In My Father's House Are Many Mansions


Book Description

Burton traces the evolution of Edgefield County from the antebellum period through Reconstruction and beyond. From amassed information on every household in this large rural community, he tests the many generalizations about southern black and white families of this period and finds that they were strikingly similar. Wealth, rather than race or class, was the main factor that influenced family structure, and the matriarchal family was but a myth.




There Is Something about Edgefield


Book Description

Through the stories of their ancestors Bush and Kemp take us on a compelling journey through African American history into the hearts of individual lives. In tracing their ancestral roots, these family historians discover their connections to some of the South's most powerful men, both famous and forgotten. The community at the heart of this historical study is Edgefield, South Carolina, yet the stories in this book form a microcosm of events experienced by black communities throughout the South. An enslaved maternal line is traced to 1799; hopes are raised, then dashed, when a family of freedmen acquire land after the Civil War, only to later lose it; the "Dark Corner" of Edgefield is exposed. Shining a bright, sometimes uncomfortable light, deep truths are unearthed through DNA results and new family is found. Follow the authors through years of meticulous genealogical research, historical settings, and DNA testing as they reclaim their family stories and inspire others to embark on their own journeys of discovery. By leaving no stone unturned, these family historians show how they overcame the brick walls of slavery.




Comes to the Light


Book Description

Edgefield, South Carolina was the best kept secret in American History. Well that was until a woman by the name of Donya Williams became interested in her personal family history. In the new book, Comes to The Light: Learning About the Entangled Families of Edgefield, South Carolina Donya reveals how she learned an entire county just may be related to each other and realizes that her interest in politics didn't just come from her uncles. Join Donya as she takes you on the journey of learning how to research your family by telling her stories of ups and downs. Follow along as she shares how Genealogy pulled her in and helped traces her family history from now all the way back to the American Revolution. Donya will share stories of family members who experienced slavery in every form, from breeders to free people of color, and persevere despite the many obstacles that was laid before them.And finally follow her as she looks in several old newspapers dating back to the 1880s to find her cousin John Yeldell on trial for murder. Is he found guilty? Comes to the light is a jaw dropping yet informational book about how African American families survived from the early slave days straight through the Jim Crow era.




First Families Of Edgefield County, South Carolina Volume 2


Book Description

This book provides family sketches and genealogical information on the first families to settle in Edgefield County, SC. The earliest settlers date back to the early 1700s. This area is particularly significant as the "end" of the Great Wagon Road from the New England States. Generally the area was not populated by white settlers until just prior to the Revolutionary War, but immediately following the war, thousands of people passed through as they pushed into Georgia, Alabama, and points west. By the time of the 1790 census, Edgefield county had families with 763 surnames listed. This volume focuses on the families which were apparently in the area as early as 1750. Families Profiled: Hammond, Dillard, Williamson, Thomas, Pickens, Abney, Brooks, Dobbins, Galphin, Pope, Harrison, and Bonham.This volume also includes Civil War rosters for the following units formed from Edgefield County.-1st Infantry Regiment (Gregg's) Company C - Edgefield Rifles-1st Infantry Regiment (Gregg's) Company G - Hamburg Volunteers-1st Infantry Regiment (Gregg's) First Company H - Cherokee Ponds Guards-1st Battalion Sharpshooters-2nd Cavalry Regiment Company G - Bonham Light Dragoons-2nd Cavalry Regiment Company I - Edgefield Hussars-2nd Infantry Regiment State Troops Company B-2nd Infantry Regiment State Troops Company I Other volumes in this series focus on other families. Visit our website at www.researchonline.net/first for a listing of available volumes.




The Home Place


Book Description

“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. “When you’re done with The Home Place, it won’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.”—Star Tribune “A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.”—National Geographic




Carolina Clay


Book Description

"He is known today, as he was then, only as Dave. His jugs and storage jars were everyday items, but because of their beauty and sometimes massive size they are now highly sought after by collectors. Born about 1801, Dave was taught to turn pots in Edgefield, South Carolina, the center of alkaline-glazed pottery production. He also learned to read and write, in spite of South Carolina's long-standing fear of slave literacy. Even when the state made it a crime to teach a slave to write, Dave signed his pots and inscribed many of them with poems. Though his verses spoke simply of his daily experience, they were nevertheless powerful statements. He countered the slavery system not by writing words of protest but by daring to write at all. We know of no other slave artist who put his name on his work." "When Leonard Todd discovered that his family had owned Dave, he moved from Manhattan to Edgefield, where his ancestors had established the first potteries in the area. Todd studied each of Dave's poems for biographical clues, which he pieced together with local records and family letters to create this moving and dramatic chronicle of Dave's life - a story of creative triumph in the midst of oppression. Many of Dave's astounding jars are found now in America's finest museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Charleston Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston."--BOOK JACKET.




The Guns of Meeting Street


Book Description

An engrossing investigation into the true crime story of a sixteen-year family feud that ended in murder in early twentieth-century South Carolina. As compelling as fiction, The Guns of Meeting Street reconstructs a series of murders from the early 1940s that rocked rural Edgefield County, South Carolina. Featuring a cast of unlikely antagonists—a prominent store owner, an elementary school teacher, and a law enforcement officer—the acts of revenge resulted in five murders and a trio of executions, including that of the first woman to be electrocuted in South Carolina. Through interviews with members of the two families involved, T. Felder Dorn probes the longstanding feud between the Logues and the Timmermans to uncover this chilling plot of resentment, revenge, and violence. Dorn’s careful research weaves together the oral history of family members affected by the shooting with court transcripts, prisoner confessions, and coroners’ reports to produce a truly gripping account of the events. Although most of the deaths took place between 1940 and 1943, the roots of this tragedy can be traced back to killings that occurred in the Meeting Street community in the 1920s. The story climaxes on January 15, 1943, with the execution, within a single hour, of Sue Stidham Logue, George Logue, and Clarence Bagwell for the murder of Davis Timmerman. Dorn’s saga concludes with the 1960 parole and rehabilitation of Joe Frank Logue Jr., the only one of Timmerman’s killers to escape capital punishment. Not for the faint of heart, The Guns of Meeting Street details the circumstances and motivations for the killings, the complexities of the court cases, and the involvement in the proceedings of South Carolina governors Richard Manning Jefferies, Olin D. Johnston, and J. Strom Thurmond. “If you have any interest in history or true crime, The Guns of Meeting Street is a winner.” —Spartanburg Herald Journal “Dorn’s rigorously researched book unfolds in a clear, straightforward style that renders the events all the more disturbing.” —The State “Dorn’s extremely impressive book has all the elements—is fascinating in its entirety. And for every reader who loves a good mystery, The Guns of Meeting Street is available to intrigue, inform, incite and excite. It’ll never get a chance to gather dust on any bookshelf.” —Union (N.J.) Leader




All God's Children


Book Description

A timely reissue of Fox Butterfield’s masterpiece, All God’s Children, a searing examination of the caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence over 5 generations of black Americans. Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five; his slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to their days as South Carolina slaves and documents how Willie is the culmination of generations of neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality directed at black Americans. From the terrifying scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is an unforgettable examination of the painful roots of violence and racism in America.




Great & Noble Jar


Book Description

First published in 1993, this was the first authoritative study of South Carolina stoneware and its history, including he methods used to throw, glaze, decorate, and fire the vessels. Illustrated with nearly two hundred photographs (including fifteen color plates), maps, and drawings, plus an index of potters.




Our Ancestors, Our Stories


Book Description

Our Ancestors, Our Stories offers insights into the African American experience in Edgefield County, South Carolina through the eyes of five very different authors.These family historians and storytellers have come together to share their family stories to inspire and encourage others, and to keep alive the memories of their ancestors.




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