A production of South Carolina ETV in association with the South Carolina Department of Parks Recreation and Tourism.

♪ ♪ Oh, I have found the sweetest place ♪ ♪ where people smile and know my name.

♪ ♪ Oh, I have found the sweetest land ♪ ♪ as warm as sun and cool as rain.

♪ ♪ A place so faaarrr... from all we had, ♪ ♪ a place so far from all we've known, ♪ ♪ a quiet place that we can love ♪ ♪ and call our home.

♪♪ ♪ Joanna Angle> In 1865, Union Major Thomas Osborn, an officer with General William T. Sherman's main army, wrote, "This town has been a pleasant one "and has the Southern aristocratic bearing.

"The streets are wide and well shaded.

"The houses, comparatively old and were once painted white.

"None but the first families "paint their houses white in South Carolina.

"The town also shows considerable age and, I am told, dates back beyond the Revolution."

[birds chirping] Although this community played unwilling host to more of General Sherman's soldiers than any other South Carolina town, miraculously no public buildings or dwellings were destroyed.

Now carefully preserved in a 213-acre National Register Historic District, these two-century-old buildings, their trees and gardens are so picturesque that one reporter called this the "prettiest town in Dixie."

Welcome to Cheraw, South Carolina, and to "Palmetto Places," a series that explores and celebrates South Carolina's small towns and countryside.

I'm Joanna Angle.

[birds chirping] Just south of Cheraw is South Carolina's oldest state park.

Now spreading over 7,360 acres, the park's initial acreage was purchased with the pennies, nickels, and dimes of Cheraw's schoolchildren during the depth of the Great Depression.

The park's 332-acre crystal-clear lake offers fishing, swimming, and various recreational opportunities.

Lakefront campsites and cabins are available for overnight guests.

Two group camps are popular with church, school, and civic groups.

A championship 18-hole golf course, with full-service pro shop, is the park's newest addition.

The course is laid out among rolling sand hills, pines, and mixed hardwoods with Lake Juniper serving as a backdrop for several holes.

[birds chirping] Cheraw is named for the Indians who once dominated the upper Pee Dee, maintaining a well-fortified village on the river's bluff.

The Cheraws reached the height of their power around 1650 and then saw their numbers devastated by disease.

[birds chirping] Among the earliest European settlers was Thomas Ellerbe, who started a trading center and water mill around 1740.

By 1750, Cheraw was one of six places in South Carolina appearing on English maps.

In 1765, ferry operators Joseph and Eli Kershaw formally laid out the town's streets and lots, reserving the center for a town green.

Four of Cheraw's most prominent buildings are on the green.

[birds chirping] The Town Hall is a two-story wooden building with the weatherboards cut to resemble stone blocks.

Fronted with four two-story Doric columns, it was built between 1856 and 1858.

Because the Masonic Lodge contributed to its construction, the Masons were given a 99-year lease to the second story of the building, which had a small, raised stage and an entrance of iron steps with a grillwork balcony wrought by Christopher Werner, celebrated ironworker of Charleston.

In earlier days, the Town Hall, or old opera house, was the center of the community's cultural activities.

The large upstairs room sometimes housed community balls and dances and other events.

Another interesting use of Town Hall took place during the World Series baseball games when a special telegraph wire relayed messages of the players' movements.

[birds chirping] Peter Lynch designed the Market Hall in 1837.

The hall is a simple two-story building with a bricked open market on the first floor and its only room on the second floor.

This room housed the first Chancery Courts held in Chesterfield County.

In 1907, the town of Cheraw granted the Civic League garden club permission to use the building, and the club continues to meet there today.

[birds chirping] The Lyceum met once a month in this small, red-brick building, 18 by 30 feet, to collect books for a library.

From 1863 to 1865, the Lyceum granted the Confederate Army use of the building as a telegraph and quartermaster's office.

During Reconstruction, Union soldiers used this building.

Today the Lyceum is a museum, housing an illustrated history of Cheraw.

[birds chirping] In 1850, Alexander McIver, a prominent lawyer, bought this little office from Duncan McNair, an important Cheraw merchant.

In 1891, Mr. McIver's son Henry became chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Mr. John A. Inglis, law partner of Justice McIver, also used this building.

He was chairman of the legislature's Secession Committee and introduced the famous resolution that South Carolina should, quote, "forthwith secede from the Federal Union."

This was the only structure to survive the catastrophic explosion and fire that destroyed Cheraw's business district in 1865.

[birds chirping] Nearby, the Merchants Bank building, built circa 1835, once housed the largest bank in South Carolina outside of Charleston and was a repository for Confederate gold.

[birds chirping] In 1820, Cheraw was incorporated as a town.

The "Carolina Observer and Fayetteville Gazette" reported that the site was "elevated, airy, and commanding, "and contained an elegant academy, "a printing establishment "from which it issued a weekly newspaper, "4 houses of entertainment, 30 stores, and at least a thousand inhabitants."

Two large steamboats and a variety of small craft were employed navigating the Pee Dee River.

One steamboat went directly to Charleston and the other serviced a route between Cheraw and Georgetown.

Local attorney and scuba diver Miller Ingram Junior... Miller Ingram> The first person to come up to Cheraw on a boat was William Gillespie, I believe, in 1740.

Cheraw was the high point of navigation on the Pee Dee River.

It's as far as you can go, in any size boat, up that river.

That made Cheraw sort of the terminus of the superhighway of the time.

All the agricultural products from the surrounding area would come to Cheraw to be loaded onto steamboats here.

If people wanted to buy products that weren't made locally, they had to come to Cheraw.

They were imported from Charleston, past Georgetown, and up the Pee Dee River.

It made Cheraw a real trading center in that day.

I grew up in Cheraw, and... my childhood in the '50s, the riverbank was sort of a dangerous and forbidding place to a lot of people in Cheraw.

The landfill was down there.

They dumped garbage and burned it on the riverbank.

The origins of Cheraw on the Pee Dee River had pretty much been forgotten.

You could still get down to the riverbank, and I'd look at that big river and think about the history of Cheraw.

I was really interested in history.

I would think about the steamboats coming to Cheraw and the old wooden bridge crossing the river down there and try to imagine what it was like, and that's the origin of my interest in diving in the river.

Cheraw really came from the Pee Dee River.

That's the origin of the town being here.

When I found out I could get certified to scuba dive, I got with friends and went to Laurinburg, North Carolina, and got certified to dive.

I wanted to dive in the Pee Dee River because of all the fantasies I've had about it.

I had a friend I talked into going with me.

Nobody else from class wanted to go in the river 'cause it looked so muddy.

As we got further down the river, we got to a site where there was a big pile of bricks.

We didn't realize exactly what it was.

We started exploring it, and I saw the fluke of this big anchor.

I didn't exactly realize what it was.

It was a big piece of metal, and you could see the ball on the crossbar of the anchor.

Suddenly these things linked up in my head, and I realized that they were part of the same thing.

We realized that an anchor that big had to be on a pretty big boat.

We determined that what we had was a big ship on the bottom of the river.

When we found the "Robert Martin" site, we didn't know what it was, so we started doing research.

They listed two wrecks in the river.

One was the "Robert Martin," which blew up and sank on November 9, 1853, and the other one was the "Osceola," which would have been a much smaller boat.

Both were listed at Cheraw.

We got some old newspapers from Georgetown and found out that there were advertisements there for the SS "Robert Martin" making trips to Cheraw.

It was making trips from Charleston to Cheraw.

We determined from the size of that big anchor that it must be the "Robert Martin."

We found, actually, a newspaper account of the actual wreck of that steamboat.

We have a lot of tools-- axes and so on-- that were on the steamboat.

We have big cast iron pots that they used to cook.

China, some of it fine 18th- century china from England that was being imported to Cheraw at that time.

And, um... blown-glass bottles... um...buttons, clothing buttons, coins, lots of nails and spikes that were used, different sizes, to hold the ship together, little brass nails that were used to hold sheeting on the outside of the boat.

As railroads and highways came into importance, the river sort of was forgotten.

But you can still go see those neighborhoods and the environment around the river, and you can see how history has been there, been forgotten, then been rediscovered.

And right now... the river in Cheraw is probably one of our best resources that's not being very well used.

There's a lot of opportunity there for recreation and so on that we could do better at developing.

[no audio] Angle> Not far from the old steamboat landing stands the only wooden church in South Carolina to survive use by four armies.

Built circa 1770, Old Saint David's was the last Anglican, or state, church built in South Carolina under the authority of King George III.

During the Revolution, Cheraw was a center of unrest and was considered strategic by both sides.

Consequently, Saint David's was used by the South Carolina Militia as quarters on several occasions.

In the summer of 1780, the 71st Highlander Regiment of Lord Cornwallis's army, under the command of Colonel Campbell, also used the church for quarters and a hospital.

A number of Highlanders became ill, probably with smallpox, died, and were buried in an unmarked mass grave at the front of the church.

The officers were buried individually in graves covered by brick mounds.

Later the church was used as a hospital by both the Confederate and Union armies.

This was the first monument ever erected in memory of fallen Confederates.

Originally the inscription did not mention Southern soldiers directly since Union forces still occupied the area.

Soldiers from every American war are buried in this cemetery.

There is also the grave of Captain Moses Rogers, commander of the SS "Savannah," the first steamship to cross the Atlantic.

The interior appears much as it did when completed in 1774.

Anglican churches of that period were very plain, placing emphasis on preaching rather than the altar.

This wineglass pulpit was made of polished black walnut.

The parish was named for David, patron saint of Wales.

The first major settlement in the old Cheraws was Welsh, and the Welsh Neck made up a large portion of the new parish.

Old Saint David's has long symbolized Cheraw and is held in great affection by the citizens.

More than 100 years ago, the Right Reverend Alexander Gregg wrote, "Amid the changes of time and civil rule, "only the old parish church remained to tell its tale connected with earlier days."

[no audio] Cheraw's most famous son became its global goodwill ambassador.

Born here in 1917, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was the big daddy of bebop.

He began his performances all over the world with the statement, "I come from Cheraw, South Carolina."

Dizzy's lifelong friend, Mr. Norman Powe, reminisces.

Norman Powe> Well, when I first met him, we were in grade school at Robert Smalls Grade School.

As I said, he was... a grade ahead of me.

He was very smart.

He's about six months younger than I am, but he's smart.

So they had some instruments there, and, um, anybody could pick them up, so I picked up a trombone.

He had a trumpet already that his neighbor had given him.

I couldn't play the trombone, and during the spring when school was out, I couldn't take it home, and neither could he.

But there was his neighbor, James Harrington, he gave him a trombone that he had-- I mean a trumpet, rather-- and he started playing it.

In the meantime, I was taking piano lessons from a lady, Miss Annie Tillman.

And...I finally got a trombone.

I bought a trombone for $2 from some college kid who had graduated, and the thing was so messed up, you-- I put automobile oil on it to just-- and he taught me how to play the trombone, and I taught him how to read music.

He could play the piano much better than I could.

Matter of fact, he could play any of the brass instruments.

And later that fall, it was in the fall that his mother and brother and sisters went to Philly... Philadelphia.

And he stayed with me about...about a month, and then we got the scholarship at Laurinburg.

We stayed at Laurinburg about three years, coming home and, uh... hitchhiking, coming home to Cheraw, and stayin' a week or two, and then we'd go back.

And later on, we, uh... we split up.

I left the year before he did, and I... went south and west with, you know, different bands... unknown bands.

And when he left Laurinburg, he went east to Philadelphia.

Angle> When did you pick up the name Dizzy?

Can you tell us about how the name Dizzy came about?

Powe> Well, uh... Dizzy, he would do things that was out of the ordinary.

You wouldn't think anybody would do things like that!

He finally went to Europe with Don Redman, and when he came back... he had this stamp of Dizzy, Dizzy.

And.... his style was... was so unique.

It was just out of this world.

It was something that the average person or musician couldn't grasp, because we were doing things like playing-- we would play a chord and leave the chord, and we may go to a seventh or a fifth, but he would do ninth and everything and do it so fast it sounded good, and it was out of the chord that was being played.

It was just a... it was a phenomenal thing how-- and he, he just...clicked.

Angle> How would you explain bebop to somebody who'd never heard bebop?

Powe> Uh...

I couldn't explain it because I don't know it myself.

But he wrote a couple of tunes, and the rhythm in it was bo-bebop, bo-bebop, you know, and it just... it caught on.

Every...every tune that he would write, it would have a rhythm that you could use the bo-bebop... bebop, bebop.

So that's as close as I can explain it, and you'd find so many musicians who can't explain it... nobody but him.

Angle> Talk about his horn.

How did he end up with a bent horn when everybody else was playing with a normal horn?

Powe> Well, it was told to me that he was at a party.

During, uh... during the early '40s, you would have parties at houses, a house party, and you get two or three musicians, and you play for the house party.

And, uh... it was told to me that someone became inebriated and sat on his trumpet... while Dizzy was eatin'.

He liked to eat, and he set it in a chair, and someone sat on it and bent it.

He had to continue playin' to get his money, so he continued with the horn sticking up like that.

It sounded good to him, and he just continued to play like that until he was able to, uh... have one specially made for himself like that.

Angle> If this could be broadcast up to that celestial ballroom in the sky and Dizzy could hear what you're saying, what would you want to tell him?

(Powe, chuckling) Well, man, you... you have attained the heights that I thought you would, and I'm just hopin' that I will... [chuckling] be in your band when I go!

Uh.... That's...that's just about all I can say.

He knows--you know, I'm very religious myself, and I feel that he knows that we're here now.

And knowing him, and I know how he feels, I know he feels good about being in his hometown and someone who's speaking about him and letting the state know about him, you know.

[no audio] [vehicular noise] By 1830, Cheraw's streets were lined with elm trees.

It is said that the town owes its green canopy to a law that required those convicted of being drunk and disorderly to dig a sapling from the nearby woods and transplant it here in town.

Cheraw still plants and protects its trees and was South Carolina's first National Arbor Day Tree City.

"Sandlapper" magazine called Cheraw an "ideal, idyllic, picket fence place."

The best way to get to know it is by walking its neighborhoods.

[birds chirping] One notable home is the Lafayette House, built by Dr. William Ellerbe in 1823.

This was the site of a festive public reception and ball in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette on his triumphal return to America in 1825.

Dr. Archibald Malloy remodeled the house after his marriage to Henrietta Coit in 1843.

The bride was from Connecticut, which probably explains the house's New England appearance.

[no audio] Across the street, The Teacherage is believed to be the oldest dwelling in Cheraw, dating to before 1790.

Schoolteachers boarded here during the 20th century, and Woodrow Wilson's father was a frequent guest during the mid-1800s.

[no audio] A most unwelcome visitor, General William T. Sherman, claimed the Hartsell house for his personal headquarters during the Union Army's 1865 occupation of Cheraw.

General Sherman brought 60,000 troops and 20,000 camp followers with him.

[vehicular noise] Cheraw's old houses survived Sherman's torches because all those Northerners needed a place to sleep while they were busy building a pontoon bridge across the Pee Dee River.

[birds twittering] Angle> Today's travelers can experience the ambience of historic houses at several here that offer bed and breakfast.

We're so happy that you could come with us to Cheraw and hope that you'll join us again for "Palmetto Places."

Until then, I'm Joanna Angle, inviting you to discover South Carolina... smiling faces, beautiful places.

♪ ♪ ♪ (female singer) ♪ And here we live, ♪ ♪ within this land ♪ ♪ of mountains' edge and ocean's shore.

♪ ♪ A land of strength, a land of grace, ♪ ♪ of men and women gone before.

♪ ♪ So many smiling faces here, ♪ ♪ so many memories still to come.

♪ ♪ Beautiful places we hold dear ♪ ♪ in this our home.

♪ (choir joins) ♪ South Carolina, always near... ♪ ♪ and always hooommmme.... ♪♪ ♪