Although my whole life has been grounded in Southern Greenville along US 25, my mother, Margaret Burnside Campbell, grew up in the little town of Troy, SC, where the Calhoun or Long Cane Massacre took place.  Troy was a thriving spot along a railroad from Greenwood to McCormick by the early 1900s, but her mother’s family had come to the area before 1830.  Thomas Plummer Dowtin settled in Abbeville County between Troy and McCormick sometime in the 1820s, building a small home along the rural expanse of farm land with about a hundred acres in fields and fifty in woods.  This home housed a large family as was natural then to farm the property and feed many mouths. 

The homeplace has had a small claim to fame or over a century and a half.  It has been in three different counties since its construction, but it has never been moved.  That is right, three counties - Abbeville, McCormick, and Greenwood.  The road passing it now, Dowtin Road, leads along the northeast side, but the old roadbed is still evident.  That packed dirt passage leads up the slight grade, passes the old barn, and loops around to the front of the house before returning to the paved road.  Many homes of that vintage had the road passing near the entrance to the house, even within twenty or thirty feet.  I remember as a child the overgrown boxwoods circling in front of the porch of Uncle (great uncle) Tom’s place.  Uncle Tom, an old bachelor, had lived there all his life, where his father had lived out his time, as his parents did.

I guess you could say the homeplace has another claim to fame now, since it is almost or may already be, two hundred years old.  It isn’t a fancy place and must have been crowded when David Warren Dowtin raised seven sons and two daughters in the second-floor rooms after the War between the States.  The family was known for the seven sons, and my poor grandmother, whom I never knew, must have been cowed by all these boys, especially after her only sister died at fourteen.  Mary Dowtin married a Burnside from Laurens County and raised her own brood, eight in all, but passed before her babies’ daughter was born. 

But I bring all this to you to say that the area where the Dowtins settled had been the Ninety Six District prior to the Revolution.  It was the big, sparsely settled, backcountry, and at times it was very lawless.

So, Revolutionary War historian, Durant Ashmore, has developed a new program about how the Ninety Six District affected the Revolution! 

THE NINETY SIX DISTRICT 

(1768-1785) – Its History and Development, and Its Role in the Revolutionary War.

Come join Fork Shoals Historical Society and Piedmont Historical Preservation Society on May 16th, at 7 pm, at the Ruritan Building in Moonville next to Memorial Gardens Cemetery for this program!  $5 donation, please.

 Anne Peden, PhD
Greenville County Historic Preservation Commission
Fork Shoals Historical Society
Piedmont Historical Preservation Society

acpeden07@gmailcom ●