The last post ended with Kingstree citizens riding two itinerant printers out of town on a rail in late 1859. While these two appear to be the only ones to suffer that particular indignity, two school teachers were also believed to be abolitionists sent to rile up the enslaved population, and they, too, were harassed by local citizens until they left the area.
Dr. James Brockinton's home at the head of Academy Street served as an early school.
In those days before public education, many of the more well-to-do families pooled their resources to hire a teacher for their children. The teachers would board with the families, with each family providing room and board for a time commensurate with the number of children in the family.
In 1857, the Rev. James A. Wallace, who was then minister at Williamsburg Presbyterian, placed an ad looking for a teacher. It's not clear if the ad was for Wallace himself or for members of his congregation. He received a number of applications and after hiring one of the applicants he passed the resumé of Richard Patterson Ashbridge Hamilton on to S. J. Bradley and four other families who were also looking for a teacher. Hamilton was the son of a Virginia minister, who had most recently answered a call in Pennsylvania.
In a letter published in The Charleston Mercury in late December 1859, Wallace, who by then had left Kingstree to pastor a church in Georgia, noted that it was not at all unusual for local families to hire teachers from the North. Wallace noted that the families who employed Hamilton considered him to be a good teacher. However, there were others in the community who were suspicious of him simply because he had come from Pennsylvania.
At some point, Hamilton submitted an article, which seems to have been about religion, to The Kingstree Star, which was not accepted by editor Richard Columbus Logan. Instead, Logan penned an editorial in which he made derogatory remarks about Hamilton and his views. Hamilton protested this in a letter he hand-delivered to Logan. According to Wallace, Logan "disliking some portion of it, commenced a personal attack on Mr. Hamilton."
Richard Columbus "Lum" Logan
No one was injured, but it was hardly a fair fight as Hamilton had a physical disability. In fact, this disability kept him from presiding over a larger school and was the major reason he had applied to teach at a small country school.
Hamilton charged Logan with assault and battery, but the Grand Jury refused to indict Logan. Hamilton then published a circular, detailing his issues with Logan, and Logan began to editorialize on a regular basis about the dangers of hiring northern school teachers.
At the time this was going on, H.D. Shaw had hired William Joseph Dodd from Jersey City, NJ, to teach his children. Dodd had only been in Williamsburg County for 10 months, living with the Shaws for the entire time.
Once Logan began his editorial campaign against teachers from the North, citizens began harboring suspicions about Dodd, as well as Hamilton.
William J. Dodd
Source; Findagrave.com
After the altercation between Hamilton and Logan, some of Hamilton's patrons withdrew their children from his school without notifying S.J. Bradley or the other parents. This created strong tensions among many families in the area.
But some of the families who had hired Hamilton, as well as Dodd's employer, H.D. Shaw, supported the teachers, noting they had seen no signs that either of them held abolitionist views. Feelings were running high in the community with at least one demonstration near the courthouse where demonstrators called for men like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter to rise again to defend the county.
A group of men opposed to Hamilton and Dodd met at McClary's store about three miles from Kingstree, where they agreed that the teachers must be forced to leave the community. Of all people, R.C. Logan was named chairman of a committee of 12 men who were given the task of informing the two teachers of the community's decision.
Dodd, for his part, approached Dr. Samuel Davis McGill, who had taught school before becoming a physician, and asked him to intercede with the community on his behalf. Dr. McGill chaired a meeting at the courthouse where he attempted to, as he wrote in his reminiscences, "appease the tumultuous cry against these foreigners." Drs. James S. Brockinton and S.D.M. Byrd quickly let Dr. McGill know that there would be no appeasement, and he hastened to tell William Dodd to leave town immediately.
A newspaper article published in Maine, stated that Dodd grew disgusted and left Williamsburg County; however, it seems likely that he simply listened to Dr. McGill's counsel and departed. Hamilton, on the other hand, stayed in Williamsburg County until the deadline he had been given before taking his leave.
I wondered what happened to Hamilton and Dodd after their tumultuous stay in Williamsburg County. While it's not always the case, the news stories surrounding these events gave me the gift of plenty of clues to attempt to trace their histories.
Both of them, it turns out, lived long lives, but neither of them married.
Hamilton, on leaving Williamsburg County, attempted to secure a teaching position in Sumter. However, his "reputation" in Williamsburg preceded him, and the people of Sumter also sent him packing. He then returned to his father's home in Pennsylvania.
In the 1870s, he moved to Chicago, where he first worked as a clerk in a store and later sold fire insurance. He died in Bremen, IL, a suburb of Chicago, in July 1918, at the age of 85.
William Dodd seems to have emulated Dr. S.D. McGill in that on returning to Jersey City, he entered medical school. During the Civil War, he was a US Army Surgeon aboard the hospital steamer Ben Deford. He later worked for several years at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
Dodd died in 1909 at age 80. This interesting article appeared in several newspapers across the county shortly after his death. "Dr. William J. Dodd, a New York physician, who left an estate of $250,000, feared he would be buried alive, and in his will requested that his radial artery be cut before his burial. The administrator in probating his will said the artery was cut as requested."
It seems a few lines from Jan Richardson's poem "Eucharista" offers a fitting benediction for this sad moment in our community's history:
You whose names
have been lost to the winds,
whose stories
have been turned into scraps,
whose voices
echo through the ages
and beckon us to listen,
we give thanks
and we remember you.
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