“Charlestonians come to the up-country for pleasure and business.”
R&R HISTORY LINK: THE IZARD FAMILY IN ROCK HILL, S.C.
City Directories and History: The highly influential Izard family of Charleston, S.C. constructed a summer residence in Lancaster County on the Catawba River. It has been reported this home and their mill were at Landsford. Open the PETTUS ARTICLE, found in the picture column to read about the Izard Family history.
See the Charleston home of the Izard Family of Charleston, S.C.
Physician Spring Branch runs into Waxhaw Creek. The spring, supposedly impregnated with iron and sulfur, was said to possess the same curative powers as those of Catawba Springs in North Carolina. While the Charleston Izards lived at their plantation, “The Fold,” on the Catawba River across from Landsford in the 1810s and 1820s, Anne Izard Deas took water from the Waxhaw Springs for her affliction, “St. Anthony’s Fire,” “with Dr. Bartlett Jones’ permission rather than his prescription,” according to her mother, Alice DeLancey Izard. General William Richardson Davie said he had heard of many cures performed by the water from this spring some years ago. The spring is shown on some of the early plats as Medicinal Spring and on Mills’ Atlas Rock Water Spring was the temporary site of Old Waxhaw’s third church. After the burning of the first log building in 1781 during the Revolutionary War and the second after the Great Camp Meeting of 1803, the congregation erected a “stand” near Rock Water Spring. They were drawn there by the water being better than at the Meeting House Spring, but the graves of the forefathers brought the members of the congregation back to rebuild near the original site adjoining the burial ground. as Mineral Spring. It lies beneath the paved road today on the northwest side of the bridge over the branch, and is shown on the Geological Survey map as Mill Branch with Foster Branch running into it before entering Waxhaw Creek.
Furthermore: Thomas Land gave his name to a ford across the Catawba River, Landsford. This rocky shoal was used as a crossing from Indian days to the early 1900s. In 1811 Ralf Izard on an exploring expedition into the Up-Country of South Carolina visited Landsford and left this account: “the majestic Catawba, forcing its rapid and noisy course over the rocks which form an ex-excellent ford and over which, in every hour of the day almost, some object is presented to vary the scene, either wagons or horses, pass on their way to Lancaster & No. Carolina, or towards Camden.” (Letter to his mother, 12 April 1811) Before the installation of ferries and later bridges, local residents were adept at guiding travelers across by gauging water marks on certain rocks in determining if it was safe to cross. The flood of 1916 washed out the road on the east side of the Catawba and fording the river has become only a memory.
Considering the developments at all of the Catawba River ford sites, that of Landsford proved to be most unusual and interesting. Roads from Lancasterville, Yorkville, Chesterville, Camden, The Mountain Gap, and other places funneled traffic into this important east-west crossing point. Here the retired diplomat and ex-governor of North Carolina, William R. Davie, returned to establish his famous Tivoli plantation home. According to Daniel G. Stinson, General Davie built merchant mills at Landsford in 1817 on the west side of the Catawba opposite Blair’s Mills. Lt. Henry Izard, of Goose Creek, had purchased Blair’s Mills about 1812. The homes of both Davie and Izard were on very high eminences so that “the thousand islands” of the river could be seen up and down for miles.
The Izard property, across from Tivoli, was later acquired in 1850 by Dr. Thomas K. Cureton, scion of a prominent Kershaw and Lancaster County mercantile and planting family. Cureton advertised from Landsford Shoals May 11, 1853, that he had “corn and wheat mills in operation” and that his corn mill would handle “twenty bushels per hour.” The Curetons had vast holdings in the Catawba Country up to the North Carolina line, including 550 acres on the east side of the Charlotte road and Waxhaw Creek just below the line.
(Information from: Names in South Carolina by C.H. Neuffer, Published by the S.C. Dept. of English, USC)
From the Rock Hill Herald, March 6, 1901 – “Col. Allan C. Izard”
Col. Allan C. Izard, father of our townsman, Mr. A. C. Izard, who died of paralysis at his home in Walterboro last Thursday, was a native of Chester county, where he was born in 1834. His grandfather, Henry Izard, was a native of South Carolina and a son of Ralph Izard, an Englishman, who was commissioner from this country to Tuscany, and one of the first two United States Senators elected from South Carolina. When a child Mr. Izard was taken by his widowed mother to Columbia, and was there reared and educated. He entered the Naval Academy, at Annapolis, in 1850, and after two years study on the shore, spent two years in the sloop of war Portsmouth, and was detached at the Sandwich Islands early in 1853 and assigned to the St. Lawrence, a 60-gun frigate, the flag ship of the Pacific squadron, in which he cruised until 1855, when he returned for examination and promotion. He graduated in June 1856, standing sixth in a class of twenty-five. Upon his graduation as passed midshipman, he was assigned to the St. Lawrence and ordered to the Brazil station. In February 1857, he was ordered to report to the United States steamer Hetzel for coast survey work on the North Carolina coast, Chesapeake Bay, York and James River, and was so employed until the fall of the same year, when he resigned and returned to Columbia, S. C. He was married there, in 1857, to Julia Davie Bedon, daughter of the late Richard Bedon, and at once removed to his plantation in Colleton county, where he remained until the outbreak of the war. He went into the Confederate army and served on the coast, in Florida and Virginia until, having been sent to a hospital in Richmond, he was pronounced unfit for further field service and was relieved from duty. After the war he returned to his plantation in Colleton county and engaged in farming. He was appointed postmaster of Walterboro by President Cleveland during his second term and remained in the office until about two years ago, since which time he has been living in quiet retirement.
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R&R HISTORY LINK: CHARLESTON AND MORE
R&R HISTORY LINK: HISTORIC LANDSFORD CANAL
R&R HISTORY LINK: HISTORIC DAVIE PLANTATION
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