♪ (male singer) ♪ 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) This is Pendleton, an Upcountry town that dates to 1790.

Pendleton was the first South Carolina town to be established north of Camden and was the seat for Pendleton District, which included the present-day counties of Anderson, Pickens, and Oconee.

The town was named for Judge Henry Pendleton of Culpeper, Virginia, who organized the Culpeper Minutemen, one of the first Revolutionary units formed in the South.

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

I'm Joanna Angle.

Nestled in the Blue Ridge foothills at the intersection of the Catawba Trading Path to Virginia and the Cherokee Trail to the South Carolina coast, Pendleton grew as a center of trade, culture, and government for the northwestern part of the state.

The agreeable climate attracted wealthy Lowcountry planters and craftsmen who catered to the planters' needs.

Pendleton soon became known for producing fine cabinetry, carriages, and ironwork.

Pendleton's historic district has more than 50 18th- and 19th-century buildings, many bordering on the village green.

A good place to begin your visit is Hunter's Store.

Constructed around 1850, it is the second oldest building on the square.

For decades it housed general merchandise and today serves as a visitors' center and craft shop and library for local history and genealogical research.

Dominating the village green is this dignified structure, Farmers Hall, the oldest farmers' hall in continuous use in the United States.

Since the late 1820s, the Pendleton Farmers Society has met here for the, quote, "promotion and improvement of agriculture and rural affairs."

[vehicular noise] The cannon on the green was used by Pendleton men during Reconstruction when they organized as Red Shirts in support of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wade Hampton.

At the other end of the village green is the 1860 Guard and market house.

This is the square's oldest remaining building, built in 1791 by William Steele, a merchant and Pendleton's first postmaster.

Years later, the property included a brew and malt house, and belonged to one Samuel Maverick, an attorney.

Maverick moved his law practice to Texas, where he once accepted 600 head of cattle as payment for some legal fees.

He had grand ideas about breeding these animals and building a large herd but unfortunately was naive as to ways of the West and let his yearlings roam unbranded.

To this day, unbranded cattle-- or people with unconventional points of view-- are known as mavericks.

Close by the green is Saint Paul's Episcopal Church.

It was completed in 1822 and is believed to be South Carolina's oldest Episcopal church north of Columbia.

[windflaw noise] In this churchyard are the remains of many well-known South Carolinians.

There is Thomas Green Clemson, founder of Clemson University, and his wife, Anna, a daughter of John C. Calhoun.

There's Brigadier General Barnard Elliot Bee, who commanded the Army of the Shenandoah at Manassas and gave Jackson the name "Stonewall."

But perhaps the most interesting, most touching, are graves of those we don't know, who have no names.

During the War Between the States, Pendleton became a refugee center, and when those who were staying here temporarily would die, they could not be returned to their home city.

So the people of Saint Paul's gave part of this hallowed ground as a final resting place.

It's always been known as Strangers' Row.

♪ All around Pendleton, vintage buildings are lovingly preserved.

Many have been assigned new uses.

We are at Liberty Hall, once a private home, now a comfortable country inn.

Tom Jonas is the owner.

(Tom Jonas) Liberty Hall was built sometime in the 1840s by Tom and Nancy Sloan of Charleston.

This was their summer home, as were many early homes of Pendleton... folks that had the wherewithal from the Lowcountry to come to the Upcountry for the summer to get away from the heat and malaria of the Lowcountry.

Pendleton was one of their choices because of what they called the most delicious climate of this area.

The Sloans sold the house sometime in the early 1850s to a family by the name of J.

B.

Hall.

As far as we know, it changed hands many times the next 50 years or so, after the Civil War.

Sometime around the turn of the century a gentleman by the name of Bonneau Harris, who was South Carolina's commissioner of agriculture and the manager of Woodburn Plantation, bought this house and turned it into his family home and a large farm.

He's the one who expanded it from its original five rooms and detached kitchen to what is now ten guest rooms and two dining rooms, an office, and kitchen.

The Harrises owned the house for approximately 50 years or so and raised a large family here, had lots of nieces and nephews who came to Liberty Hall for the summer and slept on the porches while Mr. Harris had them working on the farm.

There's lots of stories about this place at that time.

It was called Harris Hall by the locals.

The Harrises come back often to what they call the old home place to visit it and reminisce.

The house is approximately 7500 square feet, um... with a center hall.

The old part of the house has heart pine floors.

The ceilings downstairs are 14 feet high.

The reason is that the house was only used in the summertime.

The high ceilings and the dogtrot fashion of the front and back door kept it cool.

They didn't live here in the wintertime, so they didn't worry about the high ceilings.

It appears that Bonneau Harris was interested in showing his constituents that he knew a lot about agriculture.

There is evidence around the property that he was involved in many facets of agriculture.

He built the old dairy barn out back.

We have the foundation from the old horse barn.

We're told that there were sheep on the property.

We're still trying to cut down cherry trees that keep sprouting up from his original cherry orchard.

We just recently removed some very old apple trees that had finally rotted away.

We still have one old pear tree here that we believe dates back to his time.

There was lots of different agriculture going on here at one time.

After Mr. Harris passed away, his wife, Ofra, ran Liberty, this building, as a boardinghouse for many years until the 40s.

We have had visits from former boardinghouse tenants.

Mrs. Harris would only take in single young ladies who were schoolteachers.

At the time, there were two schoolteachers per room.

There were eight rooms and two bathrooms.

Imagine what it was like early in the morning during the school year.

The Harris family sold this property sometime in the 40s.

We don't know exactly when to another local family by the last name of Brown, and the Browns owned it for quite some time.

Sometime in the 70s, it was actually occupied by college students.

It was finally boarded up and passed around to a number of different speculators who were all trying to find something to do with the property.

Eventually, one individual bought it all and had a grand plan.

He was unable to raise money for the renovation, so he optioned the building and four acres to some renovators who actually renovated the building in 1985.

It was open for business, and the folks who did the renovation decided to sell the property.

And we were, at the time, living in Saint Louis.

I was working for a large advertising agency, looking for a career change.

We came and bought Liberty Hall and have enjoyed living in Pendleton and in South Carolina and now call it home.

When we bought the inn in 87, approximately a third of the furnishings were here, came with the property.

Another third of the furnishings are personal belongings which our family had collected from living in Iowa and Denver and in Saint Louis and in Kentucky.

The final third is a collection of items that we've picked up here locally.

Some of that may not be local, but it's been purchased in this area.

It's somewhat of an eclectic collection.

We don't give every room a theme, or even give the whole inn a theme.

It would be as though you'd lived here 150 years and bought some furniture every year... some you would still have, and some you wouldn't.

I hope the house would say, Thanks for saving me and for keeping me alive.

It's a spirited sort of place.

It has a lifeblood now... at one time it didn't.

Its lifeblood had stopped, and I hope that the house likes what's going on.

♪ (Angle) Pendleton men have always been close to the soil, to the red clay of the hills.

Meet one who's closer than most... master potter Rob Gentry.

(Rob Gentry) I saw my first potter when I was in 6th grade, and at the time, I was just mesmerized by the wheel and thought it looked like magic.

I decided at that point I'd like to learn how to do it.

In 7th grade I started with my first teacher, Virginia Davis, down in Florida, who I worked with for about three or four years.

I ended up helping her and teaching with her at the end.

She was a functional potter and really gave me a good start and was very patient and got me going.

The next major instructor that was helpful was Mike Vatalero here at Clemson University.

He teaches--he heads up the ceramic department.

He's the one that now, once I had my skills down, he taught me how to...see... and to judge my pots, and how to...actually start looking at them in a different light.

And, uh, I give Mike a lot of credit, uh, for kind of directing me... into a more professional...level.

I consciously avoided being a professional for a while because I didn't see any hopes of making a living at it.

[wheel humming] But it has chased me everywhere I've been.

And every... situation I've been in, it seems like, I've always run into clay, and it's always come back at me.

Eleven years ago I started the studio with the idea that if it didn't work, I'd try something else.

And, uh, as I said, it's been 11 years, and I just thoroughly love it.

I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to.

I love working with my hands.

I love starting something and taking it all the way through to a finished product.

There is a lot of... magic in the clay.

The...the fact that it will... take any kind of motion... that you apply to it... it stretches, it tears, it breaks.

You can paint on it, You can paint with it.

Uh... it's just a fascinating media.

And you can make anything of clay.

One of the things that I'm kind of trying to do is come up with various things that probably most people are not familiar with having been made out of clay.

I do aquariums, I do fountains.

I do hanging screens, I do bathroom sinks... and all of the stuff I love to do.

I like the variation.

I thouroughly enjoy.

I get bored very easily, so I'm probably a little bit more diverse than is healthy, [laughing] just because I do bounce over all kinds of different avenues, and I'm going in about 12 directions instead of one.

But at the same point, I just, I...

I really love it.

It makes it more entertaining for me.

So I guess my inspiration is just the challenge of making something new.

After I finish throwing here, I've got to do a raku firing.

I've got the kiln set up out in the yard, and I'm working on a big hanging mobile that I call "Mean Fish."

This process that you're about to see is a raku firing.

This is a small kiln made of an oil drum.

It's fired by a propane torch.

That's the roar in the background.

We're firing up to about 1800 degrees.

I'll visually be looking in through the chimney here.

When the piece is melted and the glaze is shiny, then I know that it's ready.

I'll be lifting the lid, put on heavy gear, the heavy gloves, and 4-foot tongs.

and I'll reach in, and take the piece out, then we'll take it and bury it in sawdust.

The sawdust will burst into flames.

We'll have to keep smothering that out, and the piece will smoke in there for 10 to 15 minutes.

Raku is traditionally Japanese.

It started back with the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony, where, in emphasis of Zen on completeness of a cycle, people would get together and make tea bowls in the morning, dry them in the sun, raku fire them that afternoon, then have the tea ceremony, using their bowls, that evening, and thus completing the cycle.

We're working on a set-- I call them "Mean Fish."

It will be a mobile of a big fish going after a medium fish, going after a little fish.

Hopefully, we'll have all that finished in an hour or two.

[torch whooshing] Okay, Joanna, are you ready?

[leaves crackling underfoot] This is the challenge here... [no dialogue] to get it out without it spinning.

[no dialogue] Hang on a second... let it get some air.

The more air it gets, the better the crazing, or the crackling of the glaze, will be.

In fact, I'm gonna let it sit just another minute.

[no dialogue] This looks real good.

All right... let me get my tongs out.

Okay.

Go ahead, dump it in.

That's the way, that's the way.

All right...let me get it packed down around there.

Ooh!

The fish has been smoking in here now for about 10 minutes... 10 to 15 minutes.

I'm gonna take it out... and then quench it in the water.

[torch whooshing, birds chirping] [torch whooshing, birds chirping] [torch whooshing, birds chirping] [torch whooshing, birds chirping] It's important that it fill totally and pretty quickly, or the outside will cool and the inside won't, and you'll get cracking.

[metal clanging] [water gurgling] There you go.

(silence) This piece is now ready to be scoured.

It has a good bit of soot.

So I'll hit it with Ajax and a scouring pad to clean it, and then it'll be finished.

(silence) ♪ (Angle) Regally crowning a hilltop just outside Pendleton, this house is called Ashtabula, an Indian word which means "fish river" and probably refers to 18 Mile Creek, which flows nearby.

Ashtabula's inhabitants have influenced South Carolina's development since 1828.

♪ It began when Lewis Ladsen Gibbes and his wife, Maria Henrietta Drayton Gibbes, both members of prominent Lowcountry families, moved here to settle a 767-acre tract.

Their son, Lewis Reeve Gibbes, grew to be a renowned botanist, writer, and educator whose early inspiration had been Ashtabula's forests and fields.

♪ Next came Dr. O. R. Broyles and his wife, Sarah.

Dr. Broyles was noted for his brilliance and keen interest in agricultural research.

In 1843 he produced 110 bushels of rice on one acre of Ashtabula ground, a world record that year.

Memoirs of a Broyles daughter recall an Ashtabula childhood.

"It was a gala day to go with Father "to the bottoms to see the work "or to see the fall gathering of Philadelphia reds "to make barrels of cider.

"We said some lessons at home.

"We pranced around on stick horses.

"We followed Mother in her flower garden, "redolent with perfume "and musical with the hum of bees.

"In the evening we had tableaux and plays and dancing at the homes of various friends and relatives."

♪ When the county seat was moved from Pendleton, the Broyles family moved to Anderson, and Ashtabula was sold to James Theodore Latta and his wife, Angela.

The Lattas renovated the house and greatly enlarged Dr. Broyles's farming operation, bringing one of the first shipments of Hereford cattle to the United States from England.

Their son, Edward Dilworth Latta, became a well-known industrialist in North Carolina and is largely credited with the early growth of the city of Charlotte.

♪ For a while this was known as the Pelzer Place.

It was owned then by Francis Pelzer, a leader in South Carolina's textile industry and founder of the town of Pelzer.

Ashtabula is furnished today as it might have been during its first 40 years.

During the War Between the States, the Bowen family lived here, and Clarissa Adger Bowen kept a diary of life at Ashtabula during 1865.

That was the year Union soldiers raided the plantation.

Some of her personal possessions are in the back parlor.

♪ Clarissa was reared in Charleston, the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant.

And like other young women, she enjoyed the social whirl of parties and balls.

This was her silver-filigreed corsage holder.

It has a small chain and a ring so she could wear her flowers while she danced.

Then later, during dinner, the legs would open, and she could put her flowers on the tabletop.

She adored handkerchiefs and said once that a lady could never have too many lace handkerchiefs.

♪ This melodeon was made in Charleston and belonged to Clarissa and her husband, O.

A. Bowen.

♪ One can only imagine the adjustments that were required of Clarissa Adger Bowen as she went from being a belle of Charleston to a young wife on the South Carolina frontier.

♪ Unlike many of Pendleton's summer houses, Ashtabula was a year-round home and working farm until 1950.

The mansion is actually two houses joined together.

Work on the main house was begun in 1825.

Until then, the family probably made do with the four-room brick annex.

The restored well house covers a 60-foot-deep well, one of two on the property.

(silence) We're glad that you could join us as we explored Pendleton and hope you'll be with 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.... ♪♪ ♪