Legislative Manual of 1947 gives a snapshot of Pee Dee ‘power brokers’

Probably the handiest of state publications is the Legislative Manual, which is a digest of state officers and a description of some.
It makes no effort to explain behavior of state government and its officials since the idea is to keep the volume brief. A look at the 1947 edition is a small trip back in history.
Gov. J. Strom Thurmond appears on page 191, after all of the legislators and their biographies. South Carolina, like most other Southern states, is a legislative state with the governor as powerless as Ben Tillman and his crowd could make him.
In the 1947 edition, Lt. Gov. George Bell Timmerman Jr. appears 175 pages earlier than the governor. The lieutenant governor was presiding officer of the Senate, which came before the governor.
The governor has advanced a little since. For several decades now, he has preceded the legislative bodies in the book. Thurmond moved up, too, having served about a half-century in the U.S. Senate and becoming its first centenarian.
The manual’s individual pages have remained the same size, but there are about twice as many now as in 1947.
Florence County that year had five House seats, and each county had one Senate seat until reapportionment was forced in the 1960s.
The Florence Senate seat was occupied by P.H. McEachin.
Florence House members were Philip H. Arrowsmith, G. Badger Baker, Herbert T. Floyd, W. Clyde Graham and Richard A. Palmer. Baker later became a circuit judge, and Graham served several terms as senator.
Other area counties’ senators were: J.P. “Spot” Mozingo of Darlington, Earle R. Ellerbe of Marion, D.S. Allen of Dillon, Paul Allen Wallace of Marlboro, E.W. Cantwell of Williamsburg and James Hugh McFaddin of Clarendon.
Darlington had three House members, W.J. Carter, Edward C. Dennis Jr. and William Egleston. J. Ralph Gasque, later to be a longtime state senator, and James C. Hooks were from Marion County, and Roger W. Scott, later to serve a term in the state Senate, and J.B. Gibson were from Dillon County.
Florence was represented otherwise. Chief justice of the state Supreme Court was D. Gordon Baker of Florence. Other justices were Edward Ladson Fishbourne of Colleton County, Taylor H. Stukes of Clarendon, Claude Ambrose Taylor of Spartanburg and George Dewey Oxner of Greenville.
Jesse T. Anderson, from the Timmonsville area and once Florence County superintendent of education, was state superintendent of education.
The Pee Dee had others.
L. George Benjamin Jr. of Darlington was insurance commissioner, James C. Dozier of Galivants Ferry was adjutant general, and Eldridge C. Rhodes, a graduate of Florence High School, was comptroller general.
John L. McMillan, a Marion County native who by then lived in Florence, was in his fifth term in the Congress from the 6th district, which included Florence, Darlington, Dillon, Georgetown, Horry, Lee, Marion, Marlboro and Williamsburg counties.
The 6th then was a Pee Dee district. Now it stretches and twists across the lower state and there is no Pee Dee district. If you draw a line from York to Columbia to Charleston, about a third of the state is east of that line, but not the residence one of our six congressmen.
In 1947, the state bird was the mockingbird, but it has been replaced by the Carolina wren.
Looking back over state thisses and thats, we find in the 1947 manual a state bird, a state flower, a state song and a state tree (the palmetto, of course). Back then just those were enough.
Now we have a state bird, a state flower, a state tree, two state songs (up from one), a state stone, a state animal, a state fish, state popular music (besides the two state songs), a state dance, a state wild game bird (in addition to the regular state bird), a state fruit, a state shell, a state beverage, a state reptile, a state gem stone, a state dog, a state insect, a state butterfly, a state square dance (besides the state dance), a state hospitality beverage, state music (besides state songs and state popular music), a state amphibian, a state spider, state tapestry, state waltz (besides the state dance), state opera (besides those other songs and music), state grass, a state tartan and a state wildflower.
Who says our Legislature doesn’t get important things done?

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