1889 atlas showed Florence in Darlington county

Whatever happened to those little stores we used to pass along highways around here? You know, the ones where they sold lots of used stuff, and many of them had piles of old books off in a corner.

I thought a dream job for me would be running one of those places. I would have had an old easy chair — one of those that folds out almost into a cot — in the corner with an old standing lamp beside it.

I would sit there throughout the day, browsing the old books, and when a potential customer came in, I would yell up to him to look around and let me know if I could help with anything.

I would have had a cup of coffee beside me until about 11 a.m. when I would have switched to iced tea or a soda with a sandwich or something for lunch. Then I would have sipped iced water after that until late in the afternoon when I mixed it with something. Too much straight water is bad for you.

Those stores seem to have disappeared, and I miss them. Do you suppose it was tax policy that eliminated them or some kind of franchise problems, or what?

Anyway, what got me to thinking about that was looking over one of my finds from visiting those old stores, years — no, decades ago. This one was on the edge of Columbia, and I came across an 1889 world atlas there.

They wanted about $5 for it, which was a big price in such a store. When I found the map still showing Florence in Darlington County, I was sold.

Besides Florence County, neither Dillon nor Lee County is shown on that map. Florence County was created about the time this atlas came out, and Lee and Dillon came later. There then were only 35 counties in South Carolina. Now there are 46.

Railroad lines are shown, not highways. I don’t know that the first horseless carriage had appeared in South Carolina by then, but I feel certain none had in Florence. One rail line shown ran from Wilmington through here to Sumter. That was the Wilmington and Manchester, the area’s first railroad. The other lines ran to Cheraw and to Charleston.

The Seaboard line through Pamplico to Kingsburg appeared after the atlas was published — and disappeared before now. Now all lines have disappeared except the CSX main line running from Charleston through here to Fayetteville and the branch that goes to Hartsville and Bishopville.

Florence had a population of 1,915, it said. Darlington had 1,200, Marion had 1,500 and Charleston, 50,000. Columbia at 10,040 was second largest town in the state.

The railroad had reached Conway, but not the Grand Strand. The atlas indicated no communities on the Horry and Georgetown county beaches.

Looking further into the atlas, it gives the United States at the time — must have been the 1880 Census — a populatioon of 50,155,793.

New York had 1,683,420 people. Brooklyn still was a separate city, according to the atlas, with about 650,000 people. The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island as well as Brooklyn were not yet part of New York City.

Chicago already had a population of 600,793, which was something for such a young city. Detroit had 155,000 people and would have more than 10 times that after the auto industry developed. It has lost heavily in recent decades to the point that it slipped below a million in the 2000 census.

Los Angeles had about 70,000 peole and Houston about 26,000. Miami, yet to be reached by the railroad, was a village of about 150 people.

In the District of Columbia, Georgetown still was a separate city from Washington, which had a population of 147,307. D.C. as a whole had 161,515.

What would become Oklahoma was the Indian Territory, and there is one Dakota Territory. Several other western states still were territories as was Alaska. Hawaii still was the Sandwich Islands.

Getting back to South Carolina, the book tells us the governor was paid $3,500 a year which seems a little excessive, but I understand governors are paid even more now for some reason. Legislators were paid $5 a day, which seems about right.

It also said the 14th and 15th amendments placed “colored” citizens on the same basis as whites, but that overlooked the ingenuity of Southern segregationists who would get around that for decades.

Getting back to the little stores where you could find such books, if you know any anywhere around here, let me know.

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