#16: Henry Laurens in the Tower, a Hollywood producer saves a modern icon in Yemassee, and Kids Fest at Hagood Mill
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #17 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
Welcome “davidghart” and “fatherbuffalo” to our SC History Newsletter community! Woohoo!
I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter, and as always, please feel free to reply to this email with your ideas and suggestions on South Carolina history you’d like to learn more about. I’m only a click away.
Additionally, please join us & keep the conversation going by becoming a member of our SC History Newsletter Facebook Community here! I can’t wait to meet you.
And now, let’s learn some South Carolina history!
Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
3 ➳ Upcoming SC History Events
To celebrate Black History Month, each newsletter in February highlights one Black History focused event. The Black History events will be listed first below.
While I have curated the following 3 events below to feature in today’s newsletter, please click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the events I have featured in the newsletter to date, as well as others I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the list! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
I.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH HIGHLIGHT: Thursday, February 29th, 6:00 pm - 7:45 pm | “Black History Month Jubilee Celebration” | Richland Library Northeast (Northeast Large Meeting Room) | Columbia, SC | FREE & Open to the public
“Join us at Richland Library Northeast as we celebrate Black History through Open Mic Poetry, African Dance, and a cooking demonstration by Chef Floyd. This will be a festive occasion where families can enjoy learning the history of certain African American dishes and why they were created.”
II.
The weekend of March 16-17 | “Super Kids Fest at Hagood Mill Historic Site” | Hagood Mill Historic Site | Pickens, SC | Admission: $5 aged $13 and up
“KidsFest is a cherished collaboration between the Hagood Mill Historic Site and the Young Appalachian Musicians (YAMs), two beloved non-profits in Pickens County.
Come out to Hagood Mill Historic Site on Saturday, March 16 for a fun-filled day featuring performances from all the participating YAMs programs in Pickens County. In addition to the children sharing their musical prowess, there will be an old-fashioned talent show and traditional games and activities throughout the day. Activities include Paint the Ponies with Mounted Ministries, a kazoo workshop, a jug band jam, archaeological adventures, old-timey clothes washing, rock painting, and more. There will also be an “Instrument Petting Zoo.” In this "petting zoo," everyone will have a chance to “pet” or hold and play a variety of traditional Appalachian instruments.
There will be lots of other things to see on March 16 as Hagood Mill hosts a variety of folklife and traditional-arts demonstrations. There will be blacksmithing, chair-caning, moonshining, basketmaking, pottery, quilting, spinning, knitting, weaving, woodcarving, metalsmithing demonstrations and more. Visitors are encouraged to ask questions of the artists, gain insight, and if you wish, spend a little money to secure a traditional arts treasure of your own.
The centerpiece of the Hagood Mill Historic Site is the water-powered 1845 gristmill. It is one of the finest examples of nineteenth century technology in the Upcountry and operates just as it has for the last century and a half. The mill will be running throughout the day. In the old mill, fresh stone-ground cornmeal, grits, and wheat flour will be available. In addition, there are plans to grind rye flour, oat flour, oatmeal and white popping corn meal and grits during this month’s 3rd Saturday event. Hagood Mill cookbooks and a variety of other mill-related items will also be available.
Tickets are $5 for those 10 years and older. Children 9 and under are free. Admission to the Hagood Mill Historic Site includes the Heritage Pavilion and the S.C. Petroglyph Site. To ensure a good seat for the entertainment, please bring your own chairs.
The Hagood Mill Historic Site is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., year-round. The Mill operates, rain or shine, on the third Saturday of every month.”
III.
Saturday, March 16th, 10:00 am - 3:30 pm | Celebrating Native American Traditions - Past & Present | Laurens Country Museum | Laurens, SC | FREE & open to the public
“This will be a day of talks on ecology and the Native American way of life, storytelling, flute playing, drumming and other instruments, and the Cherokee language and songs. This program is possible because of a grant from the SC Arts Commission.”
2 ➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Do you know that the only American to have ever been held prisoner in the tower of London is South Carolina Founding Father, Henry Laurens?
Henry Laurens (1724-1792) was an American Founding Father, “merchant, slave trader and rice planter” from South Carolina who became a political leader during the Revolutionary War. He was born in Charleston and was the grandson of French Huguenot immigrants. Laurens was a wealthy man and made his fortune as a partner in the “largest slave-trading house in North America” named Austin & Laurens. See advertisement from their business below. In the 1750s alone, Laurens’ Charleston-based firm “oversaw the sale of over 8,000 enslaved Africans.”
In politics, Laurens served for a period as the vice president of South Carolina and has United States minister to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War. In this role, he sailed abroad to negotiate Dutch support for the war, yet on his return voyage, he was intercepted by the British frigate Vestal off the coast of Newfoundland. The British discovered evidence of a draft US-Dutch treaty, and Henry Laurens was charged with treason. The British transported Laurens to London and imprisoned him in the Tower of London, where he still remains “the only American to have been held prisoner in the tower.” In December 31, 1781, Laurens was released from the tower “in exchange for General Lord Cornwallis.”
Note from Kate: There is more Henry Laurens history to be written about, which I will save for a later date. In the meantime, I leave you with this portrait of Laurens that was painted of him while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London! While the conditions in the Tower must have been awful, I find it interesting and a bit odd that the below (beautiful) portrait of Laurens was painted during his time in captivity — perhaps for publicity purposes to get him released sooner?
II.
Did you know that there are 2 houses designed by modern American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in South Carolina?
While Frank Lloyd Wright is most famous for designing the modern home Falling Water in Pennsylvania, he also designed homes across the county — and there are 2 Frank Lloyd Wright homes in South Carolina: the Auldbrass Plantation in Yemassee, SC, and Broad Margin in Greenville, SC.
Let’s start with the Auldbrass Plantation. It is the only plantation home Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed. It is only open for tours to the public “one weekend, every other year.” The plantation was established in 1938 by C. Leigh Stevens (from Michigan) who combined “over 4,000 acres from Old Brass, Mount Alexander, Richfield, Old Combahee, and Charlton plantations.” Stevens commissioned Wright to design him a “self-sufficient, modern plantation for farming, hunting, and entertaining.” Wright employed his principles of “organic architecture” to design a plantation complex that would exist in harmony with the Lowcountry landscape.
Across the property and its outbuildings, many of the walls are built at an 80% angle to mimic the live oaks on the property. “Hexagonal shapes and inward sloping walls, with low lying ceilings were the theme.” Wright even designed a copper downspout for water drainage to look like the Spanish moss draped upon the oak trees of the property.
The property exchanged hands numerous times in the years to come, as the cost of repairs to the home and outbuildings escalated each year. In 1987, a long-time admirer of Wright’s architecture, Hollywood producer Joel Silver (The Matrix) purchased Auldbrass. He partnered with Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson, Eric Lloyd Wright, and has spent the last 35 years restoring the property to its original grandeur.
The second Frank Lloyd Wright property in South Carolina is in Greenville, and was built in 1954. Wright named the property “Broad Margin” which originates from Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden where he states “I love a broad margin to my life.” Symbolic that the name of the house originates from a great American author, as the home was designed for librarians (and unmarried sisters) Charlcy and Gabrielle Austin.
Wright called the style of Broad Margin the “Usonian style” (United States of North America), a “term he invented in the 1930s to describe a distinctly American and democratic architecture that middle class people could afford.”
1 ➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
I.
“I told you in my last that I was going to Georgia. . . My negroes there, are all to a man, are strongly attached to me — so are all of mine in this country [South Carolina]; hitherto not one of them has attempted to desert; on the contrary, those who are more exposed hold themselves always ready to fly from the enemy in case of a sudden descent…You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it…I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to English for that favour; nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me — the laws and customs of my country, my own and the avarice of my countrymen."
—Henry Laurens, in an excerpt from a letter to his son in 1776. Despite his anti-slavery sentiment expressed above, Laurens never spoke out publicly against it.
Sources used in today’s newsletter:
Henry Laurens, the Founding Father Who Was Imprisoned in the Tower of London
Places: Broad Margin is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Greenville
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