Our Own Particular Magic

This week, we'll focus a little less on history and a little more on history-in-the-making. I don't know for certain, but I think it might be a safe bet to say that Academy Street had never spent an evening before last Thursday filled with beautifully-decorated tables as residents strolled from business to business to the strains of that most American of all music, jazz, while shopping, and in some of the businesses, sampling the food that was a part of Kingstree's first Downtown Dine Around.

Tables waiting for the Downtown Dine Around to begin.

Diners gathered with friends and neighbors around tables on Academy street

during Kingstree's first Downtown Dine Around

It's good for a community to take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday living and spend an evening with friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, while at the same time slowing down the pace enough to absorb what's been happening while we've all been busy with our daily lives.

Main Street Director William Freeman and Design Committee member Frances McGill Belser

set up a table and chairs in front of Artsy Bakery, one of the newer businesses on Academy Street.

A table in Welch Park offered beer and wine as well as tea and water

to Downtown Dine Around ticket holders.

In the last six to eight months, at least four new businesses have opened downtown. Academy Street is now home to Miles & Co., Artsy Cakes & Bakery, and Shirley's Floral Gifts, while on Main Street, Donna's has opened in the old fruit stand.

The new maple trees in the Downtown Parking Lot are welcoming spring with

plenty of new leaves.

The Downtown Parking Lot has undergone a complete makeover and was filled to capacity with cars and trucks at Thursday night's event. The maple trees in the new planters in the parking lot are full of tiny spring-green leaves. Also, shoppers are taking advantage of the new benches flanking the Academy Street entrance to the parking lot to rest for a few minutes, to visit with friends, or to check their phones.

A shopper checks her phone while resting a few minutes on one of the Academy Street benches.

The HomeTown Chamber recently completed a facade makeover, and new banners are flying from the light poles on Main and Academy Streets.

One of the new banners in front of the HomeTown Chamber office on Academy Street.

Another of the new banners and balloons welcomed Dine Around participants 

to Academy and Main streets.

 Main Street also drew crowds during the Downtown Dine Around.

To many people, progress seems to take a long time, and it is a slow process. But the signs are visible in downtown Kingstree, and there is more to come. If you missed the Downtown Dine Around, you may want to mark your calendar to attend the Easter Eggstravaganza  from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 13. There will be a huge downtown Easter egg hunt, and the Easter Bunny will be on hand to have his photo taken with children. This event will kick-off a week-long promotion among participating merchants in which anyone making a purchase will be given a chance to win prizes.

I read recently that each town has its own particular magic, depending on the lens through which we choose to view it. Our own particular magic was on display last Thursday night. More visible changes are on the way, so keep your eyes and ears open as you visit downtown Kingstree over the next month or so.

Kingstree Girl Was Belle of Chatauqua

During the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, various traveling shows criss crossed the United States combining entertainment and education in lectures, concerts, stories, and plays. Patterned after offerings of the Chatauqua Institute in western New York state, various groups sought to bring education and entertainment to small towns and villages. One of those entertainers, Anne Frierson, grew up in Kingstree.

Redpath Chatauqua advertisement for Anne Frierson.

University of Iowa Libraries

digital.lib.uIowa.edu/tc

Anne Frierson, who was known as Annie in her youth, described her upbringing like this. "I was born in the old town of Charleston, SC, in the conventional Charleston house of grey stone, with the porch running along the side and stained glass windows. My mother reared me, and my black "Dah." tended me. Sometimes my black "Dah" took me to see my "Grand-Dah" who lived "obuh de ribbuh." There I caught my first glimpse of native negro life, for in this Gullah settlement there were no white inhabitants."

In 1913, when Annie was 10, her father, Dr. Dickey Price Frierson, accepted a position as pharmacist at Scott's Drug Store in Kingstree. He would later buy the store. Annie's mother, Ivah Morgan Epps, was a Kingstree native, and the Friersons would build a home on a portion of the plantation owned by Ivah's parents, James W. and Martha Ann (Annie) Epps.

This house on Eastland Avenue is, I believe, where Annie Frierson grew up.

Anne Frierson noted that there were no white children living near their home and that she and her brother, Dolph, (whom many of us remember as the pharmacist at Frierson's Drug Store when we were young) soon discovered that their black playmates knew "far more fascinating games" than the few white children of their acquaintance. The mothers and grandmothers of those black playmates also had no qualms about handing out hunks of "tater" pie between meals or rewarding good children with peppermint candy. And, she mused, the black men knew all about ghosts and plat-eyes and what animals said to each other.

After graduation from Kingstree High School, Annie attended her mother's alma mater, Columbia College. (Ivah Frierson would become one of the first female trustees of that institution.) The inscription under the senior photo of Annie Isabelle Frierson in the 1924 Columbia College yearbook states: No telling what will become of Annie. she might land in the White House, or she might land in jail. But wherever she goes, she'll carry with her the heart of old Columbia College."

While at Columbia College, she had learned song-leading, and after graduation began her career as an entertainer by leading songs for Kiwanis, Rotary, and other civic organizations across the state of South Carolina. But after two years, she enrolled at Northwestern University in Illinois to pursue a Master's Degree. 

At Northwestern, she studied speech, specializing in Gullah because so little was known about the Gullah people beyond the Sea Islands of South Carolina. She faced discrimination at Northwestern over her strong Southern accent. One professor tried to bar her from his class because of it. However, she told Greenville News reporter A.F. Gurlington for a 1934 article that she simply kept showing up for the class and eventually he had to accept her. She was a bit of a rebel, however, and refused to submit the thesis required for her to receive her degree. She would, instead, write a play. This same professor had told her that he believed her incapable of writing a play, and she was determined to prove otherwise. When she was finally given the go-ahead to submit a play instead of a thesis, she spent three days, working night and day with no sleep, to finish it. 

The result, "Quagmire," a depiction of the life of the Gullah in South Carolina, was performed at both Northwestern's theatre and at the Playhouse Theatre in Chicago to rave reviews. Mayer Levine, the theatre critic for the Chicago Daily News, handed her the ultimate applause when he proclaimed it better than Porgy, referring to the DuBose Heyward novel, set in Charleston, that had recently been published, and would a few years later become the basis for the opera, Porgy and Bess.

The success of "Quagmire" led to requests for her to give recitations around Chicago, one of which caught the attention of a representative of the Redpath Chatauqua, who signed her to a three-year contract, making her the first member of her graduating class to secure a job. For the next three years she traveled from Maine to Florida and as far west as Colorado presenting stories and singing songs as she accompanied herself on the banjo.

Another photo of Anne Frierson from Redpath Chatuaqua materials.

In 1934, she married John K. Griffin in Kingstree United Methodist Church. Years later, their daughter would also choose Kingstree Methodist as the location for her wedding.  

Anne Frierson Griffin taught at Wesleyan College in Lincoln, GA where she was head of the radio department. Later, she became a professor of speech and head of the drama department at Columbia College where she founded the CC Players. During her years teaching at Columbia College, she often expressed a desire to have all of her former students come back for a reunion dinner. In 1969, her students surprised her by hosting a dinner to which all of her former students were invited. One hundred fifty of them attended with a host of others making donations to what would become the Anne Frierson Griffin Scholarship Fund. 

When she learned that they would be singing her favorite song, "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapese," she exhibited the exuberant spirit for which she was well-known by shouting, "Yippee."

Anne Frierson Griffin lived a full life, dying on March 25, 1985, at age 81. She is buried at Williamsburg Cemetery in Kingstree.

Annie Frierson Griffin's gravesite in Williamsburg Cemetery.

Three Story Buildings, Part 2: The Nexsen Building

From very early in Kingstree's history, the properties at the intersection of Main and Academy streets were viewed as prime real estate. The buildings on three of those corners were established early, with two of them still standing today. The Nelson House/Colonial Inn was the cornerstone of the Nelson Plantation and sat on the southeast corner of the intersection. Brockinton Drug Store had long been established on the southwest corner, and Stackley's Dry Goods was on the northeast. The Stackley building was later refitted as the Wee Nee Bank, and after the bank's failure, the Post Office moved into the building in 1932. It took some time, however, to establish the northwest corner of the intersection.

The red-brick Nexsen building is now home to Jarrito's Mexican Restaurant.

According to a story that appeared in The County Record in 1908, the property was tied up in the unsettled estate of S.M. Nexsen. Two old wooden buildings sat on the property. H.A. Meyer's bakery was in the front of one of the buildings, with Lesesne and Thompson's men's wear occupying the rear of that building. The other was a grocery store store operated by T.J. Pendergrass. Bessie S. Britton remembered Pendergrass as a jolly African-American storekeeper who had a comical pigeon-toed walk, often emulated by the bad little boys of the town.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1908, fire started in Lesesne and Thompson's part of the building. Although the bucket brigade fought it valiantly, both stores burned to the ground. No one, however, seemed too distraught by the loss. Meyer's Bakery moved into another store on Main Street, while T.J. Pendergrass (and his brothers) continued to operate their grocery store in a building on Academy Street for many more years. 

The sign at the very top, identifying the Nexsen Building.

For several years, the lot remained vacant, although it was used, according to The County Record, as "an exhibition ground for sundry and varied amusements and gaming operators." In 1911, W.I. Nexsen bought the lot for $4,500. He allowed various amusements to continue on the lot until he began construction of a new building in 1913. The newspaper noted that only a few days before construction began, a Coney Island merry-go-round had been set up on the property. 

The original plans called for a two-story brick building with retail establishments on the first floor and office space on the second. However, as the builders began their work, the Kingstree Masonic Lodge #46 approached Nexsen about adding a third floor to the building that its members could use as a lodge hall. Nexsen agreed, and Kingstree's second three-story building began to take shape. When completed, there were three retail stores on the ground floor, office space on the second floor, and the lodge hall on the third floor.

Detail work on the upper floors of the Nexsen building.

Because W.I. Nexsen also owned the buildings on either side of the three-story building on the corner, it is hard to establish with certainty what businesses were located in the three-story building. We do know that S. Marcus moved its operation from the Gourdin Building into one of the retail stores in the Nexsen building once it was completed. When Saul and Anne Marcus decided to retire from their retail store a few years later, the Bank of Kingstree moved a few doors down into the corner building. In 1917, it appears that Chase Brothers Piano works had a display and sales room in the building. 

The second floor of the building was home to a number of medical, insurance, and law offices, including Drs. R.J. McCabe, W.L. Taylor, and James A. Cole. F.R. Hemingway opened a law office on the second floor, as did J.D. O'Bryan, although Mr. O'Bryan soon went into partnership with the Stoll brothers. Insurance agents R.C. Johnson, Jr., and Carlisle l. Strauss both opened offices on the second floor of the Nexsen building. 

Colorful, lighted signs in the window's of the Nexsen building as a new day begins.

One interesting business that operated from the building was the Carolina Teachers' Agency, managed by F.K. Graham, with J. McCullough as assistant manager. A 1915 ad for the agency noted, "We have enlisted with us at this season, for both summer and fall terms, the very best teachers available and shall be glad to supply you at any season of the year. Office in Nexsen three-story building always open."

The third story of the building lent itself to another use in June 1949, when three of the stores on the west side of Academy Street caught fire. The fire started in the A&P Grocery store and quickly spread to D.D. Hardee's Palace Beauty & Barber Shop and Stanley Inman's Grocery. Firefighters were handicapped in fighting the blaze because they were unable to easily access the back of the buildings. Fire Chief Gordon Rodgers decided that the best way to attack the fire would be to drag the hoses up the two flights of stairs to the lodge hall on the third floor of the Nexsen building and then across the roof of Dubin's Department Store which would allow firefighters better access to the burning buildings than they had from the street. Although, the three buildings were seriously damaged, the fire was stopped from spreading to other buildings on the street.