Museum Musings
Father Stephen Presley was born a slave in 1820. He was owned by Boykin Witherspoon, a prominent planter from Society Hill. Presley was a carpenter by trade. He married another slave by the name of Phyllis McIver Presley. Welsh Neck Baptist Church records indicate that the couple fellowshipped there as slaves but were dismissed in […]
During the Great Depression, Butler was in charge of the distribution of relief supplies to the African-American community, and as a Mason and an Odd Fellow, he was respected by religious and business leaders both black and white. According to "Rev. Henry Hannibal Butler," a remembrance written by Horace Fraser Rudisill, Butler, among his many other worthy and laudable accomplishments, was "remembered as always being immaculately dressed in coat, tie and vest with a gold watch chain prominently displayed."