November 19, 2013 Ninety-Six National Historic Site

Amazingly, I have come here by chance on the 238th anniversary to the day of the Nov. 19, 1775 of the first major land battle of the American Revolution in the South in which  1,900 loyalists attacked 600 patriots  on this very spot ending in a truce after 2 days.  The ranger tells me that Ninety-Six was the spot in the Upstate that the British wanted to control as it was the intersection of trading routes.  It had been so since the Cherokee Nation forged the first trails from Keowee (near Clemson) to Charleston, Augusta, Camden and elsewhere
(as those places are known now).

I get here from Columbia, up I-26, exit 74 for highway 34.  I cross the uprivers of the Bush and the Saluda before they reach Columbia, wide and roaring.  I cross Wilson Creek. In the small neat town of Ninety-six I take 248 for 2 miles to the Site.

Here the Island Ford Trail and the Cherokee Trail are deeply sunken into the ground from the hundred's of years' use.

I take the paved walk through the woods to the Star Fort (a star shaped earth bunker) with a snaking walk around it.  It is almost totally silent with only the wind in the trees and the rattling of leaves above the place where many died and in the woods where many are sleeping under the ground.  At the end of the Star Fort trail, the Gouedy Trail enters the woods.  There is the stone grave marker of James Gouedy who ran a trading post here.  The trail is marked with yellow blazes, but I lost it along a still silent creek with dark cloudy water.  I find it again and meet a couple from Seattle entering the woods.

Two local women out for exercise, tell me to take the gravel road at the entrance to the Star Fort trail and follow it through the woods until I come to a small field on the right.  Turn there to the left and a short walk takes you to a steel blue pond with ducks floating on its surface.  There is a fishing access trail off to the left.
There are other trails which the women tell me not to take as they are not marked well.

The war was already turning in favor of the patriots in May of 1781 when General Greene and his troops attacked the loyalist stronghold at Star Fort in Ninety-Six.  There were many casualties on both sides. Green withdrew his troops and British General Cruger abandoned the fort and burned the village to the ground.

I return home by taking highway 246 to highway 72 at Coronava and then left on 221 which finally becomes Church street in Spartanburg.  Between Waterloo and Maddens I pass the big Crenshaw's store which has hundreds of cow skulls and bones on the roof.  I think it must be a butcher shop.

Soon I am crossing Lake Greenwood, dark blue and gleaming. On the far is side a Sunoco station with a Subway.  It is most probably the Subway with the greatest view in the world, as it's tables overlook the wide lake.  You can also sit outside on the deck and the gas station has all of the fishing supplies you would ever need.

My trip on the back roads through the small towns takes me past nearly abandoned old main streets now filled with antique shops and rows of pansies for sale.  As I pass the lovely old two and three story houses with big generous porches, I think of going to live in a small town in one of those old houses and drinking a mint julep (I have never had a mint julep) on the porch on a hot summer evening with the fans ticking overhead.

The name, "Ninety-Six" is somewhat of a mystery, but one theory is that the old Indian trail from Keowee, near the present town of Clemson, was an exact distance of 96 miles.

Captain John Blakeney of Chesterfield County on Lynches River fought in the Revolution. I do not know whether he fought at Ninety-Six.  A young man in his regiment named John Welsh married his daughter, Jane and he was able to buy 3,500 acres from Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox, in Lancaster County to homestead.
However at the age of 65, Captain Blakeney, John Welsh and his wife Jane and their son William loaded up and began the long walk to Alabama. William became ill on the way and returned home to Lancaster County.  He was our family's forebear.  The rest of the family continued on and became among the original founders of Marion, Alabama.