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Pomaria is a town in Newberry
County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 177 at the 2000
census.
Pomaria, Newberry County, was named
by Horticulturist William Summer (a descendant of one of the earliest
settlers there). The name is derived from the Latin, pomus, meaning plants
or trees; and though often mispronounced, has no
basis for the legend
about a needy soul named
"Po' Mary."
Geography
Pomaria is
located at 34°15?60?N, 81°25?10?W (34.266535,
-81.419580)GR1.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the
town has a total area of 2.7 km˛ (1.0 mi˛). 2.7 km˛ (1.0 mi˛) of it is
land and 0.95% is water.
Demographics
As of the
censusGR2 of 2000, there were 177 people, 70 households, and 46 families
residing in the town. The population density was 65.7/km˛ (170.1/mi˛).
There were 84 housing units at an average density of 31.2/km˛ (80.7/mi˛).
The racial makeup of the town was 54.80% White, 41.24% African American,
1.69% from other races, and 2.26% from two or more races. Hispanic or
Latino of any race were 2.26% of the population.
There were 70
households out of which 30.0% had children under the age of 18 living with
them, 45.7% were married couples living together, 15.7% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 32.9% were non-families. 24.3% of
all households were made up of individuals and 10.0% had someone living
alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was
2.53 and the average family size was 2.91.
In the town the
population was spread out with 23.2% under the age of 18, 9.6% from 18 to
24, 29.9% from 25 to 44, 19.8% from 45 to 64, and 17.5% who were 65 years
of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there
were 124.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 106.1
males.
The median income for a household in the town was $45,000,
and the median income for a family was $49,000. Males had a median income
of $24,688 versus $25,313 for females. The per capita income for the town
was $20,524. About 2.1% of families and 9.7% of the population were below
the poverty line, including 12.9% of those under the age of eighteen and
14.3% of those sixty five or over.
Sketch written by John A. Chapman, "Annals of
Newberry, pg 548-552
The Pomaria Postoffice in the Southeastern part
of the county was established about the year 1840. The name was given by
Mr. William Summer, the founder and proprietor of the Pomaria Nurseries,
which were so long and so favorably known through out the country. Mr.
Summer, if I mistake not, was the first Postmaster. About the year 1850
the Postoffice was moved to where the present town of Pomaria now is on
the completion of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad to that point.
William Summer was Postmaster and Thomas W. Holloway (who is, in 1892, P.
M.) Assistant.
J. A. Folk & Sons did a large business as
merchants at Pomaria until the year 1855, when they were succeeded by
Thomas W. Holloway and his brother-in-law, H. H. Folk, who continued until
Secession and the war.
After the war Thomas W. Holloway and Hayne D.
Reid formed a copartnership and carried on a large and lucrative business,
until the murder of Reid and the burning of the house with the body of the
murdered man in it by the assassin, Thompson, on the 24th of December,
1875. Thompson confessed the crime and was hanged. The burning of
the house and the goods in it entailed a heavy loss upon the
firm.
The next mercantile house established at this
place was that of D. A. Dickert and David Hipp. They were succeeded by D.
Hipp & Co. E. R. Hipp, now (1892) of Columbia, represented the
company. Upon the dissolution of this firm Mr. Wm. T. Hatton took the
place of E. B. Hipp, and the firm name, D. Hipp & Co., still
stands.
A store house was built by Thomas W. Holloway
and his son, J. B. O’Neall Holloway, in 1872, and they carried on the
mercantile business together until the fall of 1889, when the stock of
goods on hand was sold to E. H. Hipp, son-in-law of the senior member of
the firm. The junior member, having married in Orangeburg, moved to that
county, near Fort Motte, and engaged in farming.
Mr. Hipp continued
the business until the 14th of January, 1891, when the store was burned
with a large stock of goods, entailing a heavy loss on Mr. Hipp.
J.
William Stone in 1889 built a store house in the town and was carrying on
business there, when his house and goods were burned at the same
time.
Among the earliest settlers of Pomaria and the neighborhood
was the family of Summer. John Adam Summer - I think is the name - came
across the country from Pennsylvania . The country traveled by him was
then almost an unbroken wilderness peopled by several different tribes of
Indians. Wherever he went, whatever tribe or family of natives he met
with, he always received the heartiest and warmest welcome. And when he
reached his destination, the natives there were waiting for him, extended
him a friendly greeting and made him feel at home. Rumors of kindness he
had shown to some Indians in Pennsylvania preceded him, and runners were
sent on ahead to tell the tale arid to give notice of his
coming.
John Summer was the father of John, Nicholas, Henry, Adam,
William, Thomas and Miss Catharine P. These are all gone, except Miss
Catharine. John and Nicholas I never knew. Nicholas was killed in the
Seminole war in Florida; John went down there to bring the body home and
he took sick and died in Florida without being able to accomplish his
mission. Elsewhere in this book an interesting anecdote is related of Dr.
King and Nicholas Summer. Henry was a lawyer at Newberry whom everybody
knew and respected. Towards the close of the war of Secession, Kilpatrick
raiders burnt his home in the lower part of the county, with his valuable
library, and hung him up by the neck to the limb of a tree in the effort
to make him tell where he had his money concealed, of which they imagined
he had an immense amount, He had none concealed and they at length
released him. Adam was a man of great and versatile genius. He left one
child, who lives in Florida. William never married, but might be called
the father of Pomaria and the Pomaria Nurseries, Henry Summer left three
children, only two of whom were alive in 1892, his son John Adam, and
daughter Catherine, who is happily married to Rev. J. F. Kiser, a Lutheran
minister John Adam owns the homestead of his grandfather, John Summer. The
other daughter of Henry Summer, Mary, married Dr. J. K. Chapman. At her
death she left three children, one daughter and two sons. Thomas Summer,
the youngest brother of Henry Summer, I knew for awhile in his youth. He
died early. He was a student, I think, in some German
university.
The late John A. Folk owned the land upon which the
town of Pomaria was built. He died in 1855, leaving three sons and two
daughters, J. D. A., Dr. H. M., H. H., Martha, the wife of Thomas W.
Holloway, and Eustatia, half-sister of the above, who was married to John
David Wedeman, who died leaving two sons.
Solomon Suber, who
resided where Dr. J. A. Berly afterwards lived, left four children, John
W., who moved to Florida after the war, where he has since died; Major
Christian H. Suber, also now deceased, a lawyer at Newberry, who was so
long and so favorably known socially, not only in his native county, but
,also throughout this State, and I may justly add, the United States, at
least in many others besides his own. Christian Suber was a man of more
than ordinary ability; of mild and amiable deportment and averse to
strife. He gave by will three thousand dollars for benevolent
purposes---two thousand dollars to Newberry College and one thousand for
the purpose of assisting in rebuilding the Lutheran Church at Newberry. He
had two sisters; Ann C., who was married to the late Walter F. Ruff—they
both died before the war, leaving no children. The other sister, Lavinia
C., was first married to George Ruff, who died before the war, leaving one
son, John S.; since the war she has become the wife of George Burder
Boozer and they make their home in the town of Newberry.
John Folk,
the original of the family of that name, resided a short distance from the
site of the town on Tanner’s Hill, known to wagoners prior to 1850 as
Folk’s Hill. It has been said that when wagoners left home with wagons
loaded with cotton or tobacco for market in Charleston if they succeeded
in getting up Folk’s Hill they would have no more trouble. Mr. Folk left
two children by his first marriage, John A. and a daughter who became the
wife of David Cannon and the mother of John A. Cannon. By a second
marriage there were five children who grew to maturity: John Wesley, David
and Levi E.—daughters Elizabeth Graham and Eve Busby, mother of Prof D. B.
and Rev. L. E. Busby, one a teacher of youth and the other a Lutheran
minister.
Dr. John A. Berly, who owned and lived and died at the
Solomon Suber place, as already mentioned, left two sons, John Eusebius
and W. W. Berly. John Eusebius died unmarried. He was a young man honored
and respected by all who knew him; of great ability, and preached the
gospel with great power and effect Those who knew him from his infancy
speak of him as having been blameless in all respects. After his
graduation from Newberry College in June, 1879, he read medicine and
practiced for awhile, a year or two, after taking his degree, when he
became deeply impressed with the feeling that it was his duty to devote
himself and his life to preaching the gospel. He accordingly prepared
himself for that work, studied in the Theological Seminary in Philadelphia
and graduated with distinction. He was called to the ninth pastorate of
the Lutheran Synod in the Fork, in which charge he continued until his
death on the 19th of July, 1890.
W. W. Berly is the owner of the
old homestead and is giving his undivided attention to the fine farm which
he inherited.
Dr. John A. Berly, the father of these young men, was
a kind and obliging neighbor. He was assiduous in the practice of his
profession for more than forty years. No man was more charitable, kind and
attentive, going at all hours, and often to a great distance, to give
relief to suffering humanity, when he knew that he would receive no
pecuniary recompense for his labor, He was always ready and willing to
assist with his means all benevolent and charitable objects. His place it
will be difficult to fill. He never used tobacco, nor alcoholic drinks,
because he knew from the study of physiology and from observation the evil
effects resulting from their use.
Christian Suber was another of
the old landmarks and resided within a half-mile of the site of the
present town of Pomaria, long before the Railroad was built. He was
engaged in the mercantile business and farming. Mr. Suber accumulated a
fortune; he grew rich and earned and secured the reward due to his
wonderful energy and perseverance. His wife was Caroline Counts, daughter
of Jacob Counts. Three sons and one daughter survived him, viz.: John D.,
George Benedict, J. Benson and Isabella Eleazer, who was first married to
Philander Cromer, who was killed in battle during the war of Secession.
Rebecca, the eldest of the children, married James A. Welch, and by this
union two sons and two daughters survive. One of these is Professor C. W.
Welch, who has filled various professional chairs and has .recently been
elected Professor of Physics in Clemson College.
Thomas W. Molloway
is still living as I compile these Annals. In the building of the
Greenville and Columbia Railroad he was appointed Agent at Hope Station,
Pomaria, Prosperity and Newberry, successively, as the Road advanced.
While Agent at Newberry he was elected Cashier of the Bank of Newberry,
which position he held until 1855, when he resigned and removed to Pomaria
and engaged in the mercantile business. He was the Secretary of the State
Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry for many years. He was also connected
with the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society from 1857 to the
breaking out of the war. The Society was reorganized after the war and he
occupied the first position of the Society under the late B. Wyatt Aiken.
in 1875 Col. Aiken declined re-election to the position of Secretary and
Mr. Holloway was elected. He has been re-elected each succeeding year to
the present, 1892.
Reminiscences of the Pomaria
Post Office
Newberry Herald, 12/19/1877
About the year 1790 the first Post Office
for the Pomaria section of the County was established on “Tanner’s Hill’
near the present day Pomaria Depot. John Folk, son of Jacob Volk (as the
name was then written) one of the original settlers, a tanner — from whose
vocation the hill received its name — was appointed postmaster. The mails
at that time were monthly; then semi monthly; then weekly and were
conveyed by horseback from Ninety Six, Greenville and Spartanburg to
Columbia. Peter Dickert, whose writings attested his excellence in
penmanship, acted as deputy Post Master, mailing the letters from time to
time as they accumulated in the office. The Post Office Department, having
observed the chirographic skill displayed in the office, wrote to Mr.
Folk, stating that it perceived he had a clerk and that it could not allow
him salary. Squire Dickert replied in substance ‘that the department need
give itself no unnecessary uneasiness, as his only expected salary was a
peck of chinquapins, whenever picked and hulled by
himself.’
The office was continued at that place until
1817 when it was located for a short time at the store of Solomon Suber,
on the spot later occupied by Dr. Berley’s Medical Office. Thence it was
removed to Col. Jacob Counts where it received the name COUNTSVILLE and
where it remained until the death of Col. Counts in 1826. It was then
removed to Col. William Counts’ place where it remained until 1831 when it
was transferred to Captain John Summers. There it remained under the name
of Countsville until about the year 1845 when our venerable citizen
William Summer Esq. established the Pomaria Nurseries. With that fine
classical taste for which he continued, admired at home and abroad, he
baptized both the Post Office and Town with the name POMARIA, unparalleled
perhaps in beauty.
During the time the office was at Col.
William Counts’ the mails were supplied semi weekly with a two- horse back
while at Captain Summers’ there was a semi weekly transit in four horse
stages. Thus it continued until early 1851 when William Summer Esq. kindly
consented at the request of Col. William Spencer Brown, to transfer both
name and office to the Railroad Depot established there.
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