Document text
Accession no.
11053
Date received
eVz /h•
Consignment no.
Shipped from
Label
Amount
f
WPA L. t. PROJECT UNIT
Form -8
Collection (or Type)
Place of originfro-le- Date
Project worker._..Ar/ eac-e-es-v-z.-1
Project editor
Remarks
3S')
Project #1655
W. W. Dixon
Winnsboro, S. C.
JOSEPH STEWART
(white)
81 YEARS OLD.
Joseph Stewart is an old bachelor living alone in a four -room frame
house on the south side of highway #34, seven miles east of the town of
Ridgeway, S. C. He is five feet ten inches tall and weidhs two hundred
pounds.
"I was born near Mitford, not far from Great Falls, January 17, 1857.
I was a boy seven years old when the great War Between the States ended in
the triumph of the Union army, the abolition of slavery, and the raiding of
our section of the county by Sherman's soldiers.
"My father was Thomas Stewart; my mother, Sallie Stewart. I had two
brothers and two sisters. Jane, who never married, is dead. Tom was a
bachelor all his life; he was drowned at the age of seventy. Brother Wil-
liam married and had a large family, but died several years ago. Mattie La-
vinia married John Haynes. She is still living at Ridgeway, S. C., with her
daughter,Mary, who married Bob Ameen, a prosperous merchant and land owner of
Ridgeway and Winnsboro, S. C. She is seventy-seven years old. She lost her
only son, Harry, last April.,
"My father and mother were not rich people before the abolition of slav-
ery; they owned only a few slaves and a mall tract of land near Mitford. The
destruction of the small cotton mill, the distilleries, and tanyards meant more
to my family than the abolition of the slaves.
"My two brothers, William and Tom, and I were not ashamed to work at what-
ever we could get to do around the cotton mill and gristmill, distilleries and
V411053
2.
tanyards. Our labor was intelligent and skilled and was preferred to Negro
labor after freedom. So the result of the war bore not so hard on our family.
"Sherman's troops burned the schoolhouse near us. It was a private
school of the neighborhood. I had gone to it one year and had gotten to the
"baker" column in the old blue -back speller, and had learned to read and write.
That is about all the schooling I ever got. What I know6 has cons from the school
of experience and in reading the newspapers.
"The Yankees burned Mt. Dearborn Cotton Mill, which was owned by Captain
Sam McAlillev at the time of the invasion by the Federal army. They also burned
and destroyed Ogyden's, Montgomery's, Lewis's, and Gaither's tanneries. These
were never reestablished, but the two distilleries in the community that were
likewise destroyed were afterward restored, and every store sold whiskey. A
gallon jug could be bought for a silver dollar, and a barrel, thirty-one and
one-half gallons, sold for a ten dollar bill. Now the sane quality and amount
of liquor would cost six dollars a gallon and not less than fifty dollars a
barrel.
"What was the pastime and amusement of man in those days? Well, society
had a distinct cleavage. There was a religious crowd who took things seriously
and went to church every time the church had anything going on. They got up
and established a temperance society, and attended revivals in the summertime.
They, led on by the preachers, believed in hell fire and brimstone, and talked
against card playing, dancing, gambling, and many innocent amusements that is
considered all right nowadays.
"Then there was the other crowd; they raised game chickens and race horses;
kept fox hounds; and played cards in barrooms and hotels at Winnsboro and Chester.
"The race course ran parallel with the Rocky Mount road. Colonel Whittaker,
Major Berry of York, the Hamptons of Richland, the McCarleys of Winnsboro, the
3.
Thompsons of Union and the Harrisons of Longtown raced thoroughbred race horses
on this track, or course, and much money was won and lost at these races. The
chicken fights were sometimes fought in Chester and sometimes in Winnsboro. I
have known as much as $500 to be bet on the "Main." That is to say, the side
winning the most fights would get the $500. But I have seen $300 bet on an
individual cock fight that didn't last a minute; a blue -breasted, red, game
cock of Mr. Pagan ran
Head,game rooster. giho
that, but the money was
"As to gambling at
his gaff clean through both eyes of an Allan Round
did the Allan Round Head belong to? I'm not sure about
put up by three Chester people.
cards, most of that took place in a bank room adjoining
the barroom. In the daytime, the game was seven up and turn trump. If you
turned a jack, that counted "one". The points to be made were "high", "low",
"jack", and the "game". No great sums cf money were lost or won on this game.
"At night in the fall and winter the card game was "draw poker" in the
town hotels. Generally a bar with liquors was fixed up in the hotel. One day
a fine old gentleman stopped his wagon, which was loaded with four bales of cot-
ton, in front of the Nickolson Hotel, in Chester. He came in just to get a
drink, he said. Looking around, he saw a card game going on; he joined it,
played a while, and had the game changed to draw poker. He soon lost what money
he had, and then bale by bale the cotton was lost. In the midst of a conversa-
tion about putting up a mule, his son came in and led him out of the hotel. The
grandson of that old gentleman is a lawyer at Barnwell, S. C. You know him well,
as he has been president of the State
"Dr. Ira S. Scott, a graduate of
physician of the surrounding country.
Bar Association.
the Charleston Medical College,
was the
His practice extended from old Beckhams-
ville to Kershaw. In typhoid fever cases, people believed him more able to
cure ft than any other doctor. They say he never was known to lose a typhoid
case, if called into consultation the first week. He died in 1888. He had
4.
been a cripple since childhood, and,because of this misfortunehe always rode
horseback on a lady's sidesaddle. You must remember that, until the year 1900,
it was regarded as immodest and shameful for ladies to ride astride as men do.
*The first 4aturday in May found everybody in wagons and buggies on their
way to the picnic at Catawba Falls, as it was commdnly called in those old
days. Now the place is a large town, a manufacturing centre, and is called
Great Falls. I have heard old people say that this picnic began as an annual
social gathering in 1784.
"Some of the Confederate soldiers who went out from our section were J.
F. Arledge, Robert Ford, E. T. Gayden, Sam Kilgo, R. M. Ford, H. J. Gavden,
Mransel Hollis, James G. Johnstone, J. F. Nichols, Dr. William Dye, John Cart-
ledge, and L. M. Ford.
"Dr. William:Hall was the richest man in the neighborhood. He built, at
his own expanse, Bethesda Church and gave it to the Methodist Episcopal denomi-
nation. Some of the preachers who went out from Bethesda were John R. Pickett,
Phillip Pickett, and James Kilgo. Mr. Kilgo had three sons to enter the Method-
ist ministry. John Kilgo, one of the sons, became president of Trinity College,
now Duke University, Durham, N. C.
"Our family moved here to the Longtom section of Fairfield County about
1884, and bought this farm upon which I have lived ever since.
"I think Fairfield was one of the nine counties declared to be in re-
bellion against the U. S. Government in the days of Ku Klux, but no great dis-
turbances took place here so far as I recall. I took part in the Red Shirt
brigades that did so much to elect Wade Hampton governor in 1876. I wore a
red shirt in the parades and did what I was commanded to do by General Bretton,
Major Woodward, and the leaders.
"A canvass of the State took place before the election in 1876. It com-
menced at Anderson and ended at Columbia. Fairfield County organized clubs.
5.
The club members, on the day of a speaking in Winnsboro, dressed in red shirts,
mounted on horseback, and rode to Winnsboro in military formation. I have
heard that they did this in every county.
"On the day of the speaking here, I suppose there were at least three
thousand red shirts on the speaking ground. It was a grand sight; it put
heart in the whites and dread in the blacks.
"At other elections, before this, Negro women would dress up in men's
clothing and vote. How many, I don't know, but we did catch one at Ridgeway,
in 1876, trying to vote for Chamberlain for governor. We were on the lookout
for them, and they must have gotten scared and made no attempts, except this
particular one.
"'Women of the Negro race were more violent in the abuse of the Democratic
Party than were the Negro men. It was common for the Negro women to threaten
their husbands with separation if they voted the democratic ticket under per-
suasion of the whites. These women were advised, encouraged, and urged by the
Negro preachers and White scalawag politicians to assume this manner and take
this drastic action toward their husbands in order to hold them in line for the
radical party at the election box."