“The McCaw Family contributed significantly to the Palmetto state.”
The Rock Hill Herald reported on Dec. 20, 1888 – “Mr. Samuel McNeel of Bullocks Creek has just completed a handsome storehouse on Congress Street.”
City Directories and History: The 1910 Sanborn map shows this as the location of the handsome brick dwelling of the McCaw family.
Historian C.G. Davidson provides the following information on the McCaw family in The Last Foray – McCaw, Col. Robert Gadsden of Fishing Creek, Catawba River and Talbert nonresident plantation and Yorkville. Born Dec. 28, 1821 (S.C.); married Apr. 18, 1848, Belle Means Bratton (Oct. 17, 1824-Mar. 8, 1905); died Nov. 24, 1870. Education: Un. of Va. (1840-41). Church Presbyterian. Public Service: Lit. Col. (staff of Gov. Aiken and Gov. Means), State Representative and Lt. Gov. during the Civil War. Slaves: 135 (York District)
HON. ROBERT GADSDEN McCAW Among the honored names of South Carolina’s sons, none are held in greater love and reverence than that of the late Robert Gadsden McCaw. This family has furnished men of worth from the time of its settlement in the “Palmetto State,” many generations ago, and its marriages have been with families of like honor and distinction. The founder of the American branch of the family, was John McCaw, a man who had been educated in the first schools of Europe, who impelled by a spirit of adventure, left the family seat in county Antrim, Ireland, and with his family emigrated to Pennsylvania, about the year 1733, where he found congenial work as a surveyor for the Royal government. At the outbreak of the French and Indian war, his knowledge of the country, acquired as a surveyor, stood him in good stead as a soldier under Braddock. After that great disaster to the British arms, he removed his family to Virginia, but was soon compelled by the hostility of the savages, to seek a safer retreat in South Carolina. He settled within the limits of what is now York county, and here for more than a century his descendants have continued to dwell. Among his offspring was a son who bore the father’s name, John McCaw, Jr., who became the first clerk of the court, after the organization of the county court of York county, on the 17th day of March, 1785, and held that office for many years, or until his death. He was educated by his father and became one of the most accomplished scholars of his time, being especially proficient in the Greek and Latin languages. He was born and reared in York district (now county), and there died, leaving a family of five in number, three sons: William, John and Robert, and two daughters, Sarah and Mary. Robert, the youngest of the sons, and the immediate ancestor of the subject of our sketch was a man of the most remarkable business attainments. At the early age of thirty-three years, when he died, he had amassed a fortune amounting to nearly half a million dollars. Robert Gadsden McCaw, of whom we write, was in person truly commanding and distinguished. Heaven and nature alike were lavish in their gifts. A figure moulded in the rarest type of manly beauty, six feet in height and of perfect symmetry and grace, was crowned by a head that was at once a model for a sculptor and a delight to the phrenologist. A forehead massive, broad and high, indicative of the highest intellectual strength and moral development, shading eyes of brilliant steel-gray, that kindled with the kindly light of a great philanthropic soul, a nose of Grecian cast, and a mouth firm and resolute, were the distinctive characteristics of a face that made its possessor a marked man wherever he moved among the sons of men. None ever saw him, whether in public or private life, but to know and feel that he was: “Resolute, moderate, clear of envy, yet not wanting In that finer ambition which makes men great and pure, In his honor—impregnable, In his simplicity—sublime.”
Robert Gadsden McCaw was truly the benefactor of the poor. Suffering and distress appealed strongly to his great, noble soul, and he drew unstintingly from the large means with which God had blessed him in relieving the desolate and oppressed. These acts of benevolence were perpetrated so unobtrusively that the world would never have been the wiser, had not a famine overwhelmed his native district of York, when his granaries of 8,000 bushels of com were thrown open to the multitude. He was elected to the legislature for several terms, was twice elected a senator, and in 1864 was chosen lieutenant-governor. From his twenty-fifth year, when he was first elected to the legislature, until the close of his life, he enjoyed the unabated confidence of the people he so long represented in various positions of public trust, and never knew political defeat. He was prepared for college at Greenville, S. C., and subsequently entered the University of Virginia, where he remained to within six weeks of his honorable graduation, when by the death of his only surviving brother, he was summoned home by his mother to assume control of the vast paternal estate, of which his mother and himself were now sole heirs. His mother was the daughter of one of the proudest names of South Carolina, her maiden name being Nancy Bratton. Col. William Bratton, of Revolutionary fame, to whom the people of South Carolina owe so much, was her father and the founder of her family in America. Mr. McCaw upon assuming charge of his ancestral estates, entered upon the ideal life of a southern planter, surrounded by his slaves, for whom spiritual and physical welfare he manifested the tenderest solicitude. In 1847 he married Miss Belle Bratton, a daughter of Dr. William Bratton, of Fairfield county, and the five surviving children of this union are Robert Gadsden, a planter; William Bratton, a lawyer; Harry, official stenographer of the Sixth judicial circuit; Mary, wife of Lewis W. Perrin, Esq., of Abbeville, and Belle, wife of Joseph K. Alston, Esq., of Columbia. His eventful career came to a close in his forty-ninth year, on the 24th day of November, 1879. (Quoted from: Garlington, J. C. Men of the Time, Sketches of Living Notables. A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous South Carolina Leaders. Spartanburg: Garlington Publishing Co, 1902, pp. 404-05.)
Yorkville Enquirer, Thursday, September 26, 1861
The Rock Hill Herald reported on April 29, 1886 – “The house on Mr. R.G. McCaw’s plantation in Ebenezer Township in which Bully Avery and Joe Coulter both colored, were living was destroyed by fire on Monday morning.”
Cotton Pickers listed with amount per day picked…
George W. Byars (“superintends the Fishing Creek farm of Col. R. G. McCaw) six miles east of this place” provided the editor with” the amount of cotton picked in one day by “the hands under his care: Big Peter, 197; Little Peter, 218; Nelly, 250; Charles, 220; Eliza, 142; Albert (one arm) 160; John, 220; York Kate, 155; Little Kate, 165; Lucy, 140; Cloe, 120.” Dated September 16, 1861.
Obituary of William Bratton McCaw, son of Robert G. McCaw and Belle Bratton McCaw — William B. McCaw, Esq., died at his home in Yorkville last Sunday [Sept 20, 1908]… after a critical illness …. born in Yorkville on August 22, 1857… .He was educated in the local primary schools of his day, spent several years at the King’s Mountain Military school under Colonel Coward, and afterward completed a course in the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, being graduated from that institution in 1876. After leaving Sewanee, he devoted three years to the study of law, was admitted to the bar in 1879, and continued to practice his profession in Yorkville up to the time of his death. He was chosen in 1888 as a member of the house of representatives; but after serving one term declined to stand for re-election. Mr. McCaw was a close student. He pursued his work persistently and systematically and it was commonly concede among his fellow-practitioners that he was a lawyer of rare attainment. His knowledge covered not only the ordinary lines necessary for the country lawyer, but fields that are seldom entered except by more ambitious specialists. During the past dozen years he has figured in a number of unusually important cases, including several of those growing out of the Fishing Creek wreck, and in one of which, the Brickman case, 34 was rendered the largest personal damage on record his practice was confined almost exclusively to the civil side of the court.
Mr. McCaw was married on November 24, 1885 to Miss Emma Le Sassier of New Orleans, who with three children, two daughters and a son, Misses Agalice and Belle and Master Henry, survive him. His surviving brothers and sisters are Messrs. R. G. and H. I. McCaw, Mrs. L. W. Perrin and Mrs. J. K. Alston…. -The Yorkville Enquirer, Sept 25,1908. (And courtesy of YCGHS—JUNE 2001)
YORK POST OFFICE @ COURTHOUSE: Historian Harvey S. Teal’s book, S.C. Post Office History, 1989 states – From 1802 – 1833, the post office was operated by John McCaw, Postmaster.
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