S.C. Encyclopedia | Asparagus was an important cash crop in South Carolina from the 1910s until the mid-1930s. Commercial asparagus production began in response to the “cotton problem.” With cotton prices low and the boll weevil creeping ever closer, farmers in the “Ridge” counties of Aiken, Edgefield, and Saluda began planting asparagus to supplement their dwindling cotton incomes.
S.C. Encyclopedia | John Caldwell Calhoun was born in Abbeville District on March 18, 1782, the third son of Patrick Calhoun, an upcountry planter and former legislator, and Martha Caldwell. A prodigy, the young Calhoun lost his father at an early age. His older brothers, William and James, already successful cotton planters and merchants, helped finance his education. Calhoun attended rural upcountry academies before entering Yale at age twenty and graduating in two years. He then attended Litchfield Law School in Connecticut before reading law in Charleston with the distinguished attorney William Henry DeSaussure, a prominent Federalist. Calhoun returned to Abbeville and began the practice of law,
S.C. Encyclopedia | Hoppin’ John is a pilaf made with beans and rice. The recipe came directly to America from West Africa and is typical of the one-pot cooking of the South Carolina Lowcountry. As the recipe moved inland, it became the traditional dish for good luck on New Year’s Day throughout the South.
The first written appearance of the recipe in English was in Sarah Rutledge’s The Carolina Housewife, or House and Home, by a Lady of Charleston, published anonymously in 1847. Though most often made with black-eyed peas, the original Charleston version called for “One pound of bacon, one pint of red peas, one pint of rice.” Red peas are cowpeas, or dried field peas, which are, as are black-eyed peas, more akin to beans.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Operation Lost Trust was arguably South Carolina’s largest and longest-running political scandal. Including the investigation, trials, and retrials, the Operation Lost Trust saga extended from 1989 to 1999.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The purpose of any state judicial system is to resolve civil disputes among residents and to determine the guilt or innocence of persons accused of crimes and infractions. Article V of the state constitution provides for a uniform system of justice throughout the state.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The final defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 brought an important and difficult problem for the federal government: how were the defeated states to be brought back into the Union? Most agreed that this should be accomplished as rapidly as possible, but not so rapidly that the planter elite that had led the South in secession would be able to renew the rebellion or reverse the results of the war. The South would have to remain under federal control until it was deemed safe to leave matters to the southern state governments. This probationary period of federal control was termed “Reconstruction.”
S.C. Encyclopedia | An internationally known brothel, the Sunset Lodge, founded about 1936, was located in a white frame house adorned by neon on U.S. Highway 17 originally three miles south of Georgetown’s limits. The business was reportedly encouraged by business leaders, including Tom Yawkey, a Massachusetts millionaire who owned a resort home near Georgetown. They wanted to divert the attentions of workers building the International Paper Company mill at Georgetown from their local women.
S.C. Encyclopedia | James Francis Byrnes was born in Charleston on May 2, 1882, the son of James Francis Byrnes, an Irish Catholic city clerk, and his Irish Catholic wife, Elizabeth McSweeney. Seven weeks before his birth, Byrnes’s father died of tuberculosis, leaving “Jimmy” to be reared by his widowed mother. She had gone briefly to New York to learn dressmaking in order to support him, his sister, an invalid grandmother, an aunt, and a nephew. In his early teens Byrnes left school to work in a Charleston law office to help support the family.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Benjamin Ryan Tillman was born in Edgefield District on August 11, 1847, to Benjamin and Sophia Tillman. The family was wealthy in land and slaves, and Ben Tillman was educated in local schoolhouses and on the family’s acres. A serious illness at the age of sixteen cost him his left eye, and his convalescence kept him out of Confederate service. In 1868 he married Sallie Starke. They had seven children.
S.C. Encyclopedia | In the aftermath of the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Continental Congress passed resolutions that created the Continental army in June 1775. Accordingly, a committee addressed the need for maintaining a regular army, and Congress began the task of apportioning quotas to the states. On November 4, 1775, Congress resolved to maintain “at the continental expense” three battalions for the defense of South Carolina. Continental regiments were units authorized for use by the Continental Congress and were distinct from state militia forces.
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