CALHOUN PLANTATION, JOHN C. (SLAVE CEMETERY), Clemson University, Oconee County, SC A.K.A. Pickens County after 1968 Version 1.0, 25-Sep-2010, C245.TXT, C245 **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization, or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. **************************************************************** LOCATION: --------- The Calhoun Family / Woodland Cemetery is located along the south side of the present day Clemson University Football Stadium. Find the intersection of Highways 123 and 93. Drive 1.5 miles southeast on Highway 93 (Old Greenville Highway) to Perimeter Road. Turn right and drive 0.3 miles. Stadium is located on the left-side of road. Finding this burial site is somewhat difficult, because it has been allowed to become overgrown with trees & brush. As of 8-02, there are no current plans to restore the area. Find the south side entrance to the cemetery - brick pillars are located on each side of the entrance. Just before you enter the fenced in Calhoun/Woodland cemetery, there is a small dirt road that runs a short distance to the left (west) of the pillars. Take this dirt road until it turns to the right (north). Stop! As your facing west, you will see a downward slopped hill. This is where the Calhoun Slaves are buried. There is a black colored wire fence that surrounds the burial area and a No Dumping sign to the right of it. HISTORY: -------- Fort Hill was the name of John C. Calhoun's (1782-1850) plantation, South Carolina's preeminent nineteenth century statesman. He lived in the home from 1825 to 1850. The surviving parts of the plantation include the dwelling house, office, reconstructed kitchen and a partially restored spring. The plantation consisted of approximately 1100 acres - 450 were only cultivated. It later became the property of Thomas G. Clemson (1807-1888)(Thomas married Anna M. Calhoun). The railroad stop in this area was also called Fort Hill and it was located near the present day Clemson depot. There were several other buildings located in the general area. The L.C. Drug Store/Bogg's Store, now called Calhoun Corners was one of them. Many university students rode the train to the crossroad stop and walked to the campus. Cherry's Crossing was the other rail stop and was located near the university's J.P. Stevens plant. Woodland Cemetery dates back to 1837, when it was simply called Cemetery Hill. It is speculated that the cemetery name changed in the 1920's. It is believed that John Caldwell Calhoun, the son of Andrew Pickens Calhoun, was the first white person to be buried in this area. John Caldwell Calhoun died 7-Dec-1837. As other members of the Andrew Calhoun family died, they were buried near the child's grave. The Calhoun burial area is surrounded by a high cast-iron fence, having a large double gate - it's public accessible. About 100 yards to the west of the Calhoun plot, is the burial grounds for approximately 60 slaves that underwent excavation in the 1990's. Many Calhoun family members, as well as Clemson family, are buried at St. Paul's Episcopal Church cemetery in Pendleton. Woodlawn Cemetery contains 202 plots and no additional development is planned. Cemetery privileges are extended to all University full-time employees and their immediate families, provided the employee has been in continuous service with the University for five years. Cemetery privileges are also extended to members of the Board of Trustees. If no plots are available, the individual will be placed on the Woodland Cemetery list. Slave graves are located on its west side and some unknown graves are on its south side. It is speculated that these graves might be for White's of non- family importance. o----------o News Notes of the Oconee County Historical Society - 8/31/92 FIRST ANNUAL SOUTH CAROLINA ARCHAEOLOGY WEEK - SEPTEMBER 19-26, 1992 SEPTEMBER 23 (a Wednesday): From 10:00 to 11:00, Carol Cowan-Ricks will lead a tour of Cemetery Hill that will reveal some of the work being conducted on African-American burials at the site. (Cemetery Hill is on the Clemson University Campus behind the Tiger Side of the Football Stadium.) A luncheon will follow at Liberty Hall Inn in Pendleton from 12:00 to 1:00. Cowan-Ricks will present a lecture entitled "Calhoun's Pre-emancipation African Americans" from 1:30 to 2:30 in room 111 of Lee Hall (the Architecture Building near the Strom Thurmond Institute). Call Cowan-Ricks at 656-0972 BEFORE SEPTEMBER 9TH to make reservations for the tour and/or the luncheon. (NOTE: Carol Cowan-Ricks is hard to reach by phone. If your call is channeled to the switchboard at the Trustee House, ask to speak to Kathleen and ask if she can accept your reservation.) by: Fred Holder o----------o I found this in Pickens Sentinel, 8 Oct 1891 (Peggy Rich's book) Clemson College now has at work 147 Negro convicts. They are required to work but are well cared for. The stockade has been increased in size and there is a hospital. Only three or four convicts have died and they are buried at the graveyard once used for servants of the Calhoun estate. Captain Perry and 18 guards have charge of the convicts. Mr. Jule Shanklin has charge of all the stock (details). [This is when they were building Clemson University] Anne Sheriff o----------o Slavery: Calhoun was shaped by his own father, Patrick Calhoun, a prosperous upstate planter who supported the Revolutionary War but opposed ratification of the federal Constitution. The father was a staunch slaveholder who taught his son that one's standing in society depended not merely on one's commitment to the ideal of popular self-government but also on the ownership of a substantial number of slaves. Flourishing in a world in which slaveholding was a badge of civilization, Calhoun saw little reason to question its morality as an adult; he never visited Europe. Calhoun had seen in his own state how the spread of slavery into the back country improved public morals by ridding the countryside of the shiftless poor whites who had once terrorized the law abiding middle class. Calhoun believed that slavery instilled in the white who remained a code of honor that blunted the disruptive potential of private gain and fostered the civic-mindedness that lay near the core of the republican creed. From such a standpoint, the expansion of slavery into the backcountry decreased the likelihood for social conflict and postponed the declension when money would become the only measure of self worth, as had happened in New England. Calhoun was thus firmly convinced that slavery was the key to the success of the American dream.[27] On February 6, 1837, John C. Calhoun took the floor of the Senate to declare that slavery was a "positive good." Senator William Rives of Virginia had referred to slavery as an evil that might become a "lesser evil" in some circumstances. Calhoun believed that conceded too much to the abolitionists: "I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good-a positive good... I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." A year later in the Senate (January 10, 1838), Calhoun repeated this defense of slavery as a "positive good": "Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." Calhoun rejected the belief of Southern moderates such as Henry Clay that all Americans could agree on the "opinion and feeling" that slavery was wrong, although they might disagree on the most practicable way to respond to that great wrong. Calhoun's constitutional ideas acted as a viable conservative alternative to Northern appeals to democracy, majority rule, and natural rights.[28] by: Wikipedia DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Apr-2001 HISTORY WRITE-UP : Dennis Taylor at td@clemson.edu in Apr-2001 LIBRARY REFERENCE: Dennis Taylor at td@clemson.edu in Apr-2001 TRANSCRIPTION .. : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Apr-2001 TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: -------------------- a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife It is estimated that there are approximately (60) graves and a few of them use field stones as markers.