The Center for a Better South
The southern Williamsburg County town of Lane, S.C., once was a thriving railroad town, photographer and retired editor Linda W. Brown of Kingstree writes. Now, however, few businesses remain. A number of store fronts are open to the elements; others are boarded up.
Copyrighted photo taken in June 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
This old house in the Cedar Swamp community of Williamsburg County, S.C., has served many purposes over the years, writes photographer and retired editor Linda W. Brown of Kingstree, S.C.
The building started out as a farmhouse but in later years it was a venue for community parties and dances. Now it is slowly being dismantled.
Copyrighted photo taken June 29, 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
The back portion and the chimney are all that are left of this farmhouse that once stood on Cedar Swamp Road in Williamsburg County, S.C., photographer and retired editor Linda W. Brown writes.
Copyrighted photo taken June 29, 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
The rusty roof of an empty, old farmhouse overlooks fields that are still planted each year, photographer and retired editor Linda Brown writes from Kingstree, S.C.
The house is on Thurgood Marshall Highway, a few miles outside of Kingstree in Williamsburg County.
Copyrighted photo taken June 29, 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
Lawnmowers, rusting equipment and an old boat have a final resting place on Simms Reach Road in Williamsburg County, S.C., photographer and retired editor Linda W. Brown writes. It’s not hard to find locations like this anywhere in the Southern Crescent, which stretches from Tidewater Virginia, across the eastern Carolinas through Georgia to the Mississippi Delta.
Copyrighted photo taken June 29, 2014 by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
Dry weather has had an effect on this field of corn in rural Williamsburg County. Farmers are all too often at the mercy of the weather when it comes to the success or failure of their crops, observes retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown of Kingstreet, S.C.
Copyrighted photo by Linda W. Brown was taken June 29, 2014. All rights reserved.
A vine-covered tobacco barn in the middle of a cotton field signals changing times in agriculture in the South and in the Cedar Swamp community of Williamsburg County, S.C., where this barn is located.
Photo taken June 29, 2014, by Linda W. Brown. All rights reserved.
This old house is across the street from the site of the Battle of Eutaw Springs in rural Orangeburg County, S.C.
The battle site is just outside of Eutawville, a town of about 350 in the eastern part of Orangeburg County near Lake Marion.
Orangeburg County is home to more than 91,000 people, two thirds of whom are black. The county has a poverty rate of 24.5 percent.
Copyrighted photo was taken July 9, 2014 by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.
The Battle of Eutaw Springs (1781) was the last major battle of the Revolutionary War between colonists and the British. The South is filled with historic markers that outline history of the area. In many places, they’re being packaged by state tourism bureaus as history trips.
Today at the site of the battle, just east of the town of Eutawville in Orangeburg County, is a memorial park with information placards that explain what happened. In the background under shade trees, you can see some memorials that honor the combatants.
The descriptive sign in this picture reads:
Victory in Defeat
On the morning of September 8, 1781, General Nathanael Greene’s American army attacked Colonel Alexander Stewart’s British force camped at a plantation near Eutaw Springs. Here two almost evenly matched armies slugged it out in the last major Revolutionary War battle in South Carolina.
In over three hours of brutal combat, American and British forces traded musket volleys and bayonet charges. Greene’s troops drove the British back into their camp, but the British regrouped and forced Greene from the battlefield.
The Americans suffered more than 500 casualties, but the British lost nearly 700. Crippled by the loss of almost one third of his command, Stewart retreated toward Charleston the following day, leaving most of the South Carolina countryside in American control.
Photo by Andy Brack, July 9, 2014. Copyrighted and all rights reserved.
We’re not exactly sure what this old place is, but figure it probably most recently was a rural joint, preceded by being a country store of some sort. Likely as not, there have been some very good times had here. The run-down building, located along S.C. Highway 261 between Manning and Kingstree, S.C., is in agricultural Clarendon County.
Clarendon County has 34,357 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 population estimate. About half of the county’s residence are white; the other half are black. Some other statistics:
Photo taken July 9, 2014, by Andy Brack. Copyrighted; all rights reserved.