Marlboro County ScArchives History - Books .....Chapter XIX Prominent Men After The Revolution 1897
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Book Title: A History Of Marlboro County

CHAPTER XIX.
PROMINENT MEN AFTER THE REVOLUTION.

  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., 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 born, 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.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

A HISTORY OF MARLBORO COUNTY,
WITH
TRADITIONS AND SKETCHES OF NUMEROUS FAMILIES.

REV. J. A. W. THOMAS, AUTHOR.

A wonderful stream is the river Time
  As it runs through the realms of tears 
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime
  As it blends with the ocean of years.
                        —TENNYSON.

ATLANTA, GA.:
THE FOOTE & DAVIES COMPANY,
Printers and Binders.
1897.


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