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CHAPTER 19 "Rushing Through the Night" 1890 to 1930

The years between 1890 and 1930 were a time of boom and bust for the Russell Reservoir area. The period began with an event of enormous significance-the coming of the railroads. Major rail lines were laid across the region, connecting east and west through Abbeville, South Carolina, and Elberton, Georgia, and traveling on to Atlanta. Another track passed from Augusta, Georgia, north along the South Carolina side of the Savannah River.

The railroads spawned major change. The Savannah River Valley, virtually shut off from the rest of the nation for so long, quickly gained nearly constant contact with the outside world. The Seaboard Air Line, cutting east to west across the area, linked Georgia and South Carolina in a rail network that tied together Atlanta, Birmingham, Washington, D.C., and New York.

With the advent of widespread rail, the Savannah River lost its importance as a way to get goods to market. Numbers from the time tell the story. In 1900, 23,000 of Elbert County's 30,000 bales of cotton, some 77 percent, were transported by rail. Of the rest, 6,000 bales went to local textile mills, and only 1,000 were shipped by other methods. That so much traffic shifted so fast to the railroads shows just how bad the local transportation system formerly was.

Up until the 1920's, roads for automobiles, trucks, and wagons continued to be rut-filled and sometimes impassable. The situation improved when highways started to crisscross the region in the 1920's as the automobile transformed from a novelty for the rich to a common mode of transportation. By 1927, the Georgia-Carolina Memorial Bridge spanned the Savannah River, marking the beginning of the end for ferry traffic.

That same year, Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Now, for better or worse, nothing could prevent change.

Before ferries became obsolete, however, a tragedy occurred involving a multiple drowning that deeply affected people on both sides of the river. Until 1928, Harper's Ferry continued to be important to local transportation. Robert Morrow, a Harper Plantation tenant farmer, operated the ferry most of the time, but on Faster Sunday 1920, another tenant, Lester Waters, was at the helm. Waters and his new bride, Alice, were entertaining a group of friends and relatives. Late in the afternoon, the group decided to cross the river to visit with more friends on the Georgia side.

The Savannah was higher than usual and especially swift that afternoon, and perhaps the boat carried too many passengers. Whatever the causes, the ferry suddenly foundered in the swirling current and capsized. Ten of the 11 passengers drowned, including the young newlyweds. The lone survivor was a shocked boy unable to say what had happened.

As a way of life revolving around ferry transportation disappeared, a new one centered around the railroad developed. The railroad gave towns a competitive edge over nearby communities without trains. Some towns became more important as a result because they could serve larger markets. Elberton, Calhoun Falls (named in honor of James Edward Calhoun), Middleton, Iva, and Starr were among those towns that flourished beginning in the late 1800's. Heardmont reached its peak sometime later, during World War I.

The town of Lowndesville even shifted its boundaries because of the railroad. Local historian Arnette Carlisle remembered what happened: "The railroad is about a third of a mile from where the town grew up, and when it came out here to the west of the old town and built a depot down there, then the business firms gravitated toward the depot. We had what we call a 'new town' and an 'old town'. …'New town' started building up shortly after the railroad came... the dwellings all came in after 1890, but some of the stores and warehouses began to build up as soon as the railroad came through there. There was a rivalry between the merchants all during the year, 'new town' and 'old town.' Of course, these boys down here at the railroad had the advantage, they didn't have to hire somebody to haul their goods a mile to a half-mile away. One of them even built his store on the side track down there. He could use handtrucks to unload right into the store… We had two passenger trains each way, north and south, each day."

None of the area's small towns mushroomed in population, but their merchants did capitalize on a golden moment. Cotton was booming and the towns provided the gin mills. Some of the gins had compresses to squeeze the cotton into compact bales so that trains could carry more bales in less space, lowering shipping costs. The local economy also received a boost when the price of olive oil shot through the roof in 1880. Suddenly there was a market for a substitute-cotton seed oil; both Starr and Lowndesville built plants to fulfill the demand for the newly popular cotton seed oil.

Local merchants became important, powerful figures. The gin mills and other cotton facilities, coupled with the railroad, meant that merchants could sell cotton and cotton products directly from Elberton, Lowndesville, and other nearby communities to outside markets. And the competition between merchants in different communities meant that sometimes, if a farmer was willing to drive his wagon a little farther down the road or hold onto his produce just a little longer, he might get a better price. Tenant farmers were no longer quite so dependent on a single landlord as a result. And if they tired of farming altogether, the railroad now offered a quick way to leave and try their luck somewhere else.

All four counties in the Russell area experienced a spurt in economic growth and increased industrialization, but none could compare with Anderson County, South Carolina. There was only one textile mill in the county in the late 1880's, but by 1909 there were 16, with a combined capitalization of $7 million. Anderson County mills employed 1,000 people who annually processed 150,000 bales of cotton.

The secret to this success was cheap power. The Anderson Water, Light, and Power Company built two generating plants before the turn of the century. By 1906, The Savannah River Power Company had completed a plant at Gregg Shoals, not far from where Paleoindians left one of their Clovis spearpoints more than 10,000 years earlier.

Low energy costs encouraged industrial development, leading to more farmers abandoning the land for factory and mill jobs. Many of them made the transition just in time to escape impending disaster. Boll weevils swarming up from Mexico reached the Savannah River Valley about 1919. Like millions of buzz saws cutting through soft wood, the weevils devoured cotton crops. The local agricultural economy staggered, and not just because of the weevils. The soil was exhausted. Years of neglect and erosion led to smaller and smaller crop yields, with farmers having to work harder to produce less. Then demand for cotton slackened, causing a panic among property owners. They booted faithful tenants off the land, while other tenants just gave up and left on their own. Population decline in the region was significant once again, with many Whites moving to bigger Southern towns, and many Blacks flocking to cities in the North and Midwest.

But some stubbornly clung to the land. Jim White was an example. His farm near Beaverdam Creek in Elbert County was originally owned by Bynum Dye, son of the planter George Washington Dye and his slave Lucinda. Jim White bought the property in 1926 and turned it into a thriving enterprise. He succeeded in farming, while others failed, by diversifying. White grew a wide variety of crops and also raised various forms of livestock. With over 100 acres, he owned more property than any other Black, without inheriting it, in the Heardmont community. When he died in 1956, his four daughters continued to farm, using mules just as their father had.

The McCallas lived on the other side of the Savannah River in South Carolina. They managed to recover from deep financial troubles by being tough and shrewd. George McCalla, described earlier, saw his fortunes plummet after the Civil War. By his death in 1886, he had little money and heavy debts. He had managed, however, to hang on to about 2,000 acres. McCalla's four sons, including John and Isaac, started rebuilding with that inheritance. Isaac, his father's executor, received permission from the other heirs to sell some of the land to pay off debts, for which he also used tenant farmers' rents. Then he started on the long road back to financial success.

By 1894, Isaac McCalla had either bought or was managing his brothers' portions of their father's land, and by 1913, he had almost doubled the plantation from 2,158 to 3,490 acres. Isaac McCalla emerged as one of the new breed of planters who also wore a business suit, a versatility that helped him ride the crest of economic good times in the region. Among other pursuits, he held half interest in his brother John's business, which included mills.

At his death, Isaac McCalla's land was divided among his three children who apparently stayed in farming and continued to rent to tenants and sharecroppers as their father had. The McCalla family remained a major economic force in the area for many years.

The story of the Harper family goes in a different direction. When the family was last mentioned, Henry, Civil War veteran and ex-prisoner of war, had retired from the South Carolina House of Representatives with his financial affairs in a downward spiral. He died in 1886, and while there was no recorded will, he apparently left what remained of his land to four children. How much property was involved is unclear.

Weston Harper, the oldest son, had, by 1894, bought most of his brothers' and sisters' shares, and owned 1,306 acres worth $7,250. Weston shared a house with his wife Alice, seven children, his sister Jennie, and his brother Clarence. Weston Harper did well economically throughout the early 1900's. By 1913, he was still financially sound, according to tax records. But sometime after the boll weevils invaded and the cotton market began to slump, Harper's fortunes tumbled. By 1926, he had lost his farm in court, probably because of debts. Douglas Featherstone bought the property at auction, and owned the land as an absentee landlord until 1979.

The last family tracked through the years was the Clinkscales. They represent the middle-income farmers who once comprised the majority of Whites living in the study boundaries. The first Clinkscales in the area were William Franklin Clinkscales and his wife Lucinda. They arrived in the mid-1850's and settled on about 450 acres in Abbeville County, South Carolina, where they built a house that would be fondly known to three generations as the "Old Home Place."

William Clinkscales struggled through the trials of the Civil War and Reconstruction, but somehow retained his 450 acres. He died at 91 on December 4, 1906, and Lucinda, his wife, died 15 days later. Their estate was divided among eight children and five grandchildren, with their son, Ezekiel, eventually buying all the farm from the others.

Ezekiel Clinkscales lived in the "Old Home Place" for a number of years and continued to farm, gradually acquiring more land. He even managed to triple the farm's size by 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. By then, he had 1,316 acres, and his wife Susan owned 500 more. They had one son, Joseph Ezekiel, born in 1913, who died at age 19 trying to save a cousin from drowning in the Savannah River. Susan Clinkscales died four years later, and Ezekiel subsequently remarried. He died after a fall in 1943, not far from his beloved family home.

One of Ezekiel Clinkscales' grandnephews, Henry A. Cook, vividly remembered the farmer and provided details about him and his ancestral home to researcher Marlessa Gray. Cook visited the farm every summer for a month between ages four and 12 when Ezekiel Clinkscales was still alive. The boy alternated between staying at the "Old Home Place" and with nearby relatives.

Cook recalled that fruit was at its best when he arrived in early July. His mother spent time with relatives "putting up pears, peaches, beans, and such things in big Mason jars; in making jams and jellies of the abundant berries and grapes and watermelon rind pickle. The big orchard was loaded with fruit for anyone to pick and eat who wished them. All were in great variety. Their flavors were delicious and there were no poison sprays to be washed off in those days."

Stories adults told about the Indians who once lived on the land captivated him as a boy, an interest further flamed by the many Indian artifacts scattered around the farm. Indians, Cook said, left "behind all kinds of stone arrow and tomahawk heads, partly buried in the sand, which were a constant stimulus to us to play at being Indians. We had a copy of Ernest Thompson Seton's book, Two Little Savages, which was kind of a bible to us. It was filled with drawings and descriptions of all kinds of Indian equipment: tepees, headdresses, moccasins, bows and arrows. Our fervor to make all of these things was limited only by our extreme youth.

"Another favorite and exciting sport for us was to fish and ride in the bateaux in the Savannah River. But that required grown-up supervision. And sometimes we could persuade them to take us across the river on Tucker's Ferry not far up river. Mr. Tucker, the ferryman, also had a sugar and syrup mill down at the ferry landing. We took our family cane down there to be extracted in a mule powered rotary press. It was then boiled down to the desired consistency. Sugar had to be boiled longer."

"…my Uncle Zeke [Ezekiel Clinkscales] took me with him on his tours of the farm where gangs of men were at work in the fields. I rode behind my Uncle on his horse. He was a wonderfully kind and patient man and he became very fond of me, probably because he was unmarried then and had no boys of his own. We acquired a kind of sympathetic understanding that is rare in this workaday world. When my Uncle was too busy to take me, I could play for hours alone about the farm and its interesting equipment… To a young town-bred boy like me, both farms were endless sources of interest. Both had old steam engines, used occasionally to power the sawmills and sometimes to do threshing. We kids spent many hours playing on them and imagining ourselves engineers, driving them and blowing their whistles.

"There were also the blacksmith shops, with their big bellows to fan the charcoal fires to the necessary white heat to make horseshoes and other implements."

And late at night when the play had ended and the grownups had stormed in to quiet the children, "peace would reign again. Then in the quiet night, we could occasionally hear the Seaboard Railroad trains over in Georgia blowing for their crossings, on their way to and from Atlanta.

"I have long ago decided that railroad engineers are really big kids at heart. They love to play tunes on their whistles as they rush headlong through the night. They strike a tremendous response in the hearts of small boys, lucky enough to hear them on a dark night."

Ezekiel Clinkscales died in 1943, and the farm was divided between two nephews, Ralph and Ray Clinkscales, the next year, as World War II was beginning to draw to an end.

Eventually, the "Old Home Place" was owned by absentee landlords. A hurricane damaged one of the chimneys in 1976, but the house remained intact. Then, in 1977, after some 130 years of figuring so prominently in the lives of three generations of a family, the house burned to the ground.

Chapter 20: Mother to Daughter, Father to Son

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