Story tells about life in Florence during Civil War

In 1939, about the time of the 50th anniversary of the creation of Florence County, the Morning News published a special section and carried some articles by old-time local residents, looking back at 19th and early 20th century Florence.

One of them was by Mrs. C.D. Bristow and was written about 1904 for the Florence Daily Times and reprinted by the Morning News in 1939.

Bristow said her father, J.H. Husbands, was the second man with a family to move into the settlement soon after the railroad junction was established here. She was a little girl in the early 1860s but remembered Civil War activity.

She wrote that the original Presbyterian Church was completed during the war. It was located on the east side of Church Street, just south of the railroad. That site now is beside the Church Street bridge.

Florence was a small village at the time, but Bristow wrote the population was boosted somewhat during the Civil War when a number of families, fleeing the bombardment of Charleston, came for refuge.

It must have been quite an experience for a young girl to see a war at first hand. “All of the men who were old enough were connected in some way with the army,” she wrote. “The only theme of conversation was the war, the dreadful battles being fought and heavy loss of life on both sides.

“Every now and then the few citizens here saw something of the struggle in the long trains of boxcars loaded with soldiers, packed inside and on top and maybe a flat car or two loaded with cannon passing through here going from one point to another where an attack was expected. Occasionally, a car passed draped in mourning, carrying some officer who had fallen in battle.”

She recalled Union prisoners who were brought by train, many from Andersonville, to be held in a stockade being built south of town. The stockade was not ready, so she recalled the prisoners being held in the middle of the village.

“Disease had laid a heavy hand on them from overcrowding, exposure and lack of proper food, consequently they died in large numbers. Wagons would come every morning to get the bodies of those who had passed away during the night. They came by our home piled high with bodies, like so much wood, (and were) carried out to the burying ground near the stockade where they were rolled in their blankets and laid to rest as coffins could not be made fast enough,” she wrote.

The government obtained the property after the war and established the Florence National Cemetery at the site.

She recalled the day in 1865 when a detachment from Sherman’s army, which was camped near Cheraw, came to Florence. Their mission was to free the prisoners in the stockade and tear up the railroad junction, but the prisoners had just been moved out by the Confederacy.

That, however, was when Bristow actually saw some fighting. There happened to be a substantial force of Confederates here with their horses still in railroad cars, “but in a twinkling they were upon (the horses) and with a yell they went to meet the enemy who stampeded towards Darlington. There was some firing, and we could see the glistening of their guns in the sunlight.”

Her mother had bought a large amount of dry goods about that time, Bristow said, because Confederate money was losing value. Calico had been slipped through the Union blockade and some had found its way to the Florence railroad junction.

Their mother had made two calico dresses each for Bristow and her sister out of the goods. But when the Union troops came, each girl put on both of her dresses because they had heard how the Yankees stole, and maybe all would be safe if they wore them.
It was interesting to me that she said that, as of 1904, Florence, “for a good many years,” had had electric lights. I recently read in a history of the Carolina Power and Light Co., now Progress Energy, that electricity came to Florence in 1904.
I wonder who was right about arrival of electricity.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. He can be reached at THIDBIT@aol.com.