Looking Back: A Journey Through the Pages of the Keowee Courier with Feature Stories Along with Highlights for the Years 1963–1965

By John Ashton Hester

This book consists of two sections: first, feature stories about various local area people and events taken from old issues of the Keowee Courier; and second, week-to-week highlights from the years 19631965 as reported in the Courier. It is the authors hope that these stories and reports will bring back some nostalgic memories for long-time local residents and provide some historical insight for younger people and newcomers to the area. The Keowee Courier, founded in 1849, is upstate South Carolinas second oldest newspapersecond only to the Abbeville County Press and Banner / Abbeville Medium, which was founded in 1844.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543419313

John Ashton Hester

Early in his career as a reporter, photographer, and editor for the Keowee Courier, ASHTON HESTER became fascinated by the volumes containing issues from past years of the paper, which was founded in 1849. He began compiling a weekly column containing news highlights from the corresponding dates 10, 20, 30, 40, etc., years ago. He first titled the column From the Past but eventually changed it to Looking Back, which is also the title of this book and six previous books which highlighted different years and contained different stories.

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Copyright © 2017 by John Ashton Hester.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2017906532

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5434-1933-7

            Softcover     978-1-5434-1932-0

            eBook           978-1-5434-1931-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 05/03/2017

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Contents

I - Stories about People and Events

II - Highlights From 1963 Keowee Couriers

III - Highlights From 1964 Keowee Couriers

IV - Highlights From 1965 Keowee Couriers

V - ‘Angel of the Rain’ Poem Said to Bring Rain to Local Area

VI - A History of St. John’s Lutheran Church and the German Colonization Society

I

Stories about People and Events

Masons Saved Town from Being Torched

(The following article is from the April 7, 1949 issue of the Keowee Courier.)

The first Ku Klux Klan in the world was given birth at historic Old Stone church near Pendleton, and one of its first acts of violence would have resulted in Walhalla being burned to the ground but for action by the Masonic order here, according to records left by the late Samuel K. Dendy, Sr.

Mr. Dendy, who was one of the charter members of Blue Ridge Lodge No. 92, took an active role in saving Walhalla from flames and he knew personally the men who organized the first Klan soon after Appomatox in 1865.

According to the late Oconeean’s records, the hooded order was formulated, created, and known only around Pendleton in the fall of 1865, and held its first meeting at the Old Stone church.

Forming the nucleus of the widely-feared but then-respected organization were four Confederate veterans, listed as Mance Jolly, Henry Dickson, Walker Russell, and Jordan Lodgins. When the war ended, they swore oaths to each other never to surrender to any living man.

It has been pointed out a number of times that any similarity between the old Klan and the sheeted group which exists in our day can be described as almost purely coincidental. The original Klan was not interested in picking up membership fees so that a so-called imperial wizard might live high and mighty.

It was struggling for the survival of a war-torn people against the encroachment of carpetbaggers and profiteers who came south to suck the very blood from a suffering land of heroic people. They came in droves despite warnings from the South as well as many from honorable people in the North. The original Klan formed to drive them out, and eventually they did.

It must be admitted some of the first Klan’s acts were perhaps vicious, but they were born of necessity in a land which was still fighting to redeem its very existence. A far cry from the bed sheet brigade we know today. In 1865, Mr. Dendy’s records recall, they were fearless and honorable men.

Since their roles in the near-burning of Walhalla meet head-on at the climax, it must be pointed out that a group of Confederate veterans here had during the same period organized the Masonic order which is now Blue Ridge Lodge No. 92.

At the time the late Mr. Dendy set down his record in 1925, he was the only surviving charter member of the lodge.

One night during those dark times, members of the Masonic order were meeting to initiate a new member when the incident occurred which almost resulted in having Walhalla destroyed by the torch.

The carpetbag party which had become entrenched here had organized 150 soldiers under the command of two Union officers, a Captain Parker and Lt. J.M. Furmon. They were billeted in the old American Hotel on Main street.

Mr. Dendy’s notes recall that both Parker and Furmon were brother Masons, so to speak, and the local order, true to its obligations, let them come into the lodge.

The meeting that night was held at Ansel’s Furniture Store, but was interrupted by a clatter of hoofbeats. Mr. Dendy recalled going outside and seeing the Klan mounted and wearing their masks and insignia—and armed to the teeth.

One of them—whom he recognized as Henry Dickson—dismounted and said, Sam, we mean to kill both those Yankee officers because they’re merely standing by and letting the men under them mistreat and rob out people.

The Klansmen had wanted to get both Furmon and Parker out of the hotel at once, but he noticed at that very moment Furmon approaching with another man. The Klan spotted him at the same time, and some of them shot him right in front of the Masonic hall.

Mounting their horses again, they spurred away and Mr. Dendy adds he never saw them again.

Captain Parker, as soon as he heard of the event, ordered his troops to burn everything in Walhalla to the ground the following morning at 10 o’clock, and the carpetbaggers could scarcely wait for the appointed hour.

However, the Masons, while perfoming what they considered their true obligations to another Mason, were setting the stage to save the then-young town from ashes. After Furmon had been killed, they had purchased a casket from Mr. Ansel and dressed and placed the body of the lieutenant inside it. They also, in consideration of their brother Mason, had prepared a grave in the Lutheran cemetery and had secured a granite slab for it.

Assembling at the hall the following morning for the lieutenant’s final rites, they sent an invitation for Captain Parker to join them. This he did. He viewed the body with the other Masons, and then and there issued an order countermanding his decree as to the burning of the town.

The town’s Masons, because of their devotion to their obligation for a fellow Mason even though he was an enemy, had spared Walhalla from fire. It was the only thing that saved many structures that stand to this day as memorials to an heroic past.

Lieutenant Furmon was buried in the Lutheran cemetery that morning. The granite slab is still engraved: Lt. J.W. Furmon, 33, Massachusetts, Colored Infantry.

Granny Crow Had Popular Walhalla Store

(This article is from the August 8, 1979 issue of the Keowee Courier. It was written by Mary Cornelia Barton Rice, a former Walhallan who in 1979 resided in Hendersonville, N.C. She graciously offered the story to the Courier to print, and it proved to be one of the most popular stories the Courier ever ran, as numerous old-timers in 1979 still vividly remembered Granny Crow. Her store—which had long been demolished in 1979—was located on the south side of West Main Street, in the vicinity of where the Oconee County Veterans Memorial is now located.)

The gaunt woman, with the magnificent crown of white hair, leaned across the drab counter of her small-town store. The finest thing ever was, she said, is a farm and a home, a garden, cows, and a good gang of chickens. That’s what I had in the mountains and I was happier than I ever was.

The time was forty years ago; the place, a small town near the foothills of the Blue Ridge in that part of upper South Carolina that thrusts a wedge in Appalachia; and the elderly store-keeper with eyes as blue as her beloved mountains was Granny Crow, as the townspeople affectionately called her. Her words, spoken so casually, disclosed an underlying dream woven into the fabric of her life, its golden threads giving her a glow, a warmth, a stability, a purpose.

Granny did not look her age. She was tall, graceful, erect, and seemingly tireless. It has been said that Fanny Ward, at seventy, danced all night; and Ninon of France took a lover at eighty; but Granny at ninety, during the hardest winter in forty years, walked two miles daily to slop her pig!

She lived up in the mountains until she was almost seventy. She often spoke of those early days when women must be at some task every minute. When we come in from workin’ in the field there was always cookin’ and weaving. I don’t know how women did so, but seems like they was satisfied.

The happiness still shone in her eyes as she told of those times; of her pleasure in outdoor chores; of her delight in the changing seasons that brought variety to her work and a different look to the hills and hollows; of her feeling of belonging in the mountains, as she roamed the trails, gathering wild berries or healing herbs; and of the joy and contentment of her life despite the poverty, the isolation, and the hard work.

There were also children to be tended to and her own were brung up strict. She said, The way chillun is raised now is something scandalous! I allus had some work that my young uns could help with from the time they was able to. So if they ever had any spare time they knowed what to do with it, and I brung up five good chillun, if I do say so.

When her children grew up they scattered, and some of them settled as far away as Wyoming. When Granny was around seventy she and her husband, Frank Crow, decided to join them. She explained this momentous decision by saying, There was talk of free land and getting rich. So they sold everything they had and went to Wyoming to live with the children.

However, they stayed only a short while because Frank smothered out there. In other words, the climate did not suit him so they had to come back. Granny was grieved to leave the children but she came back with Frank for, as she put it, I didn’t marry him to quit him.

The trip had taken just about everything they had, and they came back to nothing. Having no place of their own made Granny actually sick. She said, Law, chile, if you a-seed me you wouldn’t a-knowed me. I was a sight, nowhere to go and nothing to go on. I looked like a old yallow dog that’s been whooped for suckin’ eggs.

But although she was desperate, Granny was far from whipped. She found a strength in a heritage of self-confidence, independence, and fierce pride from generations of mountain clans who had painfully scrabbled a living from rocky soil. She said of her predicament, I was minded of a ‘possum in a trap, but I knowed we’d find a way to claw ourselves out somehow.

They decided to take the few dollars they had left and open a small store in town. They started by selling on shares, produce brought in by mountain people. They were gradually enlarging the business, adding some canned goods, hard candy, spools of thread, and the like, when catastrophe struck! In one short week Frank sickened and died.

The final link with her old life was gone. Granny faced the world alone.

She wrestled with her grief and emerged victorious. Like a piece of mountain pottery after its final firing, she was now shatter-proof. She wore a hard gaze of determination to succeed by her own efforts in work that was strange to her. It was all she had left.

She was fearfully handicapped, as she could not read, write, or figger, although she could make change. Her drummers (as she called them) would tell her the selling price of her goods, and she learned to remember it for each item.

At first, Granny said, she felt like an