Abbeville and Environs

A couple of posts ago I mentioned my interest in John C. Calhoun, and noted that I had visited one of his homes, and the land on which he had lived for short periods of time. These recollections were prompted by my reading a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the man by Margaret L. Coit. The volume I have is a re-print published jointly by the University of South Carolina Press, the Institute for Southern Studies, and the South Caroliniana Society of the University of South Carolina. The reprint includes a new introduction by Clyde N. Wilson, the foremost Calhoun scholar alive today.

The center of Calhoun's early life was Abbeville, SC, and the immediate area surrounding Abbeville. This historic little town is less than a two-hours drive from our home here in Madison, GA, so one Sunday recently Kathy, Lucy, and I decided we should drive to Abbeville and "get a feel" for the man who dominated political life in this country for so many years.

Our port of entry into the state of South Carolina was Calhoun Falls, SC. According to the Historical Marker Data Base we should have found, upon entering the state, a marker on the left of state highway 72 that reads: Half mile southeast is Millwood, home of James Edward Calhoun, 1796-1898, son of John Ewing and Floride Bonneau Calhoun and brother-in-law of John C. Calhoun. After serving as lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he developed Millwood, which ultimately included 25,000 acres. Seeing the value of Trotter's Shoals, a part of this estate, he was among the first to encourage the use of Southern water power.

We stopped to take a photo of the Millwood marker. This is what we found:

After the trip, I contacted the coordinator of the South Carolina Historical Marker program about this missing marker. Fortunately, that was the only missing or damaged marker we found on our trip.

I suspect that a good bit of "Millwood" is now beneath the surface of the Richard B. Russell lake, which was created when the Richard B. Russell Dam was constructed near this spot on the Savannah River. If you think that the state of Georgia has a fondness for naming things after our former governor and US senator, you should visit the state of West Virginia. I am really quite surprised that the state hasn't been renamed the state of Robert Byrd.

The road from Calhoun Falls to Abbeville took us by an interesting historical marker, one noting the burial ground of Patrick Calhoun, John C. Calhoun's father: “5.5 miles southeast is the burial ground of Patrick and Martha Caldwell Calhoun, Parents of John C. Calhoun; Deputy Surveyor 1756; First Representative from Up Country to Commons House of Assembly, 1769-1772; Member of First Provincial Congress, 1775; Second, 1775-1776; General Assembly, 1776; and frequently after until his death, 1796. His greatest service to his state was his successful fight for the Circuit Courts Act, 1762. Across the road is his home site.”

What I found most interesting about this marker is that it was located so far from the burial ground. It is almost as if the state wants to make sure that visitors are aware of the burial ground, but are unable to find it. We, of course, found it.

The burial ground is at the end of an unmarked dirt road. The hint embedded in the marker is the last sentence. Patrick Calhoun's home no longer exists, but there is a marker across the road from the burial ground indicating that John C. Calhoun was born on this land.

The young Calhoun erected an obelisk in the burial ground to honor his parents:

(John C. Calhoun is not buried here: his resting place is St. Philip's Episcopal Church Cemetery in Charleston, SC. I took the photos below in the summer of 2015.)

The only thing close to a building near the burial ground or the marker noting the birthplace of Calhoun is the ruin we found on the dirt road leading to the burial ground:

The beautiful little town of Abbeville itself is quite historic, and not just because Calhoun spent his formative years here, and briefly practiced law here.

When Richmond fell in the spring of 1865, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, relocated the capitol of the CSA to Danville, Virginia. While the capitol was in Danville, Lee surrendered to Grant, and Davis decided that the government should be moved farther south. On May 2, 1865, Davis and the government arrived in Abbeville. The house where he stayed, the Burt-Stark House, is still there:

The last meeting of the Confederate Cabinet and the last Council of War was held there.

There is even more to see in Abbeville, but this is about John C. Calhoun, and I have digressed enough already with this event that occurred some 15 years after Calhoun's death.

Calhoun's early education was at the Willington Academy, which was run by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Moses Waddel, DD. Although only a small school, it educated some of the leading men in the region. Take a look at the list of surnames on the marker below. If you are schooled in the history of the south, you will be astounded by the list of graduates of the Willington Academy.

Calhoun lived in what is known as the Long Cane portion of the county. A very significant event occurred there on February 1, 1760, 261 years ago tomorrow (as this is written on January 31, 2021). On that date, a boundary dispute between the Cherokee nation and the Scotch-Irish settlers of the region resulted in an ambush of the settlers, and the massacre of 23 of them. One of the survivors of the massacre was Patrick Calhoun, John's father. Two who did not survive were Patrick's mother Cathrine, and his brother James. The first picture below is that of the replacement of the marker that Patrick Calhoun placed at the site of the massacre. The second photo shows the original.

As an aside, a treaty was finally worked out between the Indians and the settlers, in 1785, which resulted in the surrender of about one third of the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee to the white settlers. Another surrender that day: Anna Calhoun, John's cousin, who had been taken by the Indians 25 years earlier at the Long Cane Massacre.

The only frustration of the trip was my inability to locate the site of Bath, the plantation that John bought for his new bride. There was no house on the property, at least at the beginning, so his wife stayed with her mother at Bonneau's Ferry while John was away in Congress. We have reports that the land was worked and managed by John's brothers, but nothing else that I can find. No one seems to know where it was located. I contacted Dr. Wilson, who put me on touch with a Calhoun descendent. Neither of them know where the plantation was located. My best guess, based on remarks here and there in the Coit biography, put me in the middle of Forest Service land. Despite tramping through the forest for a considerable period of time, we came away empty handed.

But that is a project for another day. I have a couple of suggestions from Kathy that may eventually point me in the right direction. For now, it is a mystery. And I love a good mystery.