FIGHTING FOR REVIVAL - Clemson University

called Districts, of Edgefield, Abbeville, Newberry, Laurens, Union, and Spartanburg.
Though the area which made up Edgefield District had been “settled” as early as 1748
these settlements were few and far between; the district remained by and large a frontier
settlement until the village of Edgefield itself was finally incorporated in 1830. 15
The early settlement of Edgefield reflected this sense of a perpetual frontier
culture, especially among the middling classes of society that consisted of the yeoman
and semi-subsistence farmers. The court records that date back to the very beginning of
Edgefield settlement bear witness to the prominence of a violent nature in the county.
Between 1785 and 1830 (the year that the Village of Edgefield was officially
incorporated as the county seat) there are on record 424 cases of violence, with twenty-
seven of these cases being for murder. 16 Though not all of these cases resulted in
convictions, they were brought to trial. The point being two-fold in that, on the one hand,
violent acts like these were frequent occurrences in the everyday life of early Edgefield,
and on the other hand, that many of these cases resulted in acquittals or reductions to
manslaughter insinuate the point alluded to in the chapter’s opening quotation—violence
15 John A. Chapman, History of Edgefield County from the Earliest Settlements to
1897 (Newberry, S.C.: Elbert H. Aull, Publisher and Printer, 1897), 1, 6, 28.; Orville
Vernon Burton, In My Father’s House are Many Mansions: Family and Community in
Edgefield, South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985),
18-19.
16 Edgefield County Judge of Probate, Minutes of the General Sessions Court, 1785-
1830, Edgefield County Archives (hereafter all sources from the Edgefield County
Archives will be denoted ECA: The records cited here are those that involved white
male crime against other white persons and include the charges of assault, assault and
battery, riot, manslaughter, murder, sending a challenge, affray, assault with intent to
murder, assault with intent to ravish/rape. Cases involving the assault of slaves on
white masters were rarely brought to trial in the county court, but when tried have not
been included here. Also omitted are crimes of whites against slaves, which normally
resulted in nominal fines. The records from the fall term 1790-spring term 1794 and
fall term 1795-spring term 1802 are incomplete or missing and not included here.
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