City Directories and History: “One of the great plantations of ante-bellum times was that owned by Doctor James Henry Dillard, who was born in 1807 and died in 1859. Both the Doctor and his wife, Margaret Hunter Park Dillard, are buried in Old Field Cemetery, Ora.
Doctor Dillard’s father, Captain James Dillard of the Revolution, came to South Carolina from Culpepper, Virginia, about 1772 and built his home facing Enoree River near Musgrove’s Mill. He fought against the British at Hammonds’ Store, Cowpens and Kings Mountain. It was his heroic wife, Mrs. Mary Dillard, who gave General Thomas Sumter notice of Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s approach toward Blackstock.
Doctor Dillard’s plantation was in the Tylersville section, equidistant from Clinton, Ora and Laurens. The seven-mile post (Laurens courthouse) stood a few hundred yards from the head of a lane of cedars leading from the house to the “big road.” The cedar lane was so broad and straight that from the front porch travelers along the road could be identified by their vehicles and horses, mules or oxen. The plantation was named Coldwater, the place getting its name from the bold spring of very cold water behind the big house. There was also an ante-bellum post office named Coldwater near the upper spring on the place.
The estate house was built by Doctor Dillard around 1847, a few yards away from an earlier house which had burned. Irene Dillard Elliott, grand-daughter of the Doctor, tells us the house was, from its beginning, unpretentious but interesting. Huge granite steps lead to a sixteen by sixteen-foot portico. The eighteen by nine-foot front hall opens into a back hall from which doors lead to the dining room on the east and to the “boys’ room” on the west. The house faces exactly north by the compass. From the front hall, open eighteen by eighteen-foot rooms on each side with large chimneys at both east and west ends. There are lower chimneys for both the dining room and the boys’ bedroom — making four chimneys in all. A granite hearth is found in every room.
The original kitchen —with a “meal room,” a chimney and a half story attic —was situated several yards from the house. In later years granite steps led from the dining room to a lower separate kitchen. The unique architectural feature is the absence of a stairway in the hall. A stairway leads up from the “parlor” to a guest bedroom which has no opening other than the staircase and windows. A second stairway from the Doctor’s combination office-bedroom and family sitting room leads also to a bedroom which opens into a smaller room used for dressing and storage.
With the exception of the front hall and the parlor, the walls of which were white, the interior of Coldwater was painted with ground pigment paints in Williamsburg blues and greens. The Charleston earthquake cracked a main chimney from top to bottom but did not impair its usefulness. This crack is still there. There are bayonet scars in the upstairs bedroom where cotton had been stored during the War Between the States against possible burning by Reconstruction “scouts” who thought the owner, James Park Dillard, might possibly be hiding at the time of the scouts’ visit.
Until recent years the gutter boxes of Coldwater had inscribed on them J.H.D. 1847 and a sun-moon-star inscription. Since such things were made by special process, it is thought that they might not have been put up when the house was built. Relatives have removed the inscriptions for safekeeping.
Originally, the Dillard tract was extensive; but at the time that a son took possession of the property, the tract had been reduced to some five hundred acres. The estate was willed to a son, James Park Dillard. A daughter, Irene Dillard Elliott (Mrs. Charles B. Elliott) of Columbia and a nephew, Reese H. Young, have done some restoration of the Coldwater manor house. Mrs. Elliott has in her possession portraits of Doctor James Dillard, of his wife, and of the mothers of both. Judging from the details of dress, one would suppose that the portraits were painted sometime around the 1830’s or 1840’s by perhaps an itinerant artist who might have spent several months in the Dillard home. Tradition has connected the name of Vanpatten with the portraits, which the artist failed to autograph.”
Information from: The Laurens County Sketchbook, Author – J.S. Bolick, 1973
Post Offices via Elmer Parker’s S.C. Post Office History Book, 1989
Coldwater or Cold Water PO – operated here from 1858 / the Civil War, Woodbury N. Farrow, Postmaster
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