COLUMN: Writer from 1882 gives Florence glowing review

Where around here do you suppose you could find it “cheering to hear the sound of saw, hammer and trowel on all sides”?

Well, I’m not sure you can be cheered by those sounds now, 2009 building equipment being more sophisticated, but Aug. 1, 1882, the News and Courier carried a long front page item
headlined “Flourishing Florence.” A writer who signed it “Carolina” gave an enthusiastic review to the town that then was not quite 30 years old — not much older than a teenager.

New buildings were going up all around, Carolina said. He could not have known that some of the new buildings would be lost to the great Florence downtown fires of the 1890s.

Anyway, of the new buildings, several were built of brick which might resist fire, and they “reflect credit” on the architects and builders, the writer said. Among the new buildings was a new Methodist Church which was to have a “lofty spire” and reflect credit on Henry W. Sholer, who I guess must have been either architect or builder or maybe both. That church was at the corner of Dargan and Cheves streets and later was lost to fire or tornado. Central Methodist about 30 years later moved to their present site at Cheves and Irby.

Carolina noted brick stores of W.J. Norris on Dargan Street and a “handsome new two-story brick store of John L. Barringer were among those being built. In a few days, he said, building would start on a new city hall which I’m pretty sure was on the same site as the much lamented later City Hall that housed the Colonial Theater and city offices. It was to be bricked, Carolina tells us.

If you think Carolina’s description of the work on the new buildings reflected credit on the architects and builders, it was very modest compared to his praise of the shops of the Wilmington, Columbia and Augusta Railroad. The WC&A had its shops in Florence where what is left of the old Atlantic Coast Line shops are now.

According to the article, Capt. W.H. Day, master carpenter and general manager of coach shops, had turned out one of the “finest and most handsome” U.S.Postal cars ever built, about 50 feet long and beautifully appointed. At Day’s shop, one could “behold some of the finest and handsomest work in wood and paint that the eye ever rested upon.” Wow.

Not only that, but shop managers were “able and skillful gentlemen” and all workers were “skilled artisans.” Day had tact and experience, the article said.

Merchants were looking for a busy sales season, and Mr. D. Sternberger was attempting to organize a board of trade for the businesses. The building and loan association was doing booming business, and Carolina said a library was being organized with Belton Townsend, “the little Hercules when anything like work is to be done,” leading the way.

Politics was “a little flat at present,” but that did not keep Carolina from writing several paragraphs about it.

Apparently there was some “independent feeling,” but if the Democrats “act wisely and give the people a ticket of good men, not old fogies, who are not in sympathy with rings and what is dubbed Bourbonism, aristocracy or shoddyism or any other ’ism,’ but the pure Jeffesonian Democracy, there is no doubt of success… this fall.”

To be sure his point was not missed, Carolina added they “must stable the old hacks and trot out something new.”

Among possible candidates for Congress from the Pee Dee district were E.K. Dargan, Esq.; Geo. W. Dargan, Esq.; and John Monroe Johnson, Esq. Carolina did love that “Esq.” title.
State Sen. W.C. Coker was a “walkover” for reelection if he chose to run again.

Democrats needed to take care, because there was a mass meeting of independents and Greenbackers scheduled a little later in Florence with the Darlington Brass Band taking part. Florence was still in Darlington County then.

Never mind the politics. Carolina wrote, “crops are in splendid condition and farmers are cheerful indeed, even if this is an election year.“

And he closed with a reminder to Charleston wholesalers and jobbers that Florence had 29 places of business “of all lines,” something other wholesalers already had noticed.

— 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.