Part 49 Extra: Tar Babies and Turpentine
By Warner M.Montgomery Warner@TheColumbiaStar.com

This sketch shows how the tar kiln was used to distill sap from pine trees.

My cousin, Keith Gourdin, has been able to do a lot of exploring in the Santee- Cooper lakebeds since the water level dropped. One of his discoveries was the naval stores industry that was once popular in the Pineville area.

The early colonists capitalized on the abundance of southern yellow pines and utilized the sap- laden trees for ship- building products such as lumber, gum, tar, resin, turpentine, and pitch - hence, the name naval stores. The Carolinas accounted for most of American production of naval stores until World War II when clear cutting and lumbering took away the source.

Keith's interest was picqued when he found tar pits, or kilns, in the shrinking Lake Moultrie. He knew that our ancestor, Thomas Pamor (changed to Palmer), established a naval stores business on his Gravel Hill Plantation, now under Lake Moultrie, before 1733. His son, "Turpentine" John Palmer, amassed over 10,000 acres between the Santee and Cooper Rivers and earned his nickname producing naval stores.

One of two tar pits found by Keith Gourdin in the dry lake bed of Lake Moultrie.

What amazed Keith, though, was the abundance of tar pits he found all along the eastern side of Lake Moultrie on what had been Buck Hall, Raccoon Hill, and Woodlawn Plantations, all owned by our ancestors. Keith still owns and farms the remainder of Buck Hall that wasn't covered by the lake. So it appears that Turpentine John got all the credit but many of his cousins were also dipping into the sap business.

Sapping begins with "tar burning" where fat lightwood is split and stacked around the perimeter of a saucer- shaped, sloping kiln. The seven- foot high stack is covered with dirt, straw, and clay, then burned slowly. The sap liquefies and runs into a collection barrel for three days. (Careless North Carolina workers tended to step in the product before it was ready and earned the name, Tar Heels.)

A Tar Baby doll made of tar and turpentine was used to entrap Br'er Rabbit

in the second of the Uncle

Remus stories. The more Br'er Rabbit fought the Tar Baby, the more entangled he became. Keith has not found the remains of any Tar Babies, but he has become more entangled in our family history.

The raw resin is distilled into turpentine which in those days was loaded into barrels and hauled to market by mule wagons. The next stage is to distill it further into spirits of turpentine which is used in woodpreserver, rubber solvent, medicines, and paint. The residue was used as pitch in shipbuilding. Another by- product, camphene, was used in lamps for home lighting. It is now used in perfumes and as a food additive.

It has been thought that rice and indigo were the only profitable products in the Santee River floodplain prior to the invention of the cotton gin. Now that the drought has allowed the lakes to give up the secret, perhaps we should add naval stores to the list.