A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
My last Saturday before heading back to work after Winter Break, and I decided to do some geocaching and photography in Fairfield County. I had new GPS units to test drive, I had specific locations I wanted to photograph, and I wanted to take some time to swing by my parent’s house. I had ambitious goals for what I wanted to see and do, perhaps too ambitious. It turned out to be a day of mixed results – delight and frustration, discovery and missed opportunities.
Saturday night was our annual Taylor Family Christmas gathering. Several were not able to make it this year, so we only had 3/4 of our family present. Even so there were still 28 of us present. This year Mom made a big pot of “grandma soup” and Dad bought some barbecue. Not exactly standard Christmas … Read More “Family Gatherings and Family Bibles” »
Over the weekend I signed up for a free two-week trial of Ancestry.com. I guess I fell prey to their recent marketing campaign, which shows users discovering new things about their families as “leaves” appear on their family tree. I had already amassed quite a bit of data on our family, so I was curious to see if I could add to my list.
It has been several years since I’ve done any serious research on our family’s history. Even then I’ve been more of a collector than actual researcher, depending upon the prior research of several cousins and some nice folks that I’ve met online, such as Dan Ellenburg in Pittsburg, with his excellent website on the Ellenberg family. By using several sources I’ve found some conflicting data, and have had to do some verification before merging various data sets. I figured that would also be the case with Ancestry.com, and I was certainly right.
Google has partnered with Time/LIFE to make a massive collection of images available online through the Google Image Search funtcion. The announcement was made on the Official Google Blog today. This collection includes film, negatives, and even glass plates dating back as far as 1750, which have been digitized and are now hosted by Google. … Read More “That’s LIFE” »
On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye
to Caanan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie.I am bound for the promised land, I’m bound for the promised land.
Oh, who will come and go with me, I am bound for the promised land.
The trip was going to be a ghost-hunting expedition for Eric Rogers and me. Eric and I had finally met offline, and were planning a joint expedition to the haunted Rock House just south of Greenwood. Since we would be down in that area, we had also plotted out some other interesting locations. I had flagged one little town, Promised Land, SC, with the comment, “With a name like that, how could we NOT go there?”
Eric was not able to make the trip, but my brother Houston and sister Glynda were able to go. Houston took on the role of Aaron, the spokesperson, with Glynda as Miriam, and me as Moses, leading and documenting our trip. So early Sunday morning we found a suitable radio evangelist and headed for the Promised Land. We hoped we would make it all the way, further than our biblical counterparts.
I’ve been re-reading Dr. A. V. Huff’s “Greenville: The History of the City and County in the South Carolina Piedmont.” I’ve just come to the portion about the “Redemption Campaign” of 1876, and was struck by the ironies and similarities with our current election. We may think the Obama-McCain contest has been ugly, but it … Read More “Election Eve – 132 years ago” »
I’ve come across the term “old field” in place names several times recently. Our put-in on one of our Enoree trips was at Mas Old Field Landing. At the Owings History Museum last week there were references to the Ora Old Field Church (pictured above) and the Riddle Old Field School. This got me thinking … Read More “Remembering the “Old Fields”” »
This morning I was feeling much, much better than I had the past couple of days, so I decided to head down to Owings for their Pioneer Days. I had gone last year and really enjoyed myself, and really didn’t want to miss this year’s event. It was enjoyable again this year, but this year I noticed something very distressing. More on that later.
I left Greenville early so that I could get there before the parade started. As I was driving down the Interstate it looked like a wall of clouds hovering over the Gray Court exit. Under this cloud the humidity skyrocketed. Unfortunately, hot and humid was the way it was going to be.
In my previous post I mentioned that I wasn’t able to find much information on Duncan Chapel online. Thanks to a bit of help from my friend Duckhunter, I was able to get some more info. Dr. A. V. Huff’s book on the history of Greenville mentions the area twice – once in reference to … Read More “Children’s Graveyard – Followup and History” »
Eric from “A Day’s Drive from Greenville” recently wrote about a trip he took to the “Children’s Graveyard” near Furman University. His descriptions and photos made me want to take a visit for myself, so today I set off in search of this supposedly haunted location.
I had only heard about this graveyard recently while reading about ghost stories of the Upstate. It’s odd that throughout all my years of association with Furman and the Furman area I was never aware of this cemetery. However, it is easy to overlook the entrance, and the area has been left undeveloped.
Thanks to Eric’s lat/long coordinates, I was able to find the spot with no trouble. The entrance road, Thackston Road on Google Maps, has huge holes in the pavement and doesn’t look like something that’s really accessible. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would drive right by.
