One of my Flickr contacts, Matt (aka greenkayak73), has posted some interesting photos of a day trip he took to the communities of Stateburg and Horatio, both located in Sumter County. Of particular interest were his photos of the old LeNoir Store in Horatio, which has been operated by the Lenoir family for nearly 200 years.
Matt’s photos showed that the old store still has antique merchandise, and it looks like a fascinating place to visit, so I thought I might find out more about it. As usual, my research took me in an entirely different direction, and led to some new discoveries.
Several references to these towns was made on the Virtual Tourist website. VT is one of those websites that I usually wouldn’t give a second glance because it’s global in nature and content-to-advertising ratio. It’s hard to believe that has such a global scope could have any interesting information about our state. It’s the old “mostly harmless” syndrome. However, the site has several active members that have found some interesting places in our state.
VT member ClarkRB seems to be the most prolific writer on the site, having published 88 different travelogues about South Carolina. Clark finds some interesting out-of-the-way places, but he’s also quite honesty about racial and economic divides in the state. Clark says that, “Some towns are just real ugly, forgotten, and have no reason for a visit. Those are my favorite places.”
There are other users that have created travelogues on VT for the state. However, most of these focus on the more visible locations, such as Myrtle Beach or South of the Border. The site does have a discussion forum where one can find a few more contributed gems. Who knows, I may have to sign up for an account and contribute some of my own traveloges.
The Church of the Holy Cross is, I think, the buial site of Poinsett. It’s a beautiful structure, but was not open at the time of my visit some years ago due to rehabilitation. I think they had some termite or other degradation to the structure, which is built out of some non-standard materials. Richard Furman’s first church is just up the road and to the right. Fascinating place as well.