Charlie Jeff Harvey
From:
South Carolina
Project 1885-1
FOLKLORE
Spartanburg Dist. 4
Sept. 20, 1937
Edited by:
Elmer Turnage
REMINISCENCES
"I was born July 16, 1852 at Jeter's old mill place in Santuc township.
The Neal's Shoal dam now marks the site of the old Jeter mill. My family
consisted of my parents and an older brother. My mother was Mandy Clark
of Union township. My grandfather Clark moved to the Jeter mill and ran
it for Mr. Jeter. My father, Tom Clark, was a laborer for the Jeters and
old man Tom Sims up on Broad River at what was then known as Simstown.
The Tom Sims and Nat Gist families owned everything in Santuc township
until their lands hit the Jimmie Jeter place.
"When I was twelve, my father went to the Confederate War. He joined the
Holcombe Legion of Union County and they went immediately to Charleston.
They drilled near the village of Santuc in what was then called
Mulligan's Old Field, now owned by Rion Jeter. This was the only
mustering ground in our part of the county. The soldiers drilled once a
week, and for the 'general muster, all of the companies from Sedalia and
Cross Keys come there once a month. During the summer time they had what
they called general drill for a week or ten days. Of course on this
occasion the soldiers camped over the field in covered wagons. Some came
in buggies. Slaves, called 'wait-men' cared for the stock and did the
cooking and other menial duties for their masters.
"The general store at Santuc and the store at the Cross Roads at Fish
Dam did good business during the summer while the soldiers were in camp.
The 'cross roads' have long been done away with at Fish Dam. The store
was under a big oak in front of the house now owned and lived in by W.
H. Gist. The Cross Roads were made by the Fish Dam Ferry Road and the
old Ninety-Six Road. They tell me that the old Ninety-Six Road was
started as an Indian trail by the Cherokee Indians, way yonder before
the Revolution. I have been told that a girl named Emily Geiger rode
that ninety-six miles in one day to carry a message to an American
general. The message kept the general and his army from being captured
by the red-coats.
"Near the Kay Jeter place just below the Ninety-six road there was a
small drill ground. The place is now known as the Pittman place and is
owned by the wife of Dr. J. T. Jeter of Santuc, I believe. Mr. 'Kay'
would send a slave on a horse or a mule to notify the men to come and
drill there. From here they went on to Mulligan's Field some five or six
miles away for the big drills. As I have told you, Mulligan's Field was
the big field for all that countryside. They tell me that the same
drilling tactics used then and there, are the same used right down
yonder at Camp Jackson.
"For about four of five years after the Confederate War, we had very
little to eat. We had given everything we could to the soldiers. After
the 'May Surrender' there came a big flood and washed everything away,
and the crops were so promising that August. As you know, that was in
'65. The rains and the high water destroyed everything. I do not believe
that Broad River and the Forest and Tyger have ever been as high before
or since.
"On Henderson's Island they saved no livestock at all. They just did
manage to save themselves. They had a hard time getting the slaves to
the mainland. Mrs. Sallie Henderson, her step-son, Jack and her son,
Jim, and daughter, Lyde were in the Henderson house when the freshet
came down upon them. They had to go up on the second floor of their
house but the water came up there.
"Mr. Ben Hancock was the ferryman at Henderson's Ferry at this time. Now
you know, Henderson's Ferry is on the Enoree just above where it empties
into the Broad. Henderson's Island is in the middle of Broad River in
full sight of where old Enoree goes into the channel of the Broad. Well,
Mr. Hancock was the best boatman in his day. He knew about the
Hendersons, so he tried to go to them but failed the first three times.
The fourth time, he got to the house. When he got there, he found the
whites and twenty-five slaves trapped with them.
"A barrel of flour had caught in the stairway that had washed down the
river from somewhere above. This was pulled upstairs and that is what
Mrs. Henderson fed her family and slaves on for about five days, or
until they were rescued by Mr. Hancock. Capt. Jack blew his opossum horn
every two hours throughout the day and night to let the people over on
the mainland know that they were still safe.
"For the rest of that year, river folks had very little to eat until
food crops were produced the next spring.
"My own father was shot down for the first time at the Second Battle of
Manassas. Here he got a lick over his left eye that was about the size
of a bullet; but he said that he thought the lick came from a bit of
shell. They carried him to a temporary make-shift hospital that had been
improvised behind the breastworks. A soldier who was recovering from a
wound nursed him as best he could.
"The second time my father was wounded was in Kingston, N.C. He shot a
Yankee from behind a tree and he saw the blood spurt from him as he
fell. Just about that time he saw another Yankee behind a tree leveling
a gun at him. Father threw up his gun but too late, the Yankee shot and
tore his arm all to pieces. The bullet went through his arm and struck
the corner of his mouth knocking out part of his jaw bone. Then it went
under the neck vein and finally it came out on his back knocking a hole
in one of his shoulder blades large enough to lay your two thumbs in.
His gun stock was also cut into. He lay on the battlefield for a whole
day and night; then he was carried to a house where some kind ladies
acting as nurses cared for him for over four months. He was sent home
and dismissed from the army just a mile below Maybinton, S.C. in
Newberry County. Father was unable to do any kind of work for over two
years. The war closed a year after he got home. From that time on I
cared for my mother and father.
"We had moved to the plantation of Mr. Ben Maybin in Maybinton before my
father was sent home wounded. Father lived until March, 1st, 1932 when
he died at the ripe old age of 102. When he died we were living at one
of the Jeter plantations near Kelley's Chapel, in Fish Dam township,
one-half mile from Old Ninety-Six Road. Father is buried at Kelley's
Chapel.
"Mr. Harvey has a bullet that Gov. Scott issued to the negroes during
reconstruction times when he was governor of South Carolina under the
carpetbag rule. Scott issued these bullets to the negroes to kill and
plunder with. Mr. Harvey says that bullets like this one were the cause
of many negroes finding their graves in the bottom of Broad River. Mr.
Harvey, so it is said, is still a Ku Klux. They were the chief
instruments in getting him into the County Home of Union in 1925.
"The Ku Klux made a boat twenty-five feet long to carry the negroes down
the river. They would take the negroes' own guns, most of them had two
guns, and tie the guns around their necks in the following manner: The
barrel of one gun was tied with wire around the negro's neck, and the
stock of the other gun was fastened with wire around the negro's neck.
When the captain would say, 'A-M-E-N', over the side of the boat the
negro went, with his guns and bullets taking him to a watery grave in
the bottom of Broad River. The wooden parts of the guns would rot, and
sometimes the bodies would wash down on the rocks at Neal's Shoals what
was then Jeter's Old Mill. Old gun stocks have been taken from there as
mementoes.
"Bill Fitzgerald was my first Ku Klux Captain. He organized the clan in
Newberry. When I came to the Klan over on the Union side, Judge W. H.
Wallace and Mr. Isaac McKissick were leaders.
"When we got the negroes from the county jail, the same jail that we
have now, that were arrested for killing Matt Stevens, I broke the lock
on the jail door. Buck Allen was the blacksmith. He held a sledge hammer
under the lock while I threw a steel hammer overhanded on the lock to
break it.
"I think Abe Lincoln would have done the South some good if they had let
him live. He had a kind heart and knew what suffering was. Lee would
have won the war if the mighty Stonewall Jackson had lived. Stonewall
was ahead of them all. I had two uncles, Jipp and Charlie Clark in
Stonewall's company. They would never talk much about him after his
death. It hurts them too much, for Stonewall's men loved him so much.
Jeff Davis was a great man, too."
=Source:= Mr. Charlie Jeff Harvey, Rt. 4, Box 85, Union, S.C.
Interviewer: Caldwell Sims, Union, S.C. 8/18/35.
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