This week we look at three ghost towns. These towns featured academies that played a large part of the town. When the academies closed down, the towns went into decline. This episode looks at the towns of Minervaville in Richland County, South Carolina, which had the Minerva Academy, Slabtown in Anderson County, which had the Thalian Academy, then the Slabtown Academy, and Sievern in Aiken County, which had the Edisto Academy.

Some of the resources I used in podcast are listed below:

• Blog Posts
  • Lower Richland and the High Hills of the Santee
  • Slabtown, Equality, and the Thalian Web
  • Chasing the Swamp Rabbit, Part 3 - Sievern and the Edisto Academy

Ellenton, Dunbarton, Meyers Mills, and Leigh were small towns in Aiken and Barnwell Counties that were uprooted to make way for the Savannah River Plant to make atomic and hydrogen bombs.

I used lots of references and audio clips in this episode. Here are the clips that I used in putting together this story.

• Blog post - Hamburg and the Atomic Towns
• "I Don't Live there Anymore" - Lawrence Holofcener
• Dr. Walter Edgar, South Carolina from A to Z - E is for Ellenton
• Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly, 1880
• Samuel Ritchie - That Others May Live: The Cold War Sacrifice of Ellenton, South Carolina
• WJBF - Hometown History, The Forgotten Town of Ellenton
• Displaced - The Unexpected Fallout from the Cold War
• Ellenton Heritage Trail Opens for Tours
• Song - Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb
• Song - The Death of Ellenton

Manchester is a ghost town in Sumter County, on the east side of the Poinsett Electronic Warfare Range. It was settled in the 1700s, but disappeared in the mid-1800s.

Resources:

• Archeological Studies
• Wilmington and Manchester Railroad from Wikipedia
• Blog Post

Willtown Black Mingo was on Black Mingo Creek in Williamsburg County. The terms "Willtown" and "Black Mingo" were used interchangeably. It was also the site of an important battle in the Revolutionary War.

Resources:

• History of Williamsburg County
• Black Mingo Historical Marker

Willtown on the Edisto River was first known as New London. It was the second planned town in South Carolina, after Charleston. The remaining buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here are the resources I used in this episode...

• Willtown: An Archeological and Historical Perspective
• Willtown Bluff Study
• Historical and Archeological Study
• Willtown Past and Present
• Blog Post - Paddling to Willtown on the Edisto

The ghost town of Shelton is located in northwest Fairfield County, South Carolina, along the banks of the Broad River. The early settlement featured a ferry, but grew into a town with the coming of the railroad. The major industries were shipping for the surrounding and the Shivar Springs Bottling Company, located just south of the town. Resources used in this episode:

• Blog post on RandomConnections
• Shelton photos from 1960s - State Newspaper
• interview with Tom McConnell
• Ron Chicone's History of Shelton
• Shivar cisterns on SC Picture Project
• National Register Listing for Shivar
• Shelton Cemetery
• McConnell Cemetery

Henry Martyn Robert - author of Robert's Rules of Order

Robertville is a small farming community in South Carolina, named for a family of French Huguenots that settled in the region. The community was the birthplace of Henry Martyn Robert, author of Robert's Rules of Order, and Alexander Robert Lawton, Confederate General and one of the founders of the American Bar Association.

Robertville Baptist Church is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ellenberg Homesite

The modern town of Ninety Six hold close connections to my family. It's where my grandparents lived, as well as some other, more notorious relatives. Before modern Ninety Six came the college town of Cambridge, named with aspirations of reaching the lofty status of its namesakes in Massachusetts and England.

Resources for this episode:

• Finding Your Roots - Season 5, Episode 10 "All in the Family"
• Samuel Campbell Clegg
  • From a National Park Service report - Ensign Samuel Clegg Samuel Clegg (ca. 1740-1779) was a prominent Loyalist and plantation owner in Craven County
  • and Edgefield District, South Carolina. He was living in South Carolina by 1766 and owned land by 1768. By the late 1770s Clegg owned more than 1,400 acres in South Carolina. At the time of the American Revolution was married to Barbara Marie Flick and they had four children. Clegg served an Ensign in Colonel Boyd’s regiment and he helped to raise recruits and he participated in the battle of Kettle Creek. Clegg, who was considered by the Patriots to be a “ring leader” of the Loyalist uprising, was captured in the battle and marched as a prisoner to Ninety-Six. Clegg was tried for sedition and treason, and hanged at Ninety-Six in late April, 1779 (S.C.D.A.H. 2009; Cann 2004:4-7; Davis 1979b:172-181).
• Star Fort - National Park Service
• Cambridge Hash blog post
• Siloam Baptist Church

Cambridge Tavern:

Cambridge Hall, later Siloam Baptist Church:

AI voices by ElevenLabs