MLK Day 2025 Ramble
And so we come to 2025. Alan and I headed out on a brutally cold Monday. First stop was breakfast at Biscuit Head in Greenville, then on to our target area. We almost missed the community. There had been a sign that read, “Welcome to the Historic Slabtown Community.”
That sign is now gone and only the posts remain. It wasn’t the last time on this trip we would see that landmarks were missing.
Slabtown Cemetery
We also drove right past our first target, Slabtown Cemetery. We turned around at the local convenience store and headed back. There we found the cemetery surrounded by a concrete block wall, next to an open field where the church had once stood. We drove around to the back of the cemetery and entered the property.
Before we entered the cemetery proper we spotted an anomaly. Just outside of the wall there was a lone headstone. Jasper Davis, a Confederate veteran, was isolated from the rest of the cemetery for some reason.
When we got back home I found out why Davis was isolated. He committed murder. Jasper “Jap” Davis suffered from mental problems and was admitted to the “lunatic asylum” at Bull Street in Columbia for awhile. During the 1886 trial, the Intelligencer’s description of Davis was less than kind.
Davis was convicted of shooting and killing his wife and sentenced to death. Some were a bit more charitable in their assessment as his attorneys appealed to the governor to have his sentence commuted.
Davis was executed by hanging later that year. The Intelligencer described the execution in gory detail, which I shall omit. This is just the first part of the description.
So Thomas Jasper Davis was buried outside of the Slabtown Cemetery. One of my Facebook friends commented that the headstone was added much, much later by Davis’s great-great grandson. Prior to that only a tree marked his grave. Davis died in 1888, but the wall wasn’t built until 1953, so there was no physical barrier between his grave and the rest until that time. I find it interesting that the wall builders felt compelled to exclude him. As for the tree, there was only a stump remaining, if it was the same tree.
We made our way into the cemetery. Even though the sign says 1886, there are burials much older. So much so that I’m rethinking when the church was established. It had to have been earlier. The earliest listed on Find-a-Grave had the date of death as 1835. We spotted some very old headstones. This one was hard to read, but it looks like 1840-something.
There were others from the same vintage.
I also found members of the Rankin Family that operated the mills and dam.
The cemetery was well-kept and in some cases newer, more legible markers had been placed in front of the original markers.
I found one very interesting interment. It was for a child, but it was a concrete oval with the inscription on the coping.
Our next stop was the old Slabtown Academy. I knew that the building was no longer there, but I wanted to see what remained. We found a residence at the site – a mobile home and several other buildings. Alan and I drove on around to a location where we had a better view of the hill where the school was located. Behind the site was a recycling/convenience center that let us get fairly close. I could just imagine the academy sitting at the top of this hill.
At the crossroads on Highway 88 was the only store left in Slabtown, the Slabtown Variety Store. We didn’t stop in for a visit.
As we headed to our next target we stopped by the old Slabtown Cafe. There we found more missing things. The cafe signs I saw in 2021 were no longer there.
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I really enjoy learning more about South Carolina from your blogs. My dad grew up in Greenwood, but he joined the Army, so naturally we did a lot of traveling. Every summer we spent time visiting family in the area. Even now, my favorite trips are to visit family still in the area. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Hope things are going well for you and your wife as you continue to recover from the storms in the fall.
Regarding the portion of your article concerning Jasper “Jap” Davis, is it possible that his behavior was the result of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD? Could he have suffered some trauma during the Civil War which led to his later ill behavior? One can only speculate.
That’s what I thought while reading this.
My mother’s family, the descendents of Captain William Griffith, moved to Slabtown from Mauldin after the civil war. My grandfather, Ellison Capers Griffith, attended the Slabtown Academy. He was a self taught fiddle player and blacksmith and served as Chairman of the local school board. He and my grandmother, LB Bradley Griffith, are buried in the Slabtown Cemetery. As a small child, I remember going to clean up that cemetery around the middle of May. My Aunt Velma Griffith built and ran the corner store until her death in 1995.