Seventh Owner of the Kaminski House: George R. 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.
by Jennie Holton Fant