Abbeville, South Carolina and the Burt-Stark Mansion

      Abbeville is a quaint, little place with a downtown trying to make a comeback.  There are several restaurants, a boutique hotel, an opera house/community theater, and a historic mansion.  Abbeville is known as the birthplace and the deathbed of the Confederacy.  After a meeting held in Abbeville on November 22, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union.  The Confederate cabinet held its last meeting on May 2, 1865 at what is now known as the Burt-Stark Mansion.  

The Main Street

A Building Waiting for a Business

The Belmont Inn is listed in National Register of Historic Places.  

The Burt-Stark Mansion
We enjoyed a lengthy, private tour of the mansion, the slave quarters, and the grounds.  Mary Stark Davis lived in the home until 1987.  Many of Mrs. Stark's evening gowns hang in her bedroom wardrobe.  Our docent opened the wardrobe and showed us each beautiful dress.  No photography is allowed inside the mansion.   

This is a view of the back of the house.  You can see the separate kitchen on the left.  The bumped out area on the right contains the downstairs bedroom.  This bedroom is actually two adjoining rooms divided into a winter area and a summer area.  The winter area has three walls adjoining the interior space of the house.  This makes the room easier to heat.  The summer area has one wall connected to the main house and three exterior walls, all containing windows for catching cool summer breezes.     

Redcliffe Plantation

      Redcliffe Plantation is a South Carolina state historic site.  It was built by James Henry Hammond in 1857 and was home to three generations of his descendants.  Redcliffe was a showplace for Hammond to entertain and flaunt his success.  Hammond's business operations occurred at his other plantations - Silver Bluff, Cathwood, and Cowden.  John Shaw Billings, the great-grandson of James Henry Hammond, donated Redcliffe Plantation and Hammond's collections to the people of South Carolina in 1973.  Hammond's meticulously detailed business records and revelatory personal diaries and  correspondence were not destroyed by his long suffering widow when he died.  Her actions (widow's revenge perhaps?) preserved the record of Hammond's avarice, child abuse, and narcissism.  These documents were made public in 1978.  

      James Henry Hammond was born in 1807.  James' father Elisha Hammond wanted James to become a lawyer.  James was not able to afford a prestigious law school, so he obtained his degree from South Carolina College.  He earned his living practicing law and publishing a newspaper.  He met sixteen-year-old Catherine Fitzsimmons, a shy, plain looking girl, in 1830 and saw an opportunity to elevate his social and economic status.  Catherine had a sizable dowry - the 7,500 acre Silver Bluff plantation and 147 slaves.  While Catherine believed the good-looking Hammond's professions of love, her brothers did not.  They saw Hammond for the gold digger that he was, but Catherine won out and married Hammond in 1831.

     From this point, Hammond was a planter, member of the United States House of Representatives, governor of South Carolina, and member of the United States Senate.  After Hammond's term as governor ended in 1844, he prepared to run for the United States Senate.  Around this same time Hammond's nieces, ages thirteen to eighteen, revealed that their Uncle James had been molesting them during family visits to Redcliffe.  The girls' father publicly denounced Hammond thinking that the scandal would ruin Hammond's political ambitions, and this would be the best way to punish him.  Voters' memories were short, and Hammond managed to be elected to the U.S. Senate thirteen years later in 1857.  When it came to the nieces, memories were not short.  Their reputations were ruined and none of them ever received an offer of marriage.  

     Also in 1857, Hammond published a manual for planation owners in which he outlined his methods of slave husbandry.  He recommended more food and better diets for field laborers, longer periods of breast feeding for slave babies, and more nutritious diets for slave children.  These practices would make stronger, heathier slaves who could work harder, be less prone to illness, survive childhood, and live to older ages.  He kept families together only because he believed they would be less likely to run away.  Hammond's obsessive record keeping - recording first and last names of his slaves and noting birthdates and familial relationships - has had the positive consequence of giving descendants of Hammond's slaves an easier time assembling their family trees. 

     Hammond was a strong supporter of slavery and State's rights.  He coined the phrase, "Cotton is king," believing that the entire world relied on southern cotton, and for this he reason was sure the south would win the Civil War.  He died of mercury poisoning in 1864 just before the end of the war.

     Read more about it:

https://headstuff.org/culture/history/james-henry-hammond-pro-slavery-paedophile-politician/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Henry_Hammond

https://south-carolina-plantations.com/aiken/redcliffe.html

The architecture is Greek Revival style.  Moving the stairs to the side during a renovation has ruined the original symmetry. 

This prickly pear has been here since 1857. 

This is known as Magnolia Row.  The trees line the road that leads to the front of the mansion.

Ranger Brandon conducted our tour.  The building in the background is one of the slave's quarters.   

Bedrooms contained a commode ...

... and a sitz bath since the house didn't have bathrooms.

The fourth generation used the house as a vacation home and added bathrooms.  

John Shawl Billings, great-grandson of James Henry Hammond, was the editor of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines.  He bought Redcliffe and restored it after his aunt Julia Hammond Richards died.  Billings' only child (pictured on the desk), Frederica Wade Billings, died in childhood.  Since there were no heirs, Billings left the estate to the State of South Carolina.  

              

Aiken, South Carolina

      Aiken is the largest city in Aiken County and serves as the county seat.  About 31,000 people live there.  Southern Living magazine once called Aiken the "best small town of the south."  There are lots of charming shops, good restaurants, and public events.  I had the most delicious Indian food I ever ate at Taj restaurant.  I attended two open air concerts.

South Boundary Road is lined with oak trees.  This is the scene driving into town.

This crazy place intrigued me.  Is it a home or a business?  Is it a junk yard?  At night every room was brightly lit so that the whole interior was in view.  

This is a concert on "The Alley," a pedestrian only street of bars and restaurants.

     If you like sampling the wares of micro breweries, the Downtown Tap Room is the place for you.  You can sample different brews then fill your cup when you find your favorite.

So many choices ....

You get a bracelet which activates the tap.  The beer is metered, and you pay for total ounces drawn at the end of the night.

Press to wash out your cup between samples.

     

On the Road Again (Finally)

      It's been a long time since I have been anywhere but the grocery store and Wal-Mart.  I made a visit to Aiken, South Carolina my first post-Covid road trip.  

     South Carolina is known for many things.  It was one of the thirteen original colonies and one of the earliest states to ratify the U.S. Constitution.  South Carolina is also the state where the Civil War began and ended (more on that later).  James Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina and lived in Beech Island, SC near the end of his life.  The state is known for the palmetto tree, and the image of the tree appears on the state flag.  Unfortunately, the place is also famous for the palmetto bug which is just a nice name for a two inch long cockroach.

South Carolina Welcome Station on I-95
I love this folk art metal sculpture.

     Aiken is known for horse racing, polo, and steeplechase.  The Savanah River Site, located on the outskirts of Aiken, produced components for thermonuclear weapons in the 1950s, and operates today with a different mission.  There are eleven golf courses in the Aiken area.  It is a mecca for golf loving snowbirds.  

The Aiken welcome center is located downtown.   If you want folk art metal sculpture, you have to travel outside the city limits to Whiskey Road.  This giraffe is located near C. Graham Co. Welder.