Post # 3 ~ The Jeffers Family in Hamburg, SC

Brand New Town ~ Brand New Opportunity

My question: what was the background of the Jeffers brothers who wrote the Civil War letters? Before diving into the letters written during the war, I want to set the stage with whatever I can gather about the environment that shaped the young men. 

There are no more family letters to be found, but there are other ways of understanding their early years. I trawled through old newspapers, but newspaper articles and advertisements give only pin-hole pictures of a moment in time. I also needed books with historical context. There are several informative books on upstate history; for me the most helpful is Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860, by Tom Downey, LSU Press, 2006. Mr. Downey identified Henry L. Jeffers as a successful merchant, a leader among merchants who were catalysts in the transition of South Carolina from a feudal agrarian society to one “becoming” open to both economic and political transformation. The history laid out in Downey’s book gave me a great framework to understand the blizzard of newspaper clippings written by or about Henry L. Jeffers. 

 Henry Langford Jeffers c 1888

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found many fascinating clues about Henry L. Jeffers (1808-1890), and the life he built for his family in the small town of Hamburg, in Edgefield District, SC. On this blog, I will be writing about that time and place, and about the family’s remarkable “Pa.” Now let me begin the tale:

Henry L. Jeffers was born in Edgefield District, an agricultural region on the western side of South Carolina, which had been populated by families moving south from the mid-Atlantic states. The likeliest census records for his parents indicate a very small farm, at most. He grew up disadvantaged, illiterate even - but felt the fire in his belly to change that, and knew he had the native intelligence and energy to climb higher. In 1822 Henry became a teenage apprentice in a blacksmith shop. In an interview given to the Anniston (Alabama) City Directory of 1887-1888 Henry gave hints of his early life, how he taught himself to read and then launched out at age twenty-one in Hamburg: 

Judge Jeffers was born poor, and in his early years was deprived of all school advantages. He never learned to read until he had reached manhood’s estate, but once this road to knowledge was opened to him, he became a devoted student and an omnivorous reader, devouring and digesting histories, biographies, works on science, art, and general literature.

At fourteen years of age he entered a blacksmith shop, and for seven years he sturdily followed that pursuit, laying at the anvil the foundation of that splendid strength of body which has carried him through his long life, safely escaping the encroachments and attacks of disease, and which gives him now, in his four score years, a vigorous frame and clear brain.

For twenty years he carried on a mercantile business at Hamburg, S.C., and Augusta, Georgia, in the days when these were two of the greatest cotton markets in the South, and in these years he became acquainted with about all the people of his native State, and a legion in Georgia.

Jeffers taught himself to read, and then managed to gather the capital to start a business. He had a winsome enough personality to marry a woman from an established local family in 1833. He and Eliza Ann Anderson, with their growing family, lived in Hamburg, SC, for the first twenty-five years of their marriage. 

Today, the land that was the village of Hamburg is within the bounds of North Augusta, SC. Back then, Hamburg was a new-born town, (see article by Tom Downey) planted in a "wilderness" in 1821 by eccentric Georgia businessman Henry Schulz, a banker and builder in Augusta, Georgia. Augusta was the transfer-point for goods carted there to be loaded on boats, then shipped down the Savannah River to markets in Savannah and Charleston. Convinced that his enemies in Augusta stole everything he had built, Schulz promised revenge and built a rival port on the South Carolina side of the river. A raw, new town, Hamburg lacked the stability and capital to nurture new business enterprises. Risk-takers and speculators began to gather. For a young man with dreams but no money, putting down roots in 1830 Hamburg would not have been a sure thing.

What was the draw of the brand-new town for Henry L. Jeffers? By his own account he was then devouring books that could open the world of knowledge and culture to him; a city with more advantages than little Hamburg would seem a better fit. Why didn’t he pack his bag and make his way to Charleston, the commercial and cultural powerhouse of the state? Though Hamburg lacked the social graces and established business networks of older cities, for Henry the bustling new town held a crucial opportunity: the possibility of building a life and a career in a place where merit would outweigh old family pedigree. 

Henry, however, clearly valued the benefit of social connections. Gregarious and sociable his whole life, his personality naturally fitted him for involvement in civic efforts. A consummate salesman, his talents were well-suited for a career as a merchant. Put those two traits together and we see, though old newspapers and the South Carolina archives, his many years of joining neighbors and fellow-merchants to work for better conditions in Hamburg. Managing a burgeoning business and staying active in civic affairs required hard work. But Henry Jeffers' motivation was self-evident; he and Eliza Ann raised their five children in Hamburg, and not only did they need food on the table, they needed a safe and healthy place to raise those children.

Hamburg was an energetic market-town, its streets crowded with wagons coming and going from the train depot. The wagons carried cotton, hogs, and tobacco raised by the upcountry farmers. An influx of merchants opened shops to retail dry-goods to be carted back to isolated farms - and that's how our Henry started out, in a shop near the train depot. The Hamburg train depot was the center of the town's activity. Looking at pictures of the still-standing depot, I can envision the throngs of wagons, lined up for miles, carting cotton to the trains, and then loading up with goods to haul back to the upstate plantations. I see Henry Jeffers working among the wagoners, the farmers, the laborers hoisting all the goods - a merchant at the center of activity. I'll bet the little Jeffers boys - Henry, Tommie, and Spann - were scampering around.

Hamburg SCRR Depot. Photo by Larry Gleason, Flickr.

This particular town could offer a chance for a self-made man to make money, and also to earn respect, friends, and standing in the community. By 1836, H. L. Jeffers had opened his own dry-goods store; from that beginning he tirelessly built his career as a merchant, advertising every week, increasing his inventory, always striving for bigger and better things. 

From the Edgefield Advertiser, June, 1837.

These advertisements, together with other articles placed in local newspapers over a span of thirty years, provide the window I will look through to follow the trajectory of the Jeffers family’s story between 1833 and 1860.