Museum Musings
The trustees of Welsh Neck High School converted their institution into a non-sectarian Baptist college. It opened September 30, 1908, as “Coker College for Women,” founded by James L. Coker. Baptist control ended in 1944, and in 1969, the college became co-educational. The Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics opened on the campus in 1988. […]
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 […]
One of the first settlements within the boundary of present day Darlington County was that at Long Bluff in 1748. It also was the site of the historical Long Bluff Courthouse established by the Circuit Court Act of the Legislature of 1769, making it one of six operating Courthouses established at that time outside Charleston. […]
Old Society Hill Library is now located on the grounds of St. David’s Academy. The oldest lending library in South Carolina (exclusive of those in Charleston and Georgetown), it was built by the Society Hill Library Society, which was organized in 1822. The library has not functioned as such for many years, and is opened […]
Arthur W. Stanley, a native of Darlington, was a WWII veteran. He served in the Pacific Theater. Stanley was the president of the Darlington Chapter of the NAACP and held the position for 40 years. He led the efforts to desegregate the Darlington County Public School System as a plaintiff in Stanley v. Darlington County […]
On June 30, 2000, The Patriot, a feature film starring Mel Gibson, is released in theaters. Mel Gibson plays Benjamin Martin, an American swept up in the Revolutionary War when a sadistic British officer murders Martin’s son. The script writer Robert Rodat claims that Benjamin Martin is a composite character based on four different historical people, one […]