Remember the Ladies

Eight downtown Kingstree merchants participated in a "Sip and Shop" on Thursday, May 10. These businesses stayed open from 6-8 p.m., served refreshments ranging from cake to crackers and dip to smoothies, and allowed visitors to browse and buy. Visitors were given cards at their first location, and the shopkeepers each initialed the cards which were turned in at the last stop. The shops then turned all the cards in to Christy McCutchen of the HomeTown Chamber and William Freeman of Main Street, Kingstree, and they drew a winner to receive a huge gift basket filled with merchandise from the eight participating businesses. They also awarded two other prizes of $25 in "Downtown Dollars."

The participating shop owners, I noticed, were either women or couples, which got me to thinking that women's participation in Kingstree's business community started early in our history. By the late 1890s, the Coleman House hotel had served travelers spending the night in Kingstree for a number of years. Its advertising boasted that it had always had a woman in a management role, beginning with the English-born Sarah "Sallie" Coleman, who, along with her husband George, started the hotel. After the Colemans, William J. and Virginia "Jenny" Lee owned and managed the hotel for 10 years. At Bill Lee's death, his obituary proclaimed that many thought of him as the "Father of the Town," although he was not a native and had moved to Kingstree in 1860 from North Carolina. Jenny Lee took over the management of the hotel for a short time before she sold it to devote herself to her retail business. She and her sister, Sallie Wilson, ran a mercantile business on Main Street on the east side of the courthouse until Mrs. Lee's death in 1900. The entire downtown closed up shop for her funeral as a salute to a woman who had devoted much of her life to Kingstree's business community. 

After Mrs. Lee sold the hotel, Charlotte Chandler became its manager and distinguished herself in that role for a number of years. Mrs. Chandler's husband, Edwin, was an attorney and news editor for The County Record before his untimely death at age 38. After Mrs. Chandler left the Coleman House, she opened a boarding house of her own. 

Another successful female hotel owner was Mary Rebecca Scott Hemingway, mother of Dr. T.S Hemingway. After her husband's death, she moved back to Kingstree from Rome Crossroads and opened the Hemingway Hotel on Railroad Avenue, which she ran until ill health forced its closure shortly before her death. The hotel was known up and down the east coast for its sumptuous meals.

Women have long played a major role in the postal service in Kingstree. Charlotte Chandler, in addition to her duties at the Coleman House, served as postmaster for the town of Kingstree from November 26, 1889, until March 4, 1898. But she was not the first Kingstree lady to run the post office. Mary Gewinner was appointed to the position of postmaster on July 17, 1866, prompting  The Charleston Daily News to run this condescending story on July 27: Old things have passed away, and all things have become new. Amid the general transformation of everybody and everything by the late war, there is none more striking than the prevalent disposition all over the country of putting the mails in the hands of females. The Kingstree Star of the 25th boasts of that village now having a regularly "reconstructed post office," Miss Mary Gewinner having received the appointment as postmistress. The Star says that Miss G has been attending to the mails for some months past. Miss G, it would appear, has been more successful in her attendance on the mails than many of her sisters.

Mary Gewinner was succeeded as postmaster in 1869 by another daughter of Kingstree, Pauline Heller. In 1898, Miss Gewinner's husband Louis Jacobs received the appointment as postmaster and served in that capacity until his death in 1913. Their daughter, Mary Jacobs Gourdin, assisted him by working in the post office for the entire 15 years of his tenure. Another daughter, Etta Jacobs, served as assistant postmaster under her father, and after his death continued the insurance agency he also ran, renaming it the Etta Jacobs Agency.

During those early years of the 20th century, a number of entrepreneurial, although unnamed, black women set themselves up in business by running outdoor kitchens on vacant lots in town, as well as on the courthouse square.

Women were also well-represented in the world of retail. Anne Marcus ran the women's department of S. Marcus for her husband Saul. Hannah Gale came to Kingstree from Baltimore and opened Gale & Gale millinery, where she designed and sold hats for a number of years before selling the business to the Kennedy family. When Jacob Eron died at age 32, his wife Sadie took over the day-to-day operations of his store, J.S. Eron's, running it very successfully. After her marriage in 1910 to well-known Atlanta violinist David Silverman, the couple lived in Georgia for several years before moving back to Kingstree, where they again engaged in a dry goods business. Many people remember Silverman's department store on Main Street, which was in more recent times owned and managed by Sadie Eron Silverman's younger brother, Isadore Goldstein.

All photos taken in downtown Kingstree from May 10-13, 2018

In a letter to her husband John in March 1776, future First Lady Abigail Adams urged him to "remember the ladies" as he and others went about setting up laws to govern the nation that had just declared its independence from England. We remember the ladies who have gone before us and salute the women of today whose businesses offer a significant contribution toward making Kingstree a better place to live. And, by the way, Cassandra Scott was the lucky winner of the gift basket, and Paul Amann and Justice Johnson won the Downtown Dollars.