Document text
bk:."-CcL
Accession no.
W11064
Date received
Consignment no.
Skipped front
Je/etair.4
Label
Amount
7/6
A
WPA L C. PROJECT
Forzo--11
Title..
Ad-zzrus-dg,
Place of origidg) Date -4/80 r
Project worker LC/f/J/Z,
Project editor
UNIT
Collection (or Type)
Remar
Project #1655
W. W. Dixon
Winnsboro, S. C.
FA/RFZELD COUNTY
THOMAS C. UMW
(white)
83 YEARS OLD.
Thomas C. Camak, widely known as a contributor of news items to the
Fairfield News and -Herald of Winnsboro, S. C., lives in a two-story frame
house on his plantation twelve miles south of Winnsboro, S. C. His daughter-
in-law, Mrs. T. C. Camak, Jr., and her two children live in the home with
him and his 'fife. At the advanced age of 83, he is still active and a member
of the County Equalization Board of Property, in Fairfield County.
"I am up here this morning attending, with a few other feeble-minded
men, a meeting of the Fairfield County Board of Equalization. It's a curious
thing the way people return property for taxation. For instance, two highly
respected citizens live on adjoining lands that produce about the same crops
per acre. One will return his property in value at seven dollars per acre,
his house at five hundred dollars, making mention of two outhouses at one
hundred dollars each, four mules at fifty dollars each, etc. The other cit-
izen will return his lands at three hundred dollars per acre, his residence
at two hundred dollars, making no mention of outhouses, and return his mules
at twenty-five dollars a head. It's strange the first man doesen't take ex-
ception to the prejudicial return of his neighbor, but he never does. The
only fair may, it seems to me, is to have property returned at its full and
just valuation.
"Again it is strange that all the boards I serve on are alive
'11061
2.
with interest in seeing that the real property of railroad, factories, and
other corporations are assessed pretty high in order to bring in sufficient
revenue to run our schools and pay the bulk of the cost of our expensive
county government. systems.
"I was born about ten miles east of Winnsboro in the Lebannon section
of the county, just after a red rooster crowed three times in the nighttime,
on May 11, 1855. It is reported that I came here into this world squalling
and demanding nourishment and the favor of the superfine sex. In my old
age, I have changed very little about the nourishment and the favor of the
women of my household.
"My father was David Y. Camak; my mother ,Jane Robinson Camak, Scotch
Irish on both sides of the parental house. My ancestors came from Ireland
to this country, about the year 1765, and settled on Crooked Run Creek in
Fairfield District, Craven District then.
"The first school I attended? Let me see! I walked four miles to
a one -teacher school; first, to a Miss Helen Puit and then to a Mrs. S. B.
Simmons, who taught in the same school. The building was known as the
Cornwallis House, from the fact that Lord Cornwallis spent a day and a
night there during the Revolutionary War. Is it still standing? No, the
Yankees burned it, but on it now stands the parsonage of Bethel Methodist
Episcopal Church in the Greenbrier section. It was a tuition school. My
father paid ten cents a day for my schooling then. I attended five days
a week, and I stayed all day. For my dinner, I carried a bottle of molasses,
two buttered biscuits, and one biscuit with a streak of lean and a streak of
fat bacon between it. We began in the old blue -back speller. As we progressed,
we got into Robertson's arithmetic and used slates and slate pencile. I forget
the history book, but there was a funny way the teacher taught geography. We
3.
sang it to the tune of Old Dan Tucker. The whole school enjoyed this method
of learning geography. All the boys and girls who went to this school with
me are dead and gone. The last one to depart was Thomas Woodward Ruff. I
can't remember how many boys there were, but I remember counting the girls
every night after I went to bed. The number was exactly twenty-two. There
was only one other boy, besides myself, that was big enough to court them,
and we sure did our best. The influence of these girls, which was good,
made me study hard at night and slick up my hair a little before going to
school in the morning. I pause here, like Brutus in his address to the
Rdmans, to ask you if you think the large school plants with the excellent
equipment of today are turning out as worthy products as the old field of
the sixties and seventies?
*What about the period of great hostilities between the North and
South? Looking over church statistics, it is shameful that secession and
war ever came about. Here was a young nation, not as old as I am today,
founded on the principles of Jesus, patience, forbearance, long suffering,
liberty, tolerance, and a declaration that all men are born free and equal.
Why could not the sermon on the mount have been heeded? That would have
provided for just recognition of what the South had done for the Negro race,
a time to be set for their emancipation, and compensation to the individual
slave owner for the property valuation of the slave. The Christian citizen-
ship of our country lost a great opportunity when it did not stand between
the Pharisaical traders and manufacturers of the North and the arrogant and
proud land owners and slaveholders of the South and settle the question
without bloodshed and on some social and economic policy fair to the Negro
and not injurious to the southern white people.
*Well, at the end of the war, Sherman's army came thru our section
4.
raiding and burning. When they got to our house, they herded up all cows
and sheep, put halters on the mules we had, made the Negroes catch our
chickens all except an old red rooster that got away under the barn
ransacked the smokehouse, and, for pure meanness, emptied a tub of lye
soap into our molasses hogshead. After they left us and marched on to
Winnsboro, it was a long time before we saw an egg again and the old red
rooster was very lonely; in fact, he didn't strut any more.
"We didn't have any coffee for a long time after the war. We used
as a substitute, that winter, parched ground rye; in the fall, ground okra
seed. Mother made our clothes; spun the thread on the old spinning wheel
after the cotton had been carded into bats by the Negro women on the place.
She could weave the cloth necessary to clothe the family. We took strips
of bark from live walnut trees to dye the cloth.
"Yes, I remember the old wire hoop she wore to bulge out the skirt.
Later, the hoop was discarded and bustles became the rage and fashion.
This looked like a head rest, but was tied on too far down the back to do
the woman's head any good, I think.
"One of the great diversions in my young manhood was horseback riding
with girls. You couldn't carry the getting -up, mount block along with you
into the woods, when you were in quest of wild strawberries, whortle7her-
ries or wild flowers; so, when the quest was over, the great problem was
not one of depression but one of elevation of the girl to her seat upon
the horse. It never happened to me, of course, but sometimes a nervous
boy would find difficulty im finding the proper foot of the young lady
in the labyrinth of furbelows, petticoats, balmorals and riding skirts.
Then he must have a good play of the wrist muscles to allow for any eccen-
tricity of the girl's ankle; for it might turn under excitement of the
5.
movement, slip out of the bay's hand, and by force of gravity descend to
the ground. Nov there is a law in physics that when a downward pressure
of this kind is removed and the upward pressure is not instantly withdrawn,
the resultant effect might be one of personal confusion and embarrassment.
*Yes, I recall the corset. The smaller a woman's waist, in those
days, the more attractive she was. It ought to have been condemned and
outlawed. I have often seen a girl or woman faint at a dance or picnic,
due, in my judgment, to tight lacing.
*How about the Sabbath day observance now and in my young days? Well,
I was brought up a strict Sabbatarian. We got up, went to family prayers
in the dining room, ate breakfast without the usual levity and talk about
personal affairs, had our boats and shoes blacked, dressed, and the whole
fagily attended church. Nothing but sacred music was played or sung in
the house that day, not even our favorites.
*While I like baseball, I Shudder every time I read of a game being
played on Sunday, visualizing the gate money, betting, coca -cola stands,
peanut venders, loud speakers, and so forth.
*I told my wife, who is just 80 years old, that if she ever played
golf with Miss Hemphill and expected me to witness her triumph, she must
pull it off some other day besides Sunday.
*Woman suffrage? I thought once that was the panacea for all our
ills and woes, but, alas, I see very little change, except the women have
become a little more masculine and the men a little lazier. Some of the
byproducts are high school girls smoking cigarets on school busses, and
Mrs. Smith attending a rally at the Jefferson Hotel, which required Mr.
Smith (I suppose) to remain at home and attend to the baby.
"In some homes in those good old days, we were allowed to dance the
6.
quadrille and the Virginia reel, but in most homes, under the saintly
power of the preacher, it was prohibited. There was no round dancing in
our section in my youth. Indeed, we boys were so unsophisticated, in our
neck of the woods, had one of us got his arms around one of the twenty-two
girls I spoke of, he would have stalled like a mule or carried her bodily
to the Methodist parsonage and got married through shame and remorse.
"What did we do for entertainment at the other houses 'there dancing
was forbidden? 0, we played Thimble,' told fortunes, played 'Old Maid,'
'Little Sallie Walker,' and 'Heavy, Heavy, Hangs Over Head.'
"I know very little about the military government in South Carolina.
And I have no knowledge of the Ku Klux Klan. When I became a man, I put
away childish things, joined the Greenbrier Club, in 1876, wore the red
shirt of those days, and obeyed the orders of Major Woodward, the leader.
Where he got them we never knew nor asked any questions, but the Major
presented the club, in July 1876, with three hundred muskets and plenty
of ammunition to fire them. Each member took a musket and some powder
and balls and a box of caps home with him.
"One night I was at the Methodist parsonage when a courier, Tom Smith,
came and notified me to come with my shooting iron to Mainstry's Hill,
where the Greenbrier Club was to be assembled. I got my horse and musket
and met them. We were led to a schoolhouse by Major Woodward. When we ar-
rived, it was estimated that there were 5,000 Negroes outside and inside
the schoolhouse. A bright mulatto from Connecticut, I. B. Smith, was speak-
ing. Major Woodward pushed thru the crowd into the schoolhouse and I
squeezed in behind him. Some discourteous reference to the Major was made
by the speaker. The Major advanced and knocked Smith down and broke up the
meeting.
7.
"That winter our Greenbrier Club went to Columbia. Fairfield had
two Negro members in the Republican Mackey House of Representatives, John
Gibson and Dan Byrd. John Gibson lived ten miles from Winnsboro; Dan Byrd
in my section, Mossy Dale. We got John and Dan to leave the Mackey House
and cone over to the Wallace House of Representatives. We contributed that
much to the strengthening of the Wallace House and to the undermining of the
Mackey House.
*Dan lived to an old age and was a privileged character among the white
people of Fairfield. After John's term expired in the legislature, he opened
up a shoe repair shop in Columbia, S. C., where he enjoyed a large patronage
from white people who knew his history.*