Pineville, a historic refuge
Part 21: The Pineville Academy
By Warner M.Montgomery Warner@TheColumbiaStar.com

There are no photographs of the Pineville Academy, but this drawing of a recitation taking place in a one- room school in the mid- 1800s might resemble activity in the Pineville Academy.

The Pineville Academy was incorporated by the State of South Carolina in 1805. It had the right to own real and personal property and to produce income not exceeding $5,000 a year. A provision allowed the Academy to receive escheated (confiscated by the state) property in St. Stephen's Parish.

A controversy arose when Mrs. Elizabeth Hardcastle (Pineville's Free Lady of Color) died in 1808 with no will and no children. The Academy claimed her estate, but eventually the state awarded her property to representatives of her father, a slave trader from Sierra Leone.

The first trustees of the Academy were John Palmer, Thomas Palmer, Peter Gaillard, Samuel Porcher, and Philip Porcher. It was organized as a grammar school instructing young boys and girls in the classics - Greek, Latin, literature, philosophy, and history.

At the time, Pineville had 22 homes and a population of 150 white people and 300 black people. Most of the homeowners had plantations outside of the village. A schoolhouse and a teacherage were built on acquired property near the center of the village.

Somerset was the home of William Cain, a student at Pineville Academy.This photo was taken in 1939 before it was demolished for the Santee- Cooper Project.

Advertisements were placed in the Charleston newspapers for a headmaster and students. The headmaster was paid $1,200 annually and provided a home in which he could take up to 16 boarders at $100 per year. Tuition for the 30 students was $50 per year for Academy members' children and $60 for others.

Alpheus Baker of New Hampshire, a graduate of Dartmouth, was the first teacher. He set high standards, and the school attracted students from surrounding plantations. Baker was followed by Mr. Lowry of Chesterfield, S.C., then Mr. Snowden, who also served as pastor at the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church.

Students at the Pineville Academy included William Cain (signed Secession Ordinance, S.C. senator, lieutenant governor), Henry William Ravenel (renowned botanist), R. Press Smith (Citadel graduate, Confederate soldier, physician, left Pineville for California in 1868), Samuel Porcher Smith (Citadel graduate, Confederate soldier, planter/merchant in Pineville, Berkeley County auditor), and four children of U.S. Congressman Theodore Gourdin II: Eleanor Gourdin McBride (wife of Dr. James McBride who was a classmate of John C. Calhoun at Yale), Samuel Thomas Gourdin (owner and manager of Nelson's Ferry), Dr. Robert Marion Gourdin (classmate of Ralph Waldo Emerson at Harvard, Confederate soldier, owner and manager of Lenud's Ferry), and John G.K. Gourdin (roommate of Ralph Waldo Emerson at Harvard, Confederate soldier, owner and manager of Murray's Ferry).

The schoolhouse was a long, low building with a chimney at both ends. On the south end was a shed connected to the main building only by a window. This so- called Globe Room was used by the headmaster for special recitation and by students to hide.

School hours were from 8 am to noon and 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm. The village dinner hour and siesta separated the daily sessions.

Frederick A. Porcher,

author of Historical and

Social Sketch of Craven

County, South Carolina,

and History of Huguenots of

South Carolina, 1887, attended the Pineville Academy in the late 1810s. He and his sister boarded with Headmaster Charles Stevens who followed Mr. Snowden. (Stephens was a homeboy, so to speak. He was closely related to the DuBoses and Richbourgs. His second wife was Anne Palmer, his third was Susan Ravenel.)

Porcher said Stevens made the students recite from Adam's Latin Grammar daily. In addition to this "endless reviewing" of verb conjugation, they were exercised in reading, spelling, and writing.

Mr. Service, an Englishman, was Mr. Stevens's assistant. The students, thinking he was single, were shocked when Mrs. Service suddenly appeared with an infant. She had been waiting until her husband secured permanent employment before joining him.

Stevens went deaf and resigned. He opened a store in Pineville with John Ravenel, got wealthy, and bought Cedar Grove Plantation. He died in 1833 of the fever.

Yorick Sterne Gordon of Maine took Stephens's place and immediately demanded obedience with a bundle of rods (spanking). The students were confused by Gordon's sometimes strange behavior such as darting from one side of a path to the other, switching quickly from being humorous to being rough and rude, and appearing intoxicated. The mystery was cleared up when Gordon died during

the spring holidays of delirium

tremens.

Jacob Gillett, a Dartmouth graduate from Vermont, succeeded Gordon. During his three years at the school, the students considered him a typical Yankee - amiable, keen after money, and inclined to gossip - and unfit for the position. He resigned at the beginning of Christmas holidays, 1823, at the urging of Isaac Porcher, presi- dent of the Academy board.

In 1831, the headmaster, Thomas Fiske, died from swamp fever. Within a few years people began to leave Pineville fearful of the dreaded miasma. The school was closed from 1836 to 1842. It closed again in 1861, never to open again.

(Next week: The Burning of

Pineville)