Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions, and KuKlux Outrages of the Carolinas: By a "Carpet-Bagger" Who Was Born and Lived There

The early days of the Summer of 1872 found three fathers, three mothers and five children residing in the quiet little village of Hudsonville, South Carolina. Driven by fate and the results of the recent great rebellion, the effects of which were still agitating all that section of the Southern country, we had changed our places of abode in other States and pitched our humble tents in this section of the United States, with the avowed intent of commencing life anew, and "making up by sober, industrious effort, so far as the ability lay in us, for lost time." We were all members of that much abused, but exceedingly patient class, known in this country as "colored people," a term which embraces all who have within their veins a single drop of African blood, from the sable brother who traces his lineal ancestors, on both sides, directly from the banks of the Congo and the Nubian plains, and boasts of his unadulterated blood, to the flaxen-haired octoroon, who leads captive the heart of her unwary Anglo-Saxonadmirer, that never associates her in his mind with any member of the "despised race." Jones, the eldest of the three, was a native Southerner, "to the manor born," (a favorite phrase, by the way, in that section,) and had left the home of his nativity, only sixty miles to the northeast of our present place of abode; in fact, having passed the greater part of his manhood as an intinerant carpenter, he was well acquainted not only with every town and hamlet of any note in all that region of country, but he was deeply versed in the avenues of travel leading to them; which was a very important acquisition in a section of country where there were no railroads, and where the tourist was relegated to the usages in vogue before the advent of the Christian era. He knew the names and places of residence of every property-holder of any note as well, and, had the records and maps of the country been lost, I verily believe he could have located more than one half the farms, and given them "metes and bounds" from his retentive memory, for stakes and stones and "blazed" trees were as familiar to him as the ordinary thoroughfares of business are to the metropolitan merchant. He could no more part with the services of his friendly pipe than he could with his "better half," and when comfortably ensconced by the side of a glowing hickory fire on a winter's night, with his pipe well filled, he could "spin yarns" by the hour.