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Prominent Men After the
Revolution
Source: A History of Marlboro County: With
Traditions and Sketches of Numerous Families,
1897
So far as this writer now
remembers, in all her history Marlboro has furnished the State but
two governors. One of these has already been named in these pages;
Dr. B. K. Henagan, who filled out the unexpired term of Gov. Noble,
who died in office. The other was John Lide Wilson.
This man was born in
Marlboro, a few miles from Cheraw, in 1784. After his school days
were over he was admitted to the bar in 1807 and settled down to his practice in Georgetown. In
the next year he was elected a member of the House of
Representatives, and subsequently filled a seat in the State Senate. In 1822 he
was made president of the Senate, and, before the session was ended,
was elected governor. Judge O'Neal,
in his "Bench and Bar," gives an estimate of his character, and
says: "His intellect was a fine one; his speeches, political and
legal, were always compiled with
wonderful arrangement and care, and his voice and manner were fine
and graceful. If he had cultivated the great talents with which God had endowed him, he must
have been among the greatest men of South Carolina." He died in
Charleston in 1849 and was buried
there with military honors.
It is fit that mention be made of
James R. Ervin, a young man when he came to Marlboro as a lawyer in
1809, having been born in Marion county in 1788. He soon rose to popular favor,
and was soon elected a member of the House of Representatives, a
position he held until he moved to
Marion. But upon his return to Marlboro he was elected to the
Senate. Subsequently he went to Cheraw, and the Chesterfield
people made him
their
Senator. Few men have lived in Marlboro of a more handsome
and commanding physique—tall, well proportioned, a countenance
beaming with intelligence and
humor, with captivating, easy manners and charming conversational
powers, he was the center and life of every circle.
As an orator, cool,
fearless, ready and forcible, he seemed born to lead; and had he not
relied too much upon his natural gifts, but given himself more to application, he might have
climbed to any height in public favor and position. Among the grand
men of a past generation, who swayed popular gatherings in the stirring times
of nullification in the Pee Dee section, the writer can remember
none, who in his boyhood's fancy,
towered above Col. Ervin. He had a son, Major E. P. Ervin, who
settled at Bennettsville as a lawyer, went to the Legislature, was
commissioner in equity, married a
daughter of Mr. John McCollum and left a family of several sons and
daughters.
Soon after the Revolutionary War was ended Robert Campbell came
to the Pee Dee and settled near Hunt's Bluff in Marlboro. He had
been a British officer, had large
wealth, married Miss Blair and soon became a money-making,
prosperous planter. He was careful in the education and culture of
his children, Robert B.t James,
John and Maria. The daughter, Maria, married David G. Coit, and was
the mother of Major J. C. Coit, of Cheraw, and others. Her second husband was Major
James McQueen.
It is said that when the War of 1812 came on
between Great Britain and the
United States, the elder Capt. Campbell earnestly urged his first
bornr Robt. B., to accept a commission in the British army which he
offered to procure for him. But the
son indignantly refused what to him appeared a traitorous
temptation. Young Campbell was gifted, of courteous, courtly manners, splendid form and
features, and soon rose into prominence. He married into the Lee
family, of Virginia, and was elected a member of
Congress. Subsequently he sold his splendid
plantation (what is now Drake's Mill and Lowden plantation), and
went to Alabama, and filled a
mission to Havana, and afterwards to England.
Col. John
Campbell, after his literary course, studied law, it is thought at
Litchfield, Conn., was admitted to the bar in 1822, but seems not to
have practiced long, if at all. He
married Mrs. Jane Thomas, the widow of W. L. Thomas. She was Miss
McQueen before marriage, a most amiable, excellent woman, who died at a great
age only a few years ago. Col. Campbell was first elected to the
Twenty-first Congress, which met in
1829. In 1837 he appeared again as a member of the Twenty-fifth and
was three times elected after this. He died universally lamented
soon after his last election. He
was a man of great polish, graceful manner, amiable spirit, refined,
modest and yet fearless; one of the most fascinating, fluent speakers of his day, capable
of charming all circles in society, the favorite alike of all
classes of his people. The Messrs.
Campbell, of Blenheim, and
James P., of Bennettsville, are descended from the first Robert, but
not by the first marriage.
Soon after the war for
independence there came to the lower part of Marlboro a man, who, if
not distinguished for great intellectual force, was yet notable on several accounts, Baron De
Poelnitz. It was claimed that the same lofty spirit that impelled
his more distinguished countrymen, Kosciusko and Pulaski, to come from Poland here,
moved Poelnitz. He purchased a large body of land on the river,
below Three Creeks, and, bringing
his effects up the Pee Dee from Georgetown by boat, built a
store-house, and thought to establish a town, and to this day the
place is called "Ragtown."
Tradition has it that he brought numerous seeds from the old world
to sow in the virgin soil of the new; and among the rest
the introduction of "nut grass" is
charged to his account. It used to be told that
when the old man came to die, he charged his friends that
when they thought him dead they
must, before burying him, apply heated irons to his feet, and see
sure signs of decay; then place his body in a strong double case, bury it upon a certain
sand-ridge in "Ragtown,"and "plant an oak at his head, that the dust
of his body entering into the growing tree might not be found at the general
resurrection."
The writer remembers a tree pointed out as
the majestic sentinel, keeping watch and guard over the dust of the Baron.
Whatever the singularities of this old Baron (and, perhaps, the only
one Marlboro has ever had to live
and die upon her soil), he seems to have accumulated property, and
reared a cultured family. A son, Julius, as remembered, married a
daughter of Col. Rogers, and when
their children were nearly all grown, went with them to Alabama. A
bachelor brother to Julius, odd, simple-minded old man, whom the young people
used to love to tease, clung to Julius as the vine to its prop. The
name is no longer known in the
county. A daughter of the Baron, a beautiful accomplished
woman,'first married a Mr. Stewart, and after his death became the
wife of Robeson Carloss. Mr.
Carloss was a prominent useful man in his day, who came from
Virginia; lived and raised a family in the Brownsville community; was long known as a justice of the
peace. The name is extinct on the Pee Dee.
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