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meet and subsist, I>nt tliey never quailed an<l battled faith- 

 full}' for those dependent on them, until brighter days eame. 

 To those of us who have passed through the like times, after 

 the Civil Wav, it is not hard to realize what these old men 

 before us had to bear. To skip over minor trials I will sim- 

 ply mention one or two calamities and i)ass on. In 1822 the 

 liereest gale, ever known on the coast, swept over them, car- 

 rying wholesale destruction to crops, houses and everything 

 else, even liuman lives were sacrificed to its fury. A great 

 many white people were droAvned, and scores of negroes on 

 the rice fields and Islands were lost. Not 20 years after 

 came the Asiatic cholera, in 1836, and almost decimated 

 whole plantations of its negroes, though not many of the 

 white i)eople succumbed to its ravages. The negroes had to 

 be moved into the pine lands and put into camps, before the 

 disease could be checked. 1 have heard njjy father say wLat 

 a dreadful time it was, he himself had to be amongst the 

 negroes in their time of trouble. 



In 1848 smallijox broke out in upper part of I'arish 

 amongst the whites, and Mr. Lincoln wrote to (Commission- 

 ers: "I had to close my school on account of the dreadful 

 disease, which has broken out in neighborhood." Jn 18(i7 

 we again had a visitation of smallpox, but it was chi(^(Iy 

 jjiiongst the negroes, a great many of them died. 



I'^xcuse digression, for a second. The River Eoad esitcnded 

 along the Santee from Blake's plantation, through this Tar- 

 ish, St. Stephen's and St. John's and on up, intersecting 

 all roa<ls from river to Charleston,- and crossing Wand)aw, 

 Echaw, Santee, Savannah and other large creeks. But the 

 bridges on these were found so hard to keep up on account 

 of freshets, that sometime about 1840 ^Vam;baw Bridge was 

 abandoned and the road was deflected out a short distance 

 below Echaw Church and creek, and crossed this creek at 

 Charley's Bridge and the other creeks at above narrower 

 parts also. 



From the earliest times until the railroad was established 

 the road running through the I'arish formed one of the links 

 which made the most direct route of travel from Charles- 

 ton to the North, then our people were in the world, for all 

 who were bound to the most settled part of the United 



