Shaw's of Sumter County South Carolina:

from 1772...

Their Story is Typical of the Times

by Ervin Bartow Shaw, Jr., M. D.
[Track back to 1772 immigrant Shaw from my father's memorial]

[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."

My Growing Up Culture: I grew up in central S. C. (Sumter) in the 1940-60s mixed agricultural and business community where there was white & black racial segregation that seemed reasonably harmonious to me (HERE) and a very strong Judeo-Christian underpinning (I did not know a soul who was not a member of a Christian church or Jews to the Jewish temple).

Everyone in Sumter pronounced the name of the town as "Sumpter". An early newspaper article (Saturday Evening Gazette of Bishopville, S. C.⁷⁰) slightly suggests that the Sumpter pronounciation may have lead to the original, casual spelling of Gen. Thomas Sumter's surname & therefore the town of Sumpterville which became Sumterville and then Sumter as citizens sought a more polished, official spelling of the surname.

Jews were huge contributors to "community", HERE. Family relationships were very close. Additionally, there were whites, blacks, and a few "Turks". There were known & well accepted but not announced "queers" amongst both genders. Though there were known alcoholics, I never knew of anyone on drugs (I was told that "dope fiends" could be found in far-away New York). There were a number of social classes of both blacks and whites. All seemed to me to get along OK. There were also some odd people and crippled people who were accepted members of the greater community. Until a teenager, we had no TV or airconditioning. With the 1913 published newspaper report of the start of the Council-Manager form of municipal government (it was the first in the USA), the newspaper editor described Sumter: "Sumter, with about 10,000 population and ten railroad radiations, is an old community, full of Revolutionary stock."

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 and more positive the level of all of the above factors, the greater the overall wisdom of the people. 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 arising out of the elevated interpersonal skills of the people 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! When pilgrims first landed at Cape Henry in 1607, they planted a cross and declared these lands (what would be the USA) for Christ.

The story of most 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 (see killing data as to Man's Inhumanity to Man). Once societies began to organize, the feudal system predominated & had society divided into classes of subjects (people) under the control of a king or queen. When America launched after the revolution to be independent from Britain, the system was (Divinely, in my opinion) set to allow a constant flux & reflux of citizens and family generations between the strata of citizen social classes...without restriction...as people took advantage of the open OPPORTUNITY (not a guarantee) to all.

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. But, times often got extremely hungry in this new world. As in the Jamestown, Va. "starving time" winter of 1609-1610, there are a few instances in the colonization and settling of America when survival cannibalism happened (the Donner Party, winter of 1846-47, California)! Modern folks also make hugely dislocating geographical moves for similar reasons and then compete for space and jobs where they land. It is true that some minority of humans seek to use migrations and the migrants as an opportunity to themselves or their native country.

The story of my Shaw family line 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. A fabulous website with many resources is HERE. 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 over a hundred or more years⁶⁹ but the "exclamation point" was in Oct. 1517 (Martin Luther posted his 95 theses). Missionaries and religious groups from English, Dutch, and French origins began to arrive³⁸; and they were the first to address the slavery situation in the Carribean^{69, lect. 19}. 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, my 4th-great grandfather [6 generations before me]) 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 citizens (sadly, this form has eroded considerably in the USA since 1960). In 2016, Gen. Colin Powell (son of two poor Jamaican immigrants) wrote an opinion piece in whic he noted, "We [USA citizens] are all immigrants, wave after wave over several hundred years. And, every wave makes us richer: in in cultures, in mkusic, and dance, in intellectual capacity."...HERE⁵⁸ The idea of America is to assure ladders of opportunity (only this has the dual benefit to both the individual and society as a whole) which each person can go after to the heights which they aspire to. An individual's efforts going up such a ladder are enhanced as they use the principals of right relationships to build networks of positive relationships that are mutually positive and beneficial. Give-aways generate a sense of entitlement and ingratitude. Here is a link to lots of early USA info, including links to maps showing early trails and roads, HERE.

WITHIN-ESSAY QUICK LINKS:

Scotland Origins

Migration to Ulster (northeastern Ireland)

Leaving Ireland...the 5 ship-loads 1772

Early S. C. townships

Sumter County Towns, 1800-1970

Sumter area and Lexington area immigrants

Early S. C., a 1732 manuscript

Early S.C., a 1734 manuscript

1700s Scotch-Irish USA marriage relationship

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

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

Jewish Contributions

Political Parties

Wars

Salem Black River Presbyterian Church

Old-timey transportation

Water: where from? 

Food: a life of "controlled spoilage"

Natural Disasters

Money & financial panics

Migrations

Schooling

Early Sumter Medicine

Slavery

Sharecropping

Reconstruction, segregation, integration

Social Habits 1900-1975

Ancient Scotland Living

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What Made Them Leave Northern Ireland?

Scotland Origins:

In Europe in the middle ages, medieval society was organized in terms of an idea known as the "three estates model". According to this long-entrenched philosophy, beneath the ruling class (nobles) were the people were born into one of three social orders = (1) those who fight (these plus nobles = 5%), those who pray (5%), and those who work (90%...the peasants; from this area came the merchant class)^{63[lecture #1]}. 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 1517-20, and it was later championed by John Knox ("he who feared the face of no man") in Scotland beginning in 1559 (the Scottish variant of the Reformation)...the Scottish protestant church was the "Kirk"⁶⁹. 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 are 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 was the Episcopal Church and the native Catholic Irish were 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 about 1768 (remember: "people" couldn't own property in those times in any nation on earth) 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":

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.

England devised a plan to actually draw immigrants to what would become the USA! There was no concern at all for "too many". 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. The Bounty Act was passed in 1761. By 1762, following petitions by the Charleston firm of John Torrans, John Greg, and John Poaug, two townships were authorized in the 96 District area: Boonesborough at the head of Long Canes Creek and Londonborough on Hard Labor Creek (both in old Abbeville District).

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 (Swiss-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. There is a Dutch Fork website to my attention listing information derived from old German Church records about MANY German families coming to the Dutch Fork area of S. C., HERE.   
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 1761 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. This Act ceased in July 1768.

Early Sumter District & Sumter County Towns: County towns & post offices, 1800-1970, HERE. Sumter County, S. C. places (via ancestry.com), HERE. 

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 Northern Ireland in great numbers in 5 great pulses; a group of them was solicited into South Carolina in 1732 (example, John Witherspoon family) for the founding of Williamsburg (Kingstree) by the availability of the free "bounty" land grants. Waves crested in the 1770s. Our immigrant ancestor, John Shaw, "arrived in the first as the first major migration of Ulstermen, consisting of 467 families, arriving in South Carolina directly from Northern Ireland. The reason for this mass migration was an incident that occurred in Londonderry, among the congregation of Reverend William Martin. A man from his congregation, in a fit of rage, had murdered a tax collector, who had come to demand payment while the man’s wife was in childbirth. Fearing retribution, Reverend Martin gathered his entire flock, and transplanted the whole community to the Catawba River Valley in South Carolina, where a significant Scots-Irish community already existed. From this point on, much of the Ulster migration to America would come directly through the port of Charleston." [this is from an article in Journal of Backcountry Studies which cited "Edgar"...Dr. Walter Edgar?] Other named roadways included the Charleston-Camden Path, Kings Highway from Charleston to Boston (about the present-day route hwy. #17). In 1915-1927, the Dixie Highway was completed from the midwest to Florida. Another old paved road from Greenvile, S. C. to Lake City, Fla. (in the 1920s) known today as the Woodpecker Trail.

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" (most acutely being the "rack rents") 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, such as pointing toward some sort of "big shot" ancestor multiple generations back. Yet, until the turn of the millenium to the year 2000, a family's history sprang from "We are who we are because they were who they were." Admittedly (and obviously to the careful thinker), 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 Research, Inciting Incident Leading Me to 50+ Years Genealogy "Addiction":

In about 1961, a man purporting to be a genealogist, B. Otis Prince of Columbia, came around to many of the Sumter Shaw Famiy 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 in very early 1966 and was incensed at the "injustice"...possibly even outright scam. Being ignorantly "confident" that I could whip together a Shaw Family History, I started interviewing older family members & heard vague and conflicting stories. I decided thatb maybe that man had researched info and had just failed to complete the deal. I finally found the man in Columbia and visited him the summer of 1969. 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 of completing the history. Little did I know that such an investigation NEVER ends!!!

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).

Names: For most of human history, males went by a single name. In the Bible, when there were several with the same name, then it might be a name, "son of so-and-so". Or, Mary Magdelene was Mary from Magdela. In western cultures, a man named John might have a father named William; John's last name might become Williamson. As populations grew, middle began to be added. When I graduated high school in Sumter, S. C. in 1962, my father was E. B. Shaw, I was E. B. Shaw, Jr., and Daddy's distant cousin was E. B. Shaw...all of us with the first name, Ervin (naming habits, below)!

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. An episode of Forensic Files is about the first time this genetic approach was used to solve a Baton Rouge serial murder, "Tight-fitting Genes" [production code #226; first aired 14 Sept. 2005].

IMMIGRANTS: In the greater Sumter, S. C. area, here are some: Andre Rembert (France), John Witherspoon, James Bradley, John Shaw (Northern Ireland), William Frierson (Northen Ireland), Duncan & son John McLaurin's family from N. C. to S. C. (Scotland), Moses Brown (Scotland to Northern Ireland), John Williamson, B. A. Weinberg, Dr. John Walsh (Northern Ireland), Rawling Pratt-Thomas, Daniel Burgess, David Cousar (Northern Ireland), Abraham Moise (France), Johannes Kolb, John McElveen (Northern Ireland), Francis Plowden (England), Col Matthew Singleton (England), and Capt. Richard Bradford (England). In Kershaw County, Dr. Francis Zemp (Switzerland). In Lexington County (Dutch Fork area), S. C., area, here are some: Jacob Drafts (Swiss-German), Jurge Caughman (Swiss-German), Jacob Lindler (Swiss-German), Mathias Wessinger (Swiss-German), Johannes A, Summer, Sr. (Swiss-German), Conrad Amick (Swiss-German), Rev. J. P. Franklow (Swiss-German),and John Meetze (Swiss-German). In August 2017, from Hanne Enderle, re: Johann Georg Krebs of Germany, I note the link to the website she is creating about these early German immigrants to S. C. (with property map of small area around St. Peter's Church, Lexington Co., S. C.), HERE. Also, she brought a Dutch Fork website to my attention listing information derived from old German Church records about MANY German families coming to the Dutch Fork area of S. C., HERE.

Common Life in the 1700's in South Carolina:

The Ervin Story...1732:

What was life like in Colonial South Carolina (before America became the nation, America) 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 (1888-1977), 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 1780 Witherspoon Chronicles...1734:

Another version of the early-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, AFTER America had declared its independence from England. Part of it is exactly transcribed, as spelled, as follows (the entire manuscript is in Boddie's book²¹, pages 10-20):

 "...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 & where hwy #41 crosses Black River & later known as Potato Bed Ferry...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; in 1795, a road was established from this Ferry over to Lenud's Ferry on the Santee 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."

1700s MARRIAGE:

"The Williamsburg County, S. C., woman of this pioneer period existed solely for the use of her husband. Even on the Church books her name was not recorded, and she had no interests outside of her home. Her husband held her at home and she conformed completely to his habits and hiis will. Sometimes he took her to church, and once or twice each year he carried her to his mother's home for a few hours visit. She never left home unless under his cautious care. The jealous zeal with which the original settler in Williamsburg guarded his wife and the complete dominion which he exercised over her may be better imagined when it is known how the exceptionally conservative man of the old stock now in the County regards his wife and how fully he believes his life should completely circumscribe her very own." The husband plasnted and harvested the crops and got the crops to the barn. The wife shelled the corn, ground it, and cooked it. He harvested the cotton; she picked it, cleaned it, spun it, and made clothes from that and hides. He killed and dressed out animals and live-stock; she cured and cooked it. At this time, women married around age 15, bore her husband about 10 children, half of which died before out of infancy. If she died with childbirth of otherwise, the husband remarruied within a year. The average man there who reached age 75 had married 3 times and had 15 living children (and had lost an equal number).

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 or HERE (two memorials are posted). A total of about 1000 came. The Hopewell arrived in Charleston 22 Dec. 1772. It was not an easy story or voyage. [summary HERE list of surnames of 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. An account (History of Colonial migration of the Friday family) of a 1737 voyage of Swiss-Germans from Europe to Charleston indicates the food arrangement during the 9 week voyage: each adult voyager got a meal per day with a quart of water to drink and a piece of Zwieback (a wheat biscuit). The meal was a portion of dried beef on Sunday & Tuesday. Saturday was a portion of pork; Friday a portion of cod fish. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday was a portion of thin soup made of boiled rice, peas, and barley. Children ate from the parents' share, (page 20, but online URL link was "private" as of 8/2014).

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 immigrant 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 (6th paragraph, above) 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. Rev. Martin fled to Mecklenburg Co., N. C. 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): 

• About 10,000 BC, the Ice Age ends: Some emerging information about Turtle Island indicates that people may have already been here. 
• 10,000-8000 BC, The Paleo-indian Period: humans were nomadic hunters using stone tipped spears. There were no crops, and pottery had not yet been invented. 
• 8000-1000 BC, The Archaic Period: These people had learned to hunt with a short spear called an atlatl. Pottery was developed about 2500 BC. These were semi-nomadic hunter gatherers. 
• 1000 BC-600AD, The Woodland Period: During this period, humans learned to plant crops and invented the bow and arrow. 
• 600 AD-1500, The Mississippian Period: This period found the mound builders and the organizing into villages as crop growing became more advantageous (especially corn). As populations grew, competotion began between indian groups. So, comple social and political systems evolved along with religion. 
• 1500 AD to present day, The Historic Period: [Timeline, America]
• 1526: Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon brought 600 people with him to make a first European settlement. Within a year, most of them were dead...including Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon. The ones who lived went back to Santo Domingo. This short-lived Spanish colony was at "Waccamaw Neck", Georgetown, S. C. [HERE]. 
• 1562: Jean Ribaut (French explorer) arrives at Beaufort River with a group (French Huguenot people...at Charlesfort for a year (present day Parris Island). These people built the first ship on American soil in order to sail back to Europe after being left here by there leader!...and then, 
• 1566: Santa Elena near Port Royal, S. C., became the first colonial capitol (Spanish) in North America. [HERE]...[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); evolution of S. C. counties, HERE.  
• 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.
• 1764 (after French & India War of 1754-1763): France cededCanada and what was to become the eastern USA to the British (and a map shows that S. C., N. C., and Virginia extend just to the Mississippi River.
• 1769-1782 transition to nation of USA: Royal Province of S. C. then divided for formation of seven state circuit court judicial districts of (when John Shaw arrived and got land grant)...(1) Camden District (included present-day Sumter, Lee, Clarendon) (2) York, (3) Chester, (4) Fairfield, (5) Richland, Lancaster, (6) Claremont, and (7) 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.  

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.

AN ASIDE: Over the years, I have had many communications with various people searching out old S. C. Shaw family lines. Sadie Allen, Ernest Shaw, and Sharon Styles have been so encouraging & informative as we have tried to work out any of their ancestral family connections to slaves on white Shaw farms or plantations. My list of other Shaw lines than mine (at least based on my info as of 2016) is HERE.

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). The Wilmington & Manchester Railroad went from Mayesville through Florence (but not yet to Sumter) and on to the east coast at Wilmington, N. C. By 1940, the Florence station was the busiest in S. C. with 14 passenger trains daily⁷⁵. Dr. Gregorie's book has a chapter on railroad evolution in the area²⁰. According⁶⁸ to an article published in The Sumter Herald in 1934, "It would be difficult to say when the real prosperity of Sumter commenced, as it was a mere village for many years, without a railroad connection until 1854 when the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad (later the Wilmington, Columbia and Augusta, R.R.) which opened to the rest of the world some of the finest land in the state. "Prior to the rail link to Sumter, the population had increased rather slowly; in 1860 there were only 900 people living within the Sumter corporate limits. In 1880 the population was about 2,000, about 3,800 in 1890, and over 5,000 in 1894 a very healthy record of growth. There was no big boom, but a steady growth, which by no means has stopped, but is continuing. It will not be a great many years before Sumter will be a city of importance, and those who own property there are quietly holding on, having full confidence in the future." Railroads sometimes caused community name changes: Sanders Station became Hagood; Providence became Dalzell; old Bethel was renamed Oswego; and Manchester (the Sodom and Gomorrah of Manchester) had a race track, brothels & saloons & fights & killings and died when the railroad was destroyed & the town burned down during Potter's Raid & railroad rebuilding favored Wedgefield. And, Paxville was originally Packsville and the name changed after mail kept being mis-delivered to the small northwest S. C. town of Parksville. Along with the busier railroad station towns came the brothels⁷⁵. By 1935, there were a half dozen brothels in Florence, S. C., a town of 15,000 people. Hazel Weisse owned one⁷⁵. H. D. Ellerbe ran for mayor in 1935 & won and set about closing the brothels⁷⁵. Hazel Weisse moved to Georgetown, S. C. and acquired a house & some land on the Coastal Road 3 miles south of Georgetown and opened Sunset Lodge which she ran from 1936-1969⁷⁵.

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 had two locations in "Lower Salem", both being between the Mayesville of today (Mayesville being preceeded by Bradleyville which was just east of today's Mayesville on today's highway 76 and just west of Black River...the old time navigable route) and today's Shiloh and today's Sardinia (Salem post office was at about the intersection of modern #527 & #301) between today's Sardinia & Gable (these locations via S. C. map of 1939). Mayesville began when the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad cut through the Mayes' property and began as Mayes Station in 1852. The area grew and eventually was called Mayesville (replacing Bradleyville).

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 the present-day intersection of 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 just upstream of his property. I believe Capt. George Cooper, 1759-1829, used this site for a cemetery for Salem Black River Presbyterian Church until the church 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 (told where it was by Mrs. Tiller), 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.

John's only child by his first wife, David Shaw, was given the original 100 acre land grant near present-day Shiloh, S. C. I think his first wife is buried in an unmarked family grave there. David and his second wife raised family at Shaw's Crossroads, between Sumter and Mayesville. I think David & his second wife are buried in an unmarked family grave on property of that 2nd home place.

Sumter forms (1798-1800): Chartered as Sumterville in the early 1800s, a committee was chosen in 1798 to select a new county seat for the Sumter District. By 1800, court was being held at John Gayle's farmhouse, near the northeast corner of what is now the intersection of North Main and Canal Street. The Gayle home faced south adjacent to Decatur Street (later called Canal Street) located on the north side of the courthouse. On Oct. 9, 1817, W. L. Brunson, deputy surveyor, was commissioned to lay out the town of Sumterville. He designated three named streets, two or three blocks in length, east to west, and five named streets north to south, two to be two blocks long and three to be three blocks long. Today only three streets still bear the original names given 1798-1800. They are north-south streets, Washington, Sumter and Harvin. Both Broad Street (later Main Street) and Harvin ran two blocks from Republican Street (now Hampton Ave.) north to Marion (now Calhoun). Neither continued to East Liberty, although East Liberty was marked on the map. The town became "Sumter" between 1850-1857.

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 were 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. My great-grandfather, Bartow Shaw, had a company store on the farm that also sold some stuff in the neighborhood for cash or on credit. In 2016, Bill Skinner showed a picture of a plastic medallion coin or chip given out to prisoners in a correctional facility. I wonder if farm or plantation workers ever obtained goods on the place from the "company store" with a type of money...or ledger credit...valuable only in that store.

We are aware 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 (cotton) 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 (cotton) of 1920 (the "fix" leading to the "roaring twenties").
    
• The Great Depression of 1929-31. By 1933 the Great Depression was in full swing and the US economy had reached it's lowest point. One third of all Americans were unemployed. Half of US banks had failed. Its first yearbook published in 1920, the 1933 Sumter High School yearbook reflects the depressed state our country was in. It had paper covers with only 31 pages bound with metal staples. YET, the parents and school made it happen (HERE)!
    
• post-WWII near depression of 1946
   
• recession of 1981-82
    
• Oct.  1987 "Black Friday" panic...one-day USA 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]
  

John G. Shaw Branch Migrates to Mississippi: 

An especially bad cotton depression hit the Sumter area from 1841-1844²⁰ as part of that over-all 1837-1843 cotton 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. The story is that 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. Many families migrated as land tracts ran out, fertility of land "played out", or situations arose that resulted in the need to leave.

Migrations from S. C. tended to be toward the fertile lands of Florida on around the Gulf coast to Texas. The South was so devastated following the ravages of the Civil War and the extreme social upheaval of freed slaves (loss of THE source of big-agricultural labor) that migrations ensued in great numbers after 1865. Abraham Pringle migrated to Florida & then to Mississippi. D. C. Shaw went in 1869 to Apopka, Florida.

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 and some textile revolutions) 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).

THE MONEY CROPS

Trading with Indians for furs 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 area of Sumter County¹⁹, 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.

Rice began inland in early 1700s along swamp streams until the end of the Revolutionary War. Weeds cannot germinate under water, but rice can; hence, the flooding systems for rice cultivation as a weed control process⁴⁷. Then in transferred to coastal with the use of tides⁴⁷. By 1840, Georgetown District produced nearly 50% of the USA rice crop. The world's best rice, Carolina Gold, seems to have arisen in S. C.⁴⁷ Though mechanical threshing (rather than flailing sticks) began in the 1830s, rice had to be hand harvested until 1940⁴⁷! The greatly nutritional bran layer on rice became quickly rancid during shipping; so, this had to be milled off and the white rice polished⁴⁷. Rice production in Louisianna and Texas took over, the Civil War having destroyed so much technology in The Rice Kingom (part of N. C, S. C., Georgia, and northern Florida)⁴⁷. The hurricanes of 1910 and 1911 destroyed the rice dams two years in a row, and was the death knell⁴⁷.

Indigo trade having been stopped by the war, and cotton began to take over inland, especially after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. [Cotton had an amazing impact on slavery...as noted below...after 1800] 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). The world's finest cotton is Sea Island cotton⁴⁷ from along the S. C. coast on down toward Florida. 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). [See this 10 minute VIDEO in the Cotton Museum in Bishopville, S. C.] 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 harvested 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). They sold the cotton. My father share cropped with the black Earl & Eva Wilson family, and they almost always made (hand harvested) a bale to the acre in the 1950s in eastern Sumter Co. Also, Betty's family sold vegetables (grown on their 60 acre farm in Lexington County on present day Darby Ambrose Road) at the Columbia Farmers Market in the current median on Assembly Street, beginning at Gervais St. and going north for a number of city blocks. Their Caughman cousins held a choice selling spot for the Drafts family in front of Caughman Feed and Seed. Okra sold best (quickly and for a good price) because it was so hard to harvest. Mrs. Drafts, with Betty & Brenda, would go to the okra patch just west of the house. In order to sell best, they were up and picking by 5AM wearing rubber gloves and long sleeved shirts so that the tiny okra "spines" did not nettle their skin. Turnips were also grown and sold at market. Much else that was grown was canned for family use during the coming fall, winter, and spring months.

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.

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. Here is Brenda Remmes' web site of some of the people at the nearby Dabb's Crossroad (formerly McBride's Corner), as well as the history of the post-war off-shoot black peoples' church, Goodwill. 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" (camp meetings are a phenomenon which started during the Second Great Awakening, & the amazing early one was the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky). 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! Mormonism appeared during this period & has since swept the world in some 200 years (nearly 15 million worlwide by 2018)!⁶⁹

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).

JEWISH CONTRIBUTIONS:

Looking back at age 72, I am positively impressed more and more with the huge contribution that the very socially integrated Jewish community made in Sumter. I grew up in Sumter and was in the public schools between 1950-1962. I was NEVER aware of any antisemitism! Francis Salvador was a very prominent Jewish immigtant businessman from England to S. C. who was the first Jew elected to public office in the Provincial Congress and was in the Rev. War but died near Keeowee after being scalped by indians (HERE). Soon after the War of 1812, some Jews from Spain & Portugal began to arrive via Charleston to Sumterville (the original name of what became Sumter). Moses Lopez and Esdaile P. Cohen bought a store in 1818 until 1820²⁰. Mr. Marks Solomons arrived between 1815-1820...the area's first Jewish settler to remain permanently²⁰. The Jewish population peaked at 390 in 1960; there is a great overview HERE. The first Sumter public school was created by A. J. Moses in 1889. His wife, Octavia Harby Moses, is credited with seeing that the large monument to the Sumter Confederate dead was created on "Graded School Square" (now between Liberty & Hampton streets on Washington Street). The Sumter Military Academy football team, class of 1902, was coached by General Emile P. Moses (team photo posted on his memorial). Pastor John R. Hay was the first Sumter County scoutmaster (in Wedgefield); W. M. Levi (Jewish) was the first city of Sumter Boy Scouts Scoutmaster and guided Troop number 1 which produced Sumter's first Eagle Scout & Sumter grade school class of 1926 (they moved to Seattle in 1922), Sam Farkas Harby, 15 Nov. 1921 (Boy Scouts founded in England in 1908). In the Korean War, Dr. Milton Weinberg, Jr. was in the type of MASH unit that was the inspiration for the hit television series, MASH (check Dr. Weinberg's 'Then & Now' link HERE). The business community and community leadership was richly populated with community-spirited Jews.

POLITICAL PARTIES:

During colonial times, the colonies were "property of England" and parties did not exist. After the Revolution, though, there were factions of voters. Right away, there were those who wanted a more centralized government (the Federalists). To counter them, the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison arose in 1798 [more detail HERE]. With more intense controversies such (as slavery), this party fractured into the Democrat Party & the Republican Party. Part fractured off in 1825 to what would become the Democrat Party in 1828 under Andrew Jackson [more detail HERE]. It would take an immigrant from India to tease out historical detail to show that it was the Democrat Party that was behind the Indian Removal Law that lead to what became known as The Trail of Tears. A black indentured servant would become one of the first owners of slaves in the colony of Virginia and become wealthy, HERE. It was the Democrat Party that tried to keep slavery; a Republican president would be behind the ending of slavery (Abraham Lincoln). It was a leading Democrat (Nathan Bedford Fiorrest) who would organize the KKK with 5 others as a fraternity (and be the first KKK Grand Wizard) which would corrupt on into a force to keep the black man down during Reconstruction and racial segregation times. By 2000+, at least one former black welfare queen coined the term "Uncle Sam's Plantation". As of 2016, Republicans tend to want to provide ladders of opportunity available for EVERYONE. Democrats believe in dropping a rope to lift the "unfortunate" up. However, some acuse that the "rope system" only lifts up to a height too high to fall from and keeps the recipient suspended as long as the mass of recipients continues to vote Democrats into office. I think President Johnson's (LBJ) War on Poverty quickly got corrupted into a gigantic & subtle vote-buying scheme.

WARS and ENEMY ATTACKS on AMERICAN (USA...after 1776) SOIL:

Context GRAPH for Americans killed in Wars: HERE.

Timeline of America: beginning with Christopher Columbus & Spanish group landing in Granada 2 Jan. 1492. The colony at Jamestown, Virginia was founded by John Smith on 14 May 1607. The Mayflower would land in Provincetown Harbor, Mass., 11 Nov. 1620 to found the Plymouth Colony after landing a little more westward at Plymouth Rock. TIMELINE HERE.

During colonial times, the original 13 colonies were "property of England": So, except for the above timeline, I'm not including any of the pre-colonial or colonial fighting, even though it was on what would become "American soil". It involved native American Indians, the French explorers & tradesmen & settlers, the Spanish explorers & tradesman, and settlers, and the English & other European immigrants.

North American continent (colonial) Revolution of 1776 (1775-1783):

This Rev. War was the first of TWO (2) instances of peoples in North America revolting from the governing "ownership" of some other country and becoming part of the United States of America. The second is of the Texas War of 1836 to separate from Mexico & then The Republic of Texas joining the United States, below.

Religion influenced by Protestant evangelists fearful of government oppression would be a significant factor in our Revolution^{69 [lecture #16]}. Isaac Backus (1724-1806) became a Baptist & evangelist & was convinced that all had to be done to allow people to accept Jesus as Savior without official or private coercion. He became convinced that a fee country had to assure individuals the complete freedom to individually accept Christ in order to assure political freedom. This lead to many having a deeply rooted fear of the potential for government abuse. This set the stage for the 1791 Establishment Clause in Virginia which helped phrase the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

The 1776 revolution would set the stage for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to underpin a new nation like no other before or since: hence, the term American Exceptionalism has arisen (because the USA is thge exception to all other ways of national government). Every four years, the rest of the world witnesses the recurring miracle of (by the standards of human history & man's inhumanity to man) the peaceful transfer of power between presidents of the USA! Now, what follows is the background.

Debt was huge after England's French & Indian War; and this would provoke an escalation in taxation by England on their subjects, the flourishing British colonies in American⁵³. This lead to colonists smuggling and partially doing an under-the-table cash economy to the point that England created procedures allowing impromptu searches and seizures even in colonists homes. The genesis of this war would be economic oppression turning into (1) a huge resistance of the threat & (2) the beginnings of an expected tyranny by Britain⁵³. Samuel Adams was the architect of the revolution & a key founding father of the USA and active in the framing of all documents leading up to the Declaration of Independence and our U. S. Constitution⁵³. Samuel, very early, felt that England was not following its own laws in dealing with the colonies, in that England was treating colonists (the colonists were actually full British citizens!) differently than its European citizens⁵³. So, meetings began in The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston to demand equal treatment ⁵³. These colonists would be known as "patriots".

The first patriot casualty was of 11 y/o Christopher Seider in 1770. Highly interesting to me is that Phillis Wheatley (she would become America's first published African-American & be a famous poet), a 15-16 y/o educated slave girl, read the eulogy poem at the funeral⁵³ (would this herald the fact that the USA would later turn away from slavery?)! This death would be the "match" to light the fuse of the revolution to come⁵³ . Soon, an aggitator organization (to hopefully catch the serious attention of The British Crown & make them realize that there were serious issues to be addressed) began to grow, named The Sons of Liberty...with a seal showing a coiled snake & the words "don't tread on me"⁵³.

The Legends and Lies video docuseries⁵³ outstandingly portrays the mood and personalities leading to the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776...actually written by young Thomas Jefferson, a man conflicted a great deal over slavery...he having a slave-farmed plantation,^{53, episode #5} beautifly illustrating his conflictedness which was & would be shared by many. From its first paragraph, this amazing document based America on God-given rights & followed, therefore, to a "covenantal representative democracy". The leaders hammering out the new nation would be known as The American Patriots. After much anguish and deep reflection, the vote in Congress passed without a single dissenting vote⁵³. Thomas Jefferson put the declaration of a new nation into the written words of the founding document; it would be up to Gen. George Washington to "make good" on this claim!⁵³ The new nation would have its revolutionary Continental Army. From the beginning, black men (such as Jack Sisson) participated^{53, episode #10}, HERE. The British came forward at Staten Island with incredible troop numbers (from a base of 32,000 men). As Gen. Washington was on the verge of an annihilating entrapment of HIS troops by the British, a RARE, unseasonal fog rolled in and gave cover for the US troops to escape (the "Miracle in the Mist")^{53, episode #5}. South Carolinian, Francis Marion (the "Swamp Fox"...a French & Indian War vet) made a phenominal battle-tactics change as he disclosed the guerrilla warfare approach (he learned such from the Cherokee Indians in that war) rather than traditional head-on confrontation.

As the war progressed in the North, the Americans began to gain the upper hand. So, the British turned to the Southern colonies for attack...for a "divide and conquer"...because there were far more British loyalists (Tories) in the South than in the North^{53, episode #7}. Gen. Cornwallis started for the British at Charleston and had a vicious determination to crush resistance & to then go northward to confront Washington in Virginia. Col. BanastreTarleton was his man to mop up S. C. & wipe out resistance there. With the mix of loyalists, S. C. began to undergo a sort of civil war...neighbor against neighbor & with war crimes & dark actions^{53, episode #7}!

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 my original immigrant from Northern Ireland, John Shaw. 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 (my John Shaw arrived 12/1772), 40% of their total came in the 1770s, 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 (who organized the 5 ship loads of immigrants (John Shaw being one) was a "warm Whig" favoring independence. But it was after 1776 that Rev. Martin 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 (Salem Black River) east of Sumter (present day Sumter County), suffered great cruelty inflicted on him on the orders of British General Banastre 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 revolutionary 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.Over in Lexington County, even women such as Emily Geiger performed amazing deeds for the cause!

The war had caused the American interests...under the Articles of Confederation...to run up enormous debt! The new nation plunged into financial free-fall with spiraling inflation to...at one point...a horse cost $150,000.00!^{53, ep.#8} Focused initially in Mass., funding organizations sought to take away farms, etc., to cover these debts. As with many (facing bankruptcy & debtors' prison), Mass. farmer & former soldier, Daniel Shays, lead a rebellion (1785) against these entities claiming to be owed the debt...it failed. But, it highlighted the situation that persons who fought for this new freedom from Britain now found that the freedom was in danger of being inadvertently revoked with such debt penalties.^{53, ep.#8}

The original Congress under the Articles of Confederation found itself paralyzed by the early structure requiring unanimous votes^{53, ep.#8}. This evolved into a huge battle over a congressional structure favoring states' rights vs. a highly centralized government. They realized that the Articles needed reforming (lead by the brilliant James Madison^{53, ep.#8})...who saw that anarchy was on the horizon without a true national government...who would turn out to be the "father" of the U. S. Constitution). Wisely, Madison met with George Washington to convince him to come out of retirement and be at the Philadelphia convention (1787) and his gravitas and nearly universal positive respect among the citizens & (1) show his support...AND (2) convince the representatives of each state that the changes would NOT lead inevitably to a monarchy^{53, ep.#8} such as they'd recently overthrown. To avoid rumor & panic during the evolution of debate, the convention was in lock-down, media-black-out mode with windows locked shut (way before air conditioning and fans & during the hottest summer in 40 years)!^{53, ep.#8} Gen. George Washington was fetched reluctantly to the Convention and then unanimously elected to preside. Importantly (Divinely?), Washington presided with his reknowned quiet gravitas manner but pretty much stayed out of the debate & held the representatives together as ONLY he could...exactly what was needed!^{53, ep.#8} A huge myth is that there was "original intent" in framing the Constitution. Initially there was debate that amounted to, "How in the hell are we going to govern this country!"^{53, ep.#8} There would be three branches of government: (1) legislative (make laws), (2) executive (execute & enforce the laws) and (3) judicial (make judgements as to whether enforcement was within the letter & intent of laws). James Madison persuaded that there had to be a central government component...they could not via a coalition of 13 different countries.To settle the states rights vs. central government deadlock over big states power vs. small states (lasting most of the summer), the Great Compromise of 1787 arose with the concept of TWO houses of the legislative branch: (1) the federation-type Senate with equal (two) senators from every state & (2) the democratic-type House of Representatives with representatives per state based on population^{53, ep.#8}. Of great interest to me is that the Compromise almost did not happen because the slave-holding states fought hard to have the slaves counted into the population on which the House members were apportioned!^{53, ep.#8} Because of this, a formula was devised to count slaves as votes (thus identifying them as citizen persons & not property = a "free person" counts as one person and "all other persons" count as 3 counts for every 5 persons [The 3/5ths Compromise...a 4 minute video explanation by black female professor]...it does NOT ever say that slaves are 3/5ths of a human). This would implant the "person" key to ending slavery (a point recognized by some high-profile black leaders in America)!^{53, ep.#8} The U. S. Constitution was hammered out & passed unanimously (17 Sept. 1787) in four long months to forge & create a new system of government never before imagined in this world: an historical first in all of human history (a sort of balance between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy)!^{53, ep.#8} This system was framed to protect the unalienable, God-given, natural rights of humans stated in the Declaration of Independence, HERE.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY: This government would establish the foundations (1) setting the pathway to equal opportunity. (2) The symbols of such (our flag and such as the Pledge of Allegiance and The National Anthem) should each and all command the respect of citizens for all persons who sacrificed time, energy, health & even their lives to keep that imperfect path open and refining.

However, there were concerns that the Constitution only implied fundamental rights of citizens. So, the Bill of Rights was debated and agreed upon (proposed 1787-1788 & agreed 25 Sept. 1789) and became implimented as a series of the first 10 amendments (written by James Madison) to the constitution (ratified 15 Dec. 1791). The Constitution defined the government structure and function, and the Bill of Rights defined the fundamental rights of every U. S. citizen. It had become critical to have a first president that was wholeheartedly respected throughout the 13 states: George Washington (who did NOT want the responsibility & did not seek it but acqiesed & was sworn in 30 April 1789).

THE DEBT PROBLEM^{53, ep.#8}: The staggering cost of the war of the revolution into independence from Britain was costly and the new nation continued strangled with debt & emotional positions which threatened the new structure. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton pushed hard for the creation of (1) a national bank to issue bonds to pay the debt (2) along with national taxes; but this seemed extreme to Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson feared some sort of scheme involved creditor types in Britain (potential big-volume bond buyers). In exchange for their support, Jefferson & James Madison came on board when the group all agreed that the new nation would have the capitol in The South (becoming Washington, D. C.). Federal taxes are levied on "distilled spirits", the greatest component of that area of the market place being on whiskey. This hit the farmers selectively hard and they rebelled and burded out, tarred and feathered and other assaults on federal tax collectors. This resulted in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 while Washington was president and which crescendoed with President Washington leading a show of force just south of Pittsburgh in 1794. The rebellion was over without a shot being fired. Rebellion leaders are charged & convicted & sentenced to death (demonstrating the seriousness of thwarting the new government); but President Washington pardons them. He leads the country out of debt and through two terms without war at home or abroad. THEN, he does something amazing in human history: he steps gracefully aside as the new president, John Adams, is elected & sets the example for an historic PEACEFUL transfer of power. from the above, one can see some reasons why Washington is often seen as the Rather of the USA. One of his 1796 farewell address warnings...certainly pertinent in 2016...can be made (^{53, ep.#8}) into the following quote, "So let me warn you against the spirit of party by which unprincipled men [or women] will be enabled to subvert the power of the people."

Sadly (viewing from 2016) and very much according to the fallenness of humanity, Hamilton (a "federalist") and Jefferson (a "democratic republican") would quickly become entagled in a nasty power struggle even before President Washington left office (and the manipulation of the free press [media] would begin media nastiness (see media in 1800^{53, ep.#9}) beyond what we see in modern times)! This would turn into a bitter struggle between VP Hamilton & Pres. Adams who had previously worked well together to forge the new nation. George Washington's worst fears are beginning to play themselves out, and he dies 4 March 1797. So nasty were the narratives of the day, a LAW was even passed & signed by Pres. Adams (1798) to make it criminal to say nasty and untrue things about the President and/or Congress (the federal government)!!! Aaron Burr would surface as the prototype of the pure, powerful, completely self-serving politician^{53, ep.#9}. At that point in US history, the Vice President was the person who lost the election to the president (this being US President #3, Thomas Jefferson. Thus, it became clear that the VP needed selection in seperate voting (giving rise to Constitution amendment #12). Ironically, former presidents John Adams (#2) & Thomas Jefferson (#3) would both die of natural causes on the same day (July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence) during the term of president #6. The new form of government had survived but would be severely test with the War Between the States (below), after which the USA would go further in a most tragic showdown toward the Declaration's promise & goal of "all men are created equal"^{53, ep.#9}.

FINAL SUMMARY POINT ABOUT THE REVOLUTION: When America was launched after the revolution to be independent from Britain, the system was (Divinely, in my opinion) set to allow a constant flux & reflux of citizens and family generations between the strata of citizen social classes...without restriction...as people took advantage of the open OPPORTUNITY (NOT a guarantee) to all to better their lives. Yet, beginning in about 1890, Progressivism began in America and has constantly since then used every means possible to alter the meanings of the constitution and build up more and more central control of every aspect of human life (proponents quietly & fully believing that central bureaucratic experts need to be in control of all aspects of USA life) ⁶⁴. Whereas, interestingly, America went to war to get loose from Britain, the backing of the USA would give Prime Minister Winston Churchill the (Divinely set up?) guts in 1940 to refuse...in the face of what the British political establishment thought would be sure defeat by the on coming Hiltler's German military sweeping Europe and having the British forces trapped at Dunkirk...the idea of surrender (see the outstanding 2017 movie, Darkest Hour). Though this war of Independence ended in 1783, the British never really accepted the independence & would launch an effort in 1812 to retake the USA!

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Post-Revolution "pull" toward England-France war (1778-83): Almost as soon as President Adams took office, some began wanting to found a new 10,000 soldier national military & possibly enter this Anglo-French war against France.

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

Post-revolution Barbary Coast Pirates war with Muslims (1801-1815): A group of North African Muslim nations (including Tripoli [note the Marine hymn]) extracted ransoms from European and American colonial shippers who traded in the Mediterranian. After Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, the ransom demand became ridiculous. This lead to the use of the U. S. Marines (created 10 Nov. 1775 as an amphibious arm of the U. S. Navy) who went into the area and killed until the Muslims got the message...the Barbary Wars. This unending desire for the Muslims to dominate the world spread toward East and West once it started; then it focused more on the West & represents a many centuries long determined Muslim effort to blot out the Western (Christian) World & force it iunto Islam. Here is an outline:

• 476AD: Rome falls to Germanic conquest & Dark Ages (until about 1100AD) of Western Europe begin.
• 622AD: Muhammad begins Muslim conquesting;
• 637AD: Jerusalem falls to the Muslim Rashidun Caliphate.
• Muslims go toward East into Indian and toward West conquering up until France where they are stopped by Charles Martel at Tours in 732AD.
• 1095-1272AD: Era of the 9 Crusades to take back what had been conquered.

The War of 1812: The British having never truely accepted their defeat in the Rev. War, this War of 1812 became America's second war of Independence (HERE)...to stay independent. The British had terrrorized our shipping since 1807. A remarkable Sumterite, "Cap" Andrews (died at age 104) may have been in this war; and a remarkable short story of his life in the form of letters of intoduction is posted, HERE. Another veteran of that war was Col. John Blount Miller, key early citizen of Sumterville. Malachi Brogdon, William Sumter, Wiley Fort, Mark Johnson, James Edgar Mayes, "Squire" M. P. Mayes, and Thomas Reese McFaddin were other Sumter County veterans of that short war. And my kinsman, Capt. John Shaw, Jr. was in that war; and Shaw connections in Mississippi (Carlos Ladner & Pierre Phillip Saucier) served. Some of my wife's Dutch Fork connections who served were John Jacob Amick & Jacob Kaminer. Richard Shaw of James Island was injured in the war. The British wanted to capture New Orleans and secure a route to the western North American continent. As the attack on New Orleans became imminent, the nuns of the Ursuline Convent mounted a prayer campaign for the citizens who had gathered ot defend New Orleans⁷¹. Under the generalship of Andrew Jackson (not a true military man), the Battle of New Orleans in early 1815 turned out to be the most lop-sided military loss (Divinely set up?) in British history and ended the War of 1812⁷¹.

The Texas War of 1836: This is the war of the Texas Revolution which is remembered with the Battle of the Alamo in South Texas. It is interesting that South Texas was part of Mexico & inhabited by many small tribes of nomadic, hunter-gatherer native American peoples who were basically peaceful & collectively referred to as the Coahuiltecans. The Spanish began to explore central America up into western North America from 1521-1821 in the effort to create New Spain. As Catholic Christians, they encountered (in 2016 terms, "immigrant infiltration"?) the indigenous populations with the Gospel via Fanciscan Friars & built Missions for worship using indigenous labor. These indigenous folk were faced in the 1700s with the expansion of the sometimes thieving Comanches into their area from the north along with the much more vicious Lipan Apaches. To help with protection for the native Coahuiltecans, the South Texas spanish missions were often fort-like with protective walls (these are readily seen in the San Antonio area) to keep the Comanche & Apache out. These people were caught between the adjustment that changed their way of life to farmer & craft types who were easy prey for the terrible diseases brought in by Europeans (small pox, etc.). To populate the area in the early 1800s, Mexico lured "anglos"...European offspring...from the eastern USA states. As these immigrants became a majority population, the stage was set for the war to break away from Mexico & become their own nation...which would join the USA in 1845.

Mexican-American War (or War with Mexico) of 1846-48 (Texas annexed into USA in 1845): Beyond the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, tension continued, and we then had this subsequent war. From Sumter County: Captain Francis Sumter and Sebastian Sumter more-or-less lead a group which included: Albertus C. Spain, Cyrus S. Mellette, James D. Blanding, Thomas M. Baker, A. F. Allen, and M. J. M. Murphy. Read about the federal government's woefully poor preparations leading to a partial mutiny en route to Mexico.^{[20, p154-161]}

Tension would continue, and there later was the Border War 1910-18 with skirmishes into the USA (Texas) by Mexicans (Company L, Sumter Light Infantry members, HERE, my grandfather was the company commander).

American "War Between the States" (1861-1865) ⁴⁵: This war has also been called The War of Northern Aggression, The War for Southern Independence, and The American Civil War. The vast majority of USA farmers were NOT slave owners...in the North or the South!!! But a sudden cancellation of slavery would absolutely collapse the Southern predominantly agricultural economy...to the detriment of both whites and subsequently freed slaves!!! Beginning in the early 1800s, another inflammatory issue arose in the form of tariffs on imports from Europe to protect Northern industries which disproportionately adversely affected the South. Adding even more hurt on the South, this damaged the European ability to buy such Southern production as cotton. It got to its highest point with the 1828 Tariff of Abominations). Propelled by anti-slavery aggitators ("radical abolitionists") who refused any orderly and slower (the gradualism of "gradual emancipation" for which Abraham Lincoln called in the Lincoln-Douglas debate) societal transition. Radical & violent abolitionist, John Brown, made an 1859 raid at Harper's Ferry which gave final proof to slave-holding regions that radical abolitionists had real influence up North and were ready for violence rather than any sort of gradualism. Seccession seemed, therefore, the only option for the South⁵³. In my opinion the war, therefore, simply but innevitably precipitated at Charleston, S. C. The North-South division having initially begun over slavery, it was finally actually crystallized over the larger issue of "states' rights". The end-game was NOT especially to retain slavery...though seccession documents in most states are said to have named slavery as the biggest reason to leave the union. S. C. secceeded on 20 Dec. 1860. On 9 Jan. 1861, the federal government attempted to get the ship, Star of the West, into Charleston Harbor to re-supply federal troops at Fort Sumter...a provocative act. A Sumter native and Citadel cadet, "Tuck" Haynsworth, fired the first 2 shots over that ship on 9 Jan. 1861 (he was killed many years later in a courtroom). I have come to realize that, initially, the greater populations of both sides imagined themselves standing up for the standards of the U. S. Constitution (the North = it is best served if the US stays united; the South = "they" [Northerners] are not like us Southerners & don't as zealously support the details of the U. S. Constitution & cannot be persuaded or trusted...therefore, we will leave the Union).

The first Battle of Bull Run (21 July 1861 near Manassas, Virginia & close to the nation's capitol) was almost considered a sports competition by the capitol elite and social upper crust. They came out by the hundreds with picnic baskets prepared to watch the likes of a fist-fight brawl. Instead, 36,000 soldiers triggered into an horrendous battle with some 8,000 killed, wounded, and missing. This war was to be no joke of a national spat! In black military units, some 3000 black men were members of the Confederate military. For the first time, a war was going to reach the communications media with photography. On my father's side, Sam Pringle of Shaws Crossroad, Sumter County, S. C. was killed in Virginia. From the seccession of S. C. and the fall of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor to almost every other increasingly gruesome event, the will of both sides to win was galvinized and re-galvinized into unimaginable horror. But...honor as to home and family was at stake. As one writer opined, "Was the Civil War a just war? Yes. But three quarters of a million [750,000] soldiers (Americans) lost their lives, and the nation nearly extinguished itself."⁵⁷ In proportion to the US population then (1865) and now (2016), this would be like 7.5 million Americans killed in 2016! For every man killed in battle in the 1860s war, two more died of diseases (mosly infectious diseases related to non-sterile procedures or cramped and close quarters). This is what hard-headed, passionate, totally impatient, radical abolitionists...thoughtless of the possibility of unintended consequences...did to America where Constitutional and economic factors...minds were changing...already had slavery on the way out! Politically, the Republican Party (mostly in states outside of the South) wanted slavery stopped⁶¹. But both Northern and Southern Democrats did NOT want slavery to cease⁶¹. During the war, as he pondered strategy, Pres. Lincoln was told (and convinced) that if he cast the war as an effort to end slavery...free the black man...then the white Northern soldiers would just quit & go home. So, Lincoln's Emanipation Proclamation was made & aimed at freeing the slaves in the Southern states. At the same time, he shrewdly declared the war to no longer be about "states' rights" but about "human rights"⁶². Later he goes "all in" for the 13th Amendment (free the slaves) to the U. S. Constitution⁶².

But, the likes of die-hard Southern sympathizers such as actor John Wilkes Booth would not accept the 5-day-old "new normal" of surrender of Southern Gen. Robert E. Lee and plotted the assassinations of President Licoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State, William Seward. Lincoln being killed at the Ford Theater in Washington, D. C. (which actor Booth knew like the back of his hand) on April 14, 1865.

To the modern day shock of USA citizens, 1000s of blacks served in the Confederate forces (mostly in poorly documented positions as aids and wagoneers...but also as armed soldiers). A former slave who became a freedman and S. C.'s 3rd largest slave owner, William Ellison, II, ( a biracial "Mulatto") fully supported the Confederate cause; he died in 1861 & his family continued that support! Another example is one such Sumter black man, George W. Washington, who ended up bringing Lt. McQueen's body home. Another instance is reported in The State newspaper on 17 July 2015 by the great grandson of Townsend Mikell (a white man). Mikell's friend and former slave, James Giles (a black man), served with him in that war. Mr. Giles also recieved a confederate pension and is named on the Edisto Confederate Monument in S. C. Inspiring details of their continued friendship after the war were in this letter to the editor (and said to be in Edisto history books, in Mikell's memoirs, and in the Edisto Island Museum). One black Sumterite served in the Union Army & is buried in Walker Cem. in Sumter, Edward Beasley. A considerable majority were slaves owned by kind families. And they favored the reality & stability of what they had over the promises of the Northern abolitionists (though I feel certain that all had to be looking forward to a stable and ongoing transition to freedom from slavery).

On Daddy's side, his great grandfather, Ervin James Shaw, was in the ongoing fighting around the Richmond area most of the war. His only injury known to us was being thrown off of his mule as it jumped Alligator Branch on his home property. On Momma's side, her great-grandfather, John Alexander Brown, had a similar accident coming home at War's end which ruptured his lower abdominal wall and left him handicapped, therefrom. On my wife's side, a type of non-combatant death was her great-great grandfather's (G. M. Caughman, Sr.) death by pneumonia as he raced to Virginia to see his son who had been shot in the chest!

They had plenty of political "spin" back in those days, too. To this day, there is controversy as to whether Sherman and the Yankees intended to burn Columbia, S. C. down or whether it was locals trying to make the Union look inhumane. My partner possesses a contemporaneous letter from an Ohio soldier to his family confirming that the Seccessionist city was intended to be burned & was not accidental. Amazingly, certain non-Southern states dragged their feet into the 1900s before they ratified the 14th Amendment (making blacks citizens) to the U. S. Constitution! [Delaware – February 12, 1901; Maryland – April 4, 1959; California – May 6, 1959; Kentucky – March 30, 1976...details HERE]. Context GRAPH for Americans killed in Wars: HERE.

The Spanish-American War (1898): This was a war of just over three months in 1898 related to Cuba. My great uncle, Uncle Pete Matthews who I never knew, died of TB contracted by him in this war. The first Mayor of Sumter & a Sumter physician, Dr. J. A Mood, was in this war. And, my maternal great grandmother's (old MaMa that lived with my grandparents) father-in-law's (Will Hall) step-sister, Annie Ferguson, was a nurse in that war.

The Border War (1910-1919): Tension would continue from the war in late 1840s, and there later was the Border War of 1910-18 with skirmishes into the USA (Texas) by Mexicans (Company L, Sumter Light Infantry members, HERE, my grandfather was the company commander). Officially known as The Mexican Expedition (also as The Pancho Villa Expedition or The Punitive Expedition, The Border War was an off and on border conflict at the border between the USA and Mexico. My grandfather, R. T. Brown was sent (& his brother, Perry Brown) for duty in this conflict & then sent to France near the end of WWI (but my grandfather was part of the war-winning effort that broke The Hendenberg Line (German resistance).

Pre-WWI, 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] There were no actual landing or air attacks on USA soil with WWII, The Korean Conflict (War), The Viet Nam War, or others since and up to the end of 2013.

***A web site collects war stories from veterans by the 1000s for on-line viewing HERE.

World War I (WWI): This was in July 1914-November 1918. Military units were still largely brought together from geographic areas, and massive unit casualtties could wipe out a large number of men in a recruiting community (as in the War Between the States). The USA joined into WWI after the Black Tom incident, above. My grandfather, R. T. Brown was sent for duty along with ALL of his brothers (Allen was gassed in the trenches and died years after at Oteen VAH outside of Asheville). This was the first war through which Progressives realized the value of war & huge threats are to pushing the progressive agenda^{64 [@ 24:36]}!

Whites Attack Black Wall Street: In an area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a domestic terror attack... The KKK-induced Tulsa Riots were followed by Airborn U. S. federal Government Firebombing, HERE.

World War II (WWII): The Second World War was from 1 Sept. 1939-14 August 1945, beginning with the invasion of Poland by Germany in the European Theatre of WWII⁶⁰. It is estimated that some 75,000,000 people died in that war (half were civilians⁷³)! Adolph Hitler of Germany hoped to dominate Russia and all of Europe. For the first time in history, there was an organized, planned attempt exterminate an entire class of people within the waring country (Jews & some others)⁷³.The seige of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was where Germany cut off all roads to that important eastern to n Russian city for 28 months, and over a million Russians starved to death or died otherwise! If the Allies (USA plus others) had not been able to suceed with the Normandy Invasion on 6 June 1944, there is a good chance Germany would have conquered the world! As if that were not bad enough, the emporer of Japan had similar dreams out in the Pacific Ocean area. On June 21, 1942, a Japanese submarine fired 17 shells on Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River (the only WWII enemy attack on a USA mainland military installation). Some of my Brown family Uncles were in this war, especially Uncle Bill Brown who was a glider pilot over Normandy (he glider-crashed with men and/or supplies 3 times in WWII) & was involved in the Korean War and the Viet Nam War...a career military man who was the highest ranking Chief Master Sergeant in the U. S. Air Force when he finally retired for good. Here is the Normany documentary movie, We Stand Alone Together- Band of Brothers.

Pacific theater: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Sunday 7 Dec. 1941, and American leaders are said to have failed (Providentially?) to take heed of a warning (which would have launched all ships. Admiral Nimitz toured the area right after the attack and surprised everyone by pointing out 3 huge (Providentially orchestrated?) mistakes by the attacking Japaneses pilots. #1: The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave.  If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800. #2: When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships.  If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is was, the ships were in shallow water and could be raised. One tug could pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already had crews ashore anxious to man those ships. #3: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war was in top-of-the-ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. Now the Japaneses had "friendly" infiltrated the Philipines for 10 yrears prior to taking them over!^{59 [page 20]} So, the Philipines needed to be taken back before any Allied invasion of Japan. The story of pacifist (conscientious objector, Medal of Honor recipient) ) soldier, Desmond Doss (see the 2016 movie, Hacksaw Ridge) is an incredible story of a heroe who saved American lives [under Divine protection ?] under the highest possible personal risk rather than than killing the Japanese enemy. The Japanese soldiers fought in the mindset of "bushido"...it was a highest honor to die in combat for the Emporer (Hirohito) & a shame to be injured or sick in battle & of all shames to surrender. President Roosevelt had been elected to his 4th term in Nov. 1944 and had a new VP under him who the American people know nothing about & on whom FDR looked down his elite nose as a "rube" from Missouri⁵⁹. On 12 April 1945, FDR died, and Harry S. Truman (his middle initial did not stand for anything) suddenly ascended to the presidency and would be faced with the biggest military decision humankind had ever made---whether to drop the new "atom bomb" or not.

Even beyond the brutality of the Russians, an excellent popular history book⁵⁹ details the brutality (remindful of radical Muslam jihadists in 2016) of the Japanese soldiers. They even kept captured females (some 200,000 "comfort women"^{59 [page 234]}) for the pleasure of their soldiers. And Japan broadcast one or more "Tokyo Rose" females talking about the American soldiers' wives & girfriends back home being unfaithful, etc., in an attempt to erode American soldier morale. The invasion was predicted to cost a million Allied (mostly American) lives.

A great breakthrough had nations scrambling to make the new atomic bomb, and the USA won the race. USA had a perfect, secret test blast of Trinity in the USA southwest desert of New Mexico. After leaflets were dropped over Japan for a week or more telling citizens to leave the pending disaster Hiroshima, Paul Tibbetts flew the Enola Gay over that city on 6 August 1945 & dropped the 5-ton "Little Boy", the first atom bomb in war; & the city was "vaporized"^{59, chapt. 21}. Allied broadcasts and more leaflets begged Japan to surrender under the Potsdam Declaration of unconditional surrender. Japan was silent. Russia is in the illegal process of highjacking the war situation in order to invade the Japanese area of Manchuria. On 9 August 1945, C. W. "Chuck" Sweeney flew Bocks Car carrying the minimally larger, 5-ton "Fat Man". With multiple spine-tingling glitches and uncooperative weather at first, Fat Man finally is dropped on Nagasaki. And, suddenly it is almost dead certain that the Bockscar will run out of fuel. "For more than an hour, Sweeney and the men of Bockscar pray^{59, chapt. 24, p225}." Bockscar lands and runs immediately out of its last drop of fuel [Divine intervention by answered prayer?]!!! On 10 August 1945, President Truman gets the surrender notice from Emporer Hirohito. WWII is finally over, ending 2500 years of Imperial Japanese rule! Believe it or not, there were 165 nijyuu hibakusha (bombed twice, double survivors^{59 [page 228]}) of both atom bombs!!!

After the dropping of the atom bombs in Japan ended the war, my Uncle Bill Brown's family lived in Japan during the U. S. Occupation to assure the recovery of the Japanese nation. Two kinspersons (B. O. Cantey, cousin Alice Cantey's brother [on my mother's side of the family]; and Leon Williams, Daddy's favorite Aunt's, Berta Williams', son on my father's side of the family). They had been fighting in the South Pacific & were thought to have been killed. The ability to communicate and investigate back in those days was understandably very poor compared to modern times (2016). The families had already had obituaries & grieving when the news came that "B. O." was alive and well. But Leon, who had been missing for over a year since the Bataan Death March, was killed by his own country in an attack of Americans on the Japanese hospital ship that Leon was alive on! Obituaries had been published prematurely and ended up being wrong on B. O. Sumter's (Stateburg) Major General George L. Mabry, Jr., was a Medal of Honor recipient and second most decorated soldier of World War II.

The nuclear cold war (1947-1991): This was a period of marked tensions between The USA and its allies versus Russia and its allies. The threats of missles carrying atom bomb nuclear warheads was constantly in the backs of our minds. Sunday afternoon family visitations fairly frequently included serious discussions as to whether it was yet time for the family to go together and build a bomb shelter to survive a nuclear detonation in our area (the shelter building never happened because it did not seem that the Sumter area was that important to the Russians). Momma not infrequently took my sister and me to the top of the tallest building in Sumter (The Dixie Life Building [7-story "sky scraper" built in 1913] on the northeast corner of Main and Liberty streets...torn down in 1973) to take our turn with the Ground Observer Corps group (formed in 1950 & ending in 1958, it was an arm of the United States Air Force Civil Defense network which provided aircraft tracking with 200,000-750,000 civilian volunteers). The Corps workers documented the dates and times that we saw any type of aircraft fly by.

Radical Muslim attacks of 11 Sept. 2001 (9/11): U. S. Citizens died in Pennsylvania, New York City (two planes flew into the world trade towers & both burned & collapsed), and Washington, D. C.; thousands were killed.

Domestic Terrorism: Between 2001-2011 (since the World trade Towers terror of 9/11), the U. S. Military Academy's (at West Point) Combating Terrorism Center notes an average 337 attacks per year within our nation with a total (aggregate) killing of 254 persons! This was covered by a piece in the New York Times on 16 June 2015.

Radical Mexicans (2008-2014): they have shot and killed or injured some 300 persons on the American side of the border in small apparently disorganized numbers.

First radical Muslim jihadist beheading on American soil: On September 24, 2014, at the Vaughn Foods food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma, the murder of Colleen Hufford happened, an employee who was gruesomely beheaded. Alton Alexander Nolen (Jah'Keem Yisrael), a recent convert to Islam, is being charged with the beheading, after attacking Hufford and another employee (Traci Johnson) shortly after learning he had lost his job. “This is the first American beheading on American soil reportedly in the name of jihad,” Mehgan Kelly said with her late June 2015 interview with Traci (who interestingly said that Nolen had told her earlier that, "I hate white people, and I beat them up!".

World War III (WWIII)(2001-?): I consider that this had to be viewed as a world war in progress when over 10 workers in Paris, France, were slaughtered in a publication business, hitting at the roots of free speech. [In retrospect, this world war began (at the latest) when the World Trade Towers were brought down by terrorists on 11 September 2001.] This recent slaughter was on 8 January 2015. On Sunday, 1/11/2015, the biggest street rally (greater than 3 million people for freedom of speech) in that nation's history; 40 world leaders were in it while Pres. Obama only had the ambassador to France. Its a war between an evil brand (millions of individuals) of Islamic jihadist barbarians and the rest of the civilized world. Wake up, civilized world!!!

Ravages of War: In addition to the obvious carnage at the sites of war, the soldiers often bring home the stains of war with wounds & physical and mental injuries. One of my wife's brother's best friends had family circumstances deal with stains of war & even further complications on the home front, HERE.

GUN RIGHTS:

The intial point of the 2nd amendment to the U. S. Constitution was for citizens to be able to resist a tyrannical government. Note that a number of the above wars were BECAUSE of the dreams of tyrannical despotic leaders with dreams of dominating the world and with the ability to hoodwink & fool a majority of their citizens and then control the now-unarmed citizens with constant death & torture threats! But it was originally based on the right & need of all citizens to assure themselves a food supply from wild game. With economic uncertainties & hard times recurring throughout our nations history, food is still a basic & prime concern. However, we have actually had to have WWII veteran citizens battle a local government after WWII in the Battle of Athens, Tenn.! It is NOT guns that kill; it is the people who use them! The criminals will never obey gun restriction laws!

DEATH & BURIAL:

For the vast majority of really ill folks prior to 1940, death came swiftly. By 2016, medical care in the USA is so effective that a majority of lethally ill people die a slow death (until the final few days of "active dying"⁵⁸), often under the auspices of a Hospice process. When coming to America in the 1700s and later, it was not unusual to have death on board ship. I suppose a funeral service was held; then the body was dumped overboard before decomposition started. Except in cities such as Charleston, burial sites tended to be on the family property. Inscribed grave marker stones were expensive. So, the site might be marked by nothing more than a special rock or other identifier. Life was simple, and families knew where their kin were buried. So, a "good death" was an expected death & happened around and amongst family and friends. It was followed by a church service or the burial performed in worshipful manner. As noted in the Medical Section of this web site, there were many and fairly common types of tragic accidental & natural deaths (example = "child bed fever"). A deep grave was needed to prevent wild animals from digging the body up and scattering it...a sure sign that the family "just did not care". The Captain George Cooper cemetery (sort of neighborhood cemetery started in 1801) in old Sumter District preceeded the cemetery at Salem Black River Church cemetery (which began about 1845). This website about the history since 1850s of the Hart Island (New York) burying ground exposes the grim fact that communities have always had to deal with the deaths of starngers and unidentified bodies, HERE. I do not have info yet on how this was dealt with in old Sumter District & County.

In the 1860s, the nation was stunned⁴⁵ when it found itself dealing with the likes of 13,000 deaths in a single battle!!! In the terror and fatigue of such situations, there were large trench graves with poor (if any) ability to specifically identify individuals. And there were large numbers of shallow graves, many of which became desecrated by wild animals. There were no military honors events or even spiritual events of dedication. This was incredibly far removed from society's notion of a "good death". Since the concept of Hell was "burning in Hell" for eternity, cremation was impossible to consider. Attempts to satisfactorily localize the place of burial of the above war deaths continues to this very day.

Well into this war⁴⁵, they started the habit of embalming bodies to send them home. Families bought embalming insurance, and the soldier wore a metal tag indicating that the embalming was "paid" (the precursor to soldier "dog tags").

Way back in time, people had one name. With increasing population and mobility, people need to know, "Which Robert are you talking about?" Common in Roman times 2000 years ago, middle names fell out of favor about a thousand years ago. In the USA, middle names made a resurgence after the War Between The States but were not standard practice until after WWI (most of our Founding Fathers only had a first & last name)⁵⁹. Special thought & honoring were oten part of naming the first son; Joseph & Elizabeth Montgomery had to try 3 times (#1) to get eldest son Robert McFaddin Montgomery to "stick. In South Carolina up until about 1950, there were additional frequent naming habits. In my wife's Caughman and other Lexington County families, two in-laws with the same given name they were known by would be referred to as their given name plus their spouses given name..."Hattie Frank" and "Hattie Walter"...in conversations (or letters) where they were absent in order to avoid confusion. When sons had a father's name, there might be debate about whether to refer to the father as Sr. or not. For clarity of conversation or genealogy, it might be done but might also be not needed in legal documents. Mine and my father's (EBS) names are identical to his grandfather's name. But, since (1) the name skipped a generation and Daddy's grandfather was deceased before Daddy was born, then I became Jr. rather than III (the third). If, at a given time, there are three men in the community named George Drafts, then some would refer to a particular one and use the middle name: "I'm talking about George Marion". For various reasons, the spelling of the surname of direct descendants might be changed (take the surname Metz in Lexington County).

Prior to onset of death certificates and birth certificates, the name given at infant baptism and recorded on the baptismal certifcate and/or church records might be just alterred at will as the child grew older. My Shaw grandfather dropped his second middle name, and his brother re-ordered his first and middle name (so as to not have identical initials with a man he did not like...Uncle Ed Pringle did something similar). Their first cousin (WBS) never used the official first name or the middle name at all on his baptismal certificate (in fact, as an old man, his grandson had never heard of name other than Willie Shaw). Even in the 1940s, baptismal and birth certificate names varied (a case = my wife and her twin). A kinsperson, Carrie Hagood Pringle Earle, has an incorrect father on her 1956 death certificate...so, documents sometimes simply contain errors. Typeset newspapers OFTEN had spelling erros due nto the nlaborious nnature of the typeset process. Census records workers simply recorded names as they, themselves, thought they were spelled unless the family was very particular that the spelling be correct. Funeral homes and vital statistics workers on death certificates not infrequently simply put information down incorrectly (as in the case of my maternal great-grandfather, DWB). In later years & for various reasons, people will go through the legal process of a legal name change which requires the expense of lawyer fees and court costs. As marital divorce became increasingly common after 1980, the women could change her name during the divorce process as part of severing the to-be ex-husband's surname from her name (an example is my stepdaughter who chose her mother's maiden surname for her surname after divorce). By 2000 & after years of computerized records & a highly legalized society, vital statistics documents have become extremely careful to be error free.

COMMUNICATION:

In 2013, we are accustomed to 24-hour television spread of international news, internet news & social media, telephones with unlimited long distance national calling, and pocket-sized cell phones carried at all times and capable of text messaging, "twitter-type" mini blogs and the concept of constant and instantaneous communication. Prior to the invention of the printing press (western world, 1450AD), all written communication was laboriously done by hand (copies of books were made by scribes and were enormously expensive). I have copies of letters by John G. Shaw in LA to relatives back home in Sumter, S. C. in the mid 1800s. Sumter Telephone Company was a manufacturing force in Sumter, producing the old hand-cranked phones. As a Sumter boy in the 1940s, we did not dial numbers. We picked the phone up and a "telephone operator" at the phone company asked, "number, please", and we called out the 3 or 4 digit number (my younger sister would do this but ask the operator, "You want to hear me sing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'?"). Most folks...especially rural folks...with phones could only afford a "party line". Those "with money" paid a higher rate for a private line. When a call came in on a party line, the phones in all homes on that line rang...the "ring" had a specific pattern for each residence. There were people who were "eaves-droppers"...they quietly picked the phone up and listened when any home on the party line got a call. Nearly everyone "eaves dropped" when a call came in during the middle of the night (ALWAYS a sign of bad news...such as a death or house fire, etc.). My wife lived at the dividing line between services of two different telephone companies. So, the first thing they had to tell the operator in making an outgoing call was the name of their phone company (theirs was "Elgin").

WATER & 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 341 Bowman Drive (where we had gotten the luxury of an attic fan) during the summer of 1959 (I was 15) and lived for the first time in an air-conditioned home on 7 Frank Clarke Street!

BATHROOM ACTIVITIES:

Toilets: Prior to the invention of septic tanks with drain fields (early 1900s for town folks), families kept "slop pots" in each bedroom. A step up from this was to dig and cover an outdoor "privy". This was a deep hole with a small shed over the hole and a seat built in the shed over the hole. The privy was for defecation. If economically feasible, the family could keep a bag of lime in the privy shed so that a scoop of lime could be thrown down the hole onto the new feces to retard the formation of bad odors. Some families only used "slop jars"...with some emptying them daily on up to once per week. Others had a privy and used slop jars for in house "movements" during bad weather or too cold weather. When in-home bathrooms began to reach country folk, there were often contentious inter-generational debates about the risk or cultural departure from having had the "shitter" outdoors and away from where meals were cooked! This debate happened in my wife's family between Betty's grandmother and her son (Betty's father) with whom she was living, and "Daddy" prevailed.

Menstrual periods: women dealt with this by wearing pieces of cloth pinned in underwear (later, there were sanitary napkin belts). In the days before disposable napkins, each individual woman was responsible for washing out her stained rags. My mother (born in 1918) well remembered this very personal and private female chore/duty. It gave rise to the saying when a women was having her menstrual period that she was "on the rag". Kotex was not launched in the USA until 1920...for those who could afford such. Internal tampons (Tampax) followed in the 1960s & lead to deadly "toxic shock syndrome" in a number of instances.

Bathing & cleanliness: A leading USA public health textbook by W. T. Sedgwick (1908) noted that "...cleanliness was doubtless an acquired taste". Prior to the hotwater heater of the fairly early 1900s, bathing might have been weekly (such as Saturday evenings so as to be clean for church on Sunday). It was a lot of trouble to heat water by the pot full. In the more polite families, the females bathed before the males, especially if there was a desire to limit the water use because it had to be laboriously hand pumped or cranked up in a bucket from the well. Interestingly, as a response to the debauchery of the ancient Roman baths, the early Christian Church frequently discouraged "cleanliness"⁴². As noted in a following section on Social Habits, hair washing was much less frequent than today. Do a web search about the history of bathing and cleanliness. For those who could afford it, perfumes were used to mask odors. Commercial under-arm deodorants were first invented & sold in 1888 (the brand was "Mum").

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. [This division of "the kill" social habit still goes on in a variety of ways in various deer hunt clubs.] 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. 

MARRIAGE²¹:

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 (as closely kin as first-cousin marriages were not very uncommon even at the start of the 20th century). Sometimes whole families inter-married for love AND for common convenience and survival³³ (see Joseph Benenhaley & about the concentration of Turkish People in Dalzell, Sumter County, S. C. ... modern folks may stand in judgment, ignorant of conditions in those days!). In the absence of a minister to perform the wedding, many marriages were common law. Such might be followed up later with a church wedding. In 1942 (during WWII), a South Carolina couple became the first to marry via telegram (she a "telegram war bride"), HERE.

SCHOOLS:

In 2018, we hear denigration of the justness of USA society because of "white privilege". Much of this so-called "privilege" has to do with ethnic and then family literacy. Almost 2000 years ago, the Jews in Israel began a campaign of literacy (HERE) after destruction of The Jerusalem Temple in 70AD. At about the same time, the Greeks devised "systematic reasoning" to make sense out of things⁷² rather than just assumning that gods & goddesses directed everything (therefore being a clue as to the mindset upon which the Old Testament of the Bible & parts of the New Testament came upon. The non-Jewish people worldwide would lag between one and 1.5 THOUSAND years until the fall-out from the Protestant Reformation of 1517 AD which focused on Christians being able to actually read The Bible themselves (prior to that, ceremony and church obedience reigned supreme). Around 1450, there began a huge 100-year transformation of the European world brought on by Guttenberg's invention of the printing press. This took all scribe-produced writings which were under the careful & tight control of the Catholic Church and made it possible for more massive availability of knowledge. Education was a big subsequent 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"). In 1910, 20% of USA adults could not read or write; only 6% of adults graduated from a high school. In Sumter, there were only 10 grades until 1914 & 12th grade added in 1945. The Sumter High School class of 1909 was the largest yet [HERE] and graduated 28 girls and 20 boys. The 1912 class had 22 girls and 17 boys. The College of New Jersey (later Princeton) was founded in 1736, Hampden-Sydney in Virginia in 1776, and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in 1783.

Though provision was made in 1792 for free schools in S. C., there was no means set to get the money to do so⁴⁹. To insure some quality growth and community creation as an inland perimeter buffer to the then S. C. state capitol, Charleston, several educational institutions for whites were begun inland (Anne King Gregorie's 18 page chapter XV has much detail...from page 174-192²⁰). That was a supplement to local personal educators/tutors (public schools were yet far off in the future). The one closest to our Sumter District immigrant ancestor's family home was the grammar school at Salem overseen by Rev. Thomas Reese & was attended by Judge William Dobein James (later a resident of Stateburg) at the time of the seige of Charleston May 1780. Mt. Zion Institute (founded about 1790) was in Winnsboro, S.C. Winnsboro was also a summer retreat area (50-60 miles further westward/inland from Sumter). There may have been a little community school at Salem Black River Presbyterian Church^{18, 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 of the poor for free. An S. C. free school law for the poor was enacted in 1811. In 1846, Rev. Julius DuBose opened Bradford Springs Female Academy. In 1853, Harmony Female College began in Bradford Springs. 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 General Sumter Memorial Academy in Stateburg (see photo on Col. Dargan memorial), 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, And there was Good Will Mills School at Dabbs Crossroads⁵¹. Dr. John M. Robert's Academy (predecessor to Furman University), Woodville Academy, Edgehill Academy near Stateburg, Thornton Academy, Rafting Creek Academy, The Hawthorndean Seminary, Sumterville Academy, A. J. Moses (namesake) School (first public school in Sumter), 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. A Catholic parocial school for girls, St. Joseph's Academy, opened after the Sister's fled to Sumter from Charleston with the bombarding of Fort Sumter to start the War Between the States. Sumter girls and S. C. girls & girls even from other states (some Jewish girls, too) got their education in this school. And it is said to have closed after public graded schools did well in the late 1800s (but, see 56th commencement in local 1919 newspaper, HERE). It finally closed entirely in June of 1929.

See the 24 Feb. 1912 issue of The Watchman and Southron, image/page 8: the public graded school district opened 2 Sept. 1889 (with 310 white students & 294 black students finishing the year 9 months later) with Mr. J. B. Duffie being the first Sumter District superintendent until July 1895.The second superintendent was S. H. Edmunds. This Sumter newspaper page lists the Sumter High school graduates from 1891-1911 by year (there were none in 1890 or 1893), HERE. No black graduates were listed in 1891 but commencement write ups were listed in the above newspaper on the same page in 1892 & 1894. And I have links to class lists on certain memorials (years 1890-1912), HERE.

Black schools were scarce. But, Sumter-native black leaders such as Rev. Harrison created some. Kendall Institute, founded (once stood at 200 Watkins St, Sumter ) in 1891, was one of the first black schools in Sumter. It was funded by the Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The institute was named for Mrs. Julia B. Kendall, late wife of Rev. Henry Kendall, secretary of the Board of Missions 1870-1892. It emphasized academics for primary and secondary grades; some students boarded here in a girls' dormitory or a boys' cottage. It closed in 1932 during the Great Depression. Mayesville Industrial and Educational Institute (Mayesville Institute) was started about 1896 by Miss Emma Jane Wilson (her local mother was emancipated) as a school for blacks (Mary McLeod Bethune was its most famous graduate)⁵¹ which had 500 students in 1915. Rosenwald schools (such as Sumter's Lincoln High School...1924/25; Winn Grammar School...1929-30 ) arose in the early 1900s (S. C. database listing, HERE). Goodwill Parochial School may be the area's oldest school for people of color. In 1889, Lincoln School for blacks was built on Council Street, remodeled in 1907, and a larger building built there in 1936. Possibly the most outstanding teacher at Lincoln was Dr. Agnes Hildebrand Wilson who was the first teacher of color elected S. C. teacher of the year in 1969.

Dr. Edmunds was called back to Sumter to head the town school district as superintendent in 1895 until he died in 1935. Here is a commencement exercise of something called the Sumter Insitute in 1896 & 1897. I also stumbled across a Sumter Presbyterian Colored High School class of 1897 report, HERE. A public white "high school" was added in 1903 in the northwest corner (Hampton School) of Monument Square (the whole eastern half of the block along Washington Street, between West Liberty Street and West Hampton Ave). In about 1908, a boys high school was built on West Calhoun Street (later known as McLaurin Jr. High after its esteemed principal of many years, Miss Linnie McLaurin)....Grace baptist Church is there now. In 1914, an 11th grade was added to the schools. In 1917, Central School (became high school for girls) was errected between Washington School & Hampton School make 3 school buildings on Monument Square. In 1924, land was bought at Purdy and Haynesworth streets for a Boy's High School; the school on Calhoun Street became Girl's High School. A second new high school building at the Purdy and Haynesworth streets campus area opened in 1939...combining boys and girls...with the name "Edmunds High School" first found in the 1940 yearbook. The 1939 yearbook still was "of Sumter High School" (in the 1940 annual, it is "of Edmunds High School"). In 1971, Edmunds High School and Lincoln High School integrated and became Sumter High School. In January 2016, I became aware of an excellent, privately constucted Edmunds High School website, the school history being HERE.

Boys sometimes went off to one of several military boarding schools. Uncle "Wash" Patrick was at Bailey Military Institute in Greenwood, S. C. about 1917. Others went to Carlisle Military School (1892-1977) in Bamberg, S. C. Then Camden Academy opened (1950-1957) which became Camden Military Academy (1958-present) in Camden, S. C.

There have been four colleges in Sumter County: (1) The Sumterville Female Academy opened (Mrs. Bowen) as a grade school in 1832 & added on undergraduate college; (2) Harmony Female College (opened in 1857 & closed ?); (3) Sumter Military Academy and Female Seminary ([called "Sumter Military College" when announced 15 May 1901⁶⁶] opened in 1901 & closed in 1903, HERE); and (4) Morris College (opened in 1908 & continues). Other colleges opened branches in Sumter after the 1960s.

By 2000 & beyond, we can gain an amazing amount of even officially accredited education via the internet.

MEDICAL CARE:

More than 90% of the medicine being practiced in 2018 did not exist in 1950!!!⁷² Though the stethoscope was invented in 1816 and anesthesia discovered in the 1840s⁷², modern medicine would begin in the 1850/60s with the germ theory⁷² and vaccine developement started in 1760 with smallpox. Attention to the issue of "clean water supplies" began to put a real dent in deaths due to typhoid fever & cholera in the mid-1800s⁷². Until. It would be after 1930 that the concept of going beyond amelioration of disease (the art of medicine) toward actual "curative medicine" (scientific medine) would begin⁷². At least in central South Carolina, there were no ambulances; funeral homes transported to hospitals the women in labor (my wife & her twin), as well as the very sick. Mrs. Stella Hurst donated a clipping showing the first motorized ambulance which Mr. Hurst donated in in 1922 to Tuomey Hospital in Sumter.

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 W. W., Jr. (CSA Medical Inspector), John J. Bossard (CSA), Matthew S. Moore (CSA), Robert Sydney Mellette (Mex. War vet; CSA homeguard), Marcus Reynolds (native of County Armagh, Ireland; US citizen 1844; CSA homeguard), H. L. Shaw, T. M. Shaw (CSA), H. D. Green (CSA), W. J. Pringle (CSA), J. S. Hughson (CSA), S. C. Baker, C. R. F. "Dick" Baker (civilian at unit recruiting, CSA?), Julius A. Mood (whose daughter, Julia M. Peterkin in Fort Motte, S. C. won the Pullitzer prise), A. C. Dick, S. Chandler Baker, I. M. Woods, J. A. Mayes (CSA), Henry James McLaurin, Sr., W. T. Brogdon, F. J. Mayes, W. M. Bradley, J. W. Hudson, C. E. King, J. H. Mills, E. M. Davis (murdered), H. W. Corbett (possibly him HERE), S. P. Oliver, W. Cheyne, H. M. Stuckey, E. R. Wilson, F. K. Holman, J. A. Mood & H. Ashleigh Mood, W. E Mills, C. P. Osteen, Sydney Burgess, Carl B. Epps, "Archie" J. A. China (murdered), A. J. China and M. D. Murray and others. The first black Sumter area physician was Dr. C. W. Birnie (his wife, Ruth, was the first female pharmacist, black or white [& likely the first black female pharmacist in S. C.]). And another early black physician was Dr. W. F. "Bill" Bultman, Jr. In the first half of the 1900s, Dr. Warren Burgess was the "county doctor" and also the local doctor for the ACL Railroad. There was Dr. J. J. Chandler. 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), W. A. Stuckey (whose home on Frank Clarke Street was bought by my parents in about 1960), and N. O. Eaddy (whose children were in school with me). An outstanding and widely known and respected pediatrician was "Pap" Probst. Possibly the first female OB-GYN doctor in the area was Mary Elizabeth Blanchard whose brother is the famous football player, "Doc" Blanchard ( and see HERE about Dr. Hilla Sheriff Zerbst & S. C. public health nursing and midwifery in the early 1900s).

Bacteria as the source of infectious disease was not known until the 1800s. Data indicate that the leading causes of death in the USA in 1910 were: influenza & pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea, heart disease, and stroke. Infectious deaths just happened. Deaths of mothers by "child bed fever" is an example of a non-"crowd-based" infectious disease; and flu epidemics are worse with crowded populations...a "crowd based" disease⁴⁴. 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. When Europeans came to North America in, say, 1492, they brought smallpox and other infectious diseases to which the idigenous folk had no immunity. It is estimated that possibly as many as 90% of that indigenous (native) population died. Other vaccines to prevent lethal disease came gradually after the 1920s. Infectious "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 in the South 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. My Shaw great-great grandfather had 17 children by 2 wives and lost 6 of the 17...his first wife dying with a birth but the baby living to age 19. My Shaw great grandfather lost 2 of his 4 children; his father lost 2 out of 10. In fact, historical population average population lifespans were largely altered by this maternal & childhood regular mortalities; widowhood & orphanhood became common after lethal epidemics & pandemics which killed adults (and got a fair share of males)⁶³ . An awful example is of my half great-great Uncle James A. and Elenora Brown who lost their first five, HERE. 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 an era 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. Miss Antonia Gibson was a graduate in the first nursing class from Baker-Dick Infirmary class of 1902, who had an amazing career & impact on Sumter. 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 (Archie was killed in 1924 by his wife, Louisa) to create Sumter Hospital (30 beds). Mood Infirmary consolidated with Sumter Hospital (on the southeast corner of Calhoun Street & Canal Streets...becoming Tuomey Hospital (much financial support by Timothy J. Tuomey)...still present-day TRMC property which became Palmetto-Tuomey in 2016) between 1909-1913.

As an aside, tuberculosis was a special infectious disease in which patients were placed into a "TB Sanatorium" until their bodies conquered the disease or they died. When his oldest daughter, Alice caught it and died, Mr. H. J. Harby created a trust to create "Camp Alice" in 1916 out on what is now known as Alice Drive. The Board of Directors decided to close it in 1941 because most patients were being transferred to "State Park" TB hospital. When I was in medical school in Charleston, S. C. in the late 1960s, TB cases were still kept separate from all other patients (in a completely isolated wing of old Charleston County Hospital...I STILL well remember the courage it took, as a medical student, to walk through the doors of that wing for the first time filled with fear that I might catch TB!).

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. Tuomey website history. The Tuomey Hospital School of Nursing was established in 1914...and first official class started...under the direction of Miss Astrid Hofseth, superintendent of Nurses, a graduate of Milwaukee County Hospital Training School for Nurses. The Tuomey Hospital School of Nursing was in operation until 1967 when it closed. In 1914, the first official class of the School of Nursing began for the 36 month nursing school program which ended up producing about 406 RNs in 53 years (4 Dec. 2005 issue of Sumter's newspaper, The Item and another source). Here is a video by my mother & Sumter native, Mildred Brown Shaw, R. N. (Tuomey 1938 graduate) telling about nursing in the days beore curative medicine..."you either lived or died and that was accepted." In 1983, Mildred B. Shaw became the first elected female Board member & Willie M. Jefferson and Larry C. Weston became the first black Board members via that same 1983 election (The Sumter Daily Item front page 17 June 1983). The Tuomey Hospital system became Palmetto Health - Tuomey in January 2016.

Remember that there were no systemic antibiotics of any type until the 1940s. As you do genealogy prior to then, you will be struck by the number of men with more than one wife, such as the original Shaw immigrant, the wives dying with bacterial "child bed fever" (NOT multiple marriages because of divorce). There were localized epidemics and sweeping-the-world pandemics. The most famous world pandemic (the black plague...bubonic plague...Antonine plague) caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis) happened during most of the 1300s AD (peaking 1340-50) and reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million (in some areas killing 50% of the population!!!). There were many more plagues around the world, both bacterial and viral & even the HIV plague that confounded the world in the late 1900s. Amazingly, historians can point to the fact that such massive disruptions sometimes end up being the basis for societal re-organization that advances the possibilities in the lives of average people in a positive way⁶³.

Aside from pandemics & epidemics, people such as my paternal great-grandfather (& possibly his grandfather & grandmother who died within days of each other...leaving 7 orphaned children) from typhoid fever. The Cousar children were left orphaned after their mother & father died 18 months apart & they went to live with their uncle and aunt. My grandfather became an orphan the day before his high school graduation when his father died of typhoid fever. A very young brother & sister died in a localized diphtheria epidemic in Lexington County. Orphaned children were common and usually taken in by family or maybe even neighbors (see "genetic mystery" in my maternal great grandfather's bio, HERE). Others died of pnemonia rushing to see a severely war-wounded son (here); or after having been mashed by the mule against the barn (here) and the funeral wagon tipped over when the horses spooked and casket thrown off and busted open, rolling the body out into the street! Others may have been pecked in the eye by a bird (a not-yet-identified kinsman of her's) and died of blood stream poisoning, or similarly by infection after shaving (here) or similarly after an infected foot sore from a malfitting shoe (here). House fires & vehicle (B. C. Kendrick) fires either killed many or injuries lead to lethal infections. The S. C. State Firefighters Hall of Fame was created and includes Sumter folks, is HERE. Accidental gunshot wounds and large numbers of other injuries were ether immediately lethal (my wife's grandfather Lindler, a sawyer, bled quickly to death from a saw injury to the neck) or deaths happened after infections set in (Hartwell Pringle fell off a hay wagon & died on site). One of the most devastating epidemics in recent human history occurred during the 20th century: the 1918 Spanish influenza virus pandemic that resulted in 50 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 own thumb (he was a surgeon). He was then able to arrange serum shipments to Sumter that cured Tom. My mother-in-law, Lallah Lndler 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 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". Longevity increased. My great Uncle Murr Hall lived to 105, dying 1n 1992. Next door to Sumter County in Clarendon County, Luke Blackwell died at age 117 in 1993 of pneumonia (the oldest person in S. C. when he died).

Prior to the discovery of hepatitis C, I recall that we pathologists were not at all afraid to dissect surgically removed organs for diagnosis "bare handed", especially if we were running low on the reuseable rubber gloves (late 1960s to about 1980). With knowledge of hepatitis C and the onset of a "planned obsolescense" economy with cheap, disposable goods, rules of practice safety require extreme care to avoid transfer of infectious disease. By 2014, my experience with the county coroner for 38 years points out that wreckless use of multiple medications is now a major, undeclared problem in the USA.

Red medicine: As a little boy in the late 1940s & growing up in the 1950s, I remember a lot of the medicines parents commonly used in Sumter. There being no TVs invented yet, children played in the yard and neighborhoods all of the time. We had tricycles and bicycles and lots of minor injuries. The treatment most hated by children was "red medicine" which was painted onto skin scrapes and scratches to prevent infection. It BURNED and stained the area red. The burning was due to it being an alcoholic solution. The "medicine" came as a solution in a small bottle with a glass-rod applicator stick attached on the inside of the screw-on bottle cap. The first red medicine was "tincture of iodine" developed in 1908, a red alcoholic solution. The next was mercurochrome which was developed in 1918 & was also a red solution in alcohol and burned. The last was a brand name of merthiolate which did not burn and was not an alcoholic solution. There are anecdotal..."folk"...diferences of opinion among those who were subjected to "red medicine" about whether Merthiolate did or did not "burn". Human nature being what it is, I feel sure that local pharmacists may have been able to "compound" this third one into a solution which would burn..."burning" being the folk indication that "it is working". The prevailing antiseptic "smell" in hospitals of those days was due to the mopping of floors with water containing phenolic acid (the germ-killing agent in Lysol). Momma also treated toe infections on us with Lysol soaks which our family still uses to GREAT advantage in 2015.

Physical Entertainment & Sports: Horse racing was done sometimes prior to 1900. Prior to 1900, I am not aware of much as to sports other than hunting. For women, apparently those with the means to do so enjoyed afternoon carriage rides. When Mrs. Huger (1752-1822) got rheumatism too bad to ride, she sent letters to Scottish relatives who sent a sketch of what we currently know as a porch or outdoors "joggling board"...originating in the Stateburg area of Sumter County. I am pretty sure that baseball came early on to Sumter. The most famous baseball player from Sumter has to have been Bobby Richardson who played second base for the champion New York Yankees (for the first time, we could cheer the word "yankee"!). Ervin David Shaw, namesake of Shaw AFB, was on the 1910 football team and an early race car driver before being killed in WWI. Football began at the high school level about 1900. Here are phots and caption info on: the SMA team of 1901 and 1902; SHS 1906, 1908, 1909 & 1910. "Buck" Flowers was an early famous Sumter native player at Georgia Tech under coach Heisman. Another was "Bit" C. V. Wilder (about SHS 1925); another was Russell Sutton (class of 1950). In modern times, Freddie Solomon was great. Doc Blanchard ("Mr. Inside") was an early famous Bishopville player for West Point. Following the Great Depression, the YMCA became an activities place for swimming, weight lifting, basketball, and volleyball. Oliver Stubbs became a national ping pong champion! Other great ping pong players were baseball great, "Bobby" R. C. Richardson, "Bobby" R. M. Herrington, Elvin J. McCoy, and the Bradley boys (Buddy, J. B., and Robert). Memorial Park had tennis courts, and my mother used to play there with her father. When I was in High School (class of 1962), the big football rivalry in our area at the college level was "Big Thursday" (before Thanksgiving) whereupon nearly everything shut down for the Carolina-Clemson footbal rivalry game held in Columbia along with the State Fair there. For the whites in the town of Sumter, the biggest high school rivalry was the Florence-Sumter game to end the season. A neighbor when I was in high school was Burke Watson who was one of Sumter's best collegiate boxers (the Citadel). I don't remember any dangerous fan behavior surrounding the above events. Sadly, as our USA social behavior darkens, on 29 April 2015 for the first time in its 140 year history, a USA major league baseball game would be played and closed to any fans because of the black racial riots and unrest in Baltimore! Talk about a sea change in societal discipline and citizenship! There is a Sumter Sports Hall of Fame maintained by The Item newspaper service but not yet online (as of July 2017)...inductees as of 2012, HERE.

Wholesome Activities: Church and Synagogue activities were always an arena for such activities. Fraternal organizations such as the Masons went back prior to the War Between the States. My ancestor soldier, E. J. Shaw left his Masonic emblem as a protection to his family should the yankees come to burn the home down (see photo on his link). Cain's Mill Club was an early local fishing and social club for men. Boy Scouts of America began to be a quality impact activity. W. M. Levi was the first city of Sumter Boy Scouts Scoutmaster and guided Troop number 1 which produced Sumter's first Eagle Scout, Sam Farkas Harby, 15 Nov. 1921 (Boy Scouts founded in England in 1908). Mr. Wilbert Bernshouse, the third Sumterite to earn the Eagle award, was an early scoutmaster who, at one point in time, had produced more Eagle Scouts than any other scoutmaster in the southeast. Henry Shelor was an ardant supporter of scouting (camp Henry Shelor on Lake Marion). I earned the Eagle award. The Sumter Parks and Recreation Dept. kept up several centers for daily recreation in the neighborhoods (such as Memorial Park and Silver Center). The latter produced some wonderful ping pong players. Oliver Stubbs was our only national champion at ping pong. Later, the Elks Club opened at the corner of North Salem Ave. and Broad St. Iris Edens produced some excellent swim teams there.

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 $4.50.¹³ Amazing to me in 2016 was to read that a lot could be bought on S. C. Coastal Isle of Palms for $875!⁵⁴ In 1910, the average U. S. worker made $200-$400 dollars per year & competent accountant $2000/year (note how the inflation-induced degradation of the purchasing power of a dollar has modern people demanding a "living wage" of $30,000 per year in 2017)!

Weather & disease 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). The 1886 season (HERE) had a record-setting total of 7 making land-fall in the USA (a record still standing through the 2017 season). 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. For Sumter County, S. C., the "Storm of 1924" (30 April 1924) was the worst until Hurricane Hugo (21 Sept. 1989). The 1924 storm affected 13 counties & spawned a tornado that went from Horation to Mechanicsville. The greater storm killed 79 (20 in Sumter County) and created $10,000,000 of property damege (380 homes destroyed). The first major hurricane that I remember was Hazel (15 Oct. 1954) which severely damaged Myrtle Beach & destroyed Garden City Beach (including the beach house of Sumterite Frank Rawlinson which our family had rented for one week each maybe the prior 5 years). The snow storm of 9-10 Feb. 1973 dumped between 10-20 inches on Sumter & central S. C. and with snow drifts up to 5 feet deep!

• The plague of Justinian (541-542) and recurred for two centuries and may have killed upwards of 50 million in the eastern Roman empire & due to Yersinia pestis.
• The black plague (the great mortality...the great pestilence...blue sickness...bubonic plague...Antonine plague) caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis) happened during most of the 1300s AD (peaking 1340-50) and reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million (in some areas killing 50% of the population!!!). "Black" referred to the horror of this plague, and was applied by historians possibly 100 or more years later. There were 3 varieties: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic)⁶³ . "Bubonic" referred to the very swollen and painful lymph nodes under the arms and/or in the groins. "Pneumonic" referred to a primarily lungs problem. And septicemic referred to a quick, primatrily blood stream infection. In the portion of my nearly 50 years of performing forensic autopsies, I autopsied only one such case (pneumonic & published it with an expert from the CDC, HERE).  
• 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). Following developement of skin vaccination (which left a large skin scar on our shoulder), 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 (Moses & Ruth Drafts among them) in a part of Lexington Co., S. C. died in one sweeping Dec. 1876 epidemic³².
• Droughts:
  • The Great Plains Locust Plague of 1875: watch this 3 minute incredible video of this disaster that Mysteries at The Museum so excellently portrayed, HERE.
• The Great Plains Dust Bowl of 1934-37, came on in the Great Depression. By 1940, more than 2.5 million people had fled from the regions affected by the Dust Bowl, and nearly 10 percent moved to California.
• The Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886: is estimated to have been 7.3 on the Richter scale & occurred  at 9:51 PM on 31 August 1886 & lasted about 7 minutes (I have seen some winess descriptions of those 7 minutes & they are incredible). It is one of the stronger quakes ever known in the eastern USA.
• The Hurricanes: These storms regularly batter S. C., and the ones of 1910 & 1911 put the final end to the S. C. rice industry. 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.
• Famous snow and/or ice storms: the great snow storm of 1973 dumped an average of TWO FEET of snow in central S. C., HERE.
• 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..."unhealthy". Many retreated to inland homes and retreats.

SLAVERY:

Regarding world history & slavery, consider the following as a preface. In Prisons & Slavery, John Dewar Gleissner writes: "The Arabs' treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. Arab Muslims began extracting millions of black African slaves centuries before Christian nations did. Arab slave traders removed slaves from Africa for about 13 centuries, compared to three centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship. Slaves invariably died within five years if they worked in the Ottoman Empire's Sahara salt mines." Thomas Sowell, the brilliant economist/historian/philosopher who happens to be black, writes: "Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved — and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed." Harvard's Department of African and African American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. — who also happens to be black — wrote: "Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage. In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone!"

A 5.5 minute EXTREMELY important, outstanding lecture to otherwise open this topic is where we practice a multi-ethnic society & not multiculturalism (the difference HERE) so that "The West" (white Caucasion) is the ONLY culture in world history to eliminate slavery. Modern USA film maker, Michael Moore, had a maternal 8th great-grandfather, John Wattles, who was one amongst almost 300 white Scottish male POWs (of 10,000 Scottish POWs England captured) sent to America from London to Boston in Nov. 1651 on the ship, "The John and Sara" with actual legal titles of "slaves" but with servitude limited to 6-8 years⁷⁴. BUT, be aware that in colonial America, a black indentured servant would promptly work off his indenture & become one of the first owners of slaves in the colony of Virginia and become wealthy, HERE. Yes, many blacks would own slaves!!! Native Americans owned black slaves (HERE).

Now, in the predominately agricultural South of the USA, how did the work get done to accomplish "crops" and the clearing of new ground on a large scale that was able to produce enough food for growing towns & cities across the USA? The South was dominantly agricultural and the North also with MUCH agricultura; and much of the North, industrial. There were no heavy machines, only horses, mules, cows, oxen, and humans to provide the power for work. While families intentionally tended to be large, it was difficult to "family farm" over 150 acres (50 acres...more or less [depending on the fertility of those acres, could support a family]. The vast majority of USA farmers were NOT slave owners!!! But, slave owning was a world-wide custom through the mid-1800s.

Slavery by Africans of other Africans (redundant to the above) goes back to ancient times and still exists in 2015! From about 1500-1800AD, the Barbary Slave Trade was of North African muslims dealing in white European Christian slaves captured in ships raided by the Barbary (Muslim) pirates. The first "modern" slaves in the Western World of the Americas were the white Irish used for sugar cane plantation labor in places like Barbados. This was followed later by black Africans selling other black Africans to Muslims who sold to them Europeans (later to Americans) as slaves.

The entire USA and England are to blame...if there MUST be blame 200 years after the fact! An excellently balanced short review of "blame" elements is HERE. That source demonstrates the centrality of cotton...at the time...and the impact of the industrial revolution on demand for cotton. And this is a short write-up of the first black captives to Virginia, HERE. AND, one of the very first black slave owners was a black man who filed lawsuits and appeals to continue slave owning, causing black John Casor to be the first human in the 13 original colonies to be legally declared a slave FOR LIFE! No one would dream of going to the trouble and expense of slave holding were there not the promise of a huge increase in personal annual income. Common sense declares that, since slaves are so important to income, there is no way a sane slave owner would knowingly risk serious injury to a slave. In the USA, the DEMAND for those slave-produced products or raw materials came from the great population centers of Europe and the northern USA. Being almost totally based in agriculture, the South met that outside demand. Looking back from modern times, it ought to be obvious that ALL free USA citizens...North & South...were the composite problem.

As already noted ABOVE, politically, the Republican Party (at that time, mostly in states outside of the South) wanted slavery stopped⁶¹. But Northern and Southern Democrats did NOT want slavery to cease⁶¹. Even the U. S. Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that slaves were property to be owned (the Dred Scott vs Sanford Case in 1857...the 7 "yes" judges were all Democrats vs. the 2 "no" votes were Republicans)! In 1860 (at the start of the War), there was not a single Republican slave owner in the USA; all 4,000,000 slaves were owned by Democrats⁶⁷!!! During the war, as he pondered strategy, Pres. Lincoln was told (and convinced) that if he cast the war as an effort to end slavery...free the black man...then the white Northern soldiers would just quit & go home. So, Lincoln's Emanipation Proclamation was made & aimed at freeing the slaves in the Southern states; at the same time, he shrewdly declared the war to no longer be about "states' rights" but about "human rights"⁶². Later he goes all in for the 13th Amendment(free the slaves) to the U. S. Constitution⁶². The Republicans would also establish the 14th (blacks become citizens) & 15th amendments (give blacks the right to vote) , while the Democrat Party of slavery would get behind white supremacy with racial segregation and racial terrorism⁶⁷.

EVERY slave ever brought to America arrived on board ships under the flag of the United States, the British Union Jack, the Spanish, or the Portuguese flag. Slaves DID NOT arrive under the Confederate flag of the South of the USA! People in the North of the USA, the South of the USA, and even other countries were making big money off of slavery. But, as the USA became its own country in 1783, the words of the founding documents ("all men are created equal") began to disturb the thinking about slavery. In the early 1800s, the large influx of cheap European labor into the North served as an additional "prompt" to thinking about the ending of slavery in the USA. While those consuming the produce of slavery might theoretically be able to adjust fairly quickly to a sudden reduction in the supply of slave-associated goods from the South, the Southern producers...the entire South...would be completely destroyed with a sudden loss of labor. There were pre-war visions of unfarmed farmlands and bankruptcy everywhere. There would suddenly be no disciplined pool of labor in the South (even though the laborers might mostly still be nearby). The hand of the North may have been forced even more by the passage of the (federal/national) Fugitive [Runaway] Slave Act of 1850 which required Northerners to capture and return runaway slaves to the South. That is, Northerners began to be "put on the spot" and feel that "heat" to report fugitives. This boosted the anti-slavery Abolitionist Movement in the North. Frederick Douglass escaped his slavery at age 21 and, being an amazingly capable man, later wrote a popular autobiography which gave some details of an unimagineably brutal slave owner. I suppose that readers presumed that such was true of ALL slave owners.

Ancient Times & Slavery Begins as Compassionate Move: slavery began in ancient times as an alternative to just slaughtering captives of war. And it ushered in suzerain-type covenants or treaties which engendered a social mindset that exists in diluted, disguised form worldwide  into 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. "In the history of this world, slavery was a universal practice around the world, and the only group to oppose it was the Christian Church. Principled opposition to slavery developed entirely as a Christian idea, and that is why the only anti-slavery movements in history were organized by Christians. In addition, the only nations that abolished slavery by their own decision were Christian ones." ⁴⁶

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 UNC on-line manuscript (even discussing fun events such as log-rolling, etc.)¹⁹. Significantly, by 1830 there were 3700 free black USA slave owners. A particular example is of the former black slave (April was his name as a slave...in 1803, his master, William Ellison, sent him to Winnsboro, S. C. to learn how to repair the all-important cotton gins). William Ellison, Jr. of Sumter County, S. C. became wealthier than 90% of Southern whites & the 3rd largest slave owner! A key book about the free black owners of slaves is HERE⁶⁵. Here is a 2017 Face Book video about him. Here is a very brief review of his rapid assimilation into the "gentry class" in the Episcopal Church in Stateburg, Sumter County, S. C. The excellent Cotton Museum in Bishopville, S. C. (just a mile or two North off of I-20, on US #15) has a display about him. Though I have not been able yet to verify this from any local records, my sister-in-law says that one of her Drafts ancestors, caring for his slaves' welfare, was jailed after the Emancipation because he refused to release his few slaves until they could read and, for the males, had learned a trade!

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 (tours still going strong as of May 2017) 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]. We were also surprised when Alphonso stopped the bus in response to a question...prompted by recent revelation of Strom's black daughter (Essie Mae Washington-Williams [her memorial])...about feelings of S. C. blacks toward the white, late, long-time Sen. Strom Thurmond (state's rights and seperate but equal segregationist), his memorial. Alphonso stated that every black pastor in S. C. had a number to call in Sen. Thurmond's office for complaints which were typically righteously rectified in days. Alphonso disclosed that there had long been a sort of color "profiling" within the American black community as to degrees of color on the spectrum of light color to very dark "black" color. I heard of the following in 2018. A former slave who became a freedman and S. C.'s 3rd largest slave owner, William Ellison, II, ( a biracial "Mulatto") and his family disowned his granddaughter, Matilda Ellison when she married a local "Turk" ("Curly" Benenhaley)! During the Gullah Tour, we visted the home of Philip Simmons, the famous black Charleston blacksmith, HERE & HERE.

We Southerners (white and black), to this modern day, love "salty boiled peanuts". Peanuts were imported in the 1700s on slave ships from Africa (as were okra and cow peas [such as black eyed peas]). The slaves who were allowed to do so, grew small plots of peanuts for consumption and for sale. Known back then as ground nuts, ground peas, or goobers (from Angolan word, ginguba), the Africans had a long history of boiling peanuts. Salt being a commodity, "salty boiling" came later.

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! As the professor pointed out in the first several lectures of the course on the Black Plague of Europe, unexpected good sometimes comes as tragedy adjusts the social order⁶³. 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 USA war of 1861-65 was fought "over slavery". It would be almost 40 years later that I really understood that slavery was the KEY agitating focus. As this slavery focus became relentlessly pressed by RADICAL abolitionists who did not take seen or unforeseen adverse consequences seriously (collapse of the Southern economy & society). Southerners realized that the true and larger constitutional issue was states' rights (to take a position to avoid economic collapse).

If only the more deliberately patient heads had prevailed!

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 all grew up in Sumter, S. C. (1940s-50s) culturally taught to hate "yankees" (except those who were in the line of duty stationed at Shaw AFB). Children were even jokingly taught that their "belly button" was "where the yankee shot you"! 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 Yankees 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. Interestingly, a black baseball player from nearby Camden, S. C. became famous in the American League as that league's first black player, Larry Doby!

Interesting to me is the fact that the END to world-wide slavery began with the founding of America on the Christianity-derived social concept that God created all men equal (in His sight [& under the U. S. law])! The very idea & concept of America began that end to slavery. 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 such as the Christian, William Wilberforce, and the to-be-Christian, John Newton [his Christian testimony], came to the fore against slavery ("Amazing Grace", the movie). An EXCELLENT 6 minute PragerU video discusses slavery and the war (HERE) but TOTALLY leaves out RADICAL (it must be done NOW) abolitionist responsibility for the disaster in the face of a constitution that already had the end of slavery within it...in a more gradual way.

Very interestingly also to me, in February of 2013 I heard something that I'd never heard before: 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.

As the US War Between the States came to an end and the South was devastated and hungry from (1) the economic collapse and (2) the ravages of war, some modern historical microbiologist thinkers look back at the impact of "the germ of laziness" as having maybe taken over during that war⁴⁴. This germ is speculated to having arisen out of the lack of shoes and the relative uncleanliness that gave the hookworm a widespread hold in the South. As it infected so many, the parasite infestations caused chronic anemia with tiredness, etc. ["laziness"].

2015: Unfortunately, we find a new kind of slavery in modern times that loosely falls under the heading of human sexual trafficking, one of dozens of info sources, HERE. Additionally, having been a Lone Ranger radio program fan as a young boy, I was amazed to watch an episode of the excellent series, Legends & Lies: The Real West, about one of the first black US marshalls after the War Between the States about Bass Reeves ( black man) who may have been the inspiration for the Lone Ranger character.

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. I don't condone what we moderns now feel was wrong; it was what it was. But I do strongly think, "How dare subsequent generations make harsh judgment on citizens & their leaders who cope with the history unfolding in their lives and local communities!" 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 & sometimes loving and loyal in both racial directions. 

Upon the defeat of the economically & socially devastated South and the release of all slaves, crops could not be harvested (the labor force was now suddenly freed &, thereby, completely depleted). The federal (Northerner) abolitionist radicals lobbied President Johnson hard within mere hours of Lincoln's death to (1) declare Southern whites in any way a part of the war effort to be disallowed the right to vote and (2) to give voting rights immediately to black slave males³⁹. The slaves were folk who had known nothing of civil organization and legislative "way" and USA government structure ever in their dozens of generations of civil history since African times. In S. C., the federal (Northern) occupation government immediately instituted a sharecrop system^{20. I}nterestingly, the concept of sharecropping may have begun in Florence, Italy, in 1350AD in the aftermath of the Black Plague of Europe⁶³ (but, read the Bible, Old Testament book of Genesis...Genesis 47:13-26...about the 7-year Middle Eastern & Egyptian famine). As the freed slaves sought work for food or pay, there was none. The white owners were broke & hungry 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 economic & social depression in the South...which was a recently devastated land after being militarily invaded by the federal (Northern) government whose Gen. Sherman laid a fiery, "scorched earth" waste to a large portion of the South. Blacks were placed into some positions of local & high 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 (Northern) element was! Both races suffererred! Here is a telling quote by a black man (Wikipedia) using the slang names used for both races in a sort of "tell it like it was" way of speaking it: ""De nigger was de right arm of de buckra [denigrating term toward whites] class. De buckra was de horn of plenty for de nigger. Both suffer in consequence of freedom." = Moses Lyles, a former slave in South Carolina, speaking in the 1930s⁵¹.

A liberal anti-slavery Northerner investigative reporter, James Pike, was secretly sent to S. C. to expose the white-influenced governmental "injustices" which the famous newspaper mogul was prejudicially sure were being perpetrated to cause the amazing dysfucntion of government in the South. Pike's book details⁴¹, however, his shocked surprise to find the whites nearly totally impotent in S. C. & the black majority legislature and government to be a poorly capable joke responsible for an incredibly corrupt governmental period. The social reversals and upheavals lead to such means as the Ku Klux Klan who attempted to regain order out of corruption.The KKK was founded as a fraternal social club in 1865 by a group of decommissioned rebel officers in Pulaski, Tennessee (as ghosts of deceased confederate soldiers)⁴³. After a federal clampdown in 1871, the KKK dissolved or lay dormant until the blockbuster 1915 movie, The Birth of a Nation⁴³. By 1920, the KKK morphed into more of a white supremacy movement appealing to (1) even more non-rural people and (2) with large numbers outside of the South, such as Denver & Oregon⁴³. The oil rush around 1905 in the area of Tulsa, Oklahoma drew venturers of all types. Black Wall Street became a booming Tulsa business area of blacks. This is said to have created resentment and envy among whites. On May 31 and June first 1921, the KKK attacked that area (including the burning down of the two black hospitals) and caused the terrible Tulsa Race Riots. In an area of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a domestic terror attack... The KKK-induced the riots apparently included airborn government firebombing, HERE? By 1925, 4,000,000 Americans claimed Klan membership & held a march of 50+ thousand in Washington, D. C. After many publications about Klan outrages in the mid-1930s, there was a period of Klan disarray. The 1954 Supreme Court decision ended legal "Segregation" in schools (which lead to the Civil Rights movement to desegregate all else in the South⁴³, but not so in the North). I never personally knew of any klan member, but I do remember that there were klan rallies once in a while during my grade school years (1950-1962) and beyond college years (1962-1966).

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 become corrupted in many areas (one story reaching into 2005, HERE).

Blacks NOT The Problem: The decade-long Radical (Northern military occupation forces) Reconstruction oppression of the right-to-vote-deprived, white Southerner, tax-paying population crescendoed into a rebellion in the summer of 1876. Though the white Southerners were not politically united in their misery (many in despair; many hoping to negotiate; and many who wanted to end Reconstruction with another rebellious fight), most agreed deeply that it was time to end the decade of U. S. military occupation and control of The South. In the North, there are said to have been many who were ashamed of the Radical plunder and economicc and judicial corruption that reigned amongst Radicals and their elements feeding upon the resources and population of The South...a region spitralling downward in decline and toward barbarism. 1876 was a campaign year and started to boil over with a fight in Hamberg and riots in Charleston, S. C. Radicals had dominant power as of August 1876. By the Democratic Convention 15 August 1876 two weeks into August, former Confederate General, Wade Hampton, III, ran against the Radical incumbant, D. H. Chamberlain (a Yale graduate). A mon th later, the Radicals were politically in retreat. Chamberlain appeared to have barely won the Nov. 3rd election, but the voting was disputed (in two counties, the votes cast were considerably higher than the number of citizens in ewach county). On a recount, Hamptoin won the governorship. Chamberlain and the federal troops left S. C. with the election of Pres. R. B. Hayes (a former Reconstructionist) who ended martial law in S. C. and the rest of The South in early 1877. This turning of the tides goes down in U. S. political histiry as one of the most apparently sudden changes in political fortune in U. S. history! But the scars would remain and be associated with blacks (rather than the greedy, corrupting Radicals).

As the white Southern locals returned to power in the late 1800s with scarce resources, I suppose they "naturally" looked upon the freed slaves as "lesser" or "beneath us" 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 white Edmunds High School (the black one was Lincoln 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 (I heard that it was quite upsetting to many of our black families, too) to schools for numerical reasons and not geographical reasons. But no such disturbance of lives was required in the North. [Could that be why litteral inequality has not yet been solved, and we have the awful racial divisiveness of 2015?] In time, things evolved and feelings changed for the better.

To survive post-war times, white land-owning farmers and blacks had to work out some system of cooperation. Evolving off of the initially federally mandated sharecrop arrangements, there arose the tenant system as the backbone of The Tenant Era (1865-1940). Landowners provided housing and the where-with-all to plant money crops; the white or black tenant (live on the property) families provided labor. After expenses were deducted, owner and tenant split the profit. "Sharecropping" evolved and could include labor arrangements without tenancy. In S. C., much effort went into picking cotton by hand in the share-cropped arrangements. In early 1940s, mechanical cotton pickers came out & could do the job so much cheaper than humans and on a vaster scale. Even the cotton-growing areas would change, with the bulk of the growing changing over 15 or so years to be concentrated in the coastal plain country of South Georgia, Alabama, the Mississippi delta and in great new developments in Oklahoma and Texas. This was predicted to cost upwards of a half-million labor jobs. But, there was still tobacco & other crops. Here is a July 2004 interview with a 109 year old black former sharecropper (Willie Holliday, proud of hard work and age 109 when interviewed) in Sumter County, S. C. By 1930, some 65% of farming in S. C. was accomplished by sharecropping. Though some wealthy charitable folks (for example, Rosenwald) in the USA helped with building schools for blacks, a poor white Saluda, S. C. mill worker (W. L. Buffington) did miraculous things for black literacy, HERE. While blacks were the most prevelant laboring component of the sharecropping system in S. C., there were plenty of whites who did the labor component. Famous (invited to the White House by several presidents) in Columbia for his giving attitude, John Fling said he grew up so poor that his [white, HIS story] family were helpers to the labor component sharecroppers!

In this review...so far...one would think that Southerners were opposed to blacks and Northerners just fine with blacks. However, Henry Ossian Flipper was the first graduating black student (there were 4 in his class) at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1877. GET THIS: historians record that none of the white students of the college ever spoke to Flipper during his four years there⁵²! GUESS WHAT: the majority of the students were NOT Southerners!!! And see the similar story about the Sumter, S. C. Lincoln High School principal, J. C. Whittaker.

Sharecropping, as with slavery, evolved a bad name outside of the South. Yet, Madame C. J. Walker, a black female daughter of a sharecropper became the first self made female millionaire in the USA! 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). Sharecropping also often included a house to live in for the family that "cropped" the land. Too often, such housing was in poor to nearly in ramshackled condition. The Earl & Eva Wilson family "cropped" the 110 acre farm my daddy owned where London Road joins Mims Road. Prior to that, the Sam Cantey family cropped the much smaller place on Camden Highway that Daddy, Granddaddy, and Uncle Will owned together.

The Supreme Court Declares (1896): The South remains the whipping boy for many USA citizens who still want someone to blame. But, ruling for the entire nation, "separate but equal" was declared to be the law of the land in Plessy vs. Ferguson until the 1954 reversal in Brown vs. Board of Education. In the period in between, consider the example of extremely violent racist killings up NORTH in Springfield, Illinois (1908), HERE!

As in much of The South after 1865, my Grandparents and parents had highly important family relationships between black and white (whether or not the times did or did not have racial segregation). For practical purposes, Daddy (early 1900s) had a surrogate mother for a time, Aunt Sally White. Certain black men were recurringly part of white groups who went hunting (such as Trezzvant Anderson with my Brown family; or Bum & Jeter with my Uncle Bunk Cain). I have mentioned the sharecropper families, above (Earl and Eva Wilson & the Sam Cantey Family). Cooks were Bunky McCollum and Edith Cooper. "Mayor Bubba" McElveen's parent's family had Sara Carter helping them.

Having grown up always in some close relationships with a few blacks in the still-then-segregated South, it is still hard for me to now (2015) believe that segregation ever existed! But, it just goes to show that the social evolution of mankind results in adaptations that, after generations later of societal evolution, make the former things seem so wrong and so hard to understand. In 2015 we saw politicians and the media fan the flames of racial conflict severely. Then a Lexington white boy killed 9 beautiful black people after an hour with the group at a Bible study inside of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S. C. The grace-filled reaction of those families and that black congregation was a life-changing testimony to many Americans. Within days, the state of S. C. retired its Confederate battle flag to the museum. Betty and I did a visit to step in front of that church on 17 July. On 18 July, I saw a wonderful Face Book testimony post by my white friend, Calvin Geddings, to the character and Christian witness of his now-deceased 93 y/o black friend, Nathaniel Lorick. Again, how dare the ignorant (educated or not) distant or local "moderns" from other times pass a pitifully ignorant judgment on the predominantly good people of the South! An oustanding book about a Citadel graduate, mayor-of-Charleston-for-40-years, Joe Riley, gives great insight into some of the people & minute details of relationship forming and inter-racial understanding that can lead to true change.⁵⁴ It is very sad to me that the radical abolitionists anti-slavery folks had no insight into the momentous social upheaval and loss of lives that their incredibly self-righteous and impatient radical pushing would do negatively to the USA.

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 ("A Long Road Out of Springfield") Northern racist communities & lynchings [HERE]. In 1989, our doctor group was the first in central S. C. to hire a woman pathologist. In 1998, our newspaper carried the story of a white northerner marrow donor saving one of S. C.'s black officials, Frank Wise. In 2008, our group was the first to hire a male African-American pathologist and a few years later, an African-American female 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. Barriers are broken in the South (example). Many older generation whites still remember certain wonderful white-black relationships during their growing up years and yearn for an end to divisiveness. Unfortunately, under President Obama, I see promotion of divisiveness by race baiters, including the President. Blacks are 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. But, I pray that people working hard for unity (black example, Star Parker) in the United States of America will be divinely impowered and blessed to prevail.

SOCIAL HABITS, 1900-1975:²³

The average USA life expectancy in 1900 or 1910, the time of the death of my great grandfather Shaw, was 47 years, only 14% of homes had an indoor 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. There were only 8000 automobiles and only 144 miles of paved road in the entire USA. Sugar cost 4 cents per pound, and eggs cost 14 cents per dozen.

In about 1925 (at about age 9), my mother-in-law (Lallah Lindler Drafts) remembers being a young farm girl near the Saluda River (location now under water where Lake Murray is today) one day when their mother called out, "Children! Come out here now! You may never see this again in your lifetime!" They heard a noise...ran outside...and looked up to get their first sight of an airplane following the Saluda River toward Columbia! By 2015, Delta Airlines alone boasts 5000 flights per day!

Most women washed their hair once per month up until maybe 1930. Antibiotics and insulin had not been discovered in 1900. Only men could vote; women & blacks could not. Radio was present when I was born in the early 1940s; TV would not be seen in Sumter until about 1955 (I was 11 years old). There was no air conditioning or electric refrigerators (our family had is first air conditioner in 1959...I was age 15). And there were only 230 murders per year in the entire USA! Growing up in Sumter, between 1940-60, we only locked the doors of the home when going out of town. Children roamed ("free range") the neighborhood without fear personally or on the part of their parents. By 2000, the average life expectancy of those born in 2000 is 77 (a 30 year increase within a century).

Provided a person was not dangerous and was law abiding, non-conventional folks were benignly (often almost joyfully) tolerated...even beloved in some instances. Two with severe birth defects were (1) "Scooting Johnny" (?), a Sumter black man born without legs, who pushed around with his knuckles on what amounted to a skate board). As I recall, he made money shining shoes. (2) "Butch" Galloway was another who had bad cerebral palsy and became a very successful business man. People with what are now called "alternative lifestyles" were part of the everyday fabric without any fanfare at all. "Confirmed bachelors" were often teachers, as were "old maids" (examples from my school days: Miss Bass, Miss Osteen, and Miss Cassie Nicholes). Gay ("queer") life styles folk did not "demand" acceptance or proclaim their status...they quietly lived life as part of whole community of politics, churches, and social activities/life. But this all changed by 2000. Even markedly eccentric folks were part of the community fabric: Hattie Moore (a door-to-door garbage hoarder) and "Goatman" C. C. McCartney (check Wikipedia write-up) were tolerated...even respected in a certain way...in and through Sumter. From the 1940s-1960s, there was no one who lived in the Sumter area who did not know about Hattie Moore (Sumter's most famous person of that era).

The dangerous were either convicted of crimes and jailed or committed to the "insane asylum" on Bull Street in Columbia. The jails were simple detention facilities. "Chain gangs" of prisoners were used as public-works labor groups at least through the 1960s in Sumter County. I remember them being brought to the old Edmunds High School location on the corner of Haynsworth & Purdy streets to pull up sandspurs ("stickers"). If you see the very memorable movie, Cool Hand Luke, you will see the life of people on "chain gangs". From about a decade, a Sumter machinist company owned by Edgar Skinner, Skinner Iron works, fabricated the famous Skinner Convict Rolling Cage which was pulled by mule, was 20 feet long by 7 wide by 8 tall with 6 metal bunk beds 3 tiers high & could each hold 18 convicts who slept secured in the canvass covered cages with a metal wood burner barrell in the center during cold weather (see among photos HERE) & about history with a couple of pics HERE. Wikipedia section on history of prisons from ancient to modern times is HERE. During those older times, there was also great fear of doing something (or acting unusual enough) that "might get you sent to Bull Street". For that reason, people were VERY careful to not get caught muttering to themselves (only crazy people talk to them selves) or telling about really unusual dreams or unconventional ("abnormal") thoughts or inclinations (for instance, few would have EVER dared to discuss having had anything like a "near death experience" (NDE) vision. By the way, our citizens had profound respect (fear?) of the law & for the police until the 1960s when race riots and hippie ways demonstrated that people could get away with law-breaking. The way people dressed defined their social class. Old group photos from the late 1800s & into the 1930s showed men nearly all dressed the same. Hats were so similar that the men often had identifying pieces of cloth sewn by their wives inside the hat. Up until, say, 1960 the prevailing thought was that only a male had a tattoo; and those males were either Navy veterans or "jailbirds".

MODERN IMMIGRATION PUSH/PULL 1845-2014:

The immigration to the USA is said to have been fairly unregulated until it became disruptive about 1846 following the Irish potatoe famine. The regulatory seriousness began to steadily increase. Some would say that, for all practical purposes, immigration was suspended for purposes of assimilation of all who were already here during about 1924-1965. By the summer of 2014, the USA is in a crisis of illegal immigration coming from South America. A timeline, HERE.

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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, put an "exclamation point" the 100+ years festering⁶⁹ 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). With the Reformation, Christianity began a worldwide march that would have it be the largest religion around the world in 2016 (with about 2.2 billion adherents)⁶⁹.

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, 611 pages, 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.
41. reprinted 10/2005 from public domain, James S. Pike, THE PROSTRATE STATE: SOUTH CAROLINA UNDER NEGRO GOVERNMENT, 279 pages, 1874. Mr. Pike was a famous anti-slavery, abolitionist reporter for the then-famous New York Tribune owned and managed by the famous Horace Greeley. During the decade following the war's end and freeing of slaves, the northerners unsympathetically heard stories of almost unbelievable malgovernance of the Southern states by black majority legislators. Greeley was arranging to send Pike to investigate as Greeley ran for president and lost and died. The new owner went ahead and sent Pike to Columbia, S. C. to move around the city and spend much time wandering the legislative halls and observing. Pike's report shocked the north and resulted in the publication of this shocking book, now free on line HERE.
42. Jay Stuller, "Cleanliness: Only Recently a Virtue", Medical Economics, 20 May 1991, pages 75, 86, 89."
43. "Klansville, USA", a 1/13/2015 showing, Public Broadcasting documentary in the American Experince TV series, HERE.
44. The Great Courses, Mysteries of the Microscopic World, Professor Bruce E. Fleury, course #1551, via www.thegreatcourses.com
45. History Channel April 2015 series on the Civil War.
46. Dinesh D'Souza, Life After Death, The Evidence, 2009.
47. Dr. Richard Porcher, botanist and S. C. rice expert in ETV radio talk (9 March 2015) on Walter Edgar's Journal...having to do with the book, The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice: An Illustrated History of Innovations in the Lowcountry Rice Kingdom (USC Press, 2014), Dr. Richard D. Porcher and co-author William Robert Judd.
48. Historical Sketches of Sumter County, vol I, Cassie Nichols
49. Historical Sketches of Sumter County, vol II, Cassie Nichols
50. "Miss Emma Jane Wilson", in The Sumter Black River Watchman, Feb. 2016 (a terrific story of perseverance toward an educational goal for black children).
51. On the Old Plantation: Reminiscences of His Childhood, John George Clinkscales. Band & White, publishers, 1916 [online, UNC collection, see pages 11 & 33]
52. Vanessa De Luca, "Strong, Proud Black Women at West Point", The Wall Street Journal, 10 May 2016, page A13.
53. Bill O'Reilly's docuseries, Legends and Lies: The Patriots, 2016 (some full episodes on YouTube, #8 being the crucial one); preview; episode #1 [15 minutes of it], Sam Adams & Paul Revere: The Rebellion Begins; #2, John Adams, Ready for War; #3, Benjamin Franklin, Inventing America; #4, General George Washington - Commanding Revolution; #5, Thomas Jefferson, Independence Declared; #6 Benedict Arnold, American Traitor; #7, Francis Marion, American Guerrilla Fighter; #8, George Washington, Forged in Conflict; #9, Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr, Deadly Division (short preview); #10, Forgotten Heroes (broadcast 11 Dec. 2016); #11, America's First Christmas (not yet available/broadcast); #12, How Freedom Was Won (not yet available/broadcast); John Brown: This Guilty Land (3/25/2018).
54. The Mayor: Joe Riley and the Rise of Charleston [mayor for 40 years], 375 pages, Brian Hicks, publisher = Evening Post Books, Charleston, S. C. 2015.
55. Thomas L. Friedman column 6/24/2016, "Another Age of Discovery".
56. Gen. Colin Powell, "What American Citizenship Makes Possible, Opinion section of Wall Street Journal, page A13, 7/27/2016, HERE.
57. James M. McPherson, The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN: 9780199375776; 232pp.
58. The Atlantic, Jennie Dear, "What it Feels Like to Die", 9 Sept. 2016.
59. Killing The Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan [an incredible popular history book about WWII Pacific Theatre with Japan], Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, 323 pages, Henry Holt and Co., 2016 (see the footnote page 29 about naming).
60. Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General, [an incredible popular history book about WWII European Theatre with Germany & Russia], Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, 352 pages, Henry Holt and Co., 2014.
61. Dinesh D'Souza (an immigrant from India...now famous...at age 17 who saw America as unique in the world's nations with a system that offered "ladders of opportunity" to ALL), Convocation Speech at Liberty University, 14 October 2016.
62. Lincoln: American Mastermind, HERE [an expose of Lincoln's incredible political skills & negotiating shrewdness], National Geographic Channel (TV) [natgeotv.com], 16 October 2016.
63. The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague, Professor Dorsey Armstrong of Purdue University, Course No. 8241; by The Teaching Company (1916), (24 lectures) purchased through The Great Courses membership. PragerU 6 minute video on cause of US slavery, HERE.
64. Prof. Paul Moreno, "Progressivism", "History 102: American Heritage course... , Lexcture 8", HERE.
65. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South by Michael P. Johnson, James L. Roark, 440 pages, Published first in 1984 & then April 17th 1986 by W. W. Norton & Company.
66. (Sumter) Watchman and Southron, May 15, 1901.
67. Dinesh D'Souza, 90 minute speech/Q&A at Brandeis University, May 11, 2017, video accessed that day, HERE.
68. The Item (Sumter, S. C. newspaper), various articles.
69. The Great Courses... The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch, Prof. Molly Worthen.
70. "Query" including part of an article entitled, Spiritual Telegraph" in The Sumter Black River Watchman, Dec. 2017 page 95.
71. Andrew Jackson: Heroe Under Fire (a one hour documentary...CLIP...production by Fox News and narrated by Brian Kilmeade, author of Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans.
72. John Steele Gordon, A Short History of American Medical Insurance, Imipris lecture of Hillsdale College, October 2018.
73. Hillsdale College 2019 on-line course about WWII.
74. Henry Louis Gates, Finding Your Roots, episode #48, Hard Times, Feb. 2019 HERE.
75. Hazel's House, S. C.'s Sordid Little Secret, p38-40, Columbia Metropolitan magazine, June 2019.

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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 10 March 1999; numerous additions since 1999...latest addition  20 August 2019)