History...is alive and well

SO Im researching this mass drowning that happened in my community... What you didnt hear about it??
Well thats because it happened back in 1860!! HA-

Meanwhile its so cool as you look for one bit of history you find 10 other bits that you had no clue about..(they dont teach this stuff in school)--Here in my area the Revolutionary and the Civil Wars get all the attention, yet real life history fills the cracks of this place...lots of other things happened ...yes the South was a battle ground and there is a-lot of that history here each and every battle has been recorded, studied, restudied, marked, and such..but to me its the human stories that never made the history books that are fascinating...like this one-
...back in early 1829...
Mr Thomas A Hopkin's mother held a grudge against Mr. Henry G. Nixon's father...she accused him of swindling her outta some land, and I reckon she passed her angry and revengeful story down and onto her son.  So Mr Hopkins called Mr. Nixon out to a duel.  The date was set and they kept it on the QT, least their families should try to talk them out of the fool hearted idea.  Dueling was considered a gentleman's way of restoring Honor to ones name and one's family name....
(this brings to mind Klingon Warriors from StarTrek)...
anyways the duel took place in Augusta a SC/GA border town on the public dueling ground. YEAH...there was such a thing. 

Mr Nixon was the pride of Camden having been born here in 1800 a native (the town was founded in 1787) and with his stellar education he was a lawyer, a SC Legislator, & past chairman of the committe to receive General Marquis de LaFayette, (who helped the budding United States to fight the War of Independence,) when he made his second (and last) visit to the USA in 1825.  LaFayette came to our fair town and dedicated Mr Baron DeKalb's ( a German Rev War Hero's) memorial we have streets named in both their honors and a very old and rather weird looking Cedar tree in our town called the LaFayette Cedar.

SO back to my story...Mr Nixon's father owned the Jackson Hotel....that stood on the corner of King & Broad streets...not far from the Quaker Meeting house and burial grounds.  Mr Hopkins knew his way around a pistol but Henry G Nixon needed a little practice, Im sure he was more adapt at legalese than shooting---so

Mr Nixon went to the Quarker Burial Ground to practice with his pistol, it was written that he fired off the 2 rounds from his dueling pistols aiming at the headstone (placed in 1822) of Scottish merchant Mr Neil Smith...and his wife Isabella....

and then on Jan 15, 1829 exactly 183 yrs and 6 days ago... Mr Nixon was killed in that duel when Mr Hopkins, shot first he fell dead upon the ground...and died with honor intact but his body in ruins...his bereeved father buried him near the Quaker burial ground where he had practiced for this event....in the Old Presbyterian Burial ground and the grief stricken father erected a fence of granite and iron around his sons burial spot.  It was only 2 short years later (1831)that Mr. Hopkins himself would die, they say of grief over his deed.  His grave has since been completely obliterated as a newly cut road encroached on the Swift Creek Baptist Chruch in Boykin, SC and graves were simply pushed aside to make way for progress...

The Jackson Hotel burned to the ground in November of that same yr and the The Nixon family left their beloved Camden in 1833 and went to Alabama and bought a plantation... I wonder how the Nixon plantation fared during Shermans bloody march through the South?
SO I went to the Old Quaker Burial Ground...and I looked for and found Mr Neil Smith, a merchant and his Wife Isabella's headstone...and wouldnt you know look what I found on the backside of that rock....

PEACE

This post is linked to
Taphophile Tragics.