City Directories and History: “About twelve miles Northwest of North Myrtle Beach is the community of Longs, situated on S.C. Highway 9. It was named for one of the prominent citizens of the place, William Hickman Long, about 1900. It is believed that the place was earlier called Ebenezer. When Bishop Frances Asbury (The Prophet of the Long Road) was making his rounds in 1801, he wrote in his diary: Friday, 13th.—At Ebenezer;—The house was unfinished and the day windy and uncomfortable. Brother Whatcoat and myself held the people nearly three hours…”
Asbury was against slavery and had delivered a special sermon entitled The Address which attacked slaveholding. The diary for Friday, February 13, 1801, continues: “A Solomon Reaves let me know that he had seen the address, signed by me; and was quite confident there were no arguments to prove that slavery was repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel: what absurdities will not men defend! If the Gospel will tolerate slavery, what will it not authorize? I am strangely mistaken if this said Mr. Reeves has more grace than is necessary, or more of Solomon than the name….” Longs is still the location of Ebenezer Methodist Church. It once had a cotton gin, Saw Mill and Grist Mill and local crops included flax and indigo. Right after the turn of the century, two young men were in a back field hoeing cotton when they heard a strange sound approaching. It was an automobile, which had never been seen in this neighborhood. They threw their hoes down and rushed out to the road to see it chug past and to smell the gasoline fumes. It was an event that dominated the thoughts and conversations in that neighborhood for a long time afterwards.
Longs is situated near the junction of Buck Creek with the Waccamaw River. John Bellamee, of Huguenot ancestry, came up from down in the Charleston area and obtained a grant to 300 acres of land on Buck Creek in 1768. The Bellamees (now anglicized to Bellamy) intermarried with the Longs, Hickmans and other local families, and many of the descendants are still to be found in the area. A youngster who was called “Boss” Bellamy was rather peculiar and wore dresses until in his teens. It was said that he would place a love note on a stump then hide until his girl friend passed, then holler for her to pick up the note.”
Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC
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