Project #1655
W. W. Dixon,
Winnsboro, S. C.
FAIRFIELD COUNTY
CYNTHIA M. COLEMAN
(white) RIDGEWAY, S. C. 91
YEARS
Mrs. Cynthia Miller Coleman lives
with her daughter, Sarah Starnes, who is postmistress in the town of
Ridgeway, S. C. She is, for one of her age, active, intelligent, and
responsive to all inquiries about her life for the past eighty-five
years.
"My father's people, the Millers,
and my mother's people, the White's, were of Scotch-Irish descent.
They came as settlers from Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary
War. My father was Robert LeRoy Miller; my mother, Jane White
Miller. In religion, my mother and father were strict-laced,
blue-stockinged Presbyterians. I was born on their small plantation
on Rocky Creek, Chester County, January 17, 1847.
"I learned to spell and read at
home out of the blue-backed speller. It was a great text book for
beginners. The first school I attended with other pupils was in
1855. Our teacher was a kind man, Mr. John Chisolm. The schoolhouse
was the old Covenanter brick church. We had a long school day. We
commenced early in the morning and ended just before sundown. We had
an hour's intermission for dinner and recreation. The boys played
town ball and shot marbles, and the few girls in the school looked
on, enjoyed, and applauded the fine plays. Every Friday we had
compositions and declamations from the pupils.
"Social amusements in the
community consisted of pound parties at some neighbor's home during
the winter nights, usually on Friday night.
The music was made by a Negro
fiddler, Tom Archer. We danced the cotillion, the Virginia reel, and
steal partners. Our community would not tolerate waltzes and round
dancing of any kind.
"I remember the hoop skirt, I wore
one. I put it on over my head, tied it behind, then put on my corset
above this and laced it tight. My outside skirt came over the wire
hoop and my bodice came down over the corset and fastened with a
collar about my neck.
"Horseback riding was a great
diversion for the girls of our day. We had long riding skirts and
sidesaddles; also a hitching post and a get on block at the front
gate to assist us in mounting on the horse.
"On the first Saturday in May,
there was an annual picnic at Catawba Falls, now called Great Falls.
The Catawba River at this point was full of shad every year at this
time. After enjoying the picnic dinner and the day, we would return
home with the back of the buggy or wagon body full of shad, which
lasted the family and all the Negroes on the plantation through
Sunday.
"My parents were not rich planters
and slave owners. We only had six hundred acres of land and about
thirty slaves. I don't remember ever seeing one of the slaves
whipped. My mother taught them the Presbyterian catechism, which was
printed especially for slaves. They were distributed among slave
owners in 1840, my mother told me.
"In 1870 I married Walter Francis
Marion Coleman, a boy in the neighborhood that I grew up with and
loved all my life. The greatest grief of my life was when old A. S.
Wallace, scalawag Congressman, sent troops to the neighborhood to
catch him for being a Ku Klux, but he evaded them by escaping to
Texas for a time. When he returned, we moved out to Blackstock and
lived there until my husband's death.
"Just before the coming of
baseball, the annual event at Blackstock was the horseback
tournament, with lances, and the crowning of a Queen of Love and
Beauty and her two maids of honor. There were three posts erected on
a field in a straight line and from there posts were suspended rings
on a cross piece. Each rider was costumed as some knight. At a fast
gallop they would successively race down the field and strive to
gain each ring suspended. Each knight made the attempt three times.
The maximum of rings caught on his lance could be nine rings. The
one taking the greatest number of rings would have the honor and
right to name and crown the Queen of Love and Beauty of the
tournament. As each knight would take his place at the standing
point, the announcer would proclaim the name of the rider. I
remember some of the representations: Knight of Avenel, James Fitz
James, Knight of Snowden, Knight of the Leopard, and Knight of
Ravenswood. The others I can't recall. It was an exciting, thrilling
scene of color, and the plaudit of the populace was deafening if the
ring was successively taken by the knight and ran down his lance. I
remember Mary Wylie was crowned at one time, Lydia Mobley at
another, and my husband's sister, Minnie Coleman once.
"In the little village of
Blackstock, at that time about one hundred inhabitants, there were
six barrooms, one church, and two policemen. Everybody was poor,
everybody had credit, everybody played cards, (I mean the men), and
everybody was happy.
"Matches were a luxury. Fire was
covered with ashes over night to save one match. The price of them
was twenty-five cents per hundred. Soap was made of ashes and hog
grease.
"I have been the mother of eleven
children, six of whom are living; the grandmother of twelve
children, all living; and the great-grandmother of four children,
all living. The Yankees didn't reach us in the route through this
part of the State.
"One of my grandsons is a graduate
of West Point Military Academy. He is a captain in the cavalry
stationed at Fort Oglethorpe. His name is Capt. Logan Carroll Berry.
He is a son of my daughter, Julia, with whom you danced fifty years
ago. She is out on the porch now waiting to speak to
you."
Source: Library of Congress - American Life
Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
