Remembering Florence: Tales from a Railroad Town

By Thom Anderson

For a town that once consisted of nothing more than a shed, a pine forest and a name, Florence, South Carolina, boasts a surprisingly rich history. From the ten foot bomb dropped on a Mars Bluff farm by apologetic Air Force pilots to a record-breaking seventeen-inch snowfall, this Pee Dee hub has seen plenty of extraordinary events and famous characters. Here, William Howard Taft enjoyed pine bark stew and Herbert Hoover visited Mikado Millie a world champion cow known for her prolific milk-making. Longtime journalist Thom Anderson lovingly recalls these hometown tales collected over thirty years of writing columns for the Morning News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625843029

Thom Anderson

Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including a career as Managing Editor of the Florence Morning News. He co-authored Heroes of World War II from Florence County and has written several articles for Sandlapper: The Magazine of South Carolina.

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entertaining.

A CITY NAMED FOR HER

William Wallace Harllee was reading a Dickens novel named Dombey and Son in 1848 when his first daughter was born. He liked the book’s character named Florence, and he gave his daughter that name.

A few years later, Harllee was president of the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad, which was being constructed from Wilmington, North Carolina, to the Sumter County village of Manchester. The rural depot where Hoffmeyer Road crossed the W&M right of way was named Florence in Harllee’s daughter’s honor. The settlement—later village and still later town—that developed around the junction took the name of the depot, and eventually a new county took the name of Florence.

Florence Henning Harllee grew up in the Mars Bluff community and then moved with her family to Marion. Later, they moved again to a Florence house at Irby and Pine Streets. Florence, who never married, apparently had a strong will and perhaps a bit of eccentricity. A great-niece wrote about her that Florence and her unmarried sister, Lizzie, shared the Florence home after their parents’ death, but each maintained what practically amounted to separate residences. The house had a hall down the middle that led into a parlor that the sisters shared for entertaining, but each had a side of the house to herself, including separate kitchens.

About 1970, Virginia Ravenel wrote that Florence and Lizzie taught school and had other enterprises to make money. Florence Harllee was the librarian in 1903 when the Florence Civic Improvement Society established a public library in the city hall. When interest in a public library was sufficient for tax support, a building was planned. The Harllee sisters’ property at Irby and Pine was purchased, and the Florence Public Library was built there. It remained there about eighty years until moving into the Drs. Bruce and Lee Library on South Dargan.

Florence Harllee as a child. Courtesy of Wayne King.

The community that bore her name apparently sought to honor her more than she wanted to be honored. When, in the early 1920s, Florence and Marion had a celebration to open the first highway bridge between the counties, plans were begun to make her guest of honor. She and her niece and great-niece, all named Florence, were invited. While the nieces were pleased, Florence Harllee scoffed at the idea of making a spectacle of ourselves and declined the invitation.

She might also have scoffed at this, but when she died on May 5, 1927, Mayor H.K. Gilbert issued a proclamation asking all businesses to close during her funeral. The city bell tolled at that hour. The State newspaper reported that great throngs of Florence people will gather at the church and at the country graveyard to pay their last respects.

She was buried beside her father in the Hopewell Presbyterian Church graveyard at Claussen.

MURDER AND HANGING

About five men went into a store near Florence in 1869 for a robbery that went bad. It led to a hanging that was feared might lead to racial strife.

On January 10, 1869, the men entered the store of M.A. Muldrow. Robert Suggs, the lone clerk at the time, was killed. The robbers were black and the store clerk was white. According to the Camden Journal, from their nearby home Suggs’s wife heard gunshots, and an armed neighbor came to help. The robbers fired on him, and two bystanders were wounded. There was much agitation, and a manhunt was launched. Cyrus Coachman, one of the robbers, was caught. Testimony at the trial said that much of the merchandise stolen from the store was found in and around Coachman’s home.

The Darlington jail had burned down, so Coachman was jailed in Marion to await trial. The Marion Star covered the Darlington trial and its aftermath. At that time, Florence was located in Darlington County.

Edward Jackson, another black man, also was charged, but he had an alibi that stood up, and he was acquitted. Coachman was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Governor Robert Scott, the first Reconstruction-era governor, delayed the execution to review the case, and Coachman apparently expected Scott to save him.

Scott reviewed the record provided by Judge Rutland, which showed that Suggs had been murdered by one of five men who robbed the store. The stolen goods found in Coachman’s possession in his house and about it Coachman claimed to have bought from some other men. The record showed that Suggs was murdered by one of five men, and Coachman was one of the five, according to witnesses. It was argued that even if Coachman did not fire the fatal shots, he was present, aided and abetted.

Judge Rutland describes Coachman as having a bad face, and the homicide was a most daring, unprovoked and premeditated act, the Star reported. The judge stated that Coachman was well-defended and that he was convicted upon Negro evidence and a jury partly colored.

One witness identified Jackson as the shooter, but upon seeing Jackson and Coachman together, changed his testimony and said that Coachman fired the shots.

Governor Scott declined to interfere, so the execution was scheduled for Friday, June 18, 1869, between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. in Darlington. Coachman was brought from Marion to temporary quarters in Darlington the day before.

Sheriff T.C. Cox was black, as were many of those carrying out the execution. Since there was fear that an attempt would be made by local blacks to rescue Coachman, Cox deputized a large group of citizens, divided between black and white, to keep order. One source said that there were seventy special deputies, forty white and thirty black, all well armed. That force was commanded by Cox and Deputies John W. Lee (white) and Joe Cavin (black). Thankfully, there was no trouble at the execution.

On Thursday night and Friday morning, Coachman reportedly told different stories, but on Friday, Captain E.K. Dargan, defense attorney, said that Coachman confessed, describing the crime and naming accomplices. Dargan described Coachman’s confession: Charles Howe was said to have organized the crime. The Star described Howe as an intelligent mulatto rascal…who was formerly a deputy sheriff and one of the principal witnesses for the state.

Coachman named five others involved, saying that he and one other were not armed. He said that the fatal shots were fired from outside when Coachman and one other refused to shoot. Then goods were thrown through a window and carried away. Each accomplice gave a share of his goods to the ringleader, who was said to have advised that the stolen items be hidden. The others named by Coachman apparently fled and later took new names.

The Star said that about 500 blacks and 150 whites turned up at the gallows erected beside the jail. About 3:00 p.m., Coachman was marched to the gallows, led by four men carrying a coffin. Coachman was dressed in a white robe and stockinged feet, accompanied by three black clergymen who led the singing of hymns. The sentence and confession were read, and Coachman made his mark on the document.

At 4:20 p.m., he climbed onto the scaffold and asked the crowd to sing Hark to the Tombs a Doleful Sound, May Ears Attend the Cry. Reverend E.M. Pinckney, one of the clergymen, prayed, and the preachers led another hymn as the rope was placed around the prisoner’s neck. Coachman spoke and asked people to tell his wife to meet him in heaven and said again that he had not committed the murder.

At 4:25 p.m., a deputy cut the rope and Coachman fell, breaking his neck. The body was given to friends for burial.

Witnesses said that, to the end, Coachman apparently had expected rescue. They said that whenever he heard a noise, he turned, beaming, expecting to be saved.

Years later, one of the accomplices, then going under the name of McKay, was caught, tried, convicted and also hanged.

FLORENCE IN THE 1890S

Morning News column, February 16, 2003

So you think local boards and commissions have done things to make you miserable? What if all males in Florence between the ages of sixteen and fifty were required to put in three to six days of work on the streets each May or another time, as might be set by the city council? And if any person failed to perform this labor, the intendant would cause the marshal to bring the offending party before him to be dealt with according to the law.

That was how it was here in the 1890s, part of what I found in a photocopy of an 1892 Florence directory of Merchants, Manufacturers, General Industries, Professional and Leading Businessmen. It is one of the goodies residing at the Florence County Library.

Getting back to street work duty, the directory says that firemen, school trustees, the intendant and wardens (similar to mayor and council) and regularly ordained ministers of the Gospel were excused.

Florence had just been re-chartered as a city a couple of years before this directory, believed to be the city’s first, was published. It contains some interesting information about Florence as it was then. Included are drawings of the old courthouse in its original state with a tower, looking a little like a church, and the first city hall, a two-story frame building with a porch, facing Evans Street. It was on the same site as the later city hall, which, when the city moved into the City-County Complex in the 1970s, was improved into eighteen parking places.

St. Anthony Catholic Mission on an old postcard.

Besides the narrative about the city, there are also many ads for local businesses, none of which are still here. There was Emporium! (the exclamation point was part of the shop’s name), which was opposite the post office, then on North Dargan Street. The post office at Evans and Irby was still more than a decade in the future. The shop offered fashionable millinery, fancy and imported goods, latest French styles.

Jerome P. Chase was mayor and D.J. Justice, Dr. F.D. Covington, W.J. Bradford and W.J. Brown were wardens.

Early view of Florence’s ACL Railroad yard. Courtesy of Wayne King.

I’ll tell you one thing: John P. Coffin a busy fellow. The directory says that he was president of a bank, a building and loan, a