Project
#1655
W. W. Dixon Winnsboro, S. C.
DR. SAMUEL B. LATHAN
96 YEARS OLD. (WHITE)
Dr. Samuel Boston Lathan is
the oldest white citizen of Chester County, South Carolina. He lives
with an unmarried daughter, Miss Susie Lathan, in a handsome
two-story residence on Saluda Street, near the U. S. Post Office in
the town of Chester, S. C. He owns the place and is one of the
outstanding citizens of the community. By reason of strength, he has
attained the Biblical allotment of four score years and ten and
exceeded it by sixteen years; yet, from the erectness of his
carriage, the texture of his skin, and the timbre of his voice, one
would never think that he was a man of that age.
"Well, it will give me
pleasure to talk to you of what I remember of life from 1848 to
1938. You know I can't remember when I was born, but that event was
recorded by my mother as having taken place on the 2d day of May,
1842, about three miles southeast of Blackstock, S. C., in Fairfield
County. My father was a farmer, Samuel M. Lathan. My mother before
marriage was Martha Patterson. The result of this marriage was five
boys and six girls. I suppose the most distinguished one of the
family was my older brother, Robert, born in 1829. He received his
education at Erskine College, became a teacher, a school
commissioner of York County, and a minister of the Gospel in the
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. His son, Robert, was editor
of the Charleston [News & Courier?] and, later, of the Asheville
[Citizen?].
"I began my education in an
old field school near our home, taught by Mr. William Douglass. I
was six years old then. All small children commenced in the old
blue-backed speller. Beginners paid ten dollars per scholastic year
of eight months. When we reached the grammar grades, the tuition was
fifteen dollars. In the advanced grades, including Latin and Greek,
the tuition was twenty-five dollars. The school hours were from 8 a.
m. until 6 p. m. There was an intermission of one hour for dinner
and recreation. We carried water from a nearby spring. On a shelf in
the schoolroom was a wooden bucket containing drinking water. A
drinking gourd hung on a nail above the bucket. It was quite a
privilege to get permission to go the spring for a bucket of fresh
water during school hours. Our teacher was a Presbyterian and
believed in the proverb, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child.' The
people of the community had great confidence in his learning,
probity, and executive ability. Usually a whipping at school was
followed by a sound thrashing at home, for good measure.
"At recess the large boys
played catball, and the younger boys and girls played antony-over,
marbles, and rolly-holey. April the 1st was dreaded by most rural
school teachers. The pupils would get inside and bar the teacher
out. The teacher, who didn't act on the principle that discretion is
the better part of valor, generally got the worst of it. Mr.
Douglass soon learned this, and, on April Fool's Day, he would walk
to the school, perceive the situation, laughingly announce there
would be no school until the morrow, and leave. Our teacher required
all pupils to study out loud. There was a pandemonium of spoken
words going on all day in the school. Why did he require this? Well,
it was to assure himself that no student was listlessly looking on
his or her book and that everyone was busy. Every Friday afternoon
we had a trapping spelling bee from the blue-backed speller. In this
school we studied Smith's Grammar, Goff's Arithmetic, Morse's
Geography, and Peter Parley's history. On the first Saturday in May,
the school children went, in wagons, to Great Falls to a picnic and
seined for shad. The Catawba River teemed with shad in those
days.
"The Fourth of July was
observed at Caldwell Cross Roads. The military companies of infantry
would assembly here from the surrounding counties making up a
brigade. A drill and inspection were had, and a dress parade
followed. There was an old cannon mounted on the field. The honor of
firing it was assigned to Hugh Reed, who had been in the artillery
of Napoleon's army at Waterloo and afterward emigrated to South
Carolina.
"A great barbecue and picnic
dinner would be served; candidates for military, state, and national
offices would speak; hard liquor would flow; and each section would
present its 'bully of the woods' in a contest for champion in a fist
and skull fight. Butting, biting, eye gouging, kicking, and blows
below the belt were barred. It was primitive prize fighting. I
recall that a man named McGill won the belt. He was beaten the
following year by Smith Harden.
"After crops were laid by, a
great deal of visiting took place among neighbors. The men inspected
each other's crops and sumptuous dinners and watermelon feasts were
exchanged. There was more neighborliness in the country then than
now. Everybody went to church on the Sabbath, and children knew by
rote the Shorter Catechism. Nearly every home in our community had
family worship night and morning.
"There's something I now call
to mind as strange. Funerals were never conducted inside of the
churches. The ceremonial rites took place at the grave. Yes, I am a
surviving Confederate soldier. I was a member of Capt. W. C. Beaty's
company, in Governor John Hugh Means' regiment. I was wounded in the
battle of South Mountain (Antietam). I was carried a prisoner of war
to Baltimore. That was the conclusiion of so much that was important
in my military career.
"When I was a boy, my home
town was Blackstock, named for its first postmaster, Edward
Blackstock. The boundary line separating Chester and Fairfield
Counties runs through the center of the town. Sometimes the post
office is in Fairfield and sometimes in Chester. Now the line runs
right through the post office, Kennedy's store. I have lived through
the following wars in which my country has been engaged: The Mexican
War, the War Between the States, the Spanish-American War, and the
World War. I have been a constituent of the following Congressman:
W. W. Boyce, W. H. Perry, A. S. Wallace, John H. Evins, J. J.
Hemphill, T. F. Strait, D. E. Finley, Stanyarne Wilson, Joseph
Johnson, W. H. Stevenson, Gen. John Bratton, Paul McCorkle, and the
present one, J. P. Richards.
"I do not consider the
military occupation and rule of South Carolina, just after the Civil
War, unwise or oppressive. The country was demoralized. Disbanded
soldiers, Confederates and Federals, passing through the State would
have raided the homes of the residents and taken off every mule,
horse, and ox, and left them without means of tilling the soil. The
provost martial of this district was Capt. Livingston. I never
joined the Ku Klux. Yes, there were shortages of food and clothing
during the war. Molasses was a substitute for sugar; parched meal
and parched ground okra seed were used for coffee; and sassafras
roots were used to make tea. Flour and meal sacks were made into
men's, women's and children's clothing.
"The radical, carpetbag,
scalawag government was inconceivably rotten and corrupt. An
executive pardon could be bought; and stealings were put through the
legislature by appropriations and issuance of fradulent bonds. Under
the Constitution of 1865, judges were allowed to state and comment
upon the facts and to disclose their opinion of what the verdict of
a jury should be. This opinion could be and often was bought with
money or its equivalent. A wealthy litigant had three chances, a
bribed jury, a bribed circuit judge, and a bribed Supreme Court. A
criminal had four chances, the ones I've just mentioned and a bribed
governor, who could give him a pardon.
"One of the most interesting
political characters evolved in this cess-pool of iniquitous
politics was Judge T. J. Mackey. Born in Lancaster County, of poor
parents, he went with them at an early age to Charleston, S. C. By
native ability, he won a beneficiary scholarship to the Citadel, the
military college of South Carolina. He was a member of the Palmetto
Regiment, and he fought through the Mexican War. In the War Between
the States, he was an officer on the Staff of General Sterling Price
at the close of the war. When the carpetbaggers and Negroes got
possession of the State government, he became a scalawag. Bright,
witty, forceful, and with a veneer of good breeding, he was rewarded
with the position of Judge of the 6th Circuit, and he resided right
here in Chester. He was a conspicuous figure on our streets for
years. Solomon in all his glory was no better arrayed. He wore
broadcloth, Prince Albert coats, silk vests, checked trousers, and
tall, silk, top hats, and carried gold-headed canes. During court
week, he would have the sheriffs attend him with cocked hat and
drawn sword, preceeded by the bailiffs crying stentoriously, 'Give
way! Give way! The Honorable Court is approaching! He conducted the
court proceedings with great pomp, magnificence, and dignity. The
suspense of all this dignity was sometimes relieved by his wit and
humor from the bench. In his inimitable manner he once addressed the
grand jury of Fairfield County at Winnsboro in these words: 'Mr.
Foreman and gentlemen of the grand inquest of the county: In
addition to what I have already charged, you might extend your
investigations into the hotels and boarding houses of Winnsboro and
observe the martyrs at their 'steaks,' and also ascertain whether or
not certain domestic animals, better known as bedbugs, are entitled
to draw pensions from the U. S. Government on account of having
drawn blood from British soldiers while they were quartered here in
the war of the Revolution.'
"On one occasion Mr. Lindsay,
a reputable citizen of Chester, knocked a drunken Negro politician
down and was prosecuted in the court for assault and battery with
intent to kill. Mr. Lindsay's attorney approached the judge with an
idea of finding out what the sentence would be, provided the
defendant would plead guilty. Mackey replied, 'You can safely leave
the matter to me, sir.'
"When the plea was accepted by
the solicitor and read by the clerk, all eyes and ears of the
expectant court room were turned on the judge. He said: 'Let the
defendant, Lindsay, stand up. You have been charged in this
indictment with an attempt to kill your fellow man. Its not your
mercy that the prosecutor is not lying somewhere today in some
silent graveyard. I could impose on you the maximum sentence of
fifteen years at hard labor in the State penitentiary, but, as you
have saved the State some expense by your plea of guilty, the
sentence of this august court is that you, William Lindsay, be
confined in the State penitentiary at hard labor for a period of ten
years (dramatic pause) or pay a fine of one
dollar."
