12 minute read
SC STORIES
Sidney Frazier
HOMETOWN: Johns Island.
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CLAIM TO FAME: He’s the master gardener and the vice president of horticulture at Middleton Place (middletonplace.org), where he earned the moniker King of Camellias.
PLANTING THE SEED: Raised Baptist, Frazier founded a nondenominational church, Full Faith Ministries, on Johns Island, where he serves as senior pastor.
FAVORITE HOBBY: Fishing. His prize catch is a 28-inch spottail bass.
CO‑OP AFFILIATION: Frazier is a member of Berkeley Electric Cooperative.
Tending the garden
Every gardener appreciates the beauty found in each of the four seasons, but for Sidney Frazier, master gardener at Middleton Place, spring is always a special time of year.
“It’s joy,” says the man known as the King of Camellias. “Everything is starting to burst into color. It’s like a fresh start again.”
For nearly 50 years, Frazier has been digging, pruning and tending to the plants at Middleton Place, the colonial-era plantation on the Ashley River, with the oldest landscaped gardens in America. His love of plants began while growing up on James Island, working alongside his grandparents. Maybelle and Herbert Lee Frazier, he says, were “modern-day sharecroppers” who grew “everything you’d find in your grocery store” and instilled in him the value of hard work.
“If you want to move up in life and be successful, be respectful and value whatever you do,” Frazier says. “If you’re going to do something, put your all into it. Don’t just do it to get by.”
Frazier took a summer job at Middleton Place in 1974 and promptly fell in love with the classical gardens that date back to 1741 and its 10,000 camellias, 100,000 azaleas, and countless hydrangeas, crepe myrtles and magnolias. He joined the staff full time in 1978 and today walks the paths beneath giants he planted as a teenager.
His favorite plant is the winter-flowering camellia japonica, particularly the Reine des Fleurs variety, believed to be the nation’s oldest camellia, planted in 1786. The “Queen of Flowers” was a gift from the French botanist André Michaux to the Middleton family. Frazier has ensured the queen’s legacy by successfully propagating the cultivar year after year.
Now 64, Frazier is contemplating retirement, but a part of him will always be rooted at Middleton Place.
“I want to retire early enough to be able to enjoy this garden and see the benefit of what I’ve done,” he says. “I still have the same joy and enthusiasm walking through this garden today that I had over 40 years ago. This will always be part of my life.”
—MICHAEL BANKS | PHOTO BY MILTON MORRIS
Camden and Kershaw County celebrate South Carolina’s rich Revolutionary
War history
HONORING HISTORY Participants portray Patriot soldiers during last year’s Battle of Camden Reenactment weekend.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TIM HANSON
IT WAS AN OVERWHELMING DEFEAT
for the Patriot cause, but the Aug. 16, 1780, Battle of Camden set into motion key events that led to victory in the American Revolution, reason enough for the people of Kershaw County to share with pride their rich history in the fight for freedom.
In a forest of towering loblolly and longleaf pines eight miles north of Camden, Continental Army troops under Gen. Horatio Gates clashed with Redcoats under the command of Gen. Charles Cornwallis. The 45-minute battle ended with some 1,900 Americans killed, injured or captured, and the British firmly in control of the region. But it also initiated a Patriot response that ultimately forced the British to retreat to Charleston less than a year later.
Today, these historical events are commemorated in a new $6 million Revolutionary War Visitor Center in Camden, on tours of the preserved Battle of Camden battlefield, through interactive tours at the Historic Camden Foundation Village, and during the annual Battle of Camden Reenactment. uu
—ALFRED MAE DRAKEFORD,
CAMDEN MAYOR
RED VERSUS BLUE Museum-style displays (and the occasional uniformed reenactor) at Camden’s Revolutionary War Visitor Center tell the story of the war in Kershaw County and South Carolina.
SIMPLY REVOLUTIONARY SWEEPSTAKES
Indulge your passion for history by entering our Simply Revolutionary Sweepstakes. Two lucky readers will be selected at random to receive a one-year pass to the Thursday Talks and other special events held at the Revolutionary War Visitor Center, plus a $100 Visa gift card. To enter, use the mail-in form on Page 25, or register online at
SCLiving.coop/revolution.
MIC SMITH
Revolutionary War Visitor Center
Camden’s visitor center, which opened to the public last summer, provides an overview of the American Revolution and Camden’s role in that world-changing event.
The facility has on display artifacts like cannonballs, a musket butt plate, a Spanish silver piece, and a button from an American Continental Army uniform—all recovered from the nearby battlefield. It also features several life-sized mannequins dressed in period-accurate uniforms and holding long, muzzle-loading muskets. Videos, audio presentations, photos, drawings, paintings and a gift shop round out the center’s offerings.
“People here in Camden have wanted something like this for a long time,” says visitor center director Rickie Good. “We are averaging from 1,000 to 1,500 visitors per month. Besides walk-in visitors, we have school groups come through to learn about our history, and we look at all aspects of the American Revolution.”
For true history buffs, the center hosts Thursday Talks, evening presentations by historians who discuss everything from military history to the music, food and culture of the era. For more on these programs, see the events section at simplyrevolutionary.com.
The Revolutionary War Visitor Center is located at 212 Broad Street in Camden and open Monday–Saturday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For more details, call (803) 272-0076 or visit simplyrevolutionary.com.
LIVING HISTORY On guided tours of the Historic Camden village, volunteers like Liz Canada add to the experience by wearing period clothing and demonstrating Colonialera skills like spinning and weaving.
The entrance to the Historic Camden Foundation Village is just steps away from the new visitor center, and the 107-acre campus offers guests additional insight into Camden’s role during the revolution.
The centerpiece is a replica of the Kershaw-Cornwallis House where the British general set up his headquarters during the occupation of Camden. The site also features a tavern, stables, nature trails and a working blacksmith shop. On guided tours of the house and grounds, volunteer living historians like Liz Canada and Lynn Teague wear period clothing and demonstrate weaving and spinning techniques, and— because war isn’t pretty—curator Nate Bazell demonstrates the crude surgical tools and techniques used to treat injured soldiers.
Historic Camden also offers guided tours of the Camden Battlefield and Longleaf Pine Preserve, located about a 15-minute drive north of the city. Other than a few historic markers, the site is in a natural state, but Bazell’s narration on guided tours and new interpretive tools offered by the South Carolina Battleground Trust (see “The Liberty Trail,” right) bring the story of the conflict to life.
Historic Camden Foundation Village is located at 222 Broad St. in Camden and open Monday–Saturday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. Admission fees vary according to the scope and length of tours. Guided tours cost $10 to $15 for adults; $8 to $13 for seniors, military with ID and students. Children ages 6 and under are admitted free. For more details, call (803) 432-9841 or visit historiccamden.org. The Camden Battlefield and Longleaf Pine Preserve is located at 1606 Flat Rock Road and open to the public for self-guided tours. Guided battlefield tours meet at the Historic Camden Foundation visitor center and are offered Wednesday–Saturday at 2 p.m. for $15 per person. uu
THE LIBERTY TRAIL
American and British forces in South Carolina clashed at about 250 locations throughout the Revolutionary War. Many of those battle sites have been lost to history as the land was farmed, sold into private hands or simply neglected. But as the United States Semiquincentennial (250-year anniversary) draws closer, two organizations are working to acquire and preserve the remaining battlegrounds for future generations.
“We are buying and preserving these battle sites and turning them into parks,” says Doug Bostick, CEO of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust. “Most of these battlefields are unprotected historic sites, and that means they are not preserved in any manner.”
Bostick says his organization is working with the American Battlefield Trust to preserve some 2,500 acres across the state and develop more than 80 locations where fighting between British and Americans occurred.
More than 30 already preserved sites are now connected by an interpretive path called the Liberty Trail. Various tools are available to make visits to battlefields more engaging, including a new smartphone app offering self-guided battlefield tours with maps, photos, audible narrations and augmented reality features. Released in February 2021, the app is now available in the Apple App Store and on Google Play.
In Camden, plans are underway to build an open-air pavilion at the Camden Battlefield Preserve and install 20 audio recordings of actors portraying men such as British Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis, American Gen. Horatio Gates, as well as privates and noncommissioned officers.
“We call it ‘Voices of Camden.’ We have taken first-person accounts and have had actors play those roles,” says Bostick. “It’s thrilling to be able to share incredible places where it feels possible to touch the past.” For more on the Liberty Trail, visit battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/libertytrail. To follow the work of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, visit scbattlegroundtrust.org.
Visitors are free to roam and interact with the participants in the replica Colonial camp, learning about the American Revolution with all five senses.
WEB EXTRA Standing tall
The Battle of Camden forever changed the fates of two notable Patriots. As the tide turned toward the British, Gen. Horatio Gates fled on horseback, but his second in command, Gen. Baron Johann de Kalb, remained and fought gallantly, suffering nearly a dozen bayonet wounds. Learn how de Kalb’s legacy lives on in Camden at SCLiving.coop/dekalb.
CLASS IS IN SESSION Thousands of visitors turn out each year to roam the Colonial encampment at the Battle of Camden Reenactment (above). The mock battle is a loud, smoky and bustling affair that includes cannons, musket fire and a cavalry charge.
Battle of Camden Reenactment
Each fall, scores of living historians turn out for the annual Battle of Camden Reenactment in Kershaw County, where they set up a replica Colonial camp by wearing period-accurate clothing, sleeping in cloth tents, cooking over wood fires, and demonstrating the life skills of the 1780s. Visitors are free to roam and interact with the participants, learning about the American Revolution with all five senses. One of the 2021 vendors, Justin Cherry, had visitors lined up to buy fresh bread, baked on-site in his 3-ton clay oven, a cooking style that was popular in the 18th century. On Sunday, the last day of the three-day event, Parson John Jarboe from Bowling Green, Kentucky, led church services with parishioners seated outdoors on bales of hay and wooden benches. Jarboe read from a 1725 King James Bible before offering his morning sermon. The highlight of the weekend is the Battle of Camden reenactments, staged on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, by dedicated reenactors who travel from around the country to portray the British and Patriot soldiers.
The event takes place on an open field where the reenactors fire replica muskets and cannons (real gun powder but no bullets or shells), swing curved sabers while on horseback, and race at each other with fixed bayonets. Soon the air is charged with dust and gun smoke and the sounds of marching drums and the voices of officers yelling orders, straining to be heard over the din of combat. The chaotic scene offers only a glimpse into what it must have been like on that August morning in 1780.
The Battle of Camden Reenactment takes place at 1208 Keys Lane in Kershaw each November. Exact dates, times and admission fees for the 2022 event were not available as this issue went to press. Advance purchase tickets will be available in September. For more information, visit southerncampaign1780.org.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR
VISITOR CENTER
CAMDEN, SC
PASSION. COURAGE. LIBERTY.
Discover how South Carolina’s quest for independence turned the tide of the American Revolution. With the first permanent exhibit of its kind, the Revolutionary War Visitor Center at Camden tells the powerful story of the Southern Campaign and the valiant patriots with their hearts set on liberty.
Open Daily
SIMPLY REVOLUTIONARY SWEEPSTAKES
Explore our American story Explore our American story
Indulge your passion for the rich history of Camden and the American Revolution by entering our Simply Revolutionary Sweepstakes
Two lucky readers will be drawn at random from all eligible entries to receive a one-year pass to the Thursday Talks and other special events held at Camden’s Revolutionary War Visitor Center (a $360 value), plus a $100 Visa gift card.
To enter, register online at SCLiving.coop/revolution, or mail in this form. Entries must be received by April 30, 2022.
By entering, you agree to join Discover Camden & Kershaw County’s Simply Revolutionary email list and receive emails from South Carolina Living.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR VISITOR CENTER
CAMDEN, SC SIMPLY REVOLUTIONARY SWEEPSTAKES Register below, or online at SCLiving.coop/revolution
YES! Enter me in the drawing for a one-year pass to events at the Camden Revolutionary War Visitor Center and a $100 gift card.
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Phone* My electric cooperative is: SEND COUPON TO: Simply Revolutionary Sweepstakes, 808 Knox Abbott Drive, Cayce, SC 29033. Entries must be received by April 30, 2022, to be eligible. *Winner will be contacted to verify mailing address.
