The Human History of the Kaminski House: The Owners

                                                           by Jennie Holton Fant

The fascinating thing about the Kaminski House Museum is that on its grounds is encompassed an entire history of Georgetown. The original lands date back to the early founding of George Town, two lots on the Sampit River that were first owned separately by outside investors. Paul Trapier, Jr. purchased one lot in 1758, another in 1759, and added a third lot to the property in 1767. And here the story begins.

Many people owned the house over the decades before Harold and Julia Kaminski purchased the property in 1931. Who were they? That is what I wanted to know. So I did a deep dive into the human history of the property to see what we could learn. Working with the scant documentation that exists and considering I haven’t access to city directors or county or city records, due to the coronavirus closings, I’ve done what I can.

I have included research performed by the Museum’s Dave Gorman, and have taken it further, tying the Kaminski house and property and its owners to the larger history of the region. Here is what I found.

This is the story, and these were the owners:

Paul Trapier

Paul Trapier, Jr. (1716-1793) was the son of Paul Trapier and Elizabeth DuGué, whose French Huguenot families were among the earliest colonists of Carolina. The Trapiers settled circa 1695 on the French Santee in Berkeley County. Paul, Jr. was a minor when his father died, leaving him a town house in Charleston. He first sold goods on commission at a store in Georgetown for Joseph Wragg from Charleston. However, in 1741 he went to London to secure credit and goods and returned to Georgetown to trade on his own. By the mid-1740s, Trapier, Jr. had expanded and opened a store in Charleston, and through the 1750s, he attained wealth on export sales in naval stores, rice, and indigo. [George Rogers, History of Georgetown County (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 1970: 49, 50, 52.]

In 1743, Trapier, Jr. married Magdalen Horry (1715-1767), the daughter of Huguenot immigrant Elias Horry and Marguerite Huger from the parish of Prince George, Winyah. In the decade after their marriage, the Trapiers, Horry and Lynch families, entangled by intermarriage, emerged as the region’s three most influential families and dominated politics. Trapier, Jr. was given power of attorney in many transactions, and represented numerous Carolina men in business matters. He attended sessions of the Commons House of Assembly in Charleston, first taking his seat in 1748, and remained a political figure through the 1750s. [Rogers, History of Georgetown: 49, 50, 61.]  Well-connected and well-known both in Charleston and Georgetown, he was soon referred to as the “king of Georgetown.” He and Magdalen had two children, Elizabeth, born in 1745, and Paul Trapier, III, born in 1749.

Paul Trapier, Jr. turned from merchant to planter when he purchased 757 acres from the estate of his friend, John Waites, Esq., after the latter’s death in 1760. In 1762  he established the family home at Windsor, a rice plantation on the Black River. As late as 1790, he was one of the largest planters in the region. [Rogers, History of Georgetown:166.] Meanwhile, three London MPs, who were merchants, partnered as speculative investors hoping to turn a huge profit on Carolina lands. In 1765 they appointed Trapier as a trustee with “full power of attorney and sale” of the original parcels, tracts and plantations of Hobcaw Barony, a lucrative venture for Trapier. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 23.]  He himself eventually obtained about 2,447 acres of the Georgetown region, and  over a thousand acres in Granville County (near Beaufort). [N. Louise Bailey, Mary L. Morgan, Carolyn R. Taylor, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina Senate, 1776-1985, Volume 3 (University of South Carolina Press), 1986:1632.]

Trapier, Jr. first purchased a lot of the property on which the Kaminski House stands as an investment in 1758, and a second lot in 1759, thereby combining two lots that had previously sold separately since the town lands were first granted. These lots had some interesting prior owners, such as Gabriel Manigault from Charleston, but the first owners were likely investors. Situated on high ground overlooking the Sampit River, the property has historically been referred to as “the Bluff.”  Trapier held the two lots until after the death of his wife, Magdalen in 1767, when he, planning to remarry, decided to first settle his “spinster” daughter, Elizabeth, who he feared would never marry. He gifted her three lots, having added a third lot to the property when he turned it over to Elizabeth. In 1769, he married Elizabeth Rothmahler Waites, the widow of his late friend,  John Waities, Esq.

Trapier owned North Island when in 1789 he made a “gratuitous cession" of seven acres to the federal government for the building of a lighthouse on the island. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 202.] ] No money was available until late 1798, when Congress appropriated $7,000 to build the lighthouse. The lighthouse was completed in early 1801, after Trapier’s death, and still stands.

Paul Trapier, Jr. died in October of 1793 and was buried beside his first wife and son in Prince George Winyah Churchyard.

ELIZABETH TRAPIER MARTIN

Elizabeth Trapier (1745-1817) owned the property on the Bluff for over a decade before she married widower Edward Martin (d. ca.1787), in 1778. Martin was from England. He was first a merchant in Charleston, where he formed a mercantile partnership with Englishman Thomas Shirley. Their firm, Martin & Shirley, was active in the importing of slaves (1763-1765), and they partnered in shares of a sloop, a brigantine, and two schooners.

In Charleston, Martin served as commissioner of the workhouse and markets (1762-1765). In Georgetown, he served as sheriff of Georgetown District, and ended his days as a planter on the Waccamaw River. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County. 284n.] In 1784, Martin purchased 746½ acres and settled Belle Voir Plantation, afterward renamed Friendfield and today a part of Hobcaw Barony. Elizabeth Trapier Martin named the property Belle Voir, which means "beautiful view" in French. [Suzanne Cameron Linder and Marta Leslie Thacker, Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of Georgetown County and the Santee River (Columbia, SC: South Carolina Department of Archives and History), 2001: 4: 18.] It is sometimes referred to as Belvoir Planation.

The same year Elizabeth married Edward Martin, her brother Paul Trapier, III (1749-1778), died. Educated in England at Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge, and admitted to the Middle Temple, London in 1767, he had been a member of the Provincial Congress and the committee of safety for Georgetown, a member of the South Carolina general assembly in 1776, and justice of the peace in 1776. Trapier, III, served in the Revolutionary War as captain of the Georgetown Artillery. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1777 but did not attend due to illness. At his death, he left a wife, his first cousin, Elizabeth Foissin Trapier (1757-1836), and four children: Paul Trapier, IV; Benjamin Foisson Trapier; Magdalene Elizabeth Trapier; and William Windham Trapier.

After the death of their father, the children lived with their Aunt Elizabeth and Edward Martin in the house, from where their grandfather helped look after them. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 159.]  It is unclear if their mother lived with them. In 1784, Elizabeth Foissin Trapier remarried, to Capt. Albert Roux (1755-1791), a Revolutionary War officer and Georgetown merchant born in Switzerland. Roux owned Serenity Plantation, lands just to the west of where the steel mill stands today on the Sampit River.

Edward Martin and Elizabeth Trapier evidently did not combine their estates. At his death in 1787, Martin left Belle Voir Plantation, two building lots in Georgetown, and forest land on Black River to his brother in England. [John Martin Papers, 1787-1802, South Carolina Historical Society, at https://schistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Martin-John-papers-1067.0.pdf]  At her death in 1817, Elizabeth left her property to her niece, Magdalen.

MAGDALEN TRAPIER KEITH

Magdalen Trapier (1777-1852) inherited the house on the Bluff from her Aunt Elizabeth Trapier Martin in 1817. Like many Georgetown region girls, Magdalen attended school in Charleston. In the Wilkinson-Keith Family papers at the College of Charleston, there is a letter dated December 10, 1785 from Samuel Baldwin, a Princeton graduate and schoolteacher who opened a classical school in Charleston. He writes to Paul Trapier, Jr. regarding his grand-daughter, Magdalen, as a pupil. Baldwin praises her disposition, and her rapid acquisition of knowledge. [Wilkinson and Keith Family Papers, 1785-1920,  Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston at https://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:40601].

In 1793, Magdalen married Major John Keith (1763- c.a.1823), the son of Dr. William Keith of Scotland and his wife Anne Cordes of Barbados. [Records of Prince George Winyah: 11.] It is believed John Keith came to America as a teenager with his father, who at the time was a medical student. In 1797, John Keith acquired lands and developed Keithfield Plantation on the Black River.

A politician as well, Keith held a seat in the South Carolina State Senate from 1804 to 1808 and again from 1816 to 1817. [Linder and Thacker, Historical Atlas: 448.]  Following the incorporation of Georgetown in 1805, he was elected the town’s first intendant (mayor) and served two terms, 1806 to 1807 and 1808 to 1809. Keith served as a militia officer in the War of 1812. He was a director of the Bank of South Carolina in Georgetown and was elected a trustee of South Carolina College. He was also an editor of the Winyaw Intelligencer from 1817 until his death.

John and Magdalen had two children, John Alexander Keith (1796–1857) and Rev. Paul Trapier Keith (1801-1868). The latter served for over a decade as rector of the parish of Prince George, Winyah, and for almost three decades as assistant minister and rector of Saint Michael's in Charleston.

When John Keith died in 1823, Keithfield was encumbered in debt. Magdalen renounced her dower on the mortgage of Keithfield, and she was able to keep her own property, [Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of South Carolina, Book 2 (South Carolina Supreme Court: Elihu Hall Bay West Publishing Co.), 1917: 34. See Magdaline [sic] Keith v. Paul Trapier, executor of John Keith, and R.O. Anderson.]. Magdalen Keith owned the house until her death in Charleston in 1852.

From their mother, the Keith sons inherited the family house on the Bluff, as well as a portion of the property around it. They soon sold it out of the family line.

In 1855, Mary Vernon purchased the house and three lots of the Keith property for 2,000 dollars. A fourth lot, that had been added at some point by the Keiths, was sold earlier by the Keith sons. At the time Mary Vernon made this transaction in 1855, a law office existed on the parcel of the original property that abutted Front Street, which was not included in the sale. This was likely the fourth lot mentioned above.

MARY VERNON

Mary Vernon was the second wife and widow of Henry Vernon, who first married Florida Guerry, of Sampit, in 1808. Florida died sometime before 1818 when her brother, Isaac Guerry and husband, Henry Vernon fought in court over two slaves left Florida in her mother’s will. [Henry Junius Nott, David James McCord, Nott and McCord's Reports of Cases Determined in the Constitutional Court of South Carolina: Containing Decisions from November Term, 1817, to November Term 1820, Inclusive (M'Carter & Dawson), 1860, 1:42: See Isaac Guerry v. Henry Vernon.] There is an entry in Records of the Georgetown Methodist Church 1811-1897 that notes the baptism of Rachel Francis Vernon, the daughter of Henry Vernon and Mary his wife, in 1822.

Henry Vernon died in 1839. On December 23, 1841, Mary Vernon advertised slaves for hire from Henry Vernon’s estate in the Winyah Observer.  In the same issue, she advertised a house and lot for rent "near the Baptist Church at present occupied by Mrs. Mary Vernon.” Seven years later, on Wednesday, May 10, 1848, the Winyah Observer published a public notice of “sale by order of the Court of Ordinary” (William Porter, applicant vs. Mary Vernon, Lewis Rebb, and H.N. Vernon) in regard to a 290 acre tract of land from the estate of the late Henry Vernon. This property, located on the east side of the Sampit, was to be sold in front of the Courthouse.

Then in March of 1858, a notice appeared in the Pee Dee Times regarding the property that is now the Kaminski House. It reads: “Under Decree in Equity, Georgetown, S.C., Mary Vernon vs Henry Vernon, J. B Thomas, et al.: On Tuesday 6th of April next at 12 o'clock, in front of the Court House in Georgetown. I will sell all that lot of land, better known as the Keith's lot, pleasantly situated in that part of the town known as the hill near the Sampit and with a river front. Also the following very valuable negroes—Toney about 30 years of age, who has been employed on one of the Steam Boats as a fireman, Sam aged about 40 years, Mariah a cook and washer, about 35 years, Susan about 5 yrs., a house servant, Isabella aged about 30, a cook and washer, Scipio about 7 yrs., of age, Hannah 2 yrs., old, and Simeon about 1 year old. Terms—the cash, and the balance on a credit of 12 months, secured by Bond with approved personal security bearing interest from day of sale payable Treasury from day of sale payable annually, and a mortgage of the premises. Purchasers to pay for papers. S. T. Atkinson, Com in Equity, March 24—2.”

It is unclear exactly what happened to Mary Vernon after 1858.

However, she did own the property until 1866, when she sold it Thomas Daggett.

THOMAS DAGGETT

Thomas West Daggett (1828-1893) owned the property on the Bluff  for less than a year, but he makes for one of the more interesting owners. Daggett, born in Bedford, Massachusetts, came south when he was sixteen years old and found work in Charleston as an apprentice in a machine shop. The skills he learned qualified him as an engineer. This led him to Darien, Georgia, to run a sawmill. He soon returned to manage Francis Marion Weston’s rice mill on Waccamaw Neck at Laurel Hill, one of plantation properties that today comprise Brookgreen Gardens. He leased the mill and was the miller, which he advertised to the outlying region in the newspaper. At the start of the Civil War, Daggett served as a captain in the Waccamaw Light Artillery. He entered Confederate service as an ordnance officer and was eventually made responsible for all the coastal defenses from Little River to Georgetown.

Near the end of the war, Georgetown surrendered to the Union Army (February 25, 1865). The next day, Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren entered Winyah Bay to take over the city. He put the city under martial law and freed the slaves, ordering their prior owners to provide them with provisions for sixty days. Dahlgren afterward turned his flagship, the Harvest Moon, back down the bay. He toured a silenced Battery White and spent the night of February 28 anchored opposite the fort. On the morning of March 1, 1865, as he attempted to sail back up the bay his ship hit a crude floating mine and sank. Adm. Dahlgren survived but a captain’s steward was killed. The bomb was the work of Capt. Thomas Daggett, fashioned it is said, on "the second floor of the oldest store in Georgetown, occupied at the time by S. W. Rouquie, and later by H. Kaminski."  The wreck of the Harvest Moon can still be seen, or at least a section of the flagship remains visible at low tide in Winyah Bay. [The Independent Republic Quarterly Vol.27 No.3; Summer 1993: 19.]

Before the Civil War, Daggett had attained some financial comfort as lessee of the mill at Laurel Hill. After the war, he, like most southerners, experienced financial reversals. It is unclear under what condition he bought and sold the house on the Bluff.

What is known is that in 1866, he sold the house and property to Arthur Morgan.

ARTHUR MORGAN

Arthur Morgan (1816-1878) and his wife, Louisa LaMotte Morgan (d. 1897), moved to Georgetown in 1854. Their children were born the same year, twins Katherine LaMotte Morgan (1854-1934) and  Joseph LaMotte Morgan (1854-1904). The family was described as Roman Catholic but “half Irish and half French” due to Louisa Morgan’s French Huguenot family origins. Arthur Morgan was from a family of Irish immigrants who settled in Georgetown. His brother, John Morgan (d. 1866), a merchant, was the father of William Doyle Morgan (1853–1938), who would serve as intendant and mayor of Georgetown from 1891 to 1906. Arthur Morgan partnered in Morgan & McQuaid, a shipping and commission firm located on Front Street at the site of what in 1888 became the J.B. Steele Building, now the River Room Restaurant.

There was not much Catholic presence in Georgetown until well after the Civil War. So during their years as residents, Arthur and Louisa Morgan opened their home to itinerant priests who passed through Georgetown. After Arthur Morgan’s death in 1878, Morgan's nephew, William Doyle Morgan, continued the Morgan tradition from his home at 732 Prince Street. Like his uncle, he opened his house for gatherings of Catholics or when a priest came to town to offer Mass. In later years, W.D. Morgan had a chapel built on the first floor of his house. In 1901, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church was built. Finally, Georgetown had a Catholic church where mass was held after the church was dedicated in 1902.

Arthur Morgan not only purchased the Bluff property in 1866, he also  purchased what was then a peninsula across the Sampit River from the site (and today is an island known as Goat Island). However. he failed to get a deed for it until 1874. The peninsula had long been a source of controversy, as the original deed was lost, and innumerable Georgetown folks claimed it but could not offer proof. This had been a problem for Arthur Morgan and after his death, it proved to be a problem for his wife and children. Beginning in 1879, the Morgans appeared in court regarding the peninsula lands, responding to an action (Congdon v. Morgan, 14 S.C. 587, 1881)  for recovery of land and for damages commenced by none other than George R. Congdon (who would later purchase the Bluff property from the Morgans) and Benjamin Hazard, plaintiffs, against Louisa Morgan, Joseph L. Morgan, Kate L. Garber and her husband, James R. Garber. [Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of South Carolina, Book 35. (South Carolina Supreme Court, Elihu Hall Bay West Publishing Company), 1916: 15: 251-255.]

It’s a long story but basically Arthur Morgan had contracted with one Myers in 1866 to purchase the peninsula lot of land. Afterward, Morgan erected a turpentine works on the peninsula and continued to use it until the works burned in 1877. After Morgan’s death, his children had taken possession of the peninsula and erected a building on it, when they were ousted by the act of an agent of Congdon & Hazard Co., the defendants, who claimed they had purchased the land for $115 from a prior owner, one Shackelford's bankrupt estate. The jury found a verdict for the plaintiffs. Congdon & Hazard appealed  the verdict, which was heard in court in 1880, again finding for the Morgans.

Meanwhile Louisa Morgan had left the area after Arthur’s death in 1878. She died at Uniontown, Alabama in 1897. After she received last rites of the Roman Catholic Church, her  last request was that she be laid to rest by the side of her husband in the old Episcopal Church Cemetery in Georgetown, her old home. In compliance with this request her son, Joseph LaMotte Morgan, brought her remains back to Georgetown and fulfilled her wish. [Georgetown Times, “Mrs. Louisa LaMotte Morgan Died at Uniontown Ala. June 17 1897 at the ripe age of 71 years 2 months and 2 days” (June 23,1897).]

As for the Morgan children, Kate LaMotte Morgan married Dr. James Rhodes Garber of Birmingham, Alabama, and lived there. Joseph LaMotte Morgan graduated from Georgetown University in D.C. and served as secretary of the legation at Mexico City under the administrations of both Cleveland and Harrison, and for a short time as consul general. In 1883, he married Sara Monica Frisbie in a ceremony performed by the Archbishop of Mexico in his private chapel. She was the granddaughter of Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the California military commander, politician, and rancher who shaped the transition of California from a Mexican district to an American state. Monica’s father, Gen. John B. Frisbie, founded Vallejo, California, which was named for her grandfather, and the nearby city of Benicia, which was named for her grandmother (née Francisca Benicia Carrillo). Unfortunately, Monica died in 1885, two years after her marriage.

Joseph L. Morgan was later special agent in the proposed building of the Nicaragua Canal, in that government's canal project,  an endeavor in which Morgan hoped to make a huge commission. His hopes were not realized. The  project fell through when the United States abandoned plans to construct a waterway in Nicaragua after it purchased the French interests in the Panama Canal. On February 3, 1904, the Georgetown Times  published the following: “The news was received on Monday of the death of Mr. Jos. L Morgan, who was well known here as a boy—his father, the late Mr. Arthur Morgan, residing on the bluff, in what is now known as the Congdon house. He had an attack of pneumonia on Saturday, in New York, and died on Sunday last. He was a first cousin of our Mayor Morgan.” On February 24,  the Georgetown Times again reports that Joseph Morgan died in New York, and further that his friend, Mrs. Jefferson Davis, sent a floral tribute. [“Joseph La Motte Morgan He Was A Native of Georgetown, But Left Here Years Ago,” Georgetown Times (Wednesday, February 24, 1904):1]

Meanwhile, George R. Congdon had purchased the house and property (now four lots, as Arthur Morgan had added the fourth lot to the property after 1868) from the Morgans in 1889.

GEORGE REYNOLDS CONGDON

George R. Congdon (1837-1903) was born in Georgetown. His father, William Prior Congdon, had come from Rhode Island to Georgetown prior to his birth, and established a mercantile house known in town for more than half a century under the successive firm(s) of Congdon & Tilley & Hazard & Co.

George Congdon was a member of the Georgetown Rifle Guards, organized in late 1859. When the Civil War began, he served as lieutenant of Capt. T. Pinckney Alston's Company (F), First South Carolina Volunteers, Greggs, and he was afterwards elected Captain of Company K, Twenty-Sixth South Carolina Regiment, on November 17, 1862. He was wounded in the second battle of Manassas, and on January 9, 1864, was appointed to “acting master's mate” in the navy of the Confederate States, on the Steamer Peedee, which was burned by orders from Richmond. [Confederate Veteran monthly (Broadfoot Publishing Co.), 1904, 12: 544.]

However, when the war began, George’s father, William Prior Congdon, found his loyalties lay with the Union, and he returned to Newport for the duration of the war. After the war, W.P. Congdon returned to business in Georgetown but spent his summers in Rhode Island, eventually settling there permanently. George Congdon returned to Georgetown to continue in the shipping and mercantile business started by his father. He partnered with Benjamin I. Hazard, another Newport, Rhode Island transplant. Soon after the war, he married Adriana Seavey Congdon (1840-1923) from Maine. They had three children: William Prior Congdon; Charles Seavey Congdon, and Georgie Alberta Congdon.

George Congdon was elected intendent (mayor) of Georgetown in 1872 and served three terms to 1875.

Congdon & Hazard rose to prominence in the 1880s, and George Congdon was among the “new men” who rose to business leadership in the next years. Most were either not native to the region, or else they came from the middle ranks of pre-war society rather than the elite planting class of the earlier generation of Georgetown leaders. This new group included Heiman Kaminski (the father of Harold Kaminski), W. D. Morgan, Benjamin Hazard, Sol Emanuel, P.R. Lachicotte, W.W. Taylor, Sr. and a number of other men who had primary businesses in town, but also served as directors of the railroads, lumber yards, rice mills, steamship lines, building and loan associations, and distributing businesses of their era. [Rogers, History of Georgetown County: 464.]  

In 1889, Congdon purchased the house on the Bluff, which was significantly enlarged during his residency.

On September 26, 1903, the Georgetown Times reports: “Inexpressibly sad was the announcement of the demise of Capt. George R. Congdon, which occurred at his residence in this city on Wednesday morning last, from a stroke of paralysis. This gentleman had long been identified with the social and commercial life of our community and was well and favorably known to everyone here. He was intendant of our town at one time, as well as holding other positions of trust and honor among us. He it was who instituted our police force, put up streetlamps, &c.”

After his death, Congdon’s widow built a Victorian mansion in the 600 block of Prince Street, where she lived from 1903.

Also in 1903,  a deed was conveyed for the building of a federal building on Front Street, adjacent to the property, from the estate of George R. Congdon, deceased, “being the same premises conveyed by said George R. Congdon, in his lifetime, to said United States of America, by deed hearing date the 9th day of May, 1903, and duly recorded in the office of the Register of Mesne Conveyances for said Georgetown County, in Book V, page 317.”  This was the U.S. Post Office and Customs House, erected in 1906, which remains standing today at 1001 Front Street. [Samuel Marion Wolfe, J. C. McLure, C. D. Barksdale, William Wallace Lewis, Silas MacBee Wetmore, Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1922 (R. L. Bryan Company and the State Co,), 1922: 18.]

According to Julian Stevenson Bolick in Georgetown Houselore, published in 1944 (page 92), the Congdons lived on the property and then “the Griffins, Royals, Kings, and Baylors lived here.” It is possible that Adriana Seavey Congdon rented the house after she moved to her new Prince Street house.

What is known is that the Congdon family owned the house until 1914, when it was sold to Edgar Lee Lloyd.

EDGAR LEE LLOYD

Edgar. Lloyd (1874-1933) was from Maryland. He came to Georgetown with Atlantic Coast Lumber Corporation (ACL), formed in 1899 and incorporated in 1903. At a time when Georgetown businessmen were seeking alternatives to the culture of rice, ACL was the brainchild of wealthy New York financier and international businessman Charles Flint, who sought to make this region of the South “lumber country.” A few years after ACL was founded, Charles Flint turned the lumber business over to Minneapolis lumberman Freeman S. Farr, who served as the first president and a leading stockholder of the Atlantic Coast Lumber Corporation, as receiver of Georgetown Lumber and Timber Company and Georgetown and Eastern Railway, and as treasurer of the Oneida Timber company and the Southern Mercantile company—all newly-organized South Carolina Corporations.

Atlantic Coast Lumber ignited the evolution of “modern” Georgetown. They purchased Savage’s lumber mill and land of the former Serenity Plantation and began operation in 1899. The company, headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, constructed the largest lumber mill on the East Coast in Georgetown, buying up hundreds of thousands of acres of land and timber rights in the surrounding counties. The plant eventually covered 56 acres in the bend of the Sampit River, property today occupied by the steel mill. The company acquired control of the Georgetown & Western Railroad and built a network of branches and spurs from the main line for hauling cut timber from remote logging camps to the mill. This flurry of activity created hundreds of new jobs and stimulated economic growth in Georgetown with an infusion of outside capital. It brought a number of new folks to town, among them Edgar L. Lloyd, who became assistance secretary and assistant treasurer of the company.

Soon after arriving, Edgar L. Lloyd experienced tragedy. In 1900, he married Bernice Sigler from Hot Springs, Arkansas. They were living in Lloyd’s new and “modern” brick house, built on Fraser Street in Georgetown’s historic district, when in 1901 Bernice and her infant son died. Bernice was 24 years old when she and her unnamed child were buried side by side in their graves at Prince George Winyah churchyard.

In 1903 in Georgetown, E.L. Lloyd remarried Maud Storrs Farr (1868-1936), a manager at ACL and the daughter of its president, Freeman S. Farr. The Lloyds had a daughter, Mabel Farr Lloyd, born the same year.

When the Georgetown Country Club was founded a few years later in 1905, a woman's golf tournament was set in progress for a cup offered by Mrs. E. L. Lloyd, and Edgar Lloyd was elected the club’s first president. Maud was founder and president of the first Georgetown chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R). She attended luncheons, bridge parties, and teas and mingled with the locals. Her brother, Raymond S. Farr, general manager of ACL, and his wife, Clara Taft Farr, also lived in Georgetown, as did Maud’s sister, Mabel, and brother-in-law, Rufus M Barnes, ACL’s assistant general manager. These couples all actively participated in local society and affairs. It was a heady, and very social time in Georgetown. In fact, in 1913, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd entertained Harold Kaminski, the future owner of the house, at a “Chafing Dish Party” party. Of course, at the time Harold’s future wife, Julia, growing up in the Pyatt house on Highmarket Street, was still a child of 13.

Atlantic Coast Lumber officers and executives— most of them northerners—hunted in their leisure time and shot ducks around Georgetown, and these sportsmen contributed largely to the region becoming a “sporting paradise.” Hunting ducks had held little appeal for southern plantation owners, who had considered it an inferior sport. They, like the English, preferred deer-hunting. However, in 1894 President Grover Cleveland paid a visit to Gen. Edward Porter Alexander’s South Island preserve soon after he acquired it. Out duck hunting, President Cleveland was tossed off a skiff in a gale and had to be rescued and hauled out of the water. This news was carried across the U.S. in all the major newspapers. Yet the bigger news was that Cleveland bagged 46 ducks that weekend. Suddenly the “ready-made” plantations of the lowcountry, no longer productive as rice fields, were in demand as winter residents and hunting preserves by elite sportsmen from the North. Guests at Gen. Edward Porter Alexander’s South Island preserve between 1900 and 1902 included Charles Flint, the father of Atlantic Coast Lumber, and its president, Freeman S. Farr, as well as Farr’s son-in-law Rufus M. Barnes.

Edgar L. Lloyd was involved  in Atlantic Coast Lumber’s acquisition of Hagley Plantation on Waccamaw Neck (and Weehawka Plantation to the north) and the purchase of eighty-five acres on Pawleys Island, where the company subsequently maintained boarding houses, including the Pelican Inn, and beach cottages for its employees. The lumber company put a steamboat, the Governor Safford, into service from Georgetown to Hagley Landing, and laid a three-and-a-half-mile railroad track that traversed the Neck and the southern causeway to Pawleys. This made it possible for mill workers to access the island from Georgetown via ferry and train in less than an hour and a half. ACL logged the lands of Hagley Plantation, but they also constructed a hunting lodge on the property for senior management of Atlantic Coast Lumber, which the Freeman S. Farr family, including E. L. Lloyd, used as a ducking ground. These ACL  arrangements lasted from June of 1901 until September of 1905. The next year, a hurricane destroyed the railroad to Pawleys. Meanwhile,  a Georgetown boat captain initiated a new ferry schedule that took seasonal travelers to Pawley’s by a different route.

Bypassed by beachgoers, Hagley Plantation was a backwater when Atlantic Coast Lumber leased it in 1909 to their Du Pont Company interests, headed by Eugene du Pont Jr. The Charleston News and Courier credited Raymond Farr and Edgar Lloyd with first convincing the E.I. Dupont de Nemours Company to locate one of its wood alcohol manufactories adjacent to ACL, to purchase the wood waste and sawdust from its mills and convert it to ethyl alcohol. The newspaper  reports that Eugene Dupont leased Hagley a day after making the deal for the alcohol plant, Dupont Powder Factory, which operated at Atlantic Coast Lumber in Georgetown beginning in 1909. Eugene Dupont claimed he had been “on the ground frequently” in Georgetown and become “aware of the splendid shooting advantages of this section of country.” Calling themselves the “Hagley Gun Club,” the lessees were given “the right and privilege only of hunting and shooting game” on Hagley’s 2,250 acres, and “also the right at all times to the use of the house near the wharf on the Waccamaw River.” However, they did not have exclusive use of the plantation. The  lease was made with the “distinct understanding” that “a co-ordinate, co-equal, and co-extensive right and privilege of hunting and shooting game . . . upon said property and the use of said house during the currency of the term hereof . . .shall be reserved to and enjoyed by the General Manager [Farr], Assistant Manager [Barnes] and Assistant Treasurer [Lloyd] of said lesser and such of their friends, not residents of this State, as they shall select.”  [M.A. Lockhart (2017) From Rice Fields to Duck Marshes: Sport Hunters and Environmental Change on the South Carolina Coast, 1890–1950. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4161]

In 1912, Eugene Dupont with James Kelly of New York and none other than composer and conductor John Phillip Sousa together purchased their own shooting preserve near Georgetown. According to the local newspaper, “The property, the Ricefield plantation, comprises 6,500 acres and is plentifully stocked with deer, quail, wild turkey, geese, and ducks. It also has extensive timber lands and rice fields and a trout brook. There was a hunting lodge on the estate and the three ardent sportsmen “expect to have several weeks shooting here every autumn and winter.” The procurement of plantation preserves, as well as historic houses as winter residences,  would remain a northern trend throughout the South Carolina lowcountry into the 1940s.

The guiding force behind the initial establishment of Atlantic Coast Lumber was Georgetown’s progressive intendant and mayor, W.D. Morgan, mentioned earlier. Morgan first encouraged the lumber businesses to move to the area, and he was a catalyst for much of Georgetown’s growth during his term of office, 1891 to 1906. During his tenure, the face of the town changed dramatically. New schools were built, as well as the new federal office building at 1001 Front Street. Oak and elm trees replaced those that had lined Georgetown’s streets until the hurricane of 1893. Concrete sidewalks were laid in much of the business area. There were electric streetlights, and new streets in the West End. Morgan was active in securing appropriations for deepening Georgetown Harbor.

Private development was an important aspect of the Morgan years, with the ready availability of lumber and millwork, and dozens of wood-framed and wood-sided houses were built in Georgetown between 1890 and 1910. Newcomers or newly prosperous residents built both substantial houses and modest cottages for themselves. During this building boom, W.D. Morgan, ACL executives and other Georgetown businessmen were spinning off development companies. W.D. Morgan, John Burness (J.B.) Steele and Edgar L. Lloyd partnered in Georgetown Farm Land and Homeseekers Company. They were buying up land in the region, clearing timber off and sawing it into lumber, and building small farms of 50 to 1000 acres, which they then advertised across the country for sale to prospective farmers. [Georgetown Times, “Development of The Farm Lands Near the City,” (November 25, 1916).] This was an endeavor to promote the raising of truck crops -- an industry then underway that it was hoped would become big business in the region. Everybody was out to develop any latent resources of Georgetown county. Edgar Lloyd was involved in a number of these ventures.

Meanwhile on July 8, 1914, the  Georgetown Times notes in a headline: “House on the Bluff Overlooking the River Bought by Mr. Edgar L. Lloyd.” It reads: “A real estate deal of considerable interest to the people of Georgetown was consummated yesterday, according to the information, when Mr. E. L. Lloyd became the owner of the very desirable residence and lots on the crest of the hill on the river front just south of King street and southeast of the government building. This is considered one of the finest residence sites in Georgetown, and for some months has been discussed as an ideal site for a tourist hotel— as it certainly would be. Mr. Lloyd could not be reached yesterday afternoon or last night, so that The Times cannot state the use to which his purchase will be put; but it feels free to say that he has got a mighty fine piece of property, superbly suited for either residence or hotel.”

E.L. Lloyd, ever the modern man, had that fancy new brick house downtown, so it is unclear if the Lloyds lived in the Bluff house after he purchased it. At some point, he and Maud became estranged. Her father, Freeman Farr, had died in 1905, and her brother served as ACL president until R.J. Clifford came to town as the new president of the company.

Two years after buying the property, on July 1, 1916, E.L. Lloyd advertised the following in the Georgetown Times “Wanted—2 or 3 gentlemen boarders to occupy nice large, cool rooms, with bathroom in connection. Call at No. 9 King street, rear of postoffice.” 

It is important to note that through the years the address of what is now the Kaminski House was sometimes 9 King Street, and sometimes Front Street. King Street once extended across Front Street to the water, and the actual front entrance to the property was from King Street. Today Joseph Rainey Park covers what was once the King Street extension.

Edgar Lloyd advertised again in the Georgetown Times on June 2, 1917: “For Rent—Cool desirable rooms, conveniently arranged for housekeeping. Lights, bath and water. Located on the ‘Bluff’ at No. 9 King St .”

Perhaps Lloyd, separated from Maud, was living in the house, and setting up “Bachelor’s Hall.” Whatever the case, the house served as a rooming house during these years.

Then in 1918, Lloyd sold it to the house and property to R.J. Clifford.

When the Lloyds daughter, Mabel, married in 1927, Town and Country magazine carried the announcement with no mention of her father, only her mother, who was then living in Richmond.

Edgar L. Lloyd died in West Palm Beach Florida in 1933 and was buried in Maryland with the Lloyd family.

Maud was living with her sister and brother-in-law, the Rufus Barnes, in Columbia when she died in 1936. According to her death certificate, she was a Christian Scientist and refused to see a doctor when she became ill.

She was brought back to Georgetown and buried in Prince George Winyah churchyard with Edgar Lloyds first wife, Bernice Sigler Lloyd, and her infant son.

RUFUS J. CLIFFORD

Rufus. J. Clifford, a Canadian-born lumberman raised in Vermont, came to Georgetown as president of Atlantic Coast Lumber Corporation from Hambleton, West Virginia, where he had been general manager of Otter Creek Boom and Lumber Company, one of the largest lumber concerns in that state. Clifford had large interests in gas, oil and other commodities. However, his chief concern was his lumber business, of which he made a distinguished success. He was seventeen years of age when he began working in lumber mills as a sawyer. Ambitious and closely attentive to his business, he soon worked his way up to executive positions and became proficient in all branches, with a “thorough mastery of methods and details.” [Thomas Condit Miller, Hu Maxwell, West Virginia and Its People (Lewis Historical Publishing Company), 1913: 3.]

Back in West Virginia, Clifford had been active in the Republican Party and in 1910, was elected a member of the House of Delegates for Tucker County, West Virginia. He had also served as chairman of the Republican executive committee of Randolph County. It’s interesting to note that on August 22 of 1912, Clifford published the following letter on the cover page of the Georgetown Daily Item, with the headline “A Card From Mr. Clifford: To All Whom It May Concern,” which reads: “It has come to my attention that the impression prevails in this section of the State that the Atlantic Coast Lumber Corporation and the Georgetown & Western Railroad Company, of both which I am president, are and have been actively engaged in county and state politics, and that the votes of employees of both Companies have been and are being controlled or influenced, in one direction or another, by threat of fear of loss of employment. As president of said two companies, I hereby most emphatically declare that there is no foundation in fact for said impression. R.J. Clifford.”

Clifford was serving as president of ACL when on April 21, 1913, two of the Georgetown mills were destroyed by fire. He told his board of directors in New York the kind of mill he would like to build to replace the two that had burned, and he was given carte blanche. He subsequently designed the new plant before the architects were permitted to draw a line. He personally laid it out “first in his mind's eye and then on drafting paper.” After satisfying himself as to how the “whole thing looked” he permitted the experts to reduce the drawing to scale; hence, it was said that the plant was Clifford's own personal creation “from log hoist to loading platform.” The result was a gigantic fireproof modern steel and concrete structure which spread over the acreage of the old site on the Sampit River. [“A Gigantic Sawmill Operation,” American Lumberman (Chicago), July 4, 1914: 32.] The new plant comprised four sawmills, a planing mill, turpentine still, machine shop and other support shops, a power plant, and the alcohol plant operated by the DuPont Powder Company adjacent to the mill. It was completed in 1914, and the rebuilding program included dozens of employee houses in the West End. R.L. Clifford was highly praised across the country for his performance.

Clifford’s wife, Ella A. Ward Clifford, was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and very active in the Methodist Episcopal church. It seems that Mrs. Clifford was more into service than socializing. After the coming of the ACL and the building of "New Town," the mill village, a second Methodist Church was founded in 1899 to serve the people there. It was known as West End Methodist Church, a mission church largely supported by ACL. Started in a modest wooden structure, a brick building was erected in 1910 and 1911 on the corner of Winyah Road and Kaminski Street. As a member of the missionary society of West End Church, Ella Clifford held rummage sales and events in support of this new congregation of her husband’s workers from the lumber mill. [Georgetown Times, April 1, 1916: 1.]

The Cliffords only owned the house for a few years but R.J. Clifford remained in the area until he was replaced at Atlanta Coast Lumber’s last president, William S. Clarke. They also had “a beautiful summer home” at Island Pond, Vermont, where they “spent the season.”

They had two children: Greta H. Brown, of Hambleton, a graduate of Yarmouth Academy, Maine, and the Fine Arts School at Philadelphia; and Paul C., educated at Mercersburg College, Pennsylvania, who also worked in the lumber business. [Miller and Maxwell, West Virginia and Its People: 3.]

In 1920, Clifford sold the property to W.W. Taylor, Jr.

The following ran in the Essex County Herald. in Guildhall, Vermont on December 14, 1922: “Mrs. Ella Ward Clifford. A former well-known resident, the wife of Rufus J. Clifford, died at Palatka, Florida. They were natives of this section and resided in Island Pond for several years while Mr. Clifford was manager of the lumbering interests in this locality. From here they went to Hambleton, W. Va., and thence to Georgetown, S. C, where Mr. Clifford was president of the Atlantic Coast Lumbar Corporation, the largest lumbering enterprise of modern times. Mrs. Clifford was of a generous-hearted motherly disposition- - and made many lasting friends ends in the various communities in which she had lived.”

By the late 1920s, logging operations had  played out in the region and ACL was looking for an out. Around 1929, the railroad relocated most of its local operations, taking most of the town's residents with it. Finally, in 1932 the ACL ceased local logging operations amd closed it doors. It was a huge blow to the region’s economy, and the boomtoon atmosphere of Georgetown disappeared. But by then, ACL as in the hands of President George S. Clark.

WILLIAM WASHINGTON TAYLOR, JR.

W.W. Taylor, Jr. (1884-1953) was the son of W.W. Taylor, Sr. (1845-1915), who, like George R. Congdon, was among the “new men” who had risen to prominence in Georgetown in the 1880s. W.W. Taylor, Sr. had been affiliated with Heiman Kaminski (the father of Harold Kaminski), when he opened a hardware business on Front Street in 1867. When Kaminski later expanded into dry goods, he partnered with Sol Emanuel and W.W. Taylor, Sr., both of whom had been previously in his employ. When Taylor and Sol Emanuel later left the Kaminski firm, Taylor, Sr. founded W. W. Taylor & Son, dealers in builders' supplies, which operated in Georgetown for many years.

W.W. Taylor, Jr’s mother was Sarah Catherine Davis from Charleston. His parents had 12 children, but only five survived their mother, among them W.W. Taylor, Jr.

W.W., Jr. attended Carlisle Military School at Bamberg, South Carolina, and the Carlisle Fitting School of Wofford College. He graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in business administration and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He afterward returned to Georgetown and entered his father’s building supply business. He was manager of W.W. Taylor & Son, when in Georgetown in 1908, he married Lucy Freeman Boone (1889-1982), a 1906 graduate of Chowan Baptist Female Institute (afterward Chowan College) in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Her father, Charles Boone, had moved the family from North Carolina to Georgetown around 1900, when he came to work for Atlantic Coast Lumber. [“Charles Boone Dies Suddenly,” Georgetown Times (Oct. 30, 1930.)] The Taylors had a son, William W. (Billy) Taylor, and daughters, Mary Taylor Tanner (1909–1987) and Lucy Inez Taylor (1912–1916). Lucy Inez, like the aunt she was named for, did not survive childhood.

In 1915, W.W. Taylor, Sr. died, and Taylor, Jr. took over W.W. Taylor & Son. He also owned Black River Farm, where he raised chickens and sold eggs. [Georgetown Times (May 7, 1913.)] His brother, Harry Calhoun Taylor, may have been associated with W.W. Taylor & Son, and with the house. Harry never married and died in 1941. W.W., Jr.’s Taylor sisters married into the local Fraser, Porter and Haselden families. Another sister, Ida, married Alfred Legare from Charleston, who for a period of thirty years served as one of the superintendents of Bernard Baruch’s Hobcaw Barony.

However, by 1928, the Taylor’s house on the Bluff was in foreclosure, as was W. W. Taylor & Son, which soon closed. That same year the house and property were transferred to the next owners, Harold A. Sands and Paulding Fosdick.

After W.W. Taylor & Son closed, W.W. Taylor, Jr. did account work for several local firms. In the 1940 Georgetown census, he, his wife, Lucy, and two Taylor children are listed as living at 233 Broad Street.

The Taylors are buried in Elmwood Cemetery. W.W., Jr. is buried with his two daughters, while Lucy Boone Taylor is buried in the Boone family plot.

HAROLD AYMAR SANDS AND PAULDING FOSDICK

Harold Aymar Sands and Paulding Fosdick were prominent New Yorkers. They were both noted athletes, clubmen and avid sportsmen, whose families appeared in the New York Social Register for generations. They frequented Newport and Palm Beach seasonally, and often appeared in society columns. They both married twice, and married heiresses. Like many of their northern friends who bought houses and plantations as sporting estates and winter residences in the region, they purchased the Georgetown house on the Bluff (likely dirt cheap) as a seasonal residence for hunting, fishing, and socializing with their friends.

Harold A. Sands (1886-1951) was the son of William Henry and Augusta Lorillard Sands. His grandfather, Samuel S. Sands, had been an American banker, head of  S.S. Sands & Co., and broker for a number of important financial interests including the Astor family. His mother was a descendant of a French immigrant who founded P. Lorillard and Company in New York City to process tobacco, cigars, and snuff. It later became Lorillard Tobacco Company and marketed cigarettes under the brand names Newport, Maverick, Old Gold, Kent, True, Satin, and Max, and, still in existence, it is today the oldest tobacco company in the U.S.

Harold Sand’s grandfather, Jacob Lorillard, with his brother Pierre, created Tuxedo Park, New York, and with Pierre’s son, Griswold Lorillard, are credited with having invented the tuxedo.

Harold was a cotton broker, a member of the New York Stock Exchange and the New York Cotton Exchange. He served as a lieutenant in the Air Corps during World War I. He was a champion marksman and golfer, who won trophies throughout his life.

In 1910, he married Katharine Hynson McFadden of Philadelphia, whose grandfather, George H. McFadden, owned a cotton brokerage firm later known as McFadden Brothers, with which her father was associated. The family owned plantations in Memphis, Tennessee, and controlled the market price of cotton for decades. Interestingly, the fashion designer Mary McFadden is from the same family.

Paulding Fosdick (1881-1967) was born in Tarrytown, New York. His grandfather, Charles B. Fosdick, was a leather merchant and banker in New York City. His parents, Charles Baldwin Fosdick and Jennie Parkhurst (Clark) Fosdick, were involved in a contentious divorce in 1888, in which she divorced him for cruelty and for custody of the two children. This was a scandal well-publicized in the press when Paulding was a child. His mother afterward married Charles A. Childs (d. 1912), head the New York City firm, C. M. Childs & Company, paint manufacturers.

Fosdick attended Cutler's School in New York and Harvard, where he lettered in hockey. He became a broker, the president of the Lenox Land & Improvement Company.

In 1909, he married  Katherine Yoakum, the daughter of millionaire railroad tycoon Benjamin Franklin Yoakum. Harold A. Sands was in the wedding.

A few years later, the Paulding Fosdicks were included in The 469 Ultra-Fashionables of America: A Social Guide Book and Register to Date [Charles Wilbur de Lyon Nicholls, Governor-General of the National Society of Scions of Colonial Cavaliers (New York, Broadway Pub. Co, 1912: 93).

They had one daughter, Anita Yoakum Fosdick, who tragically died in 1927 at the age of 15.

The Georgetown Times reports in February of 1928, the year Sands and Fosdick purchased the house, that Benjamin Franklin Yoakum, the railway magnate, spent a mouth at the Georgetown house on the Bluff with his daughter, Mrs. Paulding Fosdick.

On March 22, 1929, the Georgetown Times ran an article headlined “Police Get Youths Responsible For Flower Theft,” which informs its readership that after months of thefts of japonica plants from Georgetown cemeteries and yards, the culprits were caught red-handed removing japonica plants off the Kaminski plot at Beth Elohim Cemetery. They had been having a “go between” sell them to a member of the winter colony, Paulding Fosdick. The article goes on to say that as soon as Fosdick discovered the bushes had been stolen, he returned them to the owner and “refused to purchase any further offerings from the dealers.”

On December 20, 1929, the Georgetown Times in “Northern Citizens Now Returning To Their Homes Here” again makes mention of the Paulding Fosdick and Harold Sands purchase the year before of “one of the most attractive homes on the waterfront,” and notes the on-going improvements being made to the property. The article claims: “Mr. Fosdick has recently had a floating dock built to accommodate his yacht, which will arrive from the north in the near future.”

In 1930, Charles S. Murray published an article in the South Carolina Gazette in Columbia under the headline, “Baronial Estates In Old-South Setting in Georgetown,” in which he reports: “About a year and a half ago Mr.[Paul D.] Mills purchased the old [Stewart Parker] house, in which legend has it Washington was once entertained. The house, which had fallen into ill repair, was remodeled and enlarged, but Mr. Mills was careful to preserve every board that could be salvaged. The wainscoting in the mansion is particularly fine, and every piece has been replaced. Mr. Mills is also owner of ‘Windsor’ plantation on the Black River. The Taylor property, situated in the city near the Mills residence, has been acquired by Paulding Fosdick and Harold Sands, of New York. The house has been remodeled and Mr. Fosdick has made extensive improvements on the waterfront.” [Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Second of the Seventy-First Congress. (United States. Congress: U.S. Government Printing Office), 1930: 8336.]

In December of 1929, Bernard Baruch’s house “Old Relick” at Hobcaw burned down while the Baruch family was gathered there for the Christmas holidays. On January 17, 1930, the Georgetown Times reports in a column, “Within Georgetown’s Winter Colony”: “Bernard M. Baruch has rented the Fosdick house in Georgetown, pending the erection of his new dwelling on the Waccamaw peninsula, according to information received at this office. The Baruch family will move into the Georgetown house within the course of a few days.”

Then in 1931, Sands and Fosdick sold the house on the Bluff to the Harold Kaminskis.

While in Paris in 1931, Paulding Fosdick and a friend, Leonard Replogle, invented a form of the game bridge which they called Towie. In 1935, they sought to make Towie a popular game in the United States, with limited success. However, it was quite popular in Paul Beach, where Fosdick remained the expert as late as 1952. [Life magazine 32:3 (Jan 21, 1952): 98.]

Harold A. Sands and Katherine Yoakum divorced and in 1935, he married Muriel Egerton Winthrop Broadman, a direct descendant of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Egerton L. Winthrop, a lawyer prominent in New York society during the Gilded Age. She was a champion amateur equestrian in Newport, where her family had an estate. They afterward lived in Newport, and had a number of children. In 1938, they purchased the historic Sherman Farm in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where they lived until Harold’s death in 1951.

Paulding Fosdick and Katherine McFadden Fosdick also divorced and in 1935, he married Emily H. Bedford Davie (1882-1975), daughter of the late E. T. Bedford, wealthy Standard Oil director. She became a leader of Tuxedo Park society while the wife of Preston Davie. She next married Russell Sard, then Paulding Fosdick. After each divorce, it was said, her ex-husbands resigned from the Tuxedo Club and never appeared there again. Emily, however, stayed on at Tuxedo Park with each new husband, “keeping very much within the confines of ‘the Park.’" [Daily News, New York (February 2, 1941):179.]

In 1936, the new Mrs. Fosdick purchased “Seaside,”a villa in Newport fronting the Cliffs. [Newport Mercury, Newport, Rhode Island (January 31, 1936):1.] The couple lived between Newport and residences in New York City, Tuxedo Park, and her villa at Palm Beach. On April 20, 1941 in Palm Beach, the Paulding Fosdicks were among the guests at a cocktail party given in behalf of the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

When in 1952, Cleveland Amory published The Last Resorts: A Portrait of American Society at Play -- which is a glimpse into the then-world of the very rich -- he describes Paulding Fosdick as one of Palm Beach’s few remaining denizens who were then still able “to put on the old-time dog” and “boast inordinarily about the sterling virtues of his butler.” Fosdick was known to never be without his butler, who became his valet when he traveled.

It’s interesting to conjecture that Paulding Fosdick’s butler may have been an inspiration to Julia Pyatt Kaminski when, in 1931 she and Harold bought the house from Sands and Fosdick. I rather doubt many folks in Georgetown, other than the “rich Yankees” who wintered in the region, had butlers. Yet Julia was known to have always had a white-coated butler during her years as chatelaine of the house on the Bluff.

Among them was Marcelo Soriano, who in the 1940 census of Georgetown, was living at Harold and Julia's (9 King Street), and was listed as a "cook (private)," but he was remembered locally as her bulter. Soriano was Filipino, 55 years old in 1940, and married. He lived into his 90's and died in Charleston in 1982.

In her will, Julia left her last butler, Walter Cruel, Jr. (1922-1977), a bequest if he remained in her employ at the time of her death. Cruel was a South Carolina native. According to his World War II Army Enlistment Records, he enlisted in 1943. At the time, he had two years of high school and had worked as a tinsmith, coppersmith, and sheet metal worker. He was married to Earline Hannah Cruel (1922-1999) from Lake City, South Carolina. Walter Cruel completed basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, then was stationed in Richmond, Indiana. There “Pfc. Walter Cruel of Georgetown, S. C” was on the kitchen staff of an exceptional cook, a Cpl. James M. Hines of Georgia, the oldest member of the company, who had 20 years’ experience in cooking and was excellent at it. A general who visited the company there in 1944 commented, “It is the only company I know in the field that serve meals in a plated dinner set. I had a feeling as if I were in the Savoy hotel.”  [“In Naval Service Richmond, Ind.” Indianapolis Recorder (the longest-published African American newspaper in Indiana), August 12, 1944.]

This speaks well for Walter Cruel’s later employ with Julia at the Kaminski house. He outlived Julia by a few years. He afterward lived at 430 Cannon Street in Georgetown. He is buried in the graveyard of Bethel A.M.E. Church, founded by freed slaves as the first African American congregation in Georgetown County.