Chesterfield, South Carolina during Reconstruction: Land sales!

This blogpost continues a series of posts on Chesterfield County. Other posts are:

1. Reconstruction in Chesterfield County
2. Unionists in a Confederate stronghold: Chesterfield during the Civil War
3. The Melton Murders
4. Letters from the Fox Family: Violence in Chesterfield County
5. The law students of the Radical University: Henry A. Fox
6. The students of the Radical University: Clarence W. Fox
7. The prep students of the Radical University: Irving P. Fox
8. The law students of the Radical University: Gil Dixon Fox
9. Chesterfield during Reconstruction: A murder on election day!

One of the most ambitious post-war efforts to reconstruct South Carolina was the efforts to develop northwestern Chesterfield County, specifically the area around modern Pageland. The efforts ended in scandal when an investigation by the General Assembly revealed that the developers had sold land to the state government at an inflated price. In contemporary historical memory, a key role was by the developer Henry J. Fox. Fox is remembered as a villainous carpetbagger from New York City who displaced whole  families by arranging to buy their land in delinquent land sales for pennies on the dollar. The community finally freed itself of him when public anger erupted in Ku Klux violence, with Fox either fleeing in the night after being threatened or being murdered. Here we take a close look at the existing records and try to separate fact from myth from fact.

Henry J. Fox set out his goals for developing Chesterfield County in part of a May 1, 1869 letter published in the New York Tribune: 

My object in this communication is to call the attention of farmers, struggling on small farms, to a section of the South not named by you, but which I think offers sure advantages to the immigrant. The "South Carolina Improvement and Trust Company," incorporated by the last Legislature of South Carolina, and to which has been granted a charter of great liberality, undertakes to do the very work [establishing farming communities] you recommend Northern associations undertake.

Its object is to buy large plantations, and divide them into small farms of 50 and 100 acres each. The farms it sells to actual settlers at a sum just sufficiently above the original cost to pay expenses of transfer, surveys, and other incidental expenses. The corporations are well known Northern men, and it is their purpose to make each colony the center of such political education, social and religious influences as shall conserve the blessings brought by the war.

(The full letter can be found in the entry "Letters from the Fox Family: Violence in Chesterfield County"):

At the time of his letter, Fox was in his forties and was serving as a Methodist minister in the town of Carmel, New York, near Poughkeepsie. Fox was originally from England, but he'd been living in the northeastern United States (Connecticut, the Catskill Mountains, and New York City) for the past twenty-some years. Except for a few years spent running a college preparatory school in the Catskills, most of his time had been spent as a Methodist minister. Through church activities, Fox had become involved in the debates over slavery (a major issue for the Methodist church), and by the time of the Civil War, he was active in the abolitionist movement.

The people Fox worked with appear to have changed over time. His original financial backers appear to have been Watson Sanford and Haskel A. Hogel. Both lived in the New York City area. Sanford worked in stove manufacturing and held a number of stove-related patents. Hogel was also an inventor who worked in manufacturing, but he worked in the fertilizer machine industry rather than stoves. Neither man appears to have been politically active, so they were likely interested in developing Chesterfield as a financial investment.

Although it offers few details, Fox's letter sets out of his goals in developing Chesterfield. The colony was not a purely commercial venture. Fox hoped to help remake the South. Growing the colony presented him with an opportunity to expand the northern Methodist church. During the antebellum, the Methodist church had split into a northern and a southern branch because of disagreements over slavery, and the end of the war presented northern Methodists with an opportunity to start churches in the south. There was particular interest in attracting freedmen who often had an antagonistic relationship with southern Methodism. Developing Chesterfield also connected with Fox's political interests. Uplifting freedmen and bringing northerners to South Carolina were ways to increase the number of Republican voters in the state. 

Fox and his backers left no records of their decision to develop northwestern Chesterfield (rather than another region), but the region had a number of features that recommended it. The region was sparsely populated, so there was plenty of space to set-up a new community. The area contained valuable mineral resources including one of the most valuable gold deposits in the southeast. The pine forests had the potential to support industries in timber and turpentine. Fox expressed particular enthusiasm for farming, but he likely misjudged the prospects. He had very limited knowledge of farming in the south: he had never lived in region and his farming experience was limited to running a family farm in the Catskills for a few years. The sandy soil of northwestern Chesterfield was poorly suited to growing cotton (the main cash crop), although the climate was mild and favorable to growing fruits and vegetables.

A gold mine in Chesterfield County in 1927
Postcard from South Caroliniana Library 

The first record of the activities of Fox, Hogel, and Sanford in South Carolina is a September 18, 1866 deed for a land purchase. Fox and his backers purchased a 2,455-acre plot of land for about $12.40 per acre (a huge sum of money) from Richard L. Edgeworth. Ownership of the land did not include mining (or mineral) rights. Those were purchased separately (for about $14.26 per acre) by a mining company that Sanford ran (the Challenge Gold, Silver, and Copper Mining Company).

Richard L. Edgeworth was a member of one of the most prominent families in the region. He was the fifth in a line of Richard L. Edgeworth's that were descended from the Anglo-Irish politician and inventor of the same name. The original Richard L. had moved to the Pee Dee shortly after the Revolutionary War, and his family was among the first to settle in northwestern Chesterfield. The land sold had been inherited by the fifth Richard L. from his father, the fourth Richard L. By the time of the Civil War, the family had built up a diversified subsistence farm that they ran with the help of fourteen enslaved workers. On the farm, they raised cattle and hogs and grew corn, oats, and potatoes. They also planted cotton, albeit a small amount relative to the size of the farm. By 1850, the younger Richard L. had struck out for himself and had left South Carolina for Cobb County, Georgia, where he started his own farm. His father died of natural causes during the first year of the Civil War. 

The sale to Fox and his financial backers was the largest sale that the Edgeworth family made, but it was not the only one. Before the war, the family had sold smaller plots to other farmers in the area, including William H. Sowell and David T. Griffith. These plots were purchased by Fox and his backers in 1867.

Plat map for land that Fox purchased from David T. Griffith
From Archive Viewer – Chesterfield County

Most of the Chesterfield land that came to be owned by Fox and his business partners had been the property of the Edgeworth family and another old Chesterfield family, the Blakeneys. The Blakeney family settled in the area in the 1760s, and one family member, Captain John Blakeney, had fought in Revolutionary War. By the time the Civil War broke out, the Blakeneys were among the few Chesterfield residents who had reached the status of planters. The patriarch, John Blakeney, owned 4,000 acres of land and cultivated 250 acres with the help of his family and fifty-one enslaved workers. The plantation was one of the most productive in the region, growing 20,000 pounds of cotton in 1860.

The Blakeney family was ruined by the war. Most of the Blakeney sons (Hugh, Louis, John C., and George W.) served in the Confederate army, and one, Hugh, was killed at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. Towards the end of the war, Sherman's troops passed through the area and seized provisions from the family. The emancipation of the Blakeney's slaves left the Blakeneys without a labor force. 

Facing financial difficulties, John Blakeney sold the most of his land, three thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six acres, to Henry J. Fox on January 14, 1868. Statistics show the extent of the Blakeney's troubles. Even though cotton prices were high, the farm only produced 300 pounds of it in 1870, a precipitous drop from pre-war productivity. 

After purchasing land from John Blakeney, Fox purchased a 750-acre farm from John Blakeney's son, William W. Evidently frustrated by his prospects in the South Carolina, William then left for Texas.

William W. Blakeney's decision to leave South Carolina was an increasingly common one among established farmers. William sold his land on February 9, 1869, and the four years since the war had seen drastic changes in the political fortunes of the state's planters. Although the Union military victory had forced the planter class to accept unwanted changes like the banning of slavery, planters maintained their traditional hold on state government for the first few years after the war. However, in 1868, they abruptly lost power following a state constitutional convention that gave freedmen the right to vote. Shortly after the election, a new state government dominated by freedmen and northern Republicans was elected. Chesterfield County was represented in the senate by R. J. Donaldson, a Methodist minister from England. He is described in greater detail in the entry "Reconstruction in Chesterfield County." 

Donaldson soon became heavily involved in efforts to developments in northwestern Chesterfield. Exactly when and how he became involved is unclear. Since he and Henry J. Fox were both Methodist ministers, they could have met each before Donaldson moved to the south, through church activities. The first record of Donaldson's involvement dates to July 1, 1867, about half a year before the vote on the constitutional convention. On that date, he and Fox each purchased half of a plot of land that one resident (David T. Griffith) had purchased from the Edgeworth family.

Once elected to the senate, Donaldson threw his political powers into remaking northwestern Chesterfield. In 1869, he successfully proposed three bills that incorporated companies intended to aid in development efforts. A close look at the companies provides some insight into plans.

The first company was the South Carolina Trust and Improvement Company, the company mentioned in Fox's Tribute letter. The company appears to have been closely tied to efforts to remake Old Store township. To white conservatives, the board of corporators was rogue's gallery. Not only were Henry J. Fox and Senator R. J. Donaldson on the board, but it also included John McCulla (later criminally charged for an election fraud scheme to re-elect Donaldson), Middleton S. Gill (later accused of being party to a corrupt sale to the state Land Commission), and U.S. Senator B. F. Whittemore (later to resign from the US Senate after being accused of selling appointments to the U.S. Military and Naval Academies). Also on the board was Orrin L. Jeralds. Orrin worked as a burnisher in New Haven, Connecticut, but he likely was on the board because of a family relation to Fox. (His wife was an Englishwoman named Sarah C. Fox Jeralds, the maiden name and birth nation suggesting a blood relation.)

The history of the company is confusing. In December (a few months after Fox's Tribute letter), the state legislature gave the company the powers of a bank and renamed it the South Carolina Bank and Trust Company. The bank operated in Columbia, and it appears to have had minimal involvement with developments in Chesterfield. However, land transactions in Chesterfield County continued to be made under the original name at least March 1871.

Another company that was incorporated was the South Carolina Plantation Company. The company is not as well documented as the Trust and Improvement Company, but it also purchased land in Chesterfield.

The third company that was created was a railroad company, the South Carolina Central Railroad. The company was charged with building a railroad to connect Charleston to Charlotte, North Carolina. The train line was to start in northwestern Chesterfield and end in Williamsburg County, where it was to connect with an existing train line that ran to Charleston. The line was to have stops in the town of Manning (in Clarendon County) and in Sumter County. 

The South Carolina Central Railroad was to run from Gourdin's Station (in the bottom right) to Clarendon County, Sumter County, and ending in northwestern Chesterfield (top center)
Lloyd's map of the southern states via Library of Congress

A look at the original charter suggests the railroad company was founded to support business interests in the towns of Manning and Sumter, and Chesterfield was an afterthought. The founding corporators included Franklin J. Moses Jr., a Sumter planter and a major Republican political figure. Others were merchants who stood to benefit financially from greater market access. The political aims appear to have been minimal as the charter members included a number of ex-Confederates and a wealthy planter (John A. Salters). 

Fox quickly began playing a leadership role at the railroad company. He served on the executive committee and was elected treasurer. Three months after the company was incorporated, several colleagues of Fox's were added as corporations. These men included two people involved with the Improvement and Trust Company (F. A. Babcock and D. Thomas) as well as a Baptist minister (William S. Clapp) who had worked with Fox in Carmel, New York.

Fox began making land sales in February 1868. Between February and May, he sold a total of eight land plots to men from England. The lots were small (100 to 500 acre) portions of the Blakeney farm. Fox himself started a farm on a 550-acre plot and focused on growing cotton. To support the new famers, he maintained two gristmills, a blacksmith shop, and a cotton gin.

In addition to the farmers from England, Fox was joined by another minister from Carmel, New York, Saurin E. Lane. Lane was a Presbyterian minister. Like Fox, he set up a farm and became active in the Republican party, serving as a trial justice and receiving the party nomination for county school commissioner. 

In his Tribune letter, Fox wrote that South Carolinians treated him and other newcomers "with kindness and according to their knowledge and training, with deference and respect." Any kindness shown was quickly abandoned as political tensions increased. Angry South Carolinians began sending the newcomers threatening letters and destroying their crops. It's unclear when the situation began to fall apart, but it was before the murder of Robert Melton. By August 1870, most of the new farms had been abandoned. Only the families of Henry J. Fox, S. E. Lane, and two Englishmen (Robert Singleton and John Woodcock) remained. 

It would be natural to expect that Fox and his colleagues abandoned their plans to develop Old Store township after the 1870 election as Fox's political patron, R. J. Donaldson, lost his senate chair. However, it appears that his plans had fallen apart months before the election ended. In March 1870 (many months before the election), Fox sold most of the land he held (4,556 acres) to the state Land Commission.

The Land Commission was subject to a good deal of public criticism and was the subject of an investigation by the state legislature. The Fox land sale came under particularly scrutiny as it was among the largest sales made. The entire transaction was handled by Senator Donaldson. He sold two tracts of land to the commission: the Fox property and a 2,462-acre plot owned by Daniel Wadsworth, a white famer and long-time resident of Chesterfield County.

If Governor Scott is believed, the price of the Chesterfield land was inflated so that interested parties could benefit financially. As a member of the commission's advisory board, Scott's approval was needed for land sales, and he testified under oath that Donaldson approached and pressured him to approve the land sales. With remarkable candor, he allegedly told Scott that he hadn't profited off the Fox sale and encouraged him to approve the Wadsworth sale as "it is the only one in which I make any money." 

The Fox sale was almost universally regarded as a fraud. An agent for the commission surveyed the land and reported that it was, "One vast sand-bed from one of end to the other." Governor Scott said that the land was so unproductive that "a blue bird could not live on a thousand acres of it." Francis Cardozo, then serving as land commissioner, said he could not sell the land for even 50 cents an acre, a fraction of what the land had been purchased for.

The financial numbers on the sale work out as follows. The land commission bought the Fox tract at about $8 per acre. Fox had originally purchased land from the Edgeworth family at $12 an acre but paid much less for other properties. Both William H. Sowell and John Blakeney sold their land at $4 an acre. It's unclear exactly which properties the land commission purchased, but the $8 an acre price is what one would get if the commission purchased the entire Edgeworth farm at $12 an acre and then 2,101 acres of less valuable land priced at $4 an acre. Was the land worth this much? Certainly, many politicians and much of the public thought not, but their opinions should be taken with a grain of salt as they were formed in a politically charged atmosphere. Scott and Cardozo gave their testimony in February 1876, a chaotic time when conservatives and Republicans were disputing the election. Both had motivation for playing up corruption in Chesterfield as it drew attention from their own involvement in questionable activities. 

The fact that Fox abandoned his plans to develop Old Store township shortly after the sale to the commission suggests that he was trying to unload his investment on the state government. However, he  certainly did not realize any large profit. At most, he recouped his original investment. If the land was indeed "one vast sand-bed," as one commission agent stated, then the state land commission overpaid for the land, but they were repeating the error Fox and his financial backers had made when making the original purchases.

After the land commission sale, Fox sold the remaining land he owned to private individuals. The last sale he made was the September 1871 sale of William W. Edgeworth's farm to a white conservative and planter (Albert Evans). Again, Fox did not see any profit for the transaction. He sold the land at $5 an acre, slightly less than the price he'd originally paid. Other properties were later lost in lawsuits. 

By December 1871, he had left Chesterfield County for the city of Charleston. While Fox would stay in South Carolian for the remainder of Reconstruction, he would have no further involvement in Chesterfield. 

The South Carolina Central Railroad would remain active into the 1870s, but the company's activities moved away from Chesterfield County, and they ultimately did not achieve much. The company only had a running train line in 1873, when it built a short wooden railroad connecting the town of Manning to the Northeastern Railroad (which ran to Charleston). The company was never listed in Poor's Manual of United States Railroads (a national listing of railroad companies).

It's unclear what ultimately happened to the land purchased by the land commission. The South Carolina Encyclopedia states that much of the land was purchased by "Messrs. McGregor, Maynard, Godfrey, and Sowell," but no further details are given. In general, the commission's mission to increase the number of small landowners was abandoned by the end of Reconstruction. The state government focused on selling off the land purely as a source of revenue. The sale of land in Chesterfield appears to have been complicated because of legal issues. As late as 1889, the state government and William Augustus Evans were engaged in a legal dispute over ownership of land sold by the Wadsworth family.

Fox's broader goals for transforming Old Store township met with failure. The region would only see major economic growth in the 1900s when the township was connected to Cheraw by a railroad. Fox's political aims were completely defeated. Conservative Democrats, who had been galvanized to action by the Republican political victories in 1868, would remain in full control of local government for over a generation.

Sources

1. "The State Capital." The Charleston daily news. [Charleston, SC], March 12, 1869, p. 1.

2. "A Wooden Railroad." Yorkville enquirer. [Yorkville, SC], July 31, 1873, p. 3.

3. "The State of South Carolina v. Evans" in Reports of Cases Heard and Determined by the Supreme Court of South Carolina Volume XXIII. Columbia, SC. James Woodrow & Co. 1891. pp. 184–190.