COLUMN: The almost-unknown story of Daniel C. Roper

In October 1884, young Daniel C. Roper left his home in Marlboro County, bound for Wofford College in Spartanburg.

Had he been a bird taking the famous route “as the crow flies,” it would have been about 125 miles to Spartanburg. But he was not, and travel was still pretty primitive. He went to Laurinburg by buggy to reach the Carolina Central Railroad, later part of the Seaboard. From there, he took a slow train to Charlotte. Then, he rode another slow train on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, later the Southern, to Spartanburg.

“I had to journey two days and part of a night,” Roper wrote in “Fifty Years of Public Life,” his autobiography which was published in 1941.

He was born soon after the Civil War in Marlboro County, near the N.C. line. His father had been in the Confederate Army, and Roper said his earliest memory was of Union soldiers, part of the Reconstruction era occupying forces, marching by his parents’ farm near Tatum.

Besides having a father who was a Confederate veteran, he tells of an uncle who was 10 years older than his father and had spent some time in Texas. This uncle was involved in the Texas withdrawal from Mexico, but what impressed the young Daniel was that his uncle had met Davy Crockett — and that was before Disney did Crockett.

Roper’s father was a great believer in education though he had little formal education himself. His father also was a great reader and often quoted Shakespeare in conversation. He showed how smart he was once when the youngster asked if he was not afraid he might be caught misquoting Shakespeare. “Son,” the father said, “I never quote Shakespeare before people who know anything about Shakespeare.”

Among Roper’s childhood memories was swinging on the front gate of his home in Marlboro County when a neighbor rode up, stopped his horse and shouted that President Garfield had been shot. “He rode on, like Paul Revere of old, to inform the rest of the community.”

He was fortunate that his father was one of a group of neighbors who paid a school teacher to extend the school year for their kids after public funds ran out — after only a couple of months.

Children whose parents could not contribute apparently were left out.

As a sophomore, Roper had a Wofford College roommate die of typhoid fever during the school year, and it was one of the most traumatic events of his life. It so upset him that he was unable to return to Wofford and transferred to Trinity College in North Carolina which later was to receive a huge Duke endowment and change its name to Duke University. In August 1886 he was preparing to return to school when he heard a strange rumbling. “It sounded as if some tremendous train of freight cars had bumped together. The house shook as if it might be going to collapse and fall,” he said in his autobiography.

It was the Charleston Earthquake which was felt far from the coastal city. Like in Florence there was panic in Marlboro County but little damage. Roper’s father said, “I’ll bet you Florida has sunk.” His father had long predicted that sooner or later, Florida was going to sink into the sea.

He finished Trinity College in 1888 and in 1892-94 served in the S.C. House of Representatives. But Washington called.

Roper went to the national capital and served as clerk of the U.S. Senate Interstate Commerce Committee until 1897, got a law degree from National University in 1901 and had a long, distinguished career in the federal government.

He was clerk of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service among other posts.

He was chairman of the Woodrow Wilson reelection campaign in 1916 when Wilson narrowly won his second term.

From 1933 to 1938, he served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Commerce, and in 1939 became ambassador to Canada. He had the distinction of having his credentials as ambassador to Canada personally accepted by King George VI in Quebec City.

That’s pretty good company for an ol’ boy from Marlboro County who was one of the Pee Dee’s most distinguished — but ironically nearly unknown — people.

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