Wars and more wars

We gained an hour along with the rest of the daylight savings world today and used it to take a 24 mile round trip to the historic village of Brattonville, west of Rock Hill, SC. No longer a living community, the first home in the area was built by the Brattons before the American Revolution.

During the Revolution the Carolina’s had many loyalist (Tory) families and some formed themselves into regiments of British armed soldiers. In 1780 Lord Cornwallis had taken Charleston and sent his Tory troops on the attack against the upcountry Rebels.

 At this community a 500 man detachment under an Tory officer named Huck was stopped and decimated by a 75 man band of patriots (Whigs) under Colonel Bratton that ended up right in the Colonels own front yard. Its been known as Hucks defeat ever since.  The unfortunate Huck was killed in the engagement.

Famous as a tourist site and home to an upcountry plantation including many of its outbuildings, Brattonville was used in several key scenes of Mel Gibson’s movie  The Patriot, which was about the vicious Carolina Tory and Whig fighting that became America’s first actual Civil War.

Driving back to Rock Hill and southeast a couple of miles we came to one of five Indian nations that still exist here in South Carolina.  The Catawba have a small portion of land along the Catawba River today but it allows members of the nation who live off the reservation to benefit from Indian nation status with regard to Federal taxation and a few other things.

They have a Cultural Center which was closed today but outside of it a beautiful woods  and historic trail led down to the river.

There are only about 5,000 Catawba, Edisto, PeeDee, Santee and a blend of remaining Indians called the Piedmont Association that remain of the 100,000 or so who lived here when the Spanish first arrived on St. Elena (today Saint Helena and Parris Islands).

Mona read in the car as the cold wind was blowing through the trees despite the bright sun.  The trail is used by the Catawba to teach the old ways to the young.

Another way I discovered they creatively teach old ways is at their Head Start Center where unique Catawba round houses are built out of hard plastic to look like bark, and playground ‘drums’ allow the Catawba children to let their percussive side show early on.

Lunch was a recommendation of John and Christie Snyder.  Mona had told them she loves a good potato soup and they told her the Flying J Truck Stops have the best, and its take out.  We stopped on the way to Columbia on I- 77 and Mona tried some.  She doesn’t eat a lot of anything, and usually shares what she gets with me.  I had one spoon full and no more.  We’ll be going back to Flying J’s for more than diesel fuel and a tank dump in the future.

Our first stop in Columbia, SC, was a quick one to get some pics of the statehouse.  Construction was begun on the building in 1855 and stopped by the Civil War. Sherman destroyed the construction project on his way through Columbia and after the war it took till the end of the 19^th century to complete. The economic pain of 
                         reconstruction and its aftermath to provide funds for its own rebuilding.

Columbia and Charleston, were the prime targets for northern soldier’s personal aggression against the originators of secession during Sherman’s “March to the Sea”. The war ended before Sherman could take Charleston, but he said he could no more ‘stop his soldiers from committing violence against property in Columbia than stop the devil himself’.

A statue of George Washington, which now sits in front of the statehouse steps, was battered and broken by vandalizing Union Soldiers. It is assumed they did not know who the statue was of or they would have left it alone.

Made especially famous in the last two decades of the twentieth century, the capital building had three Confederate naval jacks (battle flags) flown from its peak and on walls in each of the assembly chambers ever since it had been built.  Finally in 2000, in an elaborate and solemn ceremony, cadets of the Citadel Military School of Charleston lowered the flags for the last time and they now reside in the state museum in the Civil War Hall.

One white edged Rebel flag is permitted on the capitol grounds, flying behind the Confederate veterans monument at the foot of Gervais Street.

We spent the bulk of the afternoon at the State Museum and the Museum of the Confederacy.  Both are located in the beautifully re-used Columbia Cotton Mill at the foot of Jefferson Davis Boulevard and the Congaree River bridge.

Pictures from the various parts of the museum are available in full on my Facebook Page, but the museum is known for its fine and well displayed collections of Confederate memorabilia.

Flags

Soldier’s gear and uniforms.

Evidence of physical and emotional loss.

Souvenirs collected from battlefields, and brought home by returning husbands, fathers, and sons.

In addition to historical evidence of every war south Carolinians have fought the museum offers interesting displays about the industrial and agricultural history of the state.

Science is well represented as well. One young man we met in an elevator told us he liked the planetarium best.  A future astronaut or astrophysicist in the making?

The natural history, plant and animal life displays attracted Mona, but the barrier islands display, even with piped in ocean beach sounds, did not provide the right ambience for Mona to spend more than a couple of minutes in her book there.

We settled into our Marriott Town Place Suites room after we pretty much CLOSED the museum at 5 pm.  Then we headed out for some chicken at the local Rushes Restaurant. There we met Terry Daw and his wife and several other couples who meet here every Sunday after their Baptist Church evening service lets out. 

I neglected to get their pictures (darn!) but one of the couples has been spending January one to near Easter in their trailer near Melbourne, Florida and Terry and his wife would love to retire to a life on the road as we have done. He says ‘It seems the more I want to retire the harder it is to do it’.

God has blessed Mona and I with the ability to live on what we have been able to save and not have to work as we travel. But as we told Terry, when the chassis or the house need repairs the costs can be high, and they keep us watching our budget daily.

But if we ever do run up against a month with no cash for gas maybe I’ll find a church that will let me serve in some way with them just for a place to park till the funds grow back.

No danger of that in our foreseeable future, so we are just looking forward to finding new and wonderful Churches to stay at as we go.

Thank you Jesus!

-Ken