Shaw's of Sumter County South Carolina

The money crops

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

Clearing the "new ground" to produce more money.

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

John G. Shaw branch, Mississippi:  

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

Labor-wise, the Industrial Revolution exerted its effects on America beginning between 1780-1830, but with little effect on common families until 1900.

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

Salem Black River Presbyterian Church

On the north side of Black River, Salem Black River [Brick Church] Presbyterian Church was founded about 1759; David Anderson gave a plot of land on Taylor's Swamp (later known as Meeting House Branch) to the Salem Congregation. A log building was erected in 1760, replaced by a frame one and then by a brick building in 1804; 42 years later the present building was built. Thomas Reese was the Pastor from 1773 to 1792, then left for Pendleton District and was designated in the session records as "Our ever memorable Pastor". Our David Shaw was asked to build the study house in 1808. Samuel and James Bradley were members of Williamsburg Church (Kingstree) who settled in Salem and planted Salem church there. The story of Rev. John Cousar⁵ gives further interesting information about church life, marriages, and even "camp meetings". When I was a cadet at The Citadel taking a "History of The Old South" course, Col. Lee liked to joke that more souls were created than saved at those old camp meetings! See a time-line brief history of midland S. C. 's oldest church (my church), Zion Lutheran Church in Lexington County in the Dutch Fork (German settlers) area, from about 1739. Here are some other historic Sumter area churches: Rembert Church; Salem Black River Presbyterian Church; First Presbyterian Church. An historic coastal church, John's Island Presbyterian Church [photo] (formed in 1710³⁸, 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. St. Philips in Charleston is old and historic. Here is the Historical Register of links in S. C. [click on county of interest]. It was customary that whites and blacks worshipped together in these rural churches (until after the end of slavery³⁸).

Enemy Attacks on American (USA) SOIL:

1. American Revolution of 1776:

   While the Scotch-Irish...especially the Covenanter Presbyterians...had plenty of anti-British antagonism, it did not necessarily translate into Revolutionary War service. I have never found any record or indication of military service by John Shaw the immigrant. John Adams maintained that about a third of Americans supported the Revolution, a third were against it, and a third tried to be neutral. In South Carolina, there was somewhat of a notion among the interior Scotch-Irish that the Charleston elite were behind the war; many did not care to be in the service of these elites²². Then, especially among the very recent Scotch-Irish immigrants (John Shaw arrived 12/1772...40% of the total came in the 1770's), many had not yet really put down their "colonial roots"; others feared losing their new grants if they openly backed the American rebels¹⁶. Rev. Martin was a "warm Whig" favoring independence; but it was after 1776 that he finally preached to his congregation, "My hearers, talk and angry words will do no good. We must fight²²!"

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

2. Post-revolution Indian Wars: such as the second war of 1776 & the Texan Cherokee War in 1839; the first war was of 1758-61, just after which my wife's immigrant ancestor, Jacob Drafts was scalped & killed, a non-combatant citizen.
3. Mexican War: of 1846-48 (Texas annexed into USA in 1845) with Battle of the Alamo, etc. Tension continued, and there was the Border War 1910-18 with skirmishes into the USA by Mexicans. My grandfather, R. T. Brown was sent for duty.
4. 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]
5. Radical Muslim attacks of 11 Sept. 2001: U. S. Citizens died in Pennsylvania, New York City, and Washington, D. C.; thousands were killed.

Water and Refrigeration

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

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

Food and food Preservation

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

Our ancestors in South Carolina widely and commonly used such old preservative methods in daily life up through the 1950's (dried corn, peanuts, and grains, canned cooked meat and vegetables, salt-cured and/or smoke-cured pork hams and pork bacon; pickled fruits and vegetables; pickled eggs). Rural families tended to have a small smoke-house or food storage shed near the home. Long-term preserved meat was hung in this shed. Beef was more difficult to store long-term (too thick for smoke penetration) by individual families (a big animal takes too much time to process). So, crossroads communities formed such as "beef clubs" (and there were a few "pig clubs")^17,19. Sixteen families would go together into a cooperative arrangement. Every two weeks¹⁷ (in some areas, every Saturday)¹⁹, a family in turn contributed a cow which was killed and butchered into 16 "shares". The butcher or someone else kept strict "books" on the poundage divided out, and the butcher also had right of first refusal on the beef liver. At the end of a year, families providing less butchered pounds paid money back into a pool which was then accounted back out to the club members. On receipt of a family's "share" for the two weeks, the meat was usually cooked and then stored in meat pots (see above) using whatever "refrigeration" was available¹⁷. Chickens, goats, wild game (rabbits, squirrel, turkey, and deer), and fish (Black River was noted to have a fine fish population²¹) were added to the diet as needed. A year-round vegetable garden was maintained. Sweet and white potatoes were grown and, over the cold months, stored in outdoor "potato hills" (dirt mounds onto which the potatoes were carefully stacked and then covered with straw which was then covered by dirt carefully sloped so that rainwater ran off and didn't really soak into the mound) in areas of S. C. which were low and flat, with a high water table. In other areas a deep, cool, and dry "root cellar" was dug and potatoes and other root-like vegetables stored. The aging of the sweet potatoes for several weeks made them sweeter (today, the aged sweet potato can be called a "yam"). Corn and wheat (and maybe some other dried grains) were harvested and dried and milled into grits, meal, or flour at numerous area grist mills located on flowing creeks (but, some people had small "hand mills"). John Shaw's son, David, may have had a mill on Alligator Creek (there were an average of 40 mills per S. C. county before 1860²⁴). 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. Routine, significant physical work required big meals of concentrated energy (high protein and fat content) so that the daily calorie requirement might be two to four times what our modern requirements are. My father recalled in 1989 (age 78) the way they ate on the farm at the time of the Great Depression, compared to modern times: he considered that Americans have never since eaten "better food" than in those bygone days of the 1920-30s.  

Marriage

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

Schools

To insure some quality growth and community creation as an inland perimeter buffer to Charleston, several educational institutions were begun inland...a supplement to local personal educators/tutors (public schools were yet far off in the future). The one closest to our immigrant ancestor's family home was Mt. Zion Institute (founded about 1790) in Winnsboro, S.C., Winnsboro also being a summer retreat area (50-60 miles further westward/inland). There may have been a little community school at Salem Black River Presbyterian Church^{18 or 19; 20}. Small communities sent children to innumerable private schools owned and run by the teacher (s), or by "societies" of cooperating parents who employed a teacher. Education of children was a parental responsibility in early times, and when parents were too poor or indifferent, the children were illiterate. The Clarendon (County) Orphan Academy was started about 1798 to meet this need for free. An S. C. free school law for the poor was enacted in 1811; and, by 1857, there were 52 free schools in Sumter District²⁰. A school which prepared students for college might be called a "high school". A girls' finishing school might be called a seminary. The most favored name for schools was so-and-so "academy"²⁰. Among some of the names in the Sumter area were: The Sandville Academy, Lodebar Academy, Mt. Clio Academy, Bishopville Academy, William T. Capers School, Coit's High School, Swimming Pens School, Plowden Mills School, St. Paul's Academy, Friendship Academy, Summerton Academy, Claremont Academy, Dr. John M. Robert's Academy (predecessor to Furman University), Woodville Academy, Edgehill Academy near Stateburg, Thornton Academy, Rafton Creek Academy, The Hawthorndean Seminary, Sumterville Academy, Mrs. Campbell's School, The Rev. R. W. Bailey School, Orange Grove School, Bradford Springs Female Academy Harmony Female College, "Sumter Military, Gymnastic, and Classical School", Young Ladies Seminary, Theus's Academy, The Sumterville Female Academy, the Sumterville Academy, Sumter Collegiate Institute, and Zoar Academy²⁰.

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

The Fevers

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

SLAVERY

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

Slavery began in ancient times as an alternative to just slaughtering captives of war. As with all social inventions initially done for good, evil enters in; and corruption takes place to bring bad features to that invention.

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

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

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

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

My father, generally not interested in sophisticated details of history, told me bluntly that the war of 1860-65 was fought "over slavery". It would be later that I really understood that slavery was the agitating focus. As this focus became relentlessly pressed by abolitionists, Southerners realized that the true and larger constitutional issue was states' rights. I grew up 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. We grew up hating "yankees" (except those who were in the line of duty stationed at Shaw AFB). That attitude began to dissolve when so many of our citizens voted in 1952 for WWII Supreme Allied Commander, General D. D. "Ike" Eisenhower, as president. It then seemed to go away nearly completely when R. C. "Bobby" Richardson of Sumter became a New York Yankee baseball player in 1955.

Interesting to me is the fact that the END to slavery began with the founding of America on the concept that God created all men equal! Prior to the voting in of that concept, world societies did not consider slavery a "horror" or even unacceptable.

RECONSTRUCTION, SEGREGATION, INTEGRATION

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

Upon the defeat of the South and the release of all slaves, crops could not be harvested (the labor force was now suddenly freed); and the farms and plantations failed. As the freed slaves sought work for food or pay, there was none. The "carpetbaggers" from the North (constituting a civilian invasion) came and took advantage of the depression in the South...which was a devastated land recently militarily invaded by the federal government whose Gen. Sherman laid waste to a large portion of the South. Blacks were placed into some positions of authority without benefit of any real social, political, or managerial training...probably a galling picture to most of the crushed white population. The social reversals and upheavals lead to such means as the Ku Klux Klan who attempted to regain order. 

As the white Southern locals returned to power with scarce resources, I suppose they "naturally" looked upon the freed slaves as "lesser" and came up with the concept of segregation and the subsequent divided efforts of the government (more for whites and less for blacks) and society. "Integration" began in Sumter public schools in 1963, the year after I had graduated from high school. And I hated the way it was forced onto the South. Among many federal rules forced on us, we had to bus children (it was quite upsetting to our black families, too) to schools. But no such disturbance of lives was required in the North. In time, things evolved and feelings changed. 

To survive post-war times, white land-owning farmers and blacks had to work some system of cooperation out. Sharecropping evolved, and here is a July 2004  interview with a 109 year old black sharecropper in Sumter County, S. C. 

Sharecropping, as with slavery, evolved a bad name outside of the South. I saw a TV special about 23 October 2005 about famed baseball player Jackie Robinson's son, David. Jackie broke the racial barrier in major league baseball, being the son of a sharecropper and the descendant of a slave. David broke the color barrier in his first grade class in Connecticut and suffered for it. 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 to say (without challenge) that he runs a "co-operative". He provides the capital; they provide the labor.

Growing up in the still-segregated South, it is hard for me to now (2011) believe that segregation existed! But, it just goes to show that the social evolution of mankind results in adaptations that, generations later of societal evolution, make the former things seem wrong.

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

In 1900:²³

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

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

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SCOTCH, SCOTCH-IRISH BACKGROUND and WAYS:

A Divided Scotland

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

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

Food

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

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

Religion

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

Ulster, A Northern Ireland buffer for England

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

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

Scots to Ireland

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

Irish rise against the Scotch-Irish in 1641

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

Scotch-Irish consolidate 1652-1670

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

Ulster rack rents of about 1764

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

Scotch-Irish archetype & 1770s migration

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

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

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

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

The Name "SHAW"

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

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

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1.     History of Williamsburg Church by Wallace..."has to do with the 1732 arrival of the Scotch-Irish in Kingstree."

2.     History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina since 1850 by Jones and Mills published in 1926, pg. 823.

3.     Williamsburg Presbyterian Church from 1736 to 1981 by Witherspoon, Davis, and Cooper in 1981. (S.C. Archives)

4.     Scotch-Irish Migration to South Carolina, 1772, Jean Stephenson, 1971.(S.C. Archives)

5.     Down the Waxhaw Road, James English Cousar, Jr., 1953.

6.     S.C. Land Grant Policies, Robert H. Ackerman, 1977 (S.C. Archives).

7.     Scottish Contributions to the Making of America, 1951, Pamphlet of U.S. Information Service. (Located in the Thomas Cooper Library at USC).
Note: Ulster Scots is a term synonymous with Scotch Irish; the Ulster Province, planted with Scots by James VI of England, "the Scottish Nation in the north of Ireland."

8.     A Social History of The Scotch Irish, Carlton Jackson. (Located in the Thomas Cooper Library at USC).

9.     Ulster Emigration to Colonial America 1718 Through 1775, R. J. Dickson. 1966. (Thomas Cooper Library at USC).

10. Scotch-Irish Pioneers In Ulster and America, Charles Knowles Bolton, 1910.

11. The Book of Ulster Surnames, Robert Bell, 1988.

12. Salem Black River Presbyterian Church Bicentennial 1759-1959 by Samuel Eugene McIntosh, 11/8/59 (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).

13. Lois Dosher Collection, Black River Church file, (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).

14. A speech to the Sumter Historical Society, James McBride Dabbs. (in Sumter Genealogical Research Center).

15. Reflections , complied by James E. Morgan, Published by The Sumter County Historical Commission, Sumter, S. C. 1986 "Railroads of Sumter District and Sumter County" (by Ross McKenzie...Oct. 1972).

16. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, Roger Daniels, 1990, Harper Collins Publishers, 450 pages. (in Thomas Cooper Library at USC, Columbia, S. C.)

17. interviews with Lallah Drafts Lindler, 1999, my mother-in-law.

18. Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806-1876, Edwin J. Scott, Columbia, 1884. (in South Carolinianna Library at USC, Columbia, SC) [author grew up in Sumter County and lived and traveled around Columbia and Lexington County, SC]

19. Life on the Old Plantation in Antebellum Days, Rev. Irving E. Lowery, 1911. Born in 1850 to a slave family on the plantation of John Frierson of Pudding Swamp (the neighborhood of the early Shaws), Sumter Co., S.C.,  the author paints a picture that is almost the opposite of what we moderns imagine slavery to have been like. This on-line item discovered and brought to my attention by Charles Dibble (the book in South Carolinianna Library at USC, Columbia, SC; on-line here at UNC).

20. History of Sumter County, Anne King Gregory, Sumter, 1954.

21. History of Williamsburg [1705-1923], William Willis Boddie, 1923.

22. Partisans & Redcoats [a history of the Rev. War in the backcountry of South Carolina], Walter Edgar, 2001.  

23. The Carolina Herald and Newsletter (official publication of the S. C. Genealogical Society), vol. XXX, number 3, page 11, July/August/Sept. 2002.

24. from a member of Society for Preservation of Old Mills [SPOOM], Oct. 2002.

25. Nettles, James A., "Early Irish Origins of the Cantey Family", The Sumter Black River Watchman, Dec. 2003, p. 84.

26. Herman, Arthur, How The Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It, 2001.

27. Shaw, Ernest, "Gathering Pieces of the Shaw Family Story", The News, 29 Sept. 2004 page 16.

28.Larry Schweikart & Michael Allen, A Patriot's History of the United States..., Penguin Books, 2004.

29. Alphonso Brown, Gullah Tours, March 2005. (http://www.gullahtours.com/index.html). 

30. Beverly Whitaker's "Early American Roads and Trails". website with maps.

31. Herrick, M. D., James B., Memories of Eighty Years, 270 pages, U. of Chicago Press, 1949.

32. Caughman, J. Ansel, History of Cedar Grove Community...

33. Smith, Lettie Mae, explaining about her elderly (1895-) mother's (Leila Backman Shull) marital times in Lexington County, S. C. around 1914, "110 Years in Lexington County", by Ron Aiken, Lexington County Chronicle & Dispatch News, 16 March 2006, page 18A.

34. Webb, James, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, 369 pages, 2004.

35. Website about passengers on Earle of Donegal ship, Belfast to S. C. & links to how to analyze such lists for info about the passengers. ( http://www.geocities.com/earlofdonegal/?200921)

36. Hugh McGough's website about Presbyterians from Ulster to the USA. (http://www.magoo.com/hugh/cahans.html)

37. Adam Parker, "Lowcountry Church Marks a Milestone", The State newspaper 2 October 2010 pB3 (and mentions a book about St. John's Church, Johns Island Presbyterian Church: Its People and Its Community from Colonial Beginnings to the 21st Century, by Dr. Charles E. Raynal, 2010.

38. Claudette Holliday, 6/23 & 6/30 & 12/15/2011 issues, newspaper The Lexington Chronicle.

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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.

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(drafted 1994...numerous revisions; posted 4 March 1999; latest addition 23 January 2012)