded boat? These people depended on God and put their faith in God. Who or what would their descendants of the next ten generations depend on? What do...who do...YOU depend on ? It would be after 1776 that the USA would form the world's only example of the covenantal form of representative democracy...the only modern government form likely to have long enduring freedom & opportunity for its people (sadly, this form has eroded considerably in the USA since 1960).

WITHIN-ESSAY QUICK LINKS:

Scotland Origins

Migration to Ulster (northeastern Ireland)

Leaving Ireland...the 5 ship-loads 1772

Early S. C. townships

Early S. C., a 1732 manuscript

Early S.C., a 1734 manuscript

Our ancestor's bad-luck trans-Atlantic immigration trip

His Sumter, S. C. area colonial land grant locations

Salem Black River Presbyterian Church

Old-timey transportation

Water: where from? 

Food: a life of "controlled spoilage"

Natural Disasters

Wars

Money & financial panics

1800s schooling

Early Sumter Medicine

Slavery

Sharecropping

Reconstruction, segregation, integration

Ancient Scotland Living

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What Made Them Leave Northern Ireland?

Scotland Origins

Scotland was born into a hardened and resolute people beginning with their resistance to Roman rule, and a thousand years later, their resistance to English rule...the battle of Bannockburn culminating with the rout of the English by Robert the Bruce at Stirling Castle in AD1314. Scotland is two cultures, The Highlands and the Lowlands. Lowlands Scotland consists of lands south of a line from the Firth of Clyde & Glasgow in the extreme west to just north of Carlisle and 73-mile-long, Roman-built Hadrian's Wall across to Edinburgh and Berwick-on-Tweed in the east²⁶. Over the earliest/ancient generations, occasional Scottish people left the southwest "Lowlands of Scotland", crossed 20-plus miles southwestwardly over St. Patrick's North Channel of the Irish Sea, and settled on the North-east coast of Ireland...a point visible from the shores of Scotland.  As time passed in later generations, descendants of some went back and forth to Scotland. Alternatively, some think that, about 1700 years ago (about 300AD), Gaelic speaking people from Ireland (called Scotti) crossed the Irish sea to what is now lowland Scotland. They met and intermarried with, and eventually absorbed, the Picts (probably a Caledonian off-shoot)...their descendants speaking Gaelic rather than Pictish. We are hereafter, in this file, pretty much talking about Lowland Scotland culture from whence our Shaw family originated.

Economic problems & Religious Persecution "pushing":

Under Pope Gregory I, following the over-running of the northwestern European areas of the Roman Empire by the "barbarians", England converted to Roman Catholic Christianity, soon to include neighboring Scotland (Caledonia) and Ireland, Ireland having been given to England in about 1150 AD by Pope Adrian IV (the only English Pope) ⁸.

Under James I, England (in about 1605...also to be known as James VI of Scotland) was a colonizer who (created the colony of Jamestown in America)  wanted to focus on a deliberate English civilization of at least northeastern Ireland. This would provide an added buffer against Irish invasion of England. Northeast Ireland (the Belfast area) being closest by sea to the northwest tip of the "Lowlands of Scotland", inducements were given by 1610 to Scots to move to Ireland and to settle what was known as the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland; and, many Scots came to Ireland thereby.

The Protestant Reformation came to Germany via Martin Luther in 1520, was championed by John Knox ("he who feared the face of no man") in Scotland beginning in 1559. Knox adopted the religious creed of Geneva's Frenchman, John Calvin; and Knox struck lethally at the roots of Popery and the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly believed that political power was ordained of God and was to the people rather than to Kings, nobles, or the clergy²⁶...the doctrine of popular sovereignty. And (100 years later) there began conflict between the Scottish Presbyterian church "ways" and those of the Anglican, Episcopalian Church of England. This lead to the Scottish Covenant, a division between the underground Scottish Covenanter Presbyterian "Kirk" (church) and the England state-approved, Bishops-controlled, Scottish Presbyterian "Kirk", and the desire of the Church of England to dominate in Scotland. By late 1638, events were leading into "The Bishop's War of 1639-41...the Killing Time being somewhere between then and 1700. Beginning in 1695-1702, there was a series of famines in Scotland (producing "the lean years" 1697-1703...deaths within the tens of thousands²⁶). Ironically, 1696 was the year of an act to begin parish schools...Scotland stood for Kirk and school (if you couldn't read, you could not exercise your right and duty to study Holy Scripture)...this happening 80 years after Knox had called for a national system of popular education in his 1560 Book of Discipline26.

On 14 January 1707, England and Scotland united and became Great Britain.

The Ulster Plantation scheme was launched in about 1610 following the English eviction of native Irish people from ancient family farms of the Belfast area (the beginnings of "Northern Ireland"). Exploitation mostly of impoverished Scots (mostly Lowland Scotland residents) was used to tenant the confiscated properties. The native Irish of that area were sent to remote reservations; and some became embittered outlaws who lived beyond the Pale, the boundary of the Ulster Plantation. The Scots persisted and developed a distinct culture, not Scotch and not Irish. Then they were evicted by their British landlords within three generations. Many of these displaced Scotch-Irish took inducements to emigrate to the American Colonies, and the inducements tended to use them to populate the dangerous ground along the frontier beyond American east-coast cities (such as Charleston).

So, within 100 years (early 1700s), the Scotch-Irish descendants of Scottish Presbyterian immigrants into Ulster were suffering their own severe economic troubles (the destruction of the woolen/linen trade in Ireland...only raw production for marketing, not finished goods, was allowed by England; linen trade collapsed in 1771-72¹⁶) along with some degree of religious persecution (Presbyterians couldn't hold office, etc.), the ruling Church of England being Episcopalian and the native Catholic Irish being to the west and south. Building upon this foundation of adverse pressure, the land leases of the Earl of Donegal's (northern Ireland) County Antrim Estates expired in 1770 (remember: "people" couldn't own property in those times) and created disturbances and evictions resulting from the actions taken to raise large sums of money (via "rack rents") in connection with the renewal of those leases^{9, 16}. 

Further inducements were made in the mid to late 1600s to move Irish to Barbados as slave labor on the sugar cane plantations...these white slaves being transported in slave ships and treated harshly as forerunners to black African slaves (England was attempting to meet the escalating world demand for sugar)²⁵. Many South Carolina Irish-stock settlers came from Barbados.

South Carolina "pulls": A short history of S. C. overview HERE.

South Carolina's capitol city began as Charleston, and Charleston was one of the most important port cities in the new world. The landed gentry and colonial officials (always seeking protective buffering from surrounding Indians, lawbreakers, and foreign enemies) devised a series of schemes to populate the back-woods interior with loyal citizens as a buffer against the less civilized humans of all types.

In the Township Act of 1730, eight townships were established by Gov. Robert Johnson in SC. They were all within 60 miles of the coast & all related to the state's river systems & consisted of between 10,000 to 20,000 acres each. Protestants were lured from various European areas with the promise of 100 acres per head of household and 50 acres for wife and each child above maybe 12 years of age...plus a town lot...plus tools & provisions for first year: [a wonderful map of townships] from this source.

1. Williamsburg Township (Scotch-Irish): on the Black River; present-day Kingstree area.  
2. Purrysburg Township (Swiss Germans & French Huguenots): on the Savannah River; centered near Harleyville & from about 25 miles upstream from Savannah to the present-day Aiken/Augusta area.  
3. Saxe-Gotha (originally Congaree) Township (Germans): on the Congaree River; Columbia/Cayce area & then moved to Lexington, S. C. (Germanic roots caused area upstream to be known as "The Dutch (Deutschland...Germany) Fork" area...from Broad River westward into Lexington Co. along the Saluda River.  
4. Orangeburgh (originally Edisto) Township...then Orangeburg (Germans): on the N. Edisto River; present-day Orangeburg area.  
5. Amelia Township (Swiss Germans & French Huguenots): Congaree & Wateree Rivers junction; present-day St. Matthews area.  
6. Fredericksburg  Township (Quakers & Scotch-Irish): on the Wateree River; present-day Camden area.  
7. Queensborough  Township, later Queensboro (Scotch-Irish and Welsh): on the Great Pee Dee River; present-day Cheraw area.  
8. Kings Town, later Kingston Township (Scotch-Irish & some English): on the Waccamaw River; present-day Conway area.  
9. Long Cane Creek area in Ninety-Six District (Abbeville area) in more western S. C. saw Patrick Calhoun (father of the famous John C. Calhoun) buy areas in the 1760s for French Huguenots and the Ulster Irish heading south from Pennsylvania.
   
   
   

By 1761, the above had proliferated into the Bounty Act of 1861 which continued land grants to all who properly appeared before the Council of the Commons House of Assembly. John Shaw got 100 acres near Shiloh, S.C. under this Bounty Act. 

Back to Irish-British "pushing":

In a committee report before the British House of Commons investigating the breakdown in the linen trade from Ireland, it was stated that almost every one of the 30,000 people who left Ireland between 1772 and 1773 were linen workers (or they left for reasons of the Anglican vs.. Presbyterian religious conflict; and food had become scarce and expensive)(p78)9. By the end of the 1700s, potatoes had made their way from Peru to Europe; 40% of the Irish ate no other solid food than potatoes. Famines of great size tended to hit various European areas about once per decade. Potatoes gave hope against such for about 50 years. In the summer of 1845, P. infestans (the water mold cause of potato blight) hit Europe and to Dublin by September & lead to the death of over a million Irish & sent others fleeing the country. Ireland remains one of the few nations with a 2011 population less than its population in 1850!

The First Scotch-Irish to America And The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road:

Those factors led to some families fleeing early to America, with the first Scotch-Irish settlement being formed in Maryland in 1680. In colonial times they were called "Irish" (until about the 1830's-1840's). Afterward and into the late 1700's, the ports of Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Boston Mass., New Castle Delaware, and Charleston S.C. beckoned. Those arriving at the northern ports tended to push westward with heavy settlement in Pennsylvania; later, many would migrate southward [see map] from Pennsylvania along the inland Shenandoah Valley "Wagon Road" to the inland Carolina's, helping to "fill" the interior of the Carolinas. It largely followed an ancient Indian path, The Occaneechi Trail, which ran from Virginia to Augusta Georgia, crossing a natural ford of the Catawba River, Nations Ford, 10 miles south of Charlotte N. C. This "Great Philadelphia Wagon Road" proceeded west across Chester and Lancaster counties and turned southwest at Harris' Ferry (present-day Harrisburg) where it crossed the Susquehanna River. It passed through York and Adams counties, traversed the western neck of Maryland, headed down Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, crossed North Carolina's central plateau, and terminated in South Carolina between Camden and Lancaster¹⁶. The "backcountry" of South Carolina was staunchly Presbyterian, especially the Catawba River valley..."The Waxhaws"...area between Lancaster, S. C. & Charlotte, N. C and from the Catawba River in S. C. to Monroe, N. C.²². They were reaching South Carolina by the 1760's via this route¹⁶. Scotch-Irish left Ireland in great numbers in 5 great pulses; a group of them was solicited into South Carolina in 1732 for the founding of Williamsburg (Kingstree) by the availability of the free "bounty" land grants.

Land and Wealth:

By 40 years later, with the truth of the news of land ownership and indigo wealth, a fifth great pulse brought many into South Carolina between 1771 and 1775. Our ancestor, John Shaw, 22 years of age, arrived in Charleston Harbor on board the Hopewell, 22 December 1772. So, there appears to have been a mix of immigration "push" and "pull" reasons/factors leading to John's immigration from Belfast. The group was from surrounding Counties Down and Antrim (the father of Pres. Andrew Jackson, Jr. was from County Antrim). By the time of the American Revolution of 1776, the S. C. backcountry had a population of 80,000 with the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians being the largest group...possibly even a majority¹⁶.

Why A Family History?

A family history tends to show the continuity, connectedness, and history of a family. It is certainly no legitimate basis for puffed up pride as pointing toward some sort of "big shot" ancestor multiple generations back. Present day family members have had any such ancestry diluted out over multiple generations by all the other inflowing lines of ancestry. Besides, the actual truth in our family histories, good or bad, has value to later generations. Exodus 20:5-6 attests to one angle, however, of a lasting effect of a parent, particularly the father, on generations to come, for both good and bad. This passage of traits/habits/ways was very strong up to and through the early 1900's. Radio, TV, and (since 1950) the powerful outside non-family influences on children have greatly altered (but not eliminated) such passage, mostly for the worse.

A family historian who was writing his family history was dismayed to find that an ancestor had been publicly hanged. In a moment of inspiration he wrote, "He died during a public ceremony when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed beneath him." Another family historian, finding that a relative had been sent to the "chair", wrote, "At the time of his death, he occupied a chair of Applied Electricity at one of our most famous institutions". An untrue "spin" can be placed on any story.

However, present day psychologists will confirm the fact that certain strong family tendencies can be passed down for multiple generations. For a people (or even a family) to understand itself and "belong", it helps to know its history...its "roots". Unfortunately, most of these early and colorful stories and descriptions and facets and traits of families are lost in the haste to document correct dates of birth, death, and marriage. I certainly fell prey to that tendency, early on.

Family Tree Search: Inciting Incident

In about 1961, a man purporting to be a genealogist, B. Otis Prince of Columbia, came around to many of the Sumter relatives pre-selling the production of a Shaw family history at about $25.00/family (a fairly hefty sum in 1961). He never produced the history. I found out about this and was incensed at the "injustice"...possibly even outright scam...and finally found the man in Columbia and visited him. It was obvious that he had never done much on the Shaw Genealogy, and I felt that he never intended to complete the effort. So, I took on the task (during college...about 1963) thinking it would be a fairly easy six-month effort.

Family Tree Search: The Start

My study of the Shaw family began in a very haphazard manner in about 1963; a first typescript was made in 1971, as an outline. By then, a number of early (1700's, not necessarily kin) Shaws in South Carolina had been identified; and I found myself in a great deal of confusion as to which one of the several John Shaws was our actual immigrant ancestor. It would be 25 years later (in 1996) before I became fully satisfied of the proof of the proper one. Here is a good resource on Sumter, S. C.

Summary Genealogy Context

Some authorities feel that Adam and Eve were born in approximately the year 4,000 BC. How are we connected? Humans lived to an age of approximately 150 years (or much more) before the Great Flood of Noah. The typical fertility period was probably unchanged so that generations have averaged about 18-25 years per generation. It, then, appears that my present generation might be #283 since Adam and Eve. The Bible suggests that the ancestry of Europeans was by way of Noah's (2400 BC.) son Japheth and his descendants, the Japheth branch beginning about 207 generations prior to John Shaw, our immigrant. Today's 20 year olds (my children, generation #284) would seem to be America's 21st generation, the "baby busters" born between 1961-1983. Beginning with John Shaw, our immigrant ancestor, I am in his Shaw Family's 7th generation in America. For those of us who are Christians, we additionally have a spiritual ancestry leading down from Noah through his son Shem to Abraham, to David, to Jesse, to Mary, and to the ultimate birth of Jesus Christ (the son of God, all born-again Christians being children of God).

Anthro-genealogy...Genetic Roots

It is now possible to check certain types of genetic family tree information through mitochondrial DNA passed from the mother's line and "y" chromosome DNA from the father's line. This web source explains how it works [here]. Two sources for such testing in 2010 are Family Tree DNA &African DNA. I have not had any such testing on myself.

Common Life in the 1700's in South Carolina

The Ervin Story...1732

What was life like in South Carolina at the time of the first Scotch-Irish settlement (1732) in Williamsburg (present-day Kingstree, S.C.), 40 years prior to our ancestor's arrival? Handed down within the Ervin family of South Carolina was a Bible said to have belonged to Colonel John Ervin (1754-1810, he commanded the Brittons Neck Brigade of Marion's Army during the revolutionary war). Included on some blank pages was written a short sketch of the "Irvin family" (Col. Ervin's last entry dated 1798; but this describes the situation as his grand-father James Ervin arrived in 1732), exactly transcribed, as spelled in the manuscript, as follows:

"Deeming it a privilege and duty, I hereby set down what I know of our family history and divers facts adjudged important for posterity to cherish"..."The Irvines, being Protestants, left the old Nation [Scotland] during the period of religious upheaval and settled in North Ireland. Howsoever soon conditions became intolerable and being of courageous and pioneering spirit, they decided to seek a better land in America on the Southern Frontier. My grandfather [James Irvin] was a man of huge statue with piercing dark eyes, fearless, of commanding presence, and various abilities. Through his veins coursed the blood of centuries of warriors and of his Scottish sires who patrolled the borders of their land repelling many invaders. It was destined that he would be a leader in rounding up the first band of colonists for the proposed settlement on Black River in the state of South Carolina. His family were amongst those who in 1732 blazed the trail for other footsteps to follow. This colony of some dozen families, under command of Roger Gordon, sailed from Belfast and endured the hazardous passage of over two months across the ocean, beset by tempest, perils and untold suffering and sickness. One Irvine son perished and was consigned to the bosom of the deep. My grandfather's family was large, being"..."Great was their sorrow when most of these passed in the tragedy of a great mortality ^{[a probable flu epidemic].} On the voyage across the family was sorely ill and on safe arrival in Charles Towne it was necessary to tarry until health was restored. Subsequently, the sons Robert and John, last name being only a lad, with a sister, being of hardihood and daring hearts, were in the vanguard that opened up the trail from Charles Towne to the Kings Tree. Also of this company were our kinsmen, the Jameses and Wilsons. Some two years later came our kinsmen the Weatherspoons and others." ^{[author: they probably crossed over the Cooper River from Charleston toward present day Mt. Pleasant...to beyond the Christ Church area & heading up present day highway #41 through present day Jamestown to cross the 100 yards wide Santee River at Lenud's Ferry, following route of today's #41 to the Black River.]}

"The lad John Ervin was my father and he later married with Elizabeth daughter to Robert Ellison, Esq. In South Carolina, our name soon became to be spelled Ervin. Oft have I heard my father tell of this pioneering enterprise, of how their small vessel crept cautiously up the dark torturous reaches of the Black River, bordered with thickly forested swamps that shut out the daylight. The apprehension for safety increased when oft the silence was shattered by hideous and unearthly screams of wild things. On reaching the Kings Tree, great was their surprise to find nothing but primeval wilderness. Notwithstanding the company scattered to select home sites near streams or springs. The Irvines chose a bluff about a mile distant and set to work to fell the mighty trees and clear away undergrowth. A crude shelter was erected tight on the sides of the prevailing winds. Later when joined by the balance of the family, a large cabin was built with thatched roof and mud chimneys."

"My father ^{[John Ervin]} was one of the few forthright and outspoken patriots of our District at commencement of the struggle for Independence. His business oft carried him to George Towne and Charles Towne so he remained better posted and saw the future more clearly than most of his neighbors. From the first he cast his lot with America and influenced many others in those early days."

"One of the first cares of this pious colony (for they were mostly, if not all, members of the Presbyterian Church) was to build a house to the Lord. They were content to dwell themselves in shanties not more comfortable than potato cellars, while their labors were more specially given to the erection of a house of worship, and a manse or parsonage for their minister, according to their custom in their native land."^{2[author: most were Covenanter (see below) Presbyterians as founders of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church of Kingstree, S. C.]}

"Ervin" as a Shaw given name

Miss Janie Revill, a Sumter professional genealogist until about 1970, did some extensive research for then Sumter Mayor, Miss M. Priscilla Shaw, and thought she had found evidence of a connection to the Ervin family...possibly through the sister of our immigrant, John Shaw. Or maybe there was a connection through John Shaw's first wife (whose identity is unknown). This given name has appeared strongly in the Shaw branch in Sumter and very strongly in the branch in Mississippi...both branches coming from David Shaw, son of John Shaw's first wife.

The Witherspoon Chronicles...1734

Another version of the first-settlement times was by way of the "Witherspoon Chronicles", thought to have been written by Robert Witherspoon (1728-1788), the grandson of John and Janet Witherspoon, in the year 1780, exactly transcribed, as spelled, as follows:

 "...until the year 1734 when he moved with his family to South Carolina. We went on ship board 14 of September and lay wind bound in the Lough at Belfast 14 days. The second day of our sail my grandmother died and was interred in the region Ocean which was an affective sight to her offspring. We were sorely tossed at sea with storm which caused our ship to spring a leak. Our pumps were kept furiously at work day and night. For many days our mariners seemed many a time at their wits end but it pleased God to bring us all safe to land, which was about the first of December ^[1734]."..."As I said, we landed in Charleston three weeks before Christmas. We found the inhabitants very kind. We stayed in town until after Christmas and we put on board of an open boat, with tools and one year's provisions, and one still mill. They allowed each hand upwards of 14 ^{[years old]} one ax, one broad hoe, and one narrow hoe. Our provisions were Indian corn, rice, wheaten flours, beef, pork, rum and salt. We were much distressed in this part of our passage and as it was the dead of winter, we were exposed to the inclemency of the weather day and night and which added to the grief of all pious persons on board the atheistical and blasphemous mouths of our patrons and their hands."

"They brought us up as far as Potatou Ferry ^{[over Black River...probably having come up the coastal ocean waters from Charleston to Winyah Bay, Georgetown, S. C., to enter and move inland on the Black River]}. It turned us on shore, where we lay in Samuel Commander barn for some time and the boat wrought her way up to the Kings Tree with the goods and provisions, which I believe was the first boat to ever come up so high before. Whilst we lay at Mr. Commander's, our men camped up in order to get dirt houses or rather like potato houses, to take their families too. They brought some few horses with them, what help they could get from the few inhabitants, in order to carry children, and other necessaries up, as the woods were full of water and most severe fronts, it was very severe of women and children. We set out in the morning, and got no farther that day than Mr. McDonald's and some as far as Mr. Plowden's, some to James Armstrong's and some to Uncle William James. Their little cabins were as full that night as they could hold and the next day everyone made the best they could to their own place, which was the first day of February."..."It was the first of February when we came to the Bluff. My mother and us children were still in expectation that we were coming to an agreeable place, but when we arrived and saw nothing but a wilderness and instead of a fine timbered house, nothing but a very mean dirt house, our spirits quite sunk, and what added to our troubles, our pilot we had with us from Uncle James left us when he came in sight of the place. My father gave us all the comfort he could by telling us we would get all these trees cut down and in a short time they would be plenty of inhabitants, that we could see from house to house. Whilst we were at this, our fire we brought from Bog Swamp went out. Father had heard that up the river swamp was the Kings Tree, although they was no path, neither did we know the distance, yet he followed up the swamp until he came to the branch and by that found Roger Gordon's. We watched him as far as trees would let us see and returned into our dolorus hut, expecting never to see him or any human person more, but after sometime he returned and brought fire. We were somewhat comforted but evening coming on, the wolves had began to howl on all sides, we then feared being devoured by wild beasts, having neither gun or dog, or any door to our house. Howbeit we setto and gathered fewel and made on a good fire and so passed the first night. The next day being a clear warm morning, we began to stir about. About mid-day there arose a great cloud southwest, attended with high wind, thunder and lightening. The rain quickly penetrated through between the powls and brought down the sand that covered over, which seemed to threaten to cover us alive. The lightening and claps of thunder were very awful and lasted a good space of time. I do not remember to have seen a much severer gust than that was. I believe we sincerely wished ourselves again at Belfast but this fright was soon over and the evening cleared up comfortabel and warm. The boat that brought up the goods arrived at the KingsTree. People were much opprest in bringing their things as there was no other way but to carry them on their backs, which consisted of their bed clothing, chist provisions, pots, and tools, since at that time there were few or no roads. Every family had to travel the best way they could which was here double distance to some, for they had to follow swamps and branches for their guides, for some time. And after some time some men got such a knowledge of the woods as to blaze paths, so the people soon found out to follow blazes from place to place. As the winter was far advanced the time to prepare land for planting was very short, yet people was very strong and healthy. All that could wrought diligently and continued clearing and planting as long as the season would admit, so that they made provisions for the ensuring year. As they but few beasts, a little served them and food was good, they had no need of feeding creatures for some years. I remember that amongst the first thing my father brought from the boat was his gun, which was one of Queen Ann's muskets"...."another alarming circumstance was the Indians. When they came to hunt in the spring they were in great numbers and in all places like the Egyptians Locusts but they were not hurtful. We had a great deal of trouble and hardships in our first settling but the few inhabitants continued yet in health and strength. Yet we were still oppresst with fears on divers accounts, especially being massacred by the Indians or bit by the snakes or torn by wild beasts or being lost or perished in the woods. Of the lost there was three persons and so forth³."

JOHN SHAW ARRIVES ON THE HOPEWELL:

Being one of 5 ships of the Covenanter Presbyterian congregation of "seceders"36 ( but not all of the 5 shiploads of voyagers were likely to have been in his own party...some percentage were fill-in passengers) of Rev. William Martin, The Hopewell arrived in Charleston 22 Dec. 1772. It was not an easy story or voyage. [see Linda Merle's  website for more info and the listed passengers]

Descriptions of the sometimes devious attempts of land merchants and shippers are detailed⁹, and one of the worst examples was that of our ancestor's trip on the Hopewell: "...but one of the worst cases of misrepresentation of the date of departure was that of the Hopewell which was advertised to sail from Belfast to Charleston on 15 August 1772. The sailing was thoughtfully delayed, 'at the request of several passengers', until 28 August, the vessel in the meantime being 'daily expected' from Baltimore and England. After a further delay until 15 September, the vessel arrived from Norway. The transatlantic voyage started in the third week of October after the appearance of two further 'final' notices stating that the vessel would leave on 1 Oct. and 5 Oct." (Pg. 204) ⁹ Though the sea voyage was 9 weeks, from the overall trip, from the muster at Belfast to the arrival in Charleston was about 17 weeks...over one-third of a year!!!

A study of some 38 voyages between 1771 and 1775 showed that the average trip was 7 weeks and 4 days with trips to Charleston and Savannah averaging 9 weeks; the shortest voyage was 27 days and the longest was 17 weeks. Provisions tended to be adequate, and accounts of starvation were related only to excessively prolonged voyages. The space per voyager was such that there tended to be 1 to 2 voyagers per ton of ship. However, the tonnage was often inaccurately advertised. Berth spaces were 18 inches wide by 6 feet long with about 2 feet of overhead between berth layers. These berths were for an adult; and, if people were 14 years old or under, 2 per birth. Beneath the deck of the ship, there was an average of four feet nine inches between decks⁹.

The Hopewell arrived in Charleston 22 December 1772 with approximately 191 persons on board. I estimate that the deck top had about as much square footage as a present-day double-wide mobile home!

My wife's Drafts ancestor (Jacob Drafts), German-speaking Swiss-Germans, arrived in Charleston in late 1743 or early 1744 on the Andrew and helped found Zion Lutheran Church in Lexington Co., S.C., a county still highly saturated with Lutherans and in the Dutch Fork area of central S. C. But the Presbyterians came to that area, too (a congregation in Larne, County Antrim, Ulster, Northern Ireland, under Rev. John Renwick, a Covenanter, in 1767 to Newberry Co. near Prosperity...Cannon's Creek Church & King's Creek Church)³⁸.

On leaving Charleston, the Hopewell went to New York; and, on the return to Newry, lost all sails but did arrive. The Hopewell had been in service since at least 1766 at which time sailing advertisements indicated that it was 250 tons; but an analysis in the U.S. indicated that it was 100 tons. Studies have been done comparing the northern Ireland advertisements of ship tonnage to those recorded in ports of arrival in America. It was thought that the ships were relatively packed during the peak years of 1771 to 1773. In our own modern times, please reflect on all of the current deception and dishonesty in advertising even with laws against such in the United States. There was no such regulation of advertising in the Old World of the 1700"s⁹.

The names of the area they went to:

Rev. Martin and many of those on the five boats of his party obtained grants in the Catawba River Valley ("The Waxhaws") area from Lancaster to Charlotte, concentrating at Rocky Creek where he became pastor of "Catholic Presbyterian Church" in 1773 (in present Chester Co.³⁵, S. C. & "catholic" in this case meaning a church of multiple Presbyterian factions³⁶...it was burned by the British)²². By 1808, a number had left for the Ohio frontier; and Historic Hopewell Church stands as a present day testament in Ohio...one example. Our family's original immigrant's, John Shaw, initial land grant fell into the Shiloh area of present-day Sumter County, S. C. But there were subsequent grants at I-95 and South Brick Church Road (highway #527...which is now in Clarendon Co., and had been in Sumter District). They and their friends and neighbors tended to populate the lands on either side of the Black River between Kingstree and Bishopville (this river originates in swamps near Bishopville & Camden). That area ran through Sumter County, between the Santee River and Lynches River; the interior from about present-day I-95 inward became known as St. Mark's Parish (1757), and downstream to below Kingstree, as Prince Frederick's Parish (1754). The near-coastal (Georgetown) zone was the southern 3rd of Prince George Parish (1721). The area has otherwise variously been known as (and I note a couple of other areas):

• 1526: Lucas Vasquez de Allyon founded a short-lived Spanish colony at "Waccamaw Neck", Georgetown, S. C. [HERE]. 
• 1562: French Charlesfort for a year (present day Parris Island) and then, 
• 1566: Santa Elena near Port Royal, S. C. [HERE]. 
• 1662-63: Charles II of England grants "Carolina" to The Lord's Proprietors (what would be N. C. & S. C. and from the Atlantic Ocean to as far west as lands would go).  
• 1670: Charles Town founded by English peoples on the Ashley River.  
• Before 1710: As above, N. C. & S. C. were called Carolina (and the royal charter actually indicated lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a situation later resolved sometime following the USA having its own functioning constitution28). Then split into N. C. & S. C.  
• 1682-1705: Craven County (one of the only 3 S. C. provincial election districts), from Seewee for 23 miles north along the coast and 35 miles inland (and also, any of the more inland grants east of the Wateree River)  
• 1706: Parish system (of the Anglican Church) began, and Prince George, Winyah created in 1721 & straddled the Black River. From the church near Georgetown & SW to the Santee River & NE to the N. C. line. It included present-day Sumter County. In 1734 it was divided into Prince Frederick's Parish Church remaining on Black River & Prince George, Winyah, encompassing the new town (1729), Georgetown, on the Sampit River.  
• 1757: inland Prince Frederick's designated as St. Mark's Parish, in Craven Co.  
• 1769-1782: Royal Province then divided for formation of seven state circuit court judicial districts (when John Shaw arrived and got land grant)...Camden District (included present-day Sumter, Lee, Clarendon) composed of York, Chester, Fairfield, Richland, Lancaster, Claremont, and Clarendon  counties.  
• 1783-1789: Each District Court area divided into counties in 1783 and a county court system utilizing lay magistrates put into place by 1785. Magistrate system replaced by lay county court judges in 1791 and in1792 Salem county was formed from part of Claremont County ("Upper Salem") and part from Clarendon County ("Lower Salem").  
• 1798-1800: The old county court system was abolished 1 Jan. 1800 and S. C. divided into judicial districts, Sumter District formed from Claremont (toward the Wateree), Clarendon (south-east), and Salem (between Black River and Lynches River) counties and justice administered through a circuit court system..  
• 1855: present-day Sumter and Clarendon counties devolved from Sumter District.  
• 1898: part of Sumter Co. into Lee Co. when Lee was formed.  
• check more detail at Southeastern Genealogy On-line county formation maps...scroll down and click on the appropriate date.
  
  

Transportation: Rivers (Black River), Roads, & Railroads

All of the government of South Carolina was centered in Charleston, S.C. until 1785. It was not until the 1900's that there were more than fairly simple dirt roads allowing any kind of decent and expeditious travel. In fact, Paul Hook noted to me that Lexington county hardly had any paving until after WWII. So, 1700-1900's travel was difficult, by way of very primitive wagon trails, paths, and most significantly by waterway. Scott speaks glowingly of the new bridge built over Black River before the civil war by commissioner of roads, Matthew E. Muldrow¹⁸...to this day referred to as Muldrow's Crossing. The waterway of greatest importance to our Shaw ancestors was the Black River. However, the channels being fairly narrow, it was constantly subject to obstruction by huge, fallen trees (they didn't have chain-saws back then). It was probably not navigable for such as 100-bale cotton barges or even shallow draft boats but from Georgetown to a few miles upriver from Kingstree²¹. The legislature was approached in the early 1800's about making efforts to make the north fork of Black River more navigable (toward Mayesville). Lynches Creek to the north was navigable further inland, and it is possible that it was a way to transport goods down to Georgetown. The Road along the north side of Black River went from Mayesville to Kingstree, passing by the old John Shaw place (see below) and sending a branch just south of Sardinia down to Charleston. And the road on the south side of Black River came from Camden, which was to the west (present-day Brewington Road), passing through Shaw's Crossroads (Brewington Rd. & hwy 76) on eastward and down to where it can get with Highway #52 to Charleston. Both encountered a road angling southeastward from Lynchburg (a town on Lynches Creek). The road from Lynchburg went to the then state capitol of Charleston and is well noted on a 1779 map, crossing Black River at about the present-day Sardinia & Gable area, then proceeding to Murray Crossing on the Santee River, thence to Charleston.

Stage coaches tended to run on the same narrow travel roads that ordinary people used on foot, horseback or wagon, most early roads having originated on (followed) old Indian trails. By 1750³⁰, a coach trail linked Boston to Charleston & became the basis for the King's Highway (US 17). The Upper Road branched off of King's Highway in Virginia & ended up through Charlotte in Spartanburg & Greenville, S. C. There was a road from Augusta through Columbia & to Camden and on to Charlotte. The old Cherokee Path from east to west from Charleston to the Smokey Mountains west of Spartanburg and Greenville headed west. Other short routes tended to follow rivers and then branch off to various towns.

Railroads arrived in 1842 with the opening of the rail from Charleston to Columbia. It branched to Camden in 1848, over toward Sumter in January 1852, 3 months later over to Mayesville¹⁵, Mayesville being available to the Shaws and their kin from the Shaws' Crossroads area (which David Shaw founded beginning in 1829). Dr. Gregorie's book has a chapter on railroad evolution in the area²⁰.

JOHN SHAW SETTLES

Where?

He initially settled in early 1773 in a geographic area west of present day Kingstree, south of Lynches River, north of Black River, and east of Mayesville...known as Salem (section known as Lower Salem). The area is in part of the present-day Pee Dee Basin river drainage system, Black River being the main river within that Salem area. It was a six-day horseback ride from Charleston. In that area, in the late 1600's, there were only a few settlers who are thought to have been mostly cattle raisers. The forest country in that area had huge stands of long leaf yellow pine trees with both the forests (pines) and the swamps (huge cypress trees) having such canopy cover that there was very little underbrush¹⁴.

Actual land-grant site location

John Shaw and descendants settled in Sumter, Lee, and Clarendon counties of South Carolina, at the headwaters of the Black River. John Shaw's original 100 acre land grant issued in 1774 was centered where Mac Road crosses the stream of Hope Swamp (near Shiloh, S. C. in present-day Sumter Co., S. C.). I call it "John Shaw, 1774 land grant for 100 acres" on Google maps. This site was finally professionally located for me (by Don Johnson's expert interpretation of records and some good luck) in the fall of 1998. That land grant went by transfer to his son, David Shaw in 1807. The subsequent John Shaw grants & general family home place on Jackson's Branch (about 5 miles eastward), on the north bluff of the Black River at present-day I-95 and SC #527 had been roughly determined by me since about 1996. John Shaw is buried in a cemetery which I believe was on a neighbor's plantation. I believe Capt. George Cooper, 1759-1829, used this site for a cemetery for Salem Black River Presbyterian Church until they started their own cemetery on the church site. I call it the Capt. George Cooper Cemetery, where the immigrant is actually buried. Sometime after my daddy & I found the cemetery & headstone, Mrs. P. M. "Netta" Tiller had the headstone moved to Brick Church & installed beside John Shaw's second wife (the now-unmarked grave and body are still in the southeast corner of that old-site cemetery & was never exhumed). The site is at latitude 33.863219 and longitude -80.127449.

Money

For most people, there wasn't a lot of money. People who marketed to this highly agrarian society had to be able to carry accounts on credit until crops were harvested and sold. Until the Bank of the State of S. C. was opened in Dec. 1812, Spanish silver coin was the monetary medium of exchange¹⁸ for crop and livestock sales, crops being hauled by wagon (and livestock driven) to Charleston (or, as noted above...possibly by boat to Georgetown via Lynches River). Promissory notes and barter took care of most of the rest of value exchanging. Such transport tended to be in groups or gangs of neighbors so that there was safety in numbers for the return trip home with the money¹⁸.You have to wonder how the families left behind cooperated amongst each other to maintain their safety...being in the "back-country"...while many of the men were away.

We are aware in of recessions & depressions of a country's economy (even of world-wide economies) in modern times. Did you know that our country suffered through a horrible debt crisis just after the revolutionary war in 1776? Then I found a lot more...see the following:

•  depression of late 1780s
    
• panic of 1792
    
• panic of 1797
    
• panic of 1819...first major financial crisis as the USA.
   
• panic & depression of 1832
    
• panic & depression of 1836
    
• panic of 1837
    
• 6-year depression of 1837-1843
    
• panic of 1857
    
• panic & depression of 1869-71
    
• panic of 1873 followed by a long depression & instability
    
• crisis of 1893
    
• crisis of 1907
    
• depression of 1920 (the "fix" leading to the "roaring twenties").
    
• The Great Depression of 1929-31
    
• near depression of 1946
   
• recession of 1981-82
    
• Oct.  1987 "Black Friday" one-day stock market drop of 22.6%
    
• Savings & Loan industry crisis, leading to,
    
• recession of 1990-91
    
• recession of 2001
    
• panic of 2008 The Great Recession). [Wikipedia listing of USA crises here]
  

The money crops

Trading with Indians flourished into the early 1700s. Prior to, and after the influx of Scotch-Irish following 1732, hogs and cattle were raised along with corn. Indigo began about 1729 & was raised inland as far as the Salem area¹⁹, significantly by 1750²¹, supported by the bounty for production of products sold to England. Many in Kingstree became indigo-wealthy. I suspect that these stories got back to kinsmen in Northern Ireland and helped nudge ("pull") our John Shaw, at age 22, to head to America in 1772. Early indigo wealth corresponded with the importation of slaves, and slaves began to be bought for expansion of this crop²¹. The onset of the Revolutionary War knocked the indigo export-to-England business out, and cotton began to take over inland. Rice began to be big on the coast. By 1840, Georgetown District produced nearly 50% of the USA rice crop! With the introduction of the cotton gin in the 1790's, cotton became a big crop in the Salem area (rice in the more coastal areas). Ginning markedly amplified the slave productivity (previously hand-picking seeds from cotton at a rate of processing one pound of cotton per hour...the early gin could clean out seeds at 6-10 pounds per hour²⁸). As large plantations were assembled by buying out smaller farmers, those smaller farmers often left for the vast fertile black lands of Alabama and Mississippi, some going to Florida. By the 1820's, the success of cotton production in those distant states had driven the price of cotton down from about 30¢ a pound to maybe 8¢ a pound. And cotton planters fell on harder times...a cotton depression. Such depressions recurred between 1812-1860; and the fertility of the land also began to play out (commercial fertilizer had not been invented yet)...all leading to more local and distant westward migration²⁰. Both cotton and indigo could be profitable within families who did not own slaves...until war or capacity for overproduction drove the price too low. My wife's family planted single-family cotton in Lexington Co. in 1939 & personally hand picked out 5 bales off of 4 acres (Betty's mother got a kick out of the fact that she could pick more cotton in a day than Betty's daddy, even though she had to stop and breast feed the baby). My father share cropped with the black Earl & Eva Wilson family, and they almost always made (hand picked) a bale to the acre in the 1950s in eastern Sumter Co.

Clearing the "new ground" to produce more money.

This was done in stages. The pines were girdled so as to kill them within a year and rot them within 2 or 3 years. Underbrush was cleared by cutting and burning and hardwood cut for lumber (any saw-milling was done with portable equipment up through the 1930's) and put up for fire wood. Log-rolling contests were held on the clearing, as slaves from the host and neighboring plantations had much enjoyment competing in front of the females to move logs off of the "new ground"¹⁹.

John G. Shaw branch, Mississippi: 

An especially bad cotton depression hit the Sumter area from 1841-1844²⁰ during that 1837-1843 depression. John Shaw's eldest grandson, John G. Shaw (JGS), left Sumter County during this period. It may have been that, at least with the financial backing of his father, David Shaw, he and another man (a brother?) took a cotton load westward with hopes of selling at a much better price (or maybe just selling and starting over in that area) in New Orleans. They were robbed near the Mississippi River, and JGS was left for dead (played possum?) with an eye gouged. Having no money at all, he got down stream and eastward on the Gulf Coast a little ways over to Pass Christian, (west) Mississippi. Carlos Ladner had a sheep and wool business and hired JGS as a shearer. Before he could save much money to return home, he fell in love with Anna Ladner (daughter of Carlos). Our Shaw line was ever after established through JGS & Anna in coastal western Mississippi.

Labor-wise, the Industrial Revolution exerted its effects on America beginning between 1780-1830, but with little effect (except for Eli Whitney's cotton gin) on common families until 1900.

For Christians, in good times and hard times, community life tended to revolve around the church. In the area of the county called Salem, a church was started which is still present today (see below).

Salem Black River Presbyterian Church

On the north side of Black River, Salem Black River ["Brick Church"] Presbyterian Church was founded about 1759. David Anderson gave a plot of land on Taylor's Swamp (later known as Meeting House Branch) to the Salem Congregation. A log building was erected in 1760, replaced by a frame building and then by a brick building in 1804. Forty-two years later (1846) the present building was built. Thomas Reese was the Pastor from 1773 to 1792. Then he left for Pendleton District and was designated in the session records as "Our ever memorable Pastor". Our David Shaw was asked to build the study house in 1808. Samuel and James Bradley were members of Williamsburg Church (Kingstree) who settled in Salem and planted Salem church there. The story of Rev. John Cousar⁵ gives further interesting information about church life, marriages, and even "camp meetings". When I was a cadet at The Citadel taking a "History of The Old South" course, Col. Lee (the teacher) liked to joke that more souls were created than saved at those old camp meetings! See a time-line brief history of midland S. C. 's oldest church (my church), Zion Lutheran Church in Lexington County in the Dutch Fork (German settlers) area, from about 1739. Here are some other historic Sumter area churches: Rembert Church; Salem Black River Presbyterian Church; First Presbyterian Church. An historic coastal church, John's Island Presbyterian Church [photo] (formed in 1710)³⁸, with building constructed in 1719 & expanded in 1823), is purported to be the oldest extant sanctuary of any denomination in any of the 5 major cities of colonial America! The oldest is Old St. Andrews Parish Church (1706) in Charleston Co. west of the Ashley River, and the second oldest Parish Church is the Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort with heritage dating to 1712. St. Philips in Charleston is old and historic. Here is the Historical Register of links in S. C. [click on county of interest]. It was customary that whites and blacks worshipped together in these rural churches (until after the end of slavery³⁸).

Enemy Attacks on American (USA...after 1776) SOIL:

During colonial times, the colonies were "property of England": So, I'm not including any of the pre-colonial or colonial fighting, even though it was on what would become "American soil".

American Revolution of 1776:
While the Scotch-Irish...especially the Covenanter Presbyterians...had plenty of anti-British antagonism, it did not necessarily translate into Revolutionary War service. I have never found any record or indication of military service by John Shaw the immigrant. John Adams maintained that about a third of Americans supported the Revolution, a third were against it, and a third tried to be neutral. In South Carolina, there was somewhat of a notion among the interior Scotch-Irish that the Charleston elite were behind the war; many did not care to be in the service of these elites²². Then, especially among the very recent Scotch-Irish immigrants (John Shaw arrived 12/1772...40% of the total came in the 1770's), many had not yet really put down their "colonial roots"; others feared losing their new grants if they openly backed the American rebels¹⁶. Rev. William Martin was a "warm Whig" favoring independence; but it was after 1776 that he finally preached to his congregation, "My hearers, talk and angry words will do no good. We must fight!²²"

James Bradley, a founder (see above) of John Shaw's church east of Sumter, suffered great cruelty inflicted on him on the orders of British General Tarleton. Tarleton dressed himself in the uniform of an American Officer and, visiting James Bradley in this disguise saying he was Gen. George Washington, drew much information from Bradley. Then, he requested that Bradley guide him through the swamps to Camden. On reaching his camp, he ordered Bradley to be put in prison bound with irons and repeatedly carted to the gallows to witness the hanging of his compatriots. Bradley wore the marks of these irons to the grave. He was a very old man when thus treated (according to Wallace's history)².

Post-revolution Indian Wars: such as the second war of 1776 & the Texan Cherokee War in 1839; the first war was of 1758-61, just after which my wife's immigrant ancestor, Jacob Drafts was scalped & killed, a non-combatant citizen.

Mexican War: of 1846-48 (Texas annexed into USA in 1845) with Battle of the Alamo, etc. Tension continued, and there was the Border War 1910-18 with skirmishes into the USA by Mexicans. My grandfather, R. T. Brown was sent for duty.

30 July 1916 German attack near New York City: Public knowledge of the destruction of a munitions facility outside of New York City (The Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey) by German agents was suppressed by Pres. Woodrow Wilson in an effort to avoid public sentiment escalating & forcing the USA into WWI. The explosion was felt almost 50 miles away, the detonation causing tremors the equivalent of an earthquake measuring between 5.0 and 5.5 on the Richter scale (7 killed & hundreds injured). [HERE]

Radical Muslim attacks of 11 Sept. 2001:U. S. Citizens died in Pennsylvania, New York City, and Washington, D. C.; thousands were killed.

Water and Refrigeration

It was always an advantage to be near a stream, spring, or artesian (free-flowing at the ground's surface) well. If water was not "pure," it had to be filtered through cloth or straw and maybe boiled. Livestock, outhouse toilets ("privies"), and garbage piles needed to be kept away from (or downstream of) the water source. In the absence of a free-flowing artesian well or other nearby surface water source, a well had to be hand-dug down below the water table (probably no more than 10-30 feet where John Shaw settled). Buckets were lowered and water pulled up. In parts of S. C. where pond cypress grew, the hollow tree trunks (of "pond cypress"..."swamp cypress" trunks were not hollow) could be used as sleeves to "curb" the well so that the top edges didn't fall in18. Water taken from below ground was always cooler in non-winter months than air temperature. Water seeping downhill under a storehouse or smokehouse caused some cooling due to evaporation. I'm not sure when; but, where the water table was much deeper, it became possible to drill something like 8-inch-diameter pipe down to the water 100 or more feet deep. By 1920, such wells utilized a narrow bucket within the pipe. A large water trough was kept by the well; excess water was poured over into the trough and used to "refrigerate" cooked meat kept in heavy stone "meat pots" with lids (had to keep bugs and animals out of it), butter in butter jars, and milk. In this type of set-up, excess trough water and house water flowed out into a pipe or narrow, open aqueduct-like trough/conduit downhill to the livestock water trough17. Rainwater could be collected off of roofs and channeled into storage cisterns.

When I was a boy (1940's), I remember farms having hand pumps attached to a well pipe drilled down into deep-well water. Such wells required "priming water" to be poured down the hand pump in order to seal the line and allow the hand-pumping action to create the suction of the well water up the pipe. You had to remember to refill the "priming" container before you stopped getting your water. City folks had running city water from the 1920's on. My grandfather, R. T. Brown, had the first electric home refrigerator in Sumter installed in his home in the 1920's. A prominent member of our church, Murray Seay, noted to me that his home in Lexington county did not get electricity until 1946 (he was 24). My wife's family did not get an electric cook stove (they used a wood stove) until about 1957! And, as a boy in the 1940s, I remember the "ice man" delivering big blocks (25-50 lb.) of ice to non-electric home refrigerators (insulated boxes...the "ice box"). Iceboxes came into being in large urban areas of the USA about the 1830s. An ice block might last 2-3 days. As we experience the heat of summertime in S. C. each year, I gratefully remember when we moved from Bowman Drive during the summer of 1959 (I was 15) and lived for the first time in an air-conditioned home on Frank Clarke Street!

Food and food Preservation

We moderns have refrigerators, freezers, convenience foods, and "eating out". Prior to the harnessing of fire by primitive man, humans killed animals or picked foods and ate on the spot. They gorged themselves on food until it ran out or spoiled. The next meal, therefore, was whenever they could find it. Cooked meat was found to last a few days to maybe two weeks before it spoiled, especially if it could be "refrigerated". In time, the preservative powers of smoke (contains formaldehyde), salt, sugar/honey, vinegar, and drying  were discovered. With time, people learned to do more than just cook meats and whole grains. Grain milling between hand stones produced flour of various types. And people put imagination into creating recipes and meals which were more tasty and had a more "high class" presentation...going beyond just the satisfaction of stomach hunger. Glass jar heat storage ("canning") methods began in France between 1810-1830.

Our ancestors in South Carolina widely and commonly used such old preservative methods in daily life up through the 1950's (dried corn, peanuts, and grains, canned cooked meat and vegetables, salt-cured and/or smoke-cured pork hams and pork bacon; pickled fruits and vegetables; pickled eggs). Rural families tended to have a small smoke-house or food storage shed near the home. Long-term preserved meat was hung in this shed. Beef was more difficult to store long-term (too thick for smoke penetration) by individual families (a big animal takes too much time to process). So, crossroads communities formed such voluntary cooperatives as "beef clubs" (and there were a few "pig clubs")^17,19. Relationship skills were vital to the success of such multifamily efforts. Sixteen families would go together into a cooperative arrangement. Every two weeks17 (in some areas, every Saturday)19, a family in turn contributed a cow which was killed and butchered into 16 "shares". The butcher or someone else kept strict "books" on the poundage divided out, and the butcher also had right of first refusal on the beef liver. At the end of a year, families providing less butchered pounds paid money back into a pool which was then accounted back out to the club members. On receipt of a family's "share" for the two weeks, the meat was usually cooked and then stored in meat pots (see above) using whatever "refrigeration" was available17. Chickens, goats, wild game (rabbits, squirrel, turkey, and deer), and fish (Black River was noted to have a fine fish population21) were added to the diet as needed. A year-round vegetable garden was maintained. Sweet and white potatoes were grown and, over the cold months, stored in outdoor "potato hills" (dirt mounds onto which the potatoes were carefully stacked and then covered with straw which was then covered by dirt carefully sloped so that rainwater ran off and didn't really soak into the mound) in areas of S. C. which were low and flat, with a high water table. In other areas a deep, cool, and dry "root cellar" was dug and potatoes and other root-like vegetables stored. The aging of the sweet potatoes for several weeks made them sweeter (today, the aged sweet potato can be called a "yam"). Corn and wheat (and maybe some other dried grains) were harvested and dried and milled into grits, meal, or flour at numerous area grist mills located on flowing creeks (but, some people had small "hand mills"). John Shaw's son, David, lived on Alligator Creek at Shaw's Crossroad (there were an average of 40 mills per S. C. county before 1860²⁴), but I doubt that the water flow was enough to ever support a mill. Some inlanders grew "upland rice"...my father remembered it on part of their Sumter Co. farm (part of David Shaw's former land at "Shaw's Crossroad"). Sugar cane was grown and harvested (and aged a bit) and crushed/squeezed in numerous area small sorghum mills; the juice was cooked down into cane syrup and further cooked down into "black strap molasses". People scheduled their times at grist (for major jobs) and cane mills (all jobs) so that the difficult hauling trips would not result in too many showing up at the same time17. Chickens on the place were a constant source of fresh eggs if you kept the chicken snakes away. One or two milk cows (about one cow per 4 adults) supplied milk and cream, and the cream was hand-churned into butter (my wife has one of her mother's small quart-sized glass butter churns). Salt might be bought in tightly woven 100 pound bags. Only by about 1900 was processed granular sugar readily bought in a large barrel. My father fondly remembered being a boy enjoying the custom on their farm (1920's) of the newly arrived sugar barrel being opened and all children (of farm owners, farm hands, black and white) being allowed to eat as much sugar as they wanted at the time of the opening.

"Baby food" was made by mixing "pot liquor" (the juices and sediment left in pots after cooking meats and vegetables) and mashed potatoes, beans, corn or grits. In more modern times, mashing cooked foods and/or blending in "blenders" has been a method.

In those bygone times, all members of the family were indispensable to family survival in every respect...emotionally, chore-wise,  work-wise, and economically. My wife grew up this way. Routine, significant physical work required big meals of concentrated energy (high protein and fat content) so that the daily calorie requirement might be two to four times what our modern requirements are. My father recalled in 1989 (age 78) the way they ate on the farm at the time of the Great Depression, compared to modern times: he considered that Americans have never since eaten "better food" than in those bygone days of the 1920-30s. 

Marriage

In long-ago, bygone days, the options for marriage were pretty much limited to one's ability to travel. As already noted above, roads were poor until paving was invented. And railroads did not exist prior to the 1800s nor air travel until 1950s or later. Consequently, people tended to marry within the community or around the cross-roads or within the church congregation (or at least that denomination) or even from within the family (first-cousin marriages were not very uncommon even at the start of the 20th century). Sometimes whole families inter-married less for love than for common convenience and survival³³ (how dare modern folks stand in judgment, ignorant of conditions in those days!).

Schools

To insure some quality growth and community creation as an inland perimeter buffer to Charleston, several educational institutions were begun inland...a supplement to local personal educators/tutors (public schools were yet far off in the future). The one closest to our immigrant ancestor's family home was Mt. Zion Institute (founded about 1790) in Winnsboro, S.C., Winnsboro also being a summer retreat area (50-60 miles further westward/inland). There may have been a little community school at Salem Black River Presbyterian Church¹⁸ or^{19, 20}. Small communities sent children to innumerable private schools owned and run by the teacher (s), or by "societies" of cooperating parents who employed a teacher. Education of children was a parental responsibility in early times; and when parents were too poor or indifferent, the children were illiterate. The Clarendon (County) Orphan Academy was started about 1798 to meet this need for free. An S. C. free school law for the poor was enacted in 1811; and, by 1857, there were 52 free schools in Sumter District²⁰. A school which prepared students for college might be called a "high school". A girls' finishing school might be called a seminary. The most favored name for schools was so-and-so "academy"²⁰. Among some of the names in the Sumter area were: The Sandville Academy, Lodebar Academy, Mt. Clio Academy, Bishopville Academy, William T. Capers School, Coit's High School, Swimming Pens School, Plowden Mills School, St. Paul's Academy, Friendship Academy, Summerton Academy, Claremont Academy, Dr. John M. Robert's Academy (predecessor to Furman University), Woodville Academy, Edgehill Academy near Stateburg, Thornton Academy, Rafton Creek Academy, The Hawthorndean Seminary, Sumterville Academy, Mrs. Campbell's School, The Rev. R. W. Bailey School, Orange Grove School, Bradford Springs Female Academy Harmony Female College, "Sumter Military, Gymnastic, and Classical School", Young Ladies Seminary, Theus's Academy, The Sumterville Female Academy, the Sumterville Academy, Sumter Collegiate Institute, and Zoar Academy²⁰.

Education was a big deal to the Presbyterians who demanded not only an educated clergy but education for all so that each person could read the Bible. In fact Protestant (Presbyterian) Scotland was the first civilized nation to pass a law for public schools (1696 "Act for Setting Schools"). The College of New Jersey (later Princeton) was founded in 1736, Hampden-Sydney in Virginia in 1776, and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in 1783.Goodwill Parochial School may be the area's oldest school for people of color (formerly, when I was a boy, "colored people").

Medical Care

Physicians: Until 1824, there was no medical school in S. C. Until late in the 1800s, "medical school" consisted of a couple of years of post high school training...in one "up North", the two years were 20 weeks each³¹. In 1889, Johns Hopkins school instituted the internship year for the first year after the granting with the M. D. degree. People must have (even as is still partially done today) used various "home remedies" when no doctor was available. Some of the early medical doctors in the Sumter area were: W. W. Anderson, Sr. and Jr., J. J. Bossard, H. L. Shaw, T. M. Shaw, W. J. Pringle, J. S. Hughson, S. C. Baker, C. R. F. Baker, A. C. Dick, I. M. Woods, J. A. Mayes, F. J. Mayes, W. M. Bradley, J. W. Hudson, C. E. King, J. H. Mills, E. M. Davis, H. C. Corbett, S. P. Oliver, W. Cheyne, J. J. Bossard, A. China, A. J. China and M. D. Murray and others. In the first half of the 1900s, I recall C. J. Lemmon, J. R. Dunn (for whom my mother worked many years), R. M. Walker (whose daughter was my high school classmate, and W. A. Stuckey (whose home on Frank Clarke Street was bought by my parents in about 1960). Bacteria as the source of infectious disease were not known until the 1800s. The realization of the spread of disease through dirty water and subsequent efforts toward clean water (and public hygiene) gained ground in the 1800s & intensified in the early 1900s. Smallpox vaccination was invented in 1798, but with widespread use not until much later. Other vaccines to prevent lethal disease came gradually after the 1920s. "Child bed fever" killed many a wife, as there were no antibiotics readily available until "sulfa drugs" and penicillin in the 1940s-50s. When you see men with multiple wives prior to the 1950s, it was quite uncommonly due to divorce. Newborns died so regularly that almost no family was spared the death of at least one child before the age of one year...often experiencing the deaths of many children between the newborn phase and adult age ²¹. Prior to antibiotics, the sick simply lived or died. Antibiotics ushered in an end to the art and science of medicine prior to the onset of "curative medicine".

Infirmaries & Hospitals: As was common in small communities, if done, Dr. J. A. Mood personally, privately, opened the very small Mood Infirmary in Sumter in 1894. The small Bossard-Baker-Dick (JJB, CSB, ACD)  Infirmary (10 beds) had been opened shortly before, same year. Mood Infirmary added Dr. C. P. Osteen in 1900 (he delivered my father in childbirth) & son, H. A. Mood afterward. B-B-D Infirmary, in 1908, added H. M. Stuckey, Walter Cheyne, and Archie China to create Sumter Hospital (30 beds). Mood Infirmary consolidated with Sumter Hospital (on the southeast corner of Calhoun Street & Canal Streets...still present day TRMC property) in 1913. Previously, Mr. Timothy J. Tuomey died, and his will (after caring for his wife until her death) endowed for Sumter to have a hospital to be known as Tuomey Hospital (after the 1950s referred to as "Old Tuomey"). It required a Board of Trustees. That Board purchased Sumter Hospital 1 August 1913 to quickly birth "Tuomey Hospital". After some 25 years as a trustee, Mr. Neil O'Donnell died and left an additional endowment for benefit of the hospital.

One of the most devastating epidemics in human history occurred during the 20th century: the 1918 influenza pandemic that resulted in 20 million known world-wide deaths, including 500,000 in the United States, in less than 1 year (more than have died in as short a time during any war or famine in the world [as of 2005]). My grandmother Brown (1891-1982) had the 1918 flu just after the birth of my mother! In about 1934, my uncle Tom Brown (1928-1986) had a sure-to-be-fatal staph. infection. Dr. C. J. Lemmon had gone to St. Elizabeth's hospital in Baltimore to get donor serum infusions from Staph. survivors (their serum contained the anti-staph. antibodies) for osteomyelitis of his thumb (he was a surgeon). He was then able to arrange serum shipments to Sumter that cured Tom. My mother-in-law, Lallah Lindler Drafts (1916-2003), told me in about 2000 of her being told that she was given the first doses of penicillin in Columbia, S. C. to save her from a terrible episode of extended ear infection (acute mastoiditis) at about age 24 (1941). And my nurse mother (1918-2011) recollects clearly (in 2009) the first dose of penicillin given in Sumter, S. C., in about 1942 was in a case of gonorrhea, which it cured the patient "as if by magic"!

But, until the 1950s (when the modern age of  "curative medicine" began), aside from some life-saving surgeries, there was not really much that medical care could do to effect real change in the course of a potentially fatal disease. People tended to be sadly but normally resolved to the biblical teaching, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away".

What Money Could Buy

To give an idea of the cost of things in the early 1800's, a trustee's accounting of annual church donations for 1827 showed that John Shaw gave $10.00, Lillis Shaw gave $5.00, and David Shaw gave $5.00. The parsonage rent for the year was $91.50. On December 24, 1833, pledges were made to the Salem Union Auxiliary (to be paid by May of 1834), with David Shaw pledging $4.50¹³.

Disasters

Prior to maybe 1950, the migrant workers, poor, & blacks may not have been counted in the casualty figures. For example, a Sept. 1928 storm swamped part of Florida; and the official death toll was 1836. But grave stone counts later put the number at 2500. One of the earliest hurricanes on record made landfall at Charleston 14 Sept. 1700 with over 100 killed. S. C. was hit again 15 Sept.1752 killing about 100 (NC & SC), 7-9 Sept. 1804 killing about 500 (GA, NC, SC), 27-28 Sept. 1822 killing about 200, and 27 Aug. 1881 killing over 700 (GA & SC). Then came the disastrous 1890s: land-falling in Beaufort, S. C. 27-28 August 1893 (hitting GA & SC), "The Great Sea Storm of 1893", the 20th ranked Atlantic USA storm, killed between 2000-2500.Then, 28-29 Sept. 1896, a hurricane killed over 100 (GA, SC, NC). Then came 1893 with one of the Atlantic USA's worst storm series in recorded history, a duet of hurricanes killing over 3400 people (GA, SC, NC)! This was followed 28-29 Sept.1899 (GA, SC, NC) with a hurricane killing 175.

• The Great Epidemic of 1617:Whether it was smallpox, typhus, or the plague, it is related to Europeans coming to North America carrying disease to which they, themselves, had become mostly immune. It raged for two years and wiped out an estimated 90% of southern New England native Americans! This left colonization of that area relatively unimpeded.  
• Small pox: The first case appeared in 1697, coming from Virginia, & 200-300 Charlestonians died in 1698. The ship London Frigate landed in Charleston in 1738, & a few slaves passed through quarantine. Almost half of the Cherokee Indian nation died as a result! An outbreak in 1759 sickened 75% of the population of Charleston and killed over 700 (9% of that city's population). The last case in S. C. was in 1947 & the last in the U. S. in 1949.  
• Yellow fever:1698-1700 A disastrous 1+ years for Charleston. Added to the above small pox, yellow fever caused "at least 160 deaths." In addition a fire destroys one-third of the city, a hurricane hits in the autumn of 1700, and an earthquake rocks the city.  
• Fires: Example, the above Charleston fire.  
• Other infectious epidemics: Whooping cough and influenza. Diphtheria tended to wipe out children; and 50% of children in a part of Lexington Co., S. C. died in one sweeping epidemic³².  
• Earthquake: The Great Charleston Earthquake is estimated to have been 7.3 on the Richter scale & occurred  at 9:51 PM on 31 August 1886. It is one of the stronger quakes ever known in the eastern USA.  
• Hurricanes: These storms regularly batter S. C., and there have been a few to rival Hugo of 1989 (Hazel Oct. 14-16, 1954 land-falling in S. C. and Camille, the most intense storm of any kind to hit the USA in modern history, land-falling at Pass Christian, western coastal Mississippi 17 August 1969)...Hugo barreling inland to the Charlotte, N. C. area! Katrina in 2005 was maybe the greatest natural disaster in USA history in terms of displaced citizens and property damage.  

The Fevers

Prior to the 1790's, coastal (and for 30 or so miles inland) South Carolina consisted of well-drained estuary and lowland swamps mixed with higher ground. By 1790, impoundments for growing rice had become so prevalent that summer fevers...mosquito-borne (such as dengue fever and malaria)...caused summer living in the lowlands to become hazardous. Many retreated to inland homes and retreats.

SLAVERY

How did the work get done to accomplish "crops" and the clearing of new ground? There were no heavy machines, only horses, mules, cows, oxen, and humans to provide the power for work. While families tended to be large, it was difficult to "family farm" over 150 acres. The first slaves in the West were the white Irish; this was followed later by black Africans selling other black Africans to Muslims who sold to Europeans as slaves.

Slavery began in ancient times as an alternative to just slaughtering captives of war, ushering in suzerain-type covenants or treaties which engendered a social mindset that exists in diluted, disguised form worldwide  to modern times. As with all social inventions initially done for good, evil enters in. And, over time/generations, corruption takes place to bring bad features to that invention.

By reading the old wills and estate settlements, one will find that essentially all of the Sumter, Lee, and Clarendon County, S. C. Shaws were slave owners. No one in my family ever knew of any family lore about slavery & certainly none about mistreatment of slaves. So, I expect that slavery within the Shaw family was along the lines written by Rev. Lowery (the Frierson Plantation was in the same general area of the early John and David Shaw places)...see on-line manuscript¹⁹.

In the meantime, Sadie Allen from Texas has been in contact with me since late 2003 and is pretty sure that her male ancestor, Carolina Shaw [her website], was a slave from one or our Shaw-line's Shaw plantations in the Swimming Pens section of old Sumter District. In 10/04, I was able to read Ernest Shaw's excellent full-page article in the Kingstree, S. C. newspaper (The News, 29 Sept. 2004) about his ancestral connection to a slave of Henry Daves Shaw (1796-1853) of the Kingstree area, Williamsburg County (so far, our Sumter Co. Shaw family does not seem to connect with this Shaw line). In late May 2008, Sharon Johnson Styles contacted me, also a descendant of the above Carolina Shaw (she sent a copy of her story in the 15 April 2008 issue of the Waco Tribune Herald).

We took "The Gullah Tour" in Charleston in April 2005 and were surprised to learn from Alphonso Brown that Sullivan's Island, S. C. is considered to be the Ellis Island for African Americans in that some 40% or more of the slaves coming to America passed through quarantine on this island! See the website initiated by the Drayton Family (plantations in Barbados, S. C., Ga., Fla., and Texas) as to on-line resources [here].

Ironically, rather than favoring government "reparations" for blacks (and certainly not mentioned in defense of slavery), one can look at slavery as an idea imported from Europe and becoming an American national activity that transferred Africans to a land within which their descendants would have opportunity and benefits greater than 10 times beyond those currently available to the African population in Africa! In early 2007, I saw a special on ETV about the Simms family of Charleston, S. C. who held a reunion of white descendants and slave descendants. Near the end, an interview with a black teenager really startled me. He had studied hard and played basketball seriously and would now have a college scholarship. He told the interviewer that his slave ancestor had begun a family tradition of emphasis on getting an education as insurance against enslavement. And, as to getting in trouble and going to jail, this young man said that it had occurred to him that going to prison was a type of self-inflicted going into slavery, and that he intended that it'd never happen to him! What insight!

My father, generally not interested in sophisticated details of history, told me bluntly that the war of 1861-65 was fought "over slavery". It would be almost 40 years later that I really understood that slavery was the agitating focus. As this slavery focus became relentlessly pressed by abolitionists and Republican radicals, Southerners realized that the true and larger constitutional issue was states' rights. I grew up in Sumter, S. C. sternly instructed that "The War Between the States" was the correct name and to never use the term Civil War because "civil war" was a term for a war within an intact nation. S. C. seceded (the first state to do so) from the union on 20 December 1860. Federal Maj. Robert Anderson then moved his troops into Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and called for reinforcements. As the federal steamer Star of The West entered the harbor 9 January 1861, Citadel cadets fired the first shots of the war into that ship. The bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861 then ignited the four-year devastating war on American soil. We grew up (1940s-50s) hating "yankees" (except those who were in the line of duty stationed at Shaw AFB). That attitude began to dissolve when so many of our citizens voted in 1952 for WWII Supreme Allied Commander, General D. D. "Ike" Eisenhower, as president. It then seemed to go away nearly completely when R. C. "Bobby" Richardson of Sumter became a New York Yankee baseball player in 1955. Yes, born in 1943, I was part of a local, white culture who collectively hated yankees. But, though still a racially segregated culture, I did not know people who actually hated blacks.

Interesting to me is the fact that the END to world-wide slavery began with the founding of America on the concept that God created all men equal! Prior to the voting in of that concept, world societies did not consider slavery a "horror" or even unacceptable. It would be up into the 1700s in Europe before the likes of people like William Wilberforce and John Newton came to the fore against slavery.

Very interestingly to me, I heard something that I'd never heard before in February of 2013: President James Monroe and others (in the 1820-1840s) wanting to abolish slavery in the USA had proposed a sort of repatriation of slaves in the USA back to Africa. We were told this by a couple who had been there on several mission trips through their church. This actually happened on a small scale and resulted in the country of Liberia in western Africa. Slaves were sent from "up north" back to Africa. Using things they'd learned, they (ironically) established a dual/mixed society somewhat like the segregated South in that there were voters (the repatriated blacks) as an upper class and non-voter native blacks as a lower class

RECONSTRUCTION, SEGREGATION, INTEGRATION

These periods of slavery in the family history  and the century after it ended  have been difficult to review and reconcile and impossible for "outsiders" to understand. How dare subsequent generations make harsh judgment on ordinary, good folk who cope with the history unfolding in their lives! I have been fascinated by the intimate relationships between blacks and whites in a great number of southern families. I will explore this in some detail at a future date, including the documentation of the mixed neighborhood of Shaw's Crossroads, rural Sumter County, S. C....typical of racially mixed neighborhoods throughout the South in formerly slaveholding regions where relations had been civil. 

Upon the defeat of the South and the release of all slaves, crops could not be harvested (the labor force was now suddenly freed). The federal radicals lobbied President Johnson hard within mere hours of Lincoln's death to declare Southern whites in any way a part of the war effort to be disallowed the right to vote and to give voting rights immediately to black slave males³⁹. In S. C., the federal occupation government immediately instituted a sharecrop system²⁰. As the freed slaves sought work for food or pay, there was none. The white owners were broke and on the verge of being vote-less taxpayers! The "carpetbaggers" from the North (constituting a civilian invasion) came and took advantage of the resulting chaos and depression in the South...which was a devastated land recently militarily invaded by the federal government whose Gen. Sherman laid waste to a large portion of the South. Blacks were placed into some positions of authority without benefit of any real social, political, or managerial skills or training system...probably a galling picture to most of the crushed white population. How incredibly unintelligent and naive the dominating federal element was! The social reversals and upheavals lead to such means as the Ku Klux Klan who attempted to regain order. As the compassionate ancient transition of conquerors from annihilation of the conquered to a system of slavery became corrupted, so would such coping elements as the KKK.

As the white Southern locals returned to power with scarce resources, I suppose they "naturally" looked upon the freed slaves as "lesser" and came up with the concept of segregation and the subsequent divided efforts of the government (more for whites and less for blacks) and society. "Integration" began in Sumter public schools in 1963, the year after I had graduated from high school. And I hated the way it was forced onto the South (with no such effort "up north"). Among many federal rules forced on us, we had to bus children (it was quite upsetting to our black families, too) to schools for numerical reasons and not geographical reasons. But no such disturbance of lives was required in the North. In time, things evolved and feelings changed.

To survive post-war times, white land-owning farmers and blacks had to work some system of cooperation out. Evolving off of the initially federally mandated sharecrop arrangements, sharecropping evolved; and here is a July 2004 interview with a 109 year old black former sharecropper in Sumter County, S. C.

Sharecropping, as with slavery, evolved a bad name outside of the South. I saw a TV special about 23 October 2005 about famed baseball player Jackie Robinson's son, David. Jackie broke the racial barrier in major league baseball, being the son of a sharecropper and the descendant of a slave. It was a business decision by baseball team owner Branch Rickey (not liberal political, media, or governmental pressure). Jackie's son, David, broke the color barrier in his first grade class in Connecticut and suffered for it (up north, mind you!). Now David lives in the Rift Valley of Africa and grows expensive coffee beans as a landowner who sharecrops with locals. However, David is allowed only to say (without challenge) that he runs a "co-operative". He provides the capital; they provide the labor (share cropping).

Having grown up in the still-then-segregated South, it is hard for me to now (2011) believe that segregation existed! But, it just goes to show that the social evolution of mankind results in adaptations that, generations later of societal evolution, make the former things seem so wrong. Again, how dare the ignorant (educated or not) from other areas pass a pitifully ignorant judgment on predominantly good people!

 In 1983, as I worked to bring a partner from Chicago into our practice, I had a very self-conscious, apologetic attitude about the South's reputation "up north" as to race. My partner (from Nebraska), quite a historian and with much interest in things Southern, finally said, "Ervin, don't be so self-conscious about racism. You've never seen racism until you see the racism in the big northern cities...and its not just black-white racism!" Note a 2008 reminder of Northern racist communities & lynchings [HERE]. In 1989, our doctor group was the first in central S. C. to hire a woman pathologist. In 2008, it was the first to hire an African American pathologist. By 2000, it seems to me that blacks are returning to the South in search of a better life...including finding much warmer black-white relations than they find in the North. Unfortunately, under President Obama, I see blacks free to make racist remarks while whites are expected to be "politically correct" and act as if there are no racial differences or preferences at all. The great black actor Morgan Freeman exclaimed on TV in the fall of 2011 that the Tea Party folks are racists (never mind the candidacy of fully fair-minded black Herman Cain!). I predict that black power brokers will refuse to let racism die and will keep it whipped up as many whites did when segregation was being dismantled.

In 1900:²³

The average USA life expectancy in 1900, the time of my great grandfather, was 47 years, only 14% of homes had a bath tub, 8% of homes had a telephone, the average worker made between $200-400 per year (at an average wage of 22 cents per hour), and a 3 minute phone call from Denver to New York cost $11. [Only a rare automobile was seen in only a few of the biggest US cities.] More than 95% of all births were at home, and 95% of all physicians attended medical schools without prior college education. Sugar cost 4 cents per pound, and eggs cost 14 cents per dozen. Most women washed their hair once per month. Antibiotics and insulin had not been discovered. Only men could vote; women & blacks could not. There was no air conditioning or refrigerators. And there were only 230 murders per year in the entire USA!

By 2000, the average life expectancy of those born in 2000 is 77 (a 30 year increase in a century).

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SCOTCH, SCOTCH-IRISH BACKGROUND and WAYS:

A Divided Scotland

The term "Scotch" is an adjective. So, proper terminology is as follows: the first generation of any Scots (noun) who settled in northern Ireland were best referred to as "Scots-Irish". Any child beyond the immigrant generation would be Scotch (adjective)-Irish, meaning Irish of Scottish descent. The "Highlands of Scotland" is the rocky, soil-poor territory north of the river Clyde (north of a line between Glasgow and Edinburgh) wherein dwelt small clans, fiercely independent, who hated agents of government and sometimes raided the Lowlander Scots; most vastly predominately of Celtic origin and spoke Celtic. At least culturally, they were Catholic. Lowlanders were south of the river Clyde, despised Highlanders as lawless and war-like, spoke Gaelic and English and had mixed Celtic, Dane, Saxon, Flemish, and Angle blood. The southern and eastern parts of the "Lowlands of Scotland" form a funnel-shaped land mass with the narrow northwestern end jutting out into the north channel of the Irish Sea, as close as 20 miles to the shore of north Ireland, at Belfast...visible from Ireland. Southward of Lowland Scotland were the upcountry English. The Lowlanders, especially, were a restless people due to trying circumstances⁸. In the United States, in 1790, studies have calculated that about 9% of the U.S. population was Scotch-Irish and 24% so in South Carolina⁸.

[SAINT PATRICK: Credited with bringing Roman Catholic Christianity to pagan Ireland in about 389-461...Patron Saint of Ireland. Born in about 385 AD in Britain (what is now Wales?) with the birth name of Maewyn Succat.]

Food

In the 1600's, the main non-meat staple of native Scottish Lowlanders (meat was mutton, pork, and fish...when they could get any meat) was a monotonous high-roughage diet of oatmeal and barley²⁶. They arose between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. and ate breakfast at 8:00 a.m., consisting of oaten cakes. There was a mid-day meal of oaten cakes and some ale. The key meal of the day was supper which included oats, sometimes some meat and quantities of ale8. The Scots had not learned the trading skill of importing food²⁶.

These lowland Scots grubbed out a miserable living in a land with few trees, few minerals, and a very thin existence. They therefore developed into very tight and conservative peoples who seldom threw anything away. Interestingly, they believed that it was unlucky to wash a butter churn; and, for warmth on colder nights, animals came into the dwellings...the people slept with the animals! And, so, the consistency of their butter was determined by the number of hairs within (both human and animal). With the exception of a very small number of wealthy people, living conditions were dreadful⁸.

Religion

On 31 October 1517, the German, Martin Luther, started the Protestant Reformation by the posting of his 95 theses...intending to just reform the Catholic Church...the Lutheran Church began.  In 1567, 50 years later, Presbyterianism triumphed in Scotland by way of the Protestant Reformer, John Knox, whose key doctrine was the infallibility of scripture. A key Protestant belief was the priesthood of the individual believer, requiring an actual break away from the Catholic Church. He also declared that all political power derived from God to people who then chose leaders (popular sovereignty). Therefore, the Scottish Presbyterians placed a high premium on education in order that each person might be able to read scripture. Hence, the tremendous importance of "Kirk and schools" (Kirk = church).

Ulster, A Northern Ireland buffer for England

In order to act as a buffer against invasion of the Irish into Scotland and then into England, the English first began placing Lowland Scots into Ireland in the 12th century; and this continued over the centuries. However, with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England began to boldly look outward toward the rest of the world. This view into the distance led to major efforts to colonize the New World in Jamestown (1607), predominately for economic reasons; into Ulster (north of Ireland) for economic and religious reasons (the Lowland Scots had become greatly enthused by the Protestant Reformation and took seriously the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19 to go forth and spread the gospel). The Ulster Plantation scheme of England started in about 1610. The Ulster Plantation consisted of six counties of north-eastern Ireland, with Donegal and Tyrone turning out to be mostly of Scottish people8.

In 1610, James I devised The Oath of Supremacy which, if a Scotsman would take it, resulted in his obtaining land in Ulster...being the first of the great Scottish diaspora that was to change the rest of the world²⁶. In 1641, under King Charles, Ulster Scots (Scotch-Irish, mostly Presbyterian) were required to take the "Black Oath" of loyalty to both the King of England and the Anglican Church. Thousands of Scotch-Irish later decided to head for America (see above, "Arrival on the Hopewell" and the link about Covenanter Presbyterians)⁸.

Scots to Ireland

As the Scots had moved into Ireland, they displaced the Irish much as immigrants in America tended to displace the Indians. These native Irish were (at least culturally) Roman Catholics, and the Scotch were Protestants. The native Irish tended not to be congregated in communities, were unorganized, and were displaceable. Nevertheless, they were a constant source of distress to the Scotch-Irish immigrants and fell into two categories: the "wild Irish" were those who continued to live in rural areas (not in towns), while the "tame Irish" were those who tended to live in towns. Because of the religious divisions and the constant hatred over displacement and other differences, there tended not to be much intermarriage between native Irish and Ulster Scots⁸.

Irish rise against the Scotch-Irish in 1641

In 1641, there was an Irish rebellion in which the native Irish invaded Ulster and would have wiped out the Scotch-Irish entirely except for a Scottish Army raised by Lt. Gen. George Monroe. This rebellion appeared to represent a massive outward "summation response" type of culmination of years of intense pent-up hatred between native Irish Catholics and the immigrant Scotch-Irish Protestants (Presbyterians) and their descendants (native Irish displaced; Scotch-Irish in to evangelize the Irish pagans; and the native Irish pecking away at the Scotch-Irish inhabitants). Some have calculated that one-third of the Protestants in Ireland were killed in the above conflict. There were continued uprisings which finally ended in 1652⁸.

Scotch-Irish consolidate 1652-1670

Between 1652 and 1670 in Ulster were years of consolidating peace for the Scotch-Irish, clearly establishing them in the north of Ireland. Some of the Scotch-Irish characteristics were: (1) the Protestant work ethic: Puritans and Scotch-Irish considered it a sin to waste time; every waking minute should be in productive work, (2) since everything comes from God, man is obligated to serve Him⁸. There of course were many interesting happenings in the north of Ireland subsequently and one might refer to several sources8.

Ulster rack rents of about 1764

Beginning at about 12 years prior to the American Revolution, new high lease rents ("rack rents") became a burden to those in northern Ireland, being placed on top of many other burdens. The news of free and cheap land (and the American Indians being more pacified) began anew to stir emigration. To the Scotch-Irish, there was little more important than owning (not leasing) land8.

Scotch-Irish archetype & 1770s migration

"Oppression commercially, politically and religiously in Ulster Ireland prepared those who emigrated to the colonies to enter the city school....Their rugged life fitted them to endure camp and march; and their inborn hostility toward England led them to forge to the front in the early weeks of the year 1775 when many good men of the old English race wavered in the face of war with Great Britain.

"The Episcopalians, all powerful in government, and the Roman Catholics, strong in numbers, pressed in upon every side, and forced the Presbyterians to an exercise of their loyalty and patience, while the spirit of proselytizing which existed everywhere in Ulster sharpened their wits. Under a century of these social and religious influences, the Scotch character must have changed."

"The Scotch-Irish have never claimed that they brought literature or art to these shores [USA]. They knew little of the former and nothing of aesthetics. Diaries and letters of the migration period do not exist and perhaps never did exist. Let us speak frankly. Every race brings to our Western Civilization a gift of its own. These people from Ulster cared very little for the beautiful, with the single exception of the wonderful and beautiful Bible story. Even the New Testament they handled as a laborer might touch a Serves vase -- reverently but rudely."

"The Scotch-Irish could not see that the severe lines of a cabin are softened by a sumac against the south wall or a creeper at the corner. They did not trim the edge of the roadway that led to the front door. In short, utility required nothing of these things and utility was their law. For the same reasons, if the soles of their feet were tough, they saw small need of shoes in summer. Their bare feet, however, gave something of a shock to century-old New England"¹⁰.

The Name "SHAW"

"Though found in the other provinces of Ireland, Shaw is common only in Ulster, particularly in counties Antrim and Down. Though it can be of English origin, from Old English "sceaga" denoting a "dweller by the woods", most in Ulster will be of Scottish stock."

"In the lowlands of Scotland, the name Shaw is of territorial origin from different places of the name and was most common in Kirkcudbrightshire, Ayrshire, around Greenock in Renfrewshire, and in Stirlingshire. The Highland Shaws are no connection with these families."

"Though the name has been on record in the Ulster region from the 16th century, it only became common after the [Ulster] Plantation. Shaws were among the first settlers brought to the Ards Peninsula in County Down by Sir Hugh Montgomery, but the name is not now found there. In mid-19th century Antrim, the name was most concentrated in the Barony of Upper Belfast and in Down, in the Barony of Upper Castlereagh, particularly in the Parish of Saintfield. Ballygally Castle, near Larne, County Antrim, now a Hotel, was built by a Scottish family of Shaws in 1625"¹¹.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. History of Williamsburg Church by Wallace..."has to do with the 1732 arrival of the Scotch-Irish in Kingstree."  
2. History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina since 1850 by Jones and Mills published in 1926, pg. 823.  
3. Williamsburg Presbyterian Church from 1736 to 1981 by Witherspoon, Davis, and Cooper in 1981. (S.C. Archives)  
4. Scotch-Irish Migration to South Carolina, 1772, Jean Stephenson, 1971.(S.C. Archives)  
5. Down the Waxhaw Road, James English Cousar, Jr., 1953.  
6. S.C. Land Grant Policies, Robert H. Ackerman, 1977 (S.C. Archives).  
7. Scottish Contributions to the Making of America, 1951, Pamphlet of U.S. Information Service. (Located in the Thomas Cooper Library at USC).
   Note: Ulster Scots is a term synonymous with Scotch Irish; the Ulster Province, planted with Scots by James VI of England, "the Scottish Nation in the north of Ireland."  
8. A Social History of The Scotch Irish, Carlton Jackson. (Located in the Thomas Cooper Library at USC).  
9. Ulster Emigration to Colonial America 1718 Through 1775, R. J. Dickson. 1966. (Thomas Cooper Library at USC).  
10. Scotch-Irish Pioneers In Ulster and America, Charles Knowles Bolton, 1910.  
11. The Book of Ulster Surnames, Robert Bell, 1988.  
12. Salem Black River Presbyterian Church Bicentennial 1759-1959 by Samuel Eugene McIntosh, 11/8/59 (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).  
13. Lois Dosher Collection, Black River Church file, (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).  
14. A speech to the Sumter Historical Society, James McBride Dabbs. (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).  
15. Reflections , complied by James E. Morgan, Published by The Sumter County Historical Commission, Sumter, S. C. 1986 "Railroads of Sumter District and Sumter County" (by Ross McKenzie...Oct. 1972).  
16. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, Roger Daniels, 1990, Harper Collins Publishers, 450 pages. (in Thomas Cooper Library at USC, Columbia, S. C.)  
17. interviews with Lallah Drafts Lindler, 1999, my mother-in-law.  
18. Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806-1876, Edwin J. Scott, Columbia, 1884. (in South Carolinianna Library at USC, Columbia, SC) [author grew up in Sumter County and lived and traveled around Columbia and Lexington County, SC]  
19. Life on the Old Plantation in Antebellum Days, Rev. Irving E. Lowery, 1911. Born in 1850 to a slave family on the plantation of John Frierson of Pudding Swamp (the neighborhood of the early Shaws), Sumter Co., S.C., the author paints a picture that is almost the opposite of what we moderns imagine slavery to have been like. This on-line item discovered and brought to my attention by Charles Dibble (the book in South Carolinianna Library at USC, Columbia, SC; on-line here at UNC). 
20. History of Sumter County, Anne King Gregory, Sumter, 1954.  
21. History of Williamsburg [1705-1923], William Willis Boddie, 1923.  
22. Partisans & Redcoats [a history of the Rev. War in the backcountry of South Carolina], Walter Edgar, 2001.   
23. The Carolina Herald and Newsletter (official publication of the S. C. Genealogical Society), vol. XXX, number 3, page 11, July/August/Sept. 2002.  
24. from a member of Society for Preservation of Old Mills [SPOOM], Oct. 2002. 
25. Nettles, James A., "Early Irish Origins of the Cantey Family", The Sumter Black River Watchman, Dec. 2003, p. 84.  
26. Herman, Arthur, How The Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It, 2001.  
27. Shaw, Ernest, "Gathering Pieces of the Shaw Family Story", The News, 29 Sept. 2004 page 16. 
28. Larry Schweikart & Michael Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States..., Penguin Books, 2004.  
29. Alphonso Brown, Gullah Tours, March 2005. (http://www.gullahtours.com/index.html).  
30. Beverly Whitaker's "Early American Roads and Trails". website with maps. 
31. Herrick, M. D., James B., Memories of Eighty Years, 270 pages, U. of Chicago Press, 1949.  
32. Caughman, J. Ansel, History of Cedar Grove Community...  
33. Smith, Lettie Mae, explaining about her elderly (1895-) mother's (Leila Backman Shull) marital times in Lexington County, S. C. around 1914, "110 Years in Lexington County", by Ron Aiken, Lexington County Chronicle & Dispatch News, 16 March 2006, page 18A.  
34. Webb, James, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, 369 pages, 2004.  
35. Website about passengers on Earle of Donegal ship, Belfast to S. C. & links to how to analyze such lists for info about the passengers. (http://www.geocities.com/earlofdonegal/?200921  )  
36. Hugh McGough's website about Presbyterians from Ulster to the USA. (http://www.magoo.com/hugh/cahans.html)  
37. Adam Parker, "Lowcountry Church Marks a Milestone", The State newspaper 2 October 2010 pB3 (and mentions a book about St. John's Church, Johns Island Presbyterian Church: Its People and Its Community from Colonial Beginnings to the 21st Century, by Dr. Charles E. Raynal, 2010.  
38. Claudette Holliday, 6/23 & 6/30 & 12/15/2011 issues, newspaper The Lexington Chronicle.
39. The  Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln [out of print], The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1929.
40. Pescovitz, Ora Hirsch, "A PIECE of MY MIND: Swimming in the Sea of Galilee",JAMA 309(9):885-886, 6 March 2013.

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Interested in stuff about South Carolina? Check out: The South Carolina Information Highway,

Sumter County Genealogical Society, and also the Sumter County's GenWeb site & e-mail (sumtergensoc@aol.com). And the Sumter Co. Museum.

Here's how to tap into genealogy/historical/family tree topics online...state-to-state and some foreign countries.

And, to find grave sites & see photos of ancestor markers (and even become a volunteer contributor), check out our Shaw immigrant page at "Find a Grave" [John Shaw is HERE].

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(drafted 1994...numerous revisions; posted 4 March 1999; latest addition 20 February 2013)