Pineville, a historic refuge

By Warner M.Montgomery Warner@TheColumbiaStar.com

Crawl Hill Cemetery is located on a hill above Crawl Branch in Pineville, the former site of Crawl Hill School.

Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have. - Benjamin Franklin

I see cemeteries as history books, each gravestone a footnote in a person's life. As I have gathered information for this series on Pineville, I have visited many cemeteries, some covered by lakes, some abandoned and neglected, some with monuments to people who changed history, and some carefully maintained by relatives.

To walk through these cemeteries has been thought- provoking. On the stone is a name, a birth date and a death date, not much more. These people with so little written about them paved the genetic highway for us, yet they are mostly forgotten. We owe them more than that. We owe them our lives.

Theodore Louis Gourdin, son of Theodore Gourdin II, graduated from Harvard just in time to serve as a captain in the War of 1812. After the war, he purchased land in Pineville and named it Buck Hall Plantation. He served in the S.C. House of Representatives, the S.C. Senate, the Nullification Convention of 1832- 1833, and the Secession Convention of 1860- 1862.

Private Robert Gourdine served in WWI. He is buried at Crawl Hill Cemetery. Theodore Louis Gourdin signed the Ordinance of Secession but was too old (70) to serve in the Confederate Army. His home at Buck Hall was burned during the Civil War, and he died unmarried in 1866. He is buried in the St. Stephen's Cemetery.

Buck Hall Plantation was passed on to John Gaillard Keith Gourdin III then Peter Palmer Gourdin I then Peter Palmer Gourdin II. The portion not covered by Lake Moultrie is presently owned by Thomas Keith Gourdin, my cousin who has assisted me in gathering material for this series.

It is assumed the whites who lived at Buck Hall were buried at St. Stephen's or elsewhere. The blacks, however, were probably buried in small graveyards on the property. The slave cemeteries are long gone, but when the lake was down, Keith discovered a few grave stones that were not removed during the construction of Santee- Cooper. Their markers read:

This is a photograph of one of the negro graveyards just before it was flooded by Santee- Cooper. • S.J. Johnson, born 1837, died June 9, 1917. He followed virtue as his truest guide, lived as a Christian, as a Christian died.

• Herman, son of Henry Johnson and Alice, born Dec. 10, 1922, died Apr. 2, 1924.

• Rebaka Johnson, departed Dec. 15, 189?, years 54 of ??08.

A more recent (since 1900) cemetery used by the black citizens of Pineville is Crawl Hill Cemetery. It is on the site of the former Crawl Hill School, a two- room school for black children, at the top of a hill overlooking Crawl Branch. Many of the churches in the area use the cemetery.

Crawl Hill Cemetery is interesting to me because of the great number of Gourdines buried there. The reason the name is spelled with an E is sim- ple, according to my uncle J.K. Gourdin. He told me before he died in 2002 that when Pineville first got a post office, the postmistress added an E to the names of all the black Gourdins as a way to better file the letters. I feel a kinship to them in that their ancestors were once slaves of my ancestors and some maybe my relatives. Some of the Gourdine gravestones at Crawl Hill read:

The grave of Smith Shar (1919- 1935) was covered by Lake Marion. • Rev. Jethro Gourdine, Sept. 1884, Oct. 1979

• Robert Gourdine, PVT US Army, World War I, 1893- 1979

• Emma Washington Gourdine, Nov. 1904, ?? 1956

• Moses Gourdine, born 2-12 1912, died 9- 1 73. We all love you.

• Mary Jane M Gourdine, born 9-14 1914, died 3-23 1981, We all love you.

• Louis Edward Gourdine, PFC US Army, Jan 16 1939, Feb 27 1998

• William Gourdine, US Army, Vietnam, Sep 25 1949, Jun 5 2005

• William M. Gourdine, 1972-2004.

(Next week: Pineville's matriarch, Mrs. Naomi

Martin)