The old Abbeville High School (pictured below) was a part of the city’s youth for over 50 years. A newer high school was built following integration to accommodate the much larger student body, and the old high school housed the school district administration for many years. However, it was demolished in 2008 and now this area is a municipal park.

Abbeville High School alumnus Mark Clark remembers the original school building well. He says that “the old auditorium featured ornate plaster and woodwork the likes of which aren’t seen in school auditoriums today. Although it had fallen into disrepair, the acoustics were still perfect.”

Mark also says that backstage there was an old chalkboard where students long gone had written their names and messages. He even found a note written by his parents, who attended the old Abbeville High School, expressing their love for each other!

Even though the school building is long gone, Mark says he always walks the track in the municipal park when visiting Abbeville to reminisce about old times at his high school.

SCIWAY thanks frequent contributor Abbeville native Mark Clark for these great pictures, information, and recollections.

Do you have memories from your days at the old Abbeville High School? Comment below and let us know!

The square is home to many festivals and events, such as “Flicks on the Bricks,” an outdoor movie series hosted by the City of Abbeville during the summer. The Abbeville Fountain, Abbeville Opera House, Abbeville Livery Stable, and the historic Abbeville Trinity Church are also all within walking distance.

SCIWAY thanks frequent contributor Mark Clark, an Abbeville native who currently resides in Winnsboro, for submitting this picture. Mark captured this shot on a quiet Sunday morning in July of 2011.

Mark writes, “The first job I ever had was working for the Abbeville Drug Company, which used to be located in the building at the far end of this picture. I stocked the shelves and delivered prescriptions to customers in town. Although Abbeville is a very small town, I quickly found that I knew very little about where the streets were without the help of a city map. Of course, since everyone in Abbeville knows everyone else, I quickly got to know most of my customers and learned a little about myself as well.”

The current stable was built in the late 1870s on the site of the original building and is located within walking distance of several other Abbeville landmarks including the Abbeville Trinity Church, the Abbeville Opera House, and the Abbeville County Courthouse.

In 2010 the Livery Stable was renovated as part of the Trinity Street Enhancement Project. Today, the stable is home to the Abbeville County Farmers Market and can also be rented for special events.

Many thanks to Anna Kate Pitts of Laurens for submitting this picture she took in March 2011.

See a picture of the Gaston Livery Stable, another brick barn located in Aiken.

McGowan’s brigade of South Carolinians participated in the costly Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May of 1864. The brigade, along with another one from Mississippi, was charged with defending a bulge in the Confederate battle line. The bulge was known as the Muleshoe Salient for its distinctive shape.

McGowan’s Brigade was charged with defending the angle facing westward. Fierce hand-to-hand combat with Union Army Major General Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps raged for over twenty hours through darkness and drenching rain. It was during this battle that wounded men would fall down, be pushed into the mud, and drowned.

Over 10,000 men from both sides would die in this battle, giving it the name the “Bloody Angle.” The S.C. State Senate passed a Concurrent Resolution on April 11, 2007, urging the federal government to authorize a monument memorializing McGowan’s Brigade. The monument was dedicated at the Virginia battle site in spring of 2009.

Many thanks to frequent contributor Mark Clark, an Abbeville native currently residing in Winnsboro, who submitted this picture and great description. Mark says that he “remembers an errant motorist crashing into and destroying this cannon’s predecessor when I was a young boy many years ago. The town’s unique military history and sense of community allowed me to enjoy my brief military service in the U.S. Navy as a young man. To me this picture sums up the bucolic beauty returning soldiers came home to following the horrors of war.”

Although most well known for his stance supporting the now defunct institution of slavery, John C. Calhoun was an accomplished politician in his day. Calhoun was President James Monroe’s Secretary of War from 1817 to 1824 and is remembered for doing away with the military’s patronage system in favor of a modern bureaucracy. He also served as President John Tyler’s Secretary of State from 1844 to 1845. In 1957 he was named one of the five greatest senators in U.S. history by the U.S. Senate, sharing company with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.

Calhoun eventually sold this house and purchased a home in the Upstate area that he named Fort Hill. He lived there with his wife, Floride, and their three children. His daughter Anna Maria married Thomas Green Clemson and when she died in 1875, Clemson inherited the home and over 800 acres of land.

Upon Clemson’s death in 1888, the Fort Hill estate was donated to the State of South Carolina for the purpose of building an agricultural college. Today that land is the site of Clemson University.

This house is adjacent to the Abbeville Recreation Center facilities and was hidden behind overgrown foliage for many years.

SCIWAY thanks Mark Clark, an Abbeville native currently residing in Winnsboro, for submitting this picture and great historical information. He writes: “I went to the recreation center for many years as a boy never realizing a house like this existed in Abbeville. The Johnsons cleared the property and the whole town was amazed at the hidden jewel that had been discovered. The house was painstakingly restored by the Johnsons and is my favorite house in Abbeville.”

In time the building became a movie theater, but eventually it closed altogether. Fortunately, the late 1960s saw efforts to revive live theater in Abbeville and restore the beautiful old Opera House. Little by little, money was raised, restoration work progressed, and in 1978, the Opera House once again had a summer theater season.

Today Abbeville’s Opera House is fully restored to its turn-of-the-century splendor with two modern concessions to comfort – air conditioning and rocking chairs! The curtain is raised and lowered using the same rope-pulled rigging system as in 1908, making it the only “hemp house” remaining in South Carolina.

At the turn of the century, vaudeville was in its heyday, and so was Abbeville’s Opera House. The hall hosted musicals, Broadway shows, the Ziegfeld Follies, and famous entertainers of the day such as Jimmy Durante and Fannie Brice.

In the early days of motion pictures, Opera House audiences enjoyed a unique mix of live theater and movies. As more and more motion pictures were released, live road shows began to disappear. But early motion pictures carried full crews of musicians and sound-effects men. They were impressive and still carried the awe of “live” show business.

In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first “talkie” to come to Abbeville. Soon afterwards, the theater converted to movies only. Business boomed through the 1930s and 40s, but changes in ownership, the economy, and a lack of public demand forced the house to close in the 1950s.

It wasn’t long before theater lovers in Abbeville organized a community theater group and began to raise funds for the restoration of the Opera House. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town was the first show produced after the restoration was completed in 1968.

Today, the Opera House attracts more than 20,000 visitors to Abbeville during its winter and summer seasons. Located on the town square across from the courthouse, the Opera House is open weekdays from 8:30 AM to 5 PM for self-guided tours.

Mark Clark, an Abbeville native currently living in Winnsboro, remembers when his high school senior class presented the play, You Can’t Take It With You, at the opera house in 1982. He was cast in the small role of Wilbur C. Henderson, an I.R.S. agent sent to collect back taxes from a character who doesn’t believe in paying them. “I was nervous,” Mark says, “but once I got in front of the bright lights, I couldn’t see the audience so I relaxed and performed my part. The experience gave me a healthy respect for Broadway actors who always have to get it right on the live stage.”

Visit the Abbeville Opera House’s website here.

Burt had become friends with Jefferson Davis before the Civil War during the 1840s. As he was fleeing from Richmond on his way to Georgia at the close of the war, Davis is said to have stopped at his friend’s home where he held the last meeting with his Confederate cabinet on May 2, 1865.

The house was purchased by James Stark in 1913, and his daughters Mary Stark Davis and Fanny Stark McKee were its last residents. The house was donated to the Historic Preservation Committee in 1971 by Mary Stark Davis.

SCIWAY thanks Mark Clark, an Abbeville native currently residing in Winnsboro, for submitting this photograph and historical information.

SCIWAY thanks Mark Clark, an Abbeville native currently residing in Winnsboro, for submitting this picture and historical information.

Marks says: “My father worked for this funeral home as a young man and had to go pick up the bodies of the deceased from the local hospitals. Talk about your odd jobs! The funeral home for many years was run by one of our neighbors, Harry Chandler. My father’s funeral was held here in 1994, completing the circle of life. In Abbeville, funeral homes honor the dead but also serve as the site of informal reunions among friends who have known each other since birth.”

Visit Harris Funeral Home’s website here.

For many years a temporary wooden frame was built around the monument to support a large Christmas tree, made from various trees in the county. The monument was damaged by intense heat in December of 1991 when the tree caught on fire and burned, flaking off large sections of stone.

Beginning with the accidental death of J. Clark Allen on February 13, 1861 on Sullivan’s Island, close to 350 Abbeville District men would lose their lives in the Civil War. It should be noted that the Federal Census of 1860 listed around 1,600 inhabitants in the area. Removing women and children from this number would mean close to one-half of Abbeville’s male population was killed in the war.

The list of Abbeville’s casualties included five prominent men who held the rank of colonel at the time of their death. Augustus M. Smith moved to Abbeville after marrying the daughter of Judge David L. Wardlaw. He eventually purchased an Arkansas plantation that had a combined property value of around $450,000 in 1860 dollars. Smith, only in his thirties, personified the incredible wealth obtained by a privileged few during the Antebellum Period. He entered Confederate service as a major in April, 1861. Smith held the rank of Colonel when he died from wounds received during the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, the third of the Seven Days Battles, in June of 1862.

John Calhoun Simkins, brother-in-law of Governor Francis Pickens, was an Edgefield native who owned a plantation in Newberry. A captain in the Palmetto Regiment during the Mexican-American War, Simkins had married another daughter of Judge David Wardlaw and spent most of his time in Abbeville to be with his wife’s family. Simkins was a colonel in the 1st SC Infantry Regiment when he was killed on July 18, 1863, during the Union assault on Battery Wagner near Charleston.

Augustus J. Lythgoe was an Aiken native whose father had immigrated to this country from England. Lythgoe was a civil engineer who trained at the South Carolina Military Academy and worked on the Blue Ridge Railroad, which included the incomplete Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel, until its suspension. He moved to Abbeville, the home of his wife, Margaret Isabella Wier, eventually becoming a merchant with her brother, John. Lythgoe was a full colonel commanding the 19th SC Infantry when killed at Stone’s River during the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on December 31, 1862.

The 1st South Carolina Rifles Regiment was organized at Sandy Springs in 1861 and its members were recruited from the Abbeville, Anderson, Marion, and Pickens Districts. Future governor James Orr, an Anderson attorney and plantation owner, was elected commander. Abbeville attorney and Mexican-American War veteran, J. Foster Marshall, was elected the regiment’s second-in-command. Coincidentally, Foster was also Orr’s brother-in-law by virtue of Orr’s marriage to Foster’s sister, Mary Jane, in 1843. The regiment became known simply as Orr’s Rifles, with Marshall becoming the unit’s commander following Orr’s election to the Confederate Congress.

Marshall was elected as a state senator after serving as captain of the Abbeville infantry company in the Palmetto Regiment during the Mexican-American War. He also owned a large plantation in Florida and the 1860 Federal Census listed his combined property value at close to $300,000. Marshall was also one of the largest benefactors in the construction of the village’s new Trinity Church, becoming a member after experiencing a religious conversion in 1858.

Orr’s Rifles, along with the rest of Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg’s Second Brigade of South Carolinians, defended the unfinished railroad grade at the Second Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) from August 28-30, 1862. Union Army of Virginia commander Major General John Pope, believing he had trapped the forces of Confederate Major General Stonewall Jackson, launched a series of furious attacks on the rail cut on August 29th.

During these attacks, Confederate Major General James Longstreet’s Second Corps arrived on Jackson’s right flank unnoticed by Pope. Longstreet, who was born in the Edgefield District, launched a 25,000-man counter-attack against Pope’s army which was the largest simultaneous assault of the war. Pope’s Army of Virginia retreated to Centreville, Virginia, in defeat, but Orr’s Rifles paid a horrible price. Nineteen men, among them Colonel Marshall, were killed and 97 more were wounded.

James M. Perrin was born 16 miles below Abbeville on Hard Labor Creek. Perrin grew up in the home of his brother, Thomas, as his father had died when he was very young. He was educated at South Carolina College and entered the Abbeville bar after studying law, also rising to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant while serving in the Mexican-American War.

Perrin became captain of the Abbeville Minute Men, which formed at the time of Secession. The unit was disbanded after returning home from the Fort Sumter campaign in Charleston. However, Perrin raised another company which subsequently became part of Orr’s Rifles and he fought with it at the Battle of Second Manassas in August of 1862.

Orr’s Rifles, along with rest of Gregg’s Brigade, suffered no casualties during the Battle of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, from September 12-15, 1862. The Brigade arrived in Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, after enduring a forced march from Harper’s Ferry to reinforce General Lee’s army there. Union commander Major General Ambrose Burnside’s forces were on the verge of flanking the 1st SC Regiment of Gregg’s Brigade after the Brigade’s arrival at the fight. The entire right side of Lee’s army was in danger of collapsing.

Captain Perrin led Orr’s Rifles in a furious counter-flanking attack which, with the rest of the Brigade’s help, pushed Burnside’s forces back across Antietam Creek, ending the battle and saving Lee’s army from a disastrous defeat. Today the Battle of Antietam is remembered as the single bloodiest day in American warfare, resulting in 23,000 men killed on both sides. However, Orr’s Rifles suffered lightly, having only three men killed and nine, Perrin among them, wounded.

Gregg’s Brigade of South Carolinians did not see action again until it joined with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in attacking Union forces at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, from December 11-15, 1862. During this battle, Gregg’s Brigade was surprised by advancing Union forces and paid dearly for it. Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg, a prominent Columbia lawyer, died of mortal wounds sustained while attempting to rally his troops in the resulting chaos and confusion.

Orr’s Rifles took the brunt of the Union attack, suffering 21 men killed and 149 men wounded. However, their sacrifices bought time that allowed the other Brigade regiments to regroup and successfully repel the Union attack.

In the aftermath of Gregg’s death, Colonel Samuel McGowan, an Abbeville attorney and Mexican-American War veteran then commanding the 14th SC Infantry Regiment in the Brigade, was promoted to Brigadier General and made the Brigade’s commander. Perrin was subsequently promoted to Colonel and given command of Orr’s Rifles. The Brigade was henceforth known as McGowan’s Brigade of South Carolinians and would be commanded by McGowan until the end of the war, always assigned to Confederate General A. P. Hill’s Light Division.

McGowan’s Brigade next saw action at the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863. The day following Confederate Major General Stonewall Jackson’s mortal wounding by friendly fire, the Brigade took heavy losses while attacking a strong Federal position in the area known as The Wilderness.

Perrin was killed and McGowan wounded in the leg below the knee. Fortunately McGowan’s leg was saved, but the injury was severe enough that he did not return to a field command until January of 1864. Presumably McGowan’s convalescence caused him to be absent from the climactic Gettysburg Campaign that occurred just two months after the Battle of Chancellorsville. However, the Brigade itself would fight at Gettysburg under the command of Colonel Abner Perrin. Brigade troops participated in the heavy fighting on the first day of battle, actually placing the first Confederate flag in the town.

McGowan’s Brigade would fight bravely and with distinction in many of the remaining battles of the Civil War. The Brigade would eventually be surrendered by McGowan at Appomattox Courthouse with the rest of Lee’s army at the war’s end.

There were two other Abbeville Colonels who survived the war. Colonel George M. Miller served in Orr’s Rifles and was wounded at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Before the war, George Miller was active in local affairs and was one of the secretaries of the secession convention that met in Abbeville on Secession Hill, November 22, 1860.

Following his injury, Miller recovered and continued to serve in Orr’s Rifles. He saw action at the battles of Petersburg, Jones Farm, Pegram’s Farm, Gravelly Run, Five Forks, and Dinwiddie Courthouse.

Before his death on July 12, 1899, Colonel Miller was instrumental in the founding of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), a veterans organization for former Confederate soldiers.

Thomas Thomson was born in Scotland on the 5th of June, 1813, and moved to Abbeville in his youth. After he grew up he taught school for a time and studied law under the Honorable Armistead Burt, eventually becoming a judge.

In 1846, Judge Thomson was elected to state legislature, and served continuously as representative and afterwards as senator until 1868. When the State seceded, exchanging the gown for the sword, he went into service as captain of a company from Abbeville in the Second Regiment of Rifles, rising step-by-step to the rank of colonel. His bravery was conspicuous, and he enjoyed the full confidence of his men. Upon his election as a state senator in 1862, Colonel Thomson resigned his commission in the army. He made Abbeville his home until his death on May 6, 1881.

SCIWAY thanks Mark Clark, and Abbeville native currently residing in Winnsboro, for providing this picture and historical information.

Mark credits the following sources: “The historical information above comes from various Internet sources and the book, Old Abbeville: Scenes of the Past of a Town Where Old Times Are Not Forgotten, by Lowry Ware. The primary online source is the Abbeville’s Confederate Colonels website, contributed by Brian Scott of Greenville.