CHAPTER FOUR
Scarburg Mill
The Yankee’s bayonet hole in Roberts’s chest in now hurting, it hurts something awful. Sweat runs down his face in beads. The sweat gets into his eyes, but he does not have the strength to wipe it away. He lays his head against the stone boulder – it is cool, it feels good on his face. The damp smell of moss and rotten wood envelops his nostrils. The scent reminds him of the caves in the cliffs behind his house overlooking Hog Creek Canyon in Alabama.
He is alone, bleeding to death, abandoned by his sons Luke and Matthew. He wishes he did not have to die forsaken; although, hundreds of his fellow soldiers are suffering and dying within earshot he still feels neglected and forgotten.
He drifts in and out of consciousness. When awake, he is living a nightmare, a terrifying nightmare; the battle, a terrible battle is still raging in all its fury. When unconscious, which is a blessing, his mind lets him dream of home and his family. Especially Malinda, he can almost feel the soft, blonde curls, which cascade down around her shoulders. He can, just about, smell the delicate scent of the lilac water on the nape of her neck. ‘Please,’ he thinks, ‘let this dream continue.’
It seems as though it has been eons since he and Malinda Ingram married. Robert’s mind drifts to thoughts of his father Thomas and his great-great-grandparents John and Celia Scarburg, the ones he called Pappy John and Mama Celia. As the oldest son, and following the custom of primogeniture, Robert inherited his father’s property. Now he is beginning to think he is going to inherit something else - a shallow unmarked grave like all the thousands of other lifeless men on this death strewn field of battle.
Pappy John’s farm as they referred to it, was slightly over ten sections of rich South Carolina bottomland, bordering on Rayburn’s Branch of the Saluda River. Ten sections of land may not sound like much, but one section is six hundred and forty acres, and in that region of the Carolinas six thousand four hundred acres was a tad more than a farm. Pappy John had saved up a tidy sum of money when he and Mama Celia left their home in Virginia to become pioneers in the unsettled frontier of South Carolina.
The first few years he spent building Celia the beautiful Scarlett Plantation. To be officially called a plantation, a farm must have as a minimum, three slaves regardless of the amount of land it encompassed. John and Celia had never owned slaves nor indentured servants. Calling Scarlett a plantation was in the name only, they never referred to it as a plantation it was simply – Scarlett.
It had been ten years after their marriage before Scarlett was finished. It had also been rumored, before the completion of the house, that Celia suffered a miscarriage, the death was an infant girl, and perhaps they named this unborn child Scarlett? However, there had never been a girl child in the Scarburg family named Scarlett, as far as anyone knew.
Pappy’s wife Celia could trace her ancestors back to the beginning of the United States; in fact, one of her ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Within Celia’s family was a story, never proven, that her grandfather had two wives, the first died quite young. Family tradition says she was a sister to George Washington. Records of this union were destroyed during the Revolution, and her name was never known, was she Scarlett? No one ever knew the answer for sure. The name Scarlett was a mystery known only to John and Celia.
Another great-great-great-grandfather of Robert’s wife Malinda, Jacob Damascus Ingram, although not a large landowner like the Scarburgs, had amassed a sizeable amount of money also. Jacob and his wife Margaret moved from Virginia with Jacob’s father and Margaret’s parents. They all settled on the western side of Mink Creek, another tributary of the Saluda River, in the early 1760s, a mere mile and one-half east of Scarlett. It did not take very long after arrival in this back-woods country for the Scarburgs and Ingrams to become close friends. Robert Scarburg and Malinda Ingram would grow up together, fall in love and later marry.
In 1769, with the comforts of life having been established John began working on two of his life’s dreams. First he wanted to build and operate a gristmill. Next he had a vision to construct the first Masonic Lodge in that part of South Carolina. Mink Creek was the perfect place for such a mill. The creek might only be a creek, as it was officially described, but the water was clean, cold and ran full and deep both summer and winter. To many they would call it a river, but it was here also that he decided to build and pursue his second dream. Being a fervent Master Mason of the Masonic Order of Free and Accepted Masons he also began work on the first Masonic Hall in that southern area of South Carolina. The lodge would become known as Masonic Lodge Number One.
Year’s later Masonic Brothers would be proud as they remembered a select group of Masons. These Masons, dressed as Mohawk Indians, left the meeting Lodge at the Green Dragon tavern in Boston and proceeded to the docks. Whooping and hollering they unceremoniously dumped the British tea into the water of the harbor. Patriots up and down the thirteen colonies still refer to this act as the Boston Tea Party. Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Sam Adams were all honored members of this rebellious group of Masonic Brothers in the Boston Masonic Lodge.
Between Masonic Lodge Number One and Scarburg Mill, and at the urging and kind benevolence of Jacob Ingram the local Quaker Friends in the community constructed a beautiful Meetinghouse, which they called the House of the Lord. It was painted a brilliant white. Adorned with stained glass windows, sitting atop was the bell tower, with its two golden toned bells. Over the bell tower was a magnificent steeple topped with a large, six-foot cross; it seemed to reach into the heavens. Its construction was a few years before their fight with England. At that time almost everyone still owed allegiance to the King; on meeting day the bells chimed all to attend the services; however, the break with King George III in the War of Independence silenced the bells, they were never to ring again.
Their Lodge was not given an official name – it was known only as ‘The King’s Masonic House Number One.’ On the day of the monthly meetings throughout the surrounding community Masonic members would say, “Come brethren get ready, it’s time to go to The King’s House.” Thus on Thursday night once a month Freemasons from across the area would meet at old Number One. The Mason would assemble for the performance of their ritualistic conferment of the Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason degrees. The conferment of these degrees was to initiate new Brothers to the Order. Even after the Revolutionary War it was still referred to as The King’s Masonic House.
Not only was the mill a place for the locals to get their corn and wheat ground in to cornmeal and flour, it became a favorite meeting place known simply as Scarburg Mill. John’s gristmill thrived. In fact, a small community sprang up around the Mill including a tavern, the Masonic lodge and the House of the Lord. As time passed, the settlement itself became known as Scarlett Town and later as Scarlettsville.
Daily, men would come to trade horses and mules within the confines of the Mill’s expansive yard. Others would swap tobacco for jugs of homemade whiskey; still others would sometimes get in to heated arguments over the plight of the budding colonies of America and the King of England. Some old timers would sit quietly on a wooden bench under the shade of an enormous live oak, whittle on a piece of soft, cedar wood and reminisce about past adventures of their youth. These exploits were sometimes true, but mostly they were fanciful tales that brought smiles to their attentive listeners.
In the summer of 1774, a vicious thunderstorm, accompanied by high winds and lightning blew in out of the west. A number of violent tornados struck the area; one hurled its raging force upon John and Celia’s home of love. The tornado only destroyed the barn and a couple of out building; however, a bolt of lightning struck one of the lovely old red oaks in the front yard. The resulting fire consumed the beloved Scarlett’s main house, burning it to the ground. All that remained of John and Celia’s dream house was the four, red brick fireplaces, two on either side of the once stately home. The year 1774 could have been remembered as one of the mo
st dreadful years of John and Celia’s marriage. One bright spot had been the birth of their first grandson Thomas, a son who years later would become the father of Robert Steven. A son and daughter had been born earlier, but neither lived long after birth. They named the infants John Junior and Celia Jane. Six months later, John’s son Charles left to join the Patriot forces of General George Washington, leaving his wife and young son Thomas with John and Celia. No word was ever been heard from him again.