March 1860

Read the bible & wrote. Charles, the nigro – about 12 years old – is bothering me considerably. He says the little McCandless girls told him I swore.

March 6, 1860

Some one stuck a pen in my chair this morning so that when I sat down, it would stick into me. It stuck up [from the chair] about half an inch. But when I sat down, one of the class saw it & told me. Whoever did it signally failed in effecting his object. Had a hard time of it today. They are the worst creatures to govern I ever met. The peach trees are in blossom. They raise a great quantity of fruit here when the season is good. Few rattlesnakes, black snakes, moccasins, etc.

March 7, 1860

…Took walk to the Factory Pond [1] & it is a beautiful place. The planters have a peculiar kind of wagon box scalloped like junk, high point & back or ribbed.

March 10, 1860

Went with Mr. Robinson, a scholar, to the [Wateree] river about two miles away & thence to an Indian mound. The river is nearly as broad as the Susquehanna at Owego – very deep and muddy. Very large trees grown on the bank. I got some pottery at the Indian mound. It is situated in a plain near the river and in between 40 and 50 feet high, nearly perfectly round & covers nearly half an acre of ground. The top & sides are covered with thick undergrowth & several large trees are growing on the sides. It must be centuries old & is probably built as a tomb. There is a smaller one near by with the larger one not more than ten feet high. The one has been dug into by a party of picnickers. Some say bones were found but whether human or not, that’s the question. The larger one has never been searched for the Camdenites have either no curiosity or ambition to care for what is in there & investigate, or they are reluctant to disturb the dead-house of the Indian. That is a very ancient mound, there is no doubt. And could it be searched, its result might be of some advantage to the Indian antiquary. The wide plain is covered with broken pieces of pottery, small yet large enough to see that they are beautifully ornamented. [2]

March 12, 1860

[Charles] has taken a key and given it back to me & says it will be lost in such a time. This is one of the nigro superstitions. Bloodhounds are not a feature of the South. I can hear of none anywhere. Longfellow says in his poems on slavery, “the nigro heard the bloodhounds distant bay.” [3]

March 17, 1860

March 18, 1860

The South Carolinians are a polite people. The standard of morals is higher that at the North. Female virtue is not of that easy kind which characterizes the North. A gentleman can never succeed in ungraceful familiarities. Cases of seduction are rare. Illicit connections [are] entirely confined to the slaves [and] are between the whites and the female slaves. And yet, if a man is known as a certainty to have money, he is little esteemed by the best of the community. This state of society seems to be the result of slavery & if it be a sin as some believe, it has its good effects. As a general thing, virtue and morals are higher throughout the South than at the North.

They have poor classes here as well as at the North but the educated portion goes in good & [with] the highest society. A lady, handsome & fashionably educated, is received everywhere. Women are careful to look out for rich husbands & my chum says, you can know that for the size of their hoops. He himself is poor but goes in the best society. The majority are better Christians than at the North.

March 23, 1860

The people may be chivalrous but they have appeared very cold to me. I have not been a warm spirit in their hearts. None but my roommate to sympathize with. Laughed at for my awkwardness. I am deserted indeed.

March 24, 1860

…The stores in the village, many of them are miserable low & the upper part for dwelling sometimes. The streets are seldom paved & [sidewalks] never cross the street. The sand makes a good walk in all kinds of weather. Rice is raised in the state but near the coast. There is a great deal of it. Looks very much like oats. The people are fine horseback riders. They have fine horses [here] & come into town or through it in their 2 horse covered carriages with a driver & a negro behind. Their lumber wagons are drawn often by 2 or more span of mules & the driver on a saddle rides the near one & swings a huge whip. Nights the negro boys make a kind of rolling, caroling screech, which no one but a negro can make.

March 26, 1860

March 28, 1860

After school, went down street where they were raising the steeple to the market. It was raised by ropes & pulleys on the outside surmounted by a flat figure of an Indian fitted so it will move in the wind. He has bow drawn & arrow in it. Supposed to represent the Catawba Indian. [4]

A photograph taken while raising the steeple on the tower in front of the town market. The King Haigler weathervane can be clearly seen on the top of the steeple as described by Goodrich.

[1] Factory Pond was the name given to a large basin of water adjacent to McRae’s Mill, constructed in 1760 by the Kershaw family. McCrae’s Wheat Mill was an impressive structure, five stories and the first in South Carolina to use the turbine wheel.

[2] Goodrich probably refers to the Pre-Columbian Indian Burial Mounds bordering the Wateree River not far from Camden, South Carolina. The "Adamson" burial mound was one such mound on the Mulberry Plantation.

[3] Goodrich is referring to the stanza in Longfellow’s poem, The Slave in the Dismal Swamp which reads:

In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse's tramp
And a bloodhound's distant bay.

[4] After Camden’s first marketplace burned in a fire in 1812, a new marketplace and town tower was erected in the 1820’s on Broad Street. A weather vane in the likeness of King Haiglar, designed by J. B. Mathieu, was placed on top of the tower. Haiglar was a Catawba Indian chief who was friendly to the white man. In 1859, construction of a second, freestanding town tower was begun in front of the market building near 1021 Broad Street (west side) and this tower was topped by the same King Haiglar weathervane that had been on the first town tower.

The Diaries of Ralph Leland Goodrich, 1859-1867