<![CDATA[In Search of Concord - Concord, South Carolina]]>

<![CDATA[In Search of Concord - Concord, South Carolina]]>Wed, 20 May 2026 19:33:07 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Concord, South Carolina]]>Tue, 28 Nov 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.concordrob.com/concord-south-carolina/south-carolina

There was a small blue spot on the wall. The rest of the massive map had the neatly written names of all the schools and churches, towns and villages in York County, South Carolina in 1914, but all that marked the former site of the community of Concord, South Carolina was this unlabeled blue dot.

There are no records of Concord South Carolina to be found on the internet. All that exists is a red dot on “Google Maps” in York County, SC just outside Charlotte, NC. I was able to find genealogical records of a Concord Cemetery, so I knew town had once existed.

I contacted the Historical Center of York County, and researcher Wanda Fowler kindly dug up a pair of grainy photographs of the Concord school and ten undated clipping from the Yorville Enquirer that recounted some of the history of Concord.

Concord School circa 1897 from Historic York County, Michael C. Scoggins, 2009

From what I can tell Concord, SC never developed into much of a town, but at its height it had a school, a church and a graveyard. Concord was noted as a site for annual revivals by Methodist preachers.
Nestled into the banks of the Catawaba River, the town flooded frequently and seemed to struggle between floods, fires, and disease. Average life span was only 46, and the rate of child mortality was depressingly high.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the power needed to run cotton mills changed over from local inconsistent river flow to the new wonder - hydroelectricity. The Catawba River was dammed and Lake Wylie was formed. The town of Concord hit hard times. The rise of Lake Catawba engulfed much of the prime riverfront farmland, malaria spread and many of the Concordians sold their land to the power company and moved out.

Catawba Nuclear Power Plant property. Concord Cemetery in blue outline.

In 1925, a new power plant was opened. This required more water and the dam was raised so that the resulting lake increased in size 20 fold. In 1924, the Southern Power Company raised the level of the dam by 25 feet and built the new Catawba Hydroelectric Station to replace the original. Much of the old community was no longer accessible by road and the remaining local residents were forced off their land by rising water and the constant threat of disease. Around 1930 the church and the school burnt down. They were rebuilt, but burned down again.

In 1985, the Catawba Nuclear Power plant was commissioned. Today, the peninsula is dominated by clouds of steam and the massive concrete structures. Access is through a restricted road. I was able to get the code to the gate and sneak unannounced into the grounds of the Catawba Nuclear Power facility. Massive cooling towers with cascading flows of water create a constant drone that vibrates the otherwise deserted landscape.

By the time the nuclear power station was built, all that remained of the community of Concord was a couple of street signs and the old graveyard.

”In her Glory … when it was a noted camp meeting place, people flocked in from miles around…. And to think that all of the old families are dead and their descendants ruthlessly driven from their homes by the lust or greed for power , by a corporation, not one of which was interested except in the greed for gold.” (Dr. R.L. Anderson, Yorkville Enquirer, undated)

In 2013, more than 100 gallons of water contaminated with radioactive tritium was released into the surrounding waterways. No one complained.

There were no Concordians left.

]]><![CDATA[Murder in Concord, South Carolina]]>Sat, 25 Nov 2017 17:43:14 GMThttps://www.concordrob.com/concord-south-carolina/murder-in-concord-south-carolinaI looked for the Anderson family marker in the Concord Cemetery, but couldn't find it. There are eight Andersons buried somewhere in the Concord Cemetery, but the patriarch of the family, Billy Anderson Sr., isn’t among them.    There are records for   Mary Anderson, who died in in 1853 aged 37, and for her husband, Billy Jr., who died the following year. Their orphaned children were taken in by family members, including Sarah Anderson, born in 1846, who was murdered in 1861 and buried in Concord Cemetery.
After her parents died, Sarah lived with her grandparents. In 1861, Sarah was sent over to stay with their neighbors, the Lathams, to help them with their cotton picking. Later in the week, one of the Latham children came to visit the Andersons, and Grandmother Anderson asked how Sarah was “getting along picking cotton,” and she was told that Sarah never arrived at the Lathams. One of their slaves, Mack, overheard them and said:
“I speck she’s daid, as I saw some buzzards down the branch this morning.”
They found Sarah's body, and Mack was charged with cutting her throat. More accurately, he was accused of leaving Sarah for dead in a gully, and then returning later to find her still alive. According to the version recounted more than 60 years later by Sarah’s nephew, Dr. R. L. Anderson:
“He returned that night and found her still alive; she had literally torn the bark from a sapling trying to arise. He finished her and threw her body in the nearby gully…. Mack, a young mulatto slave, was arrested, jailed and tried for the murder.”
Here's where this story takes a twist. Sarah’s grandfather, Billy Sr., hired lawyers to defend Mack, the accused killer “to the limit of their ability.” Dr. Anderson was clearly puzzled by the defense of “this fiend” by his great-grandfather. The actions of Billy Sr. sullied the Anderson name.  “His disgrace became publicly known and my father never mentioned his name if he could avoid it.”
In a follow up column another Concordian, Mr. J.T. Faris, wrote, "My mother held me in her arms, and as a child I witnessed the hanging of Mack Anderson. My father was one of the armed guards. Though not quite three years old when it occurred that unnatural sight made an indelible impression on my mind, as vivid today as when I saw the black cap pulled over the doomed negro’s eyes, the trap sprung and the body dangling in the air. This is the earliest recollection of my life.
Faris was clearly haunted by the hanging, for he spent much time as an adult investigating the case further. The central question was why would Billy Anderson Sr. hire white attorneys to defend the killer of his granddaughter? Faris writes,
“The reasons were three and simple. 1. Billy really believed Mack was innocent. 2. Mack was his own son by a young slave woman. 3. Mack was a strapping young buck in his twenties and easily worth a thousand dollars in gold.”
The trial was held in nearby Yorkville and the former sheriff Robert Graves “obtained the evidence for the prosecution. After a bitter and hard-fought legal battle, Mack was convicted strictly on circumstantial evidence.”
A scaffold was erected on the site of the murder. There are three versions of what happened on the day of the execution. Dr. Anderson says that Robert Graves grabbed the supposed murder weapon a butcher’s knife and said
“‘As you perish in death thus shall perish your _____- knife. ‘ He then drove the knife into the upright of the gallows until the blade broke, then again and again until none of the blade remained…. Some say he drove the pieces into a pine and that over forty years after there was a warty cancerous growth on the tree, where the pieces of the blade were driven in.”
A second version said that when the hour for execution arrived, the current sheriff, Alfred Stillwell, spoke “some words of regret or something. Then Robert Glenn reached out his hand and said ‘Give me that hatchet!’ and with one swift blow severed the retaining rope and the fiend plunged to eternity.”
The final version from J.K. Feris tells a different story of the events on the scaffold:
.... I saw the black cap pulled over the doomed negro’s eyes, the trap sprung and the body dangling in the air. This is the earliest recollection of my life. Mack was prevented from giving details of the tragedy for which he was executed. As he began to talk the crowd of angry men began to cry ‘Hang him! – Hang him!’ whereupon the sheriff obeyed and Mack was prevented from telling anything.”
The tattered remains of these archived, undated newspaper articles recount events that occurred perhaps 70 or 80 years earlier. J.K. Faris claims to have been a witness to the execution in 1861. The three versions of the events on the gallows are as tangled as these incomplete newspaper clippings. I suspect the facts of the case were never clear, but herein lies core of the tale: The elderly white man defends the black accused killer of his own granddaughter. I can’t help but conjecture that Mack Anderson was Billy Sr.’s son and therefore the uncle of Sarah Anderson. Mack alerted everyone to the possible location of the body, and that was enough to convict him. He trusted that his father would manage to free him, but at the last moment realized that Billy Sr. could do nothing for him. Mack protested his innocence, but there was no answer against an angry mob.

]]><![CDATA[The People of Concord South Carolina]]>Sat, 25 Nov 2017 16:49:37 GMThttps://www.concordrob.com/concord-south-carolina/the-people-of-concord-south-carolinaTechnically, there are no people in Concord, South Carolina. There is a cemetery and a nuclear power plant. But I did meet some interesting people along the way.

I am most grateful to Wanda Fowler, the researcher at Historical Center of York County who dug up some yellowed undated newspaper articles and photographs in their archives.

Micheal C. Scoggins wrote the book on the history of York County. We also shared an interest in African-American soldiers who served in The Revolutionary War. By happy coincidence, I was able to connect him with Janet Eberts of Concord, Ohio who is passionately trying to prove that long-time Concordian, Richard Stanhup, was a slave in George Washington's personal service during The Revolutionary War and was therefore a veteran.

I met Carla Pendleton at Dick Pendleton Grocery and Sporting Goods in Clover, South Carolina. Her relative, Thomas Faris, gave the land for cemetery, and Carla heads up the Concord Cemetery Association Carla also supplied some helpful additional historical documents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Dow

The most fascinating part of this project is the people I meet, and the stories that they tell. I’ve interviewed hundreds of strangers, some of whom quickly became friends. A second way I’ve “met” people is through the research necessary to create the background of each of these “Concord” narratives. Today I spent hours reading about Lorenzo Dow. Dow was born in Connecticut and trained to become a Reverend in the Methodist church, but his passionate, uncompromising preaching was too radical for the orthodox Methodist church and they disowned him. With unkempt hair and only the clothes on his back and a box of Bibles that he gave away, Dow became an itinerant Methodist preacher who roamed far and wide, holding “camp meetings.” These meetings were wildly popular. It is said that he would preach to 10,000 and hold them spell-bound. He went as far east as England and Ireland, as far south as The West Indies and as far North as Canada, but most of the time roamed the back woods of North America from Vermont to Alabama. Dow became a leading figure in the Second Great Awakening movement, and he included in his travels regular camp meetings in Concord, South Carolina.

Among those who heard Lorenzo Dow speak, was a young Presbyterian named Thomas Faris. According to a letter from Faris' grandson "At first there was a tabernacle lighted on the outside with blazing pine knots on elevated earthworks and a trumpet used to call the congregation to services." Ferris was so impressed that he not only became a Methodist, he also donated five acres of land to establish the Concord Methodist Church in 1832. The deed specified that the land "could not be disposed of nor used for any other than church purposes, and that if for any reason they failed to get a preacher, they must get out and get fresh air. "

It is thought that more than 10,000 babies were named after Lorenzo Dow. If you Google “Lorenzo Dow” and “Concord” you’ll find Concordians with the first name “Lorenzo” and the middle name “Dow” in a half dozen states, I don’t know if there is a direct connection between the name “Concord” and Dow’s preaching, but he did preach in Concord NH in 1818 and later in Concord, NC.
So once again the name of this community was probably derived from the name of the church, but we probably will never know.
For more on the fascinating life of Lorenzo Dow, see http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/ARIZARD/2005-11/1131402763

Next Stop, Concord Tennessee (second Visit)

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