Agriculture

The whites of Prince William’s Parish overwhelmingly supported the nullification movement in 1832, and the region continued to be a center of secession sentiment throughout the antebellum period.

Pringle’s best-selling book eased her financial worries. By 1920 she began writing another book to tell about her childhood and how women fared during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Back in Charleston, Pringle turned his energies from trade to public service. Early in his career he had served on the vestry of St. Philip’s Church, and as churchwarden he oversaw the distribution of aid after the disastrous Charleston fire of 1740.

From its inception, residents of Promised Land exerted a significant influence over the political, economic, and social life of rural Abbeville and Greenwood Counties.

Punches have been prominent at South Carolina social gatherings from the state’s beginnings.

Quitrents in South Carolina were designed to encourage immediate colonization by taking into account settlers’ lack of money.

After helping to establish the Medical College of South Carolina in 1824, Ravenel served as its professor of chemistry and pharmacy and, later, as dean.

The origin of the South Carolina rice industry is complex and controversial. Until relatively recently historians accorded Europeans primary credit for originating rice production in South Carolina. During the past few decades, however, some scholars have amassed evidence suggesting instead that Africans were the prime movers in the earliest days of rice cultivation in South Carolina.

While rice exports brought fabulous wealth to a handful of planters and merchants, its consumption provided sustenance for all. Exotic fruits from the Caribbean, cookbooks from England, and fresh herbs from local gardens were regularly advertised in newspapers. Wealthy Charleston ladies tried the latest cooking fads from European courts, while their black cooks added dishes from their homelands, such as collards, gumbo, and benne (sesame) candy

By the middle of the nineteenth century, rice milling was well established in Charleston. Cannonborough Mills began operation in 1825 under the direction of Thomas Bennett. The mill included twenty-two pestles driven by steam and fourteen driven by the tides of the Ashley River.

In the early colonial period, planters used hollow cypress logs, each with a vertical plug at one end, as sluices. David Doar, rice planter and historian, believed that this practice was the origin of the term “trunk.”

Richardson became the first backcountry resident—indeed the first non-Charlestonian—to hold the office, and his election reflected the increasing political and economic solidification of the state based on cotton, slavery, and the plantation system.

In office, Richardson supported a statewide agricultural and geologic survey in order to improve agriculture and halt the migration of planters and farmers from the state.

Characterized as “a man of sense and a most lovable gentleman,” Richardson continued to be active in conservative Democratic politics and in civic and business affairs after relinquishing public office.

In November 1775 Richardson and Colonel William Thomson were given command of 2,500 men and ordered to scatter the large concentration of Loyalists gathering in the South Carolina backcountry.

Nevertheless, this concept possesses some degree of political, economic, and social reality, for Columbia, Richland County, and their neighbors frequently charted a “middle” way between extremes advocated by other regions. And, because of the presence of state authority, they often are seen as spokesmen, especially on sectional and national matters, for virtually all South Carolinians.

In the Senate, Robertson served as chairman of the Committee on Manufactures. On the issues surrounding Reconstruction, his stance softened somewhat during his time in office.

Rogers publicized his success in area newspapers and encouraged others to plant tobacco. He recruited young men from the North Carolina–Virginia tobacco belt to advise and instruct novice growers in cultivating and curing the new crop.

After much controversy, voters chose Red Bank, where Mine Creek and Red Bank Creek converge to form Little Saluda River. Trees were removed and streets and lots laid out. Town limits extended one-half mile in each direction from the courthouse.

At the end of the twentieth century, agriculture still dominated the Saluda County economy, but cotton was replaced by the poultry industry, cattle farms, dairy production, and tree farming in most of the county, and there were peach orchards along the “Ridge.” In 1998 Saluda County ranked ninth in the state in sales of agricultural products, third in livestock, and nineteenth in timber sales.