Post # 1 ~ Welcome to the Side Show

Spin-Offs from the Big Show

While researching a collection of Civil War letters written by the Jeffers brothers of Greenwood, SC, I often find topics that are fascinating companions to the main story, but so complex that they grow out-of-bounds. I decided to put the antebellum thread in its own separate place, here, and build on the subject as I find more to add. There is no perfect way to do this - but for now this will give me room to build related stories, without inserting lengthy diversions into the main story developing over in Your Dear Son ~ Letters from the Civil War.

This blog, A Merchant of Hamburg, will be about their father, Henry Langford Jeffers, 1809-1890, and about Hamburg, SC, the town in which the Jeffers family lived during the brothers' childhood years (1835 -1855). Hamburg was not a typical rural antebellum village, and the father of the family left an unusual footprint there.

Concrete pilings from the old railroad bridge between Hamburg and Augusta, GA. Photo by Larry Gleason, Flickr.

Here I am using an inverted post-time display, to make the thread unroll in (roughly) chronological order. New posts will show up at the end. Since the amount of new material is limited, and I don't expect the total to be more than about 25 posts, this will work out conveniently to present the background story of the Jeffers family. I always welcome messages and new information.

Post # 2 ~ Who Were These People?

Suddenly Want to Know

The Jeffers letters, like most original Civil War documents, shed light on a fascinating time in our national history. The intense patriotism, violence, misery, and hard-won victory by the Union - all these and many more reasons compel people to study the Civil War exhaustively. There are still so many things to understand.

Integral to my project is an understanding of the family life of the three letter-writing brothers. When it comes to the Jeffers family, that is harder to research than I expected. Most southern families kept genealogical records, and were proud of their "blood." Detailed records were kept and passed on, even after Sherman's court-house rampages. In 1861, the families of my all my great-great grandparents lived in South Carolina, owned slaves, attended church, and were loyal to the Confederacy. Almost all of my great-great-grandparents can be researched in old records. That one great-great that left no genealogical trail? Mr. Henry Langford Jeffers, 1809-1890, father of the family of letter-writers.

I understand that often, especially when you have their own hand-written papers, the act of writing about long-ago people makes you feel as if you know them personally. You become invested emotionally; you care about what happened to them. 

Spann's letter from Deep Bottom, VA, September 22, 1864.

Of course, that happened to me!

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

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Post # 4 ~ Hamburg Rising

Hamburg's Day in the Sun

This post looks at Hamburg itself, a place we might describe today as a boom town, built to ship cotton on the Savannah River.

Shipping cotton, from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1862. LOC.

In my last, I introduced Henry Schultz, the colorful, self-promoting merchant who vowed revenge on his enemies in Augusta, Georgia, and set out to build a rival market-town that would pull in all the trade of back-country SC, GA, TN, and NC. Shultz named his new place after his hometown of Hamburg, Germany. His town grew rapidly for about three decades. An 1891 article in The Atlanta Journal recorded the memories of elderly Augusta merchant William C. Sibley, a contemporary of Henry L. Jeffers. 

Post # 5 ~ Quality of Life in Hamburg

Building a Better Hamburg

Though busy earning a living, H. L. Jeffers’ involvement in local civic affairs kept apace. The first example I found was his participation, in 1831 at age 23, with other church members in a petition to the State Legislature for land to build a Baptist Church in Hamburg. 

Detail of 1831 Petition to the South Carolina General Assembly,

for land in Hamburg to build a Baptist Church. SC Archives

Post # 6 ~ Henry L. Jeffers Elected a Warden of Hamburg

Inauguration of Hamburg's First Elected Town Council

~ Church Bells Ringing! ~

On Saturday, February 20, 1836, the newly elected councilmen of the newly incorporated Hamburg, SC, were solemnly sworn in. Clipped from The Charleston Daily Courier, 1836-03-03, LOC.

TEXT TRANSCRIPTION BELOW

Post # 7 ~ Picturing Hamburg

Attention! Artists
~ One Thousand Dollars: Rush Job! ~

I wonder if Mr. Shultz, Founder of Hamburg, ever found a workmanlike artist. What I wouldn't give to see that Correct Drawing.

From The Charleston Daily Courier, 1836-04-05. LOC

  

I haven't seen further mention of this artistic project in the old newspapers. But I did find a written description

Post # 8 ~ How Hamburg Dealt with Trouble, Part 1

Friends are Confirmed, and Enemies are Confounded

This post continues looking at life in Hamburg, SC, the town in which the Jeffers family lived 1830-1855. The material covered centers on Henry Shultz, Hamburg's Founder and fervent Defender. The Jeffers family's father, Henry Langford Jeffers, had staked his livelihood and career in Hamburg, and would have been completely involved in all the efforts touched on below. 

Henry Shultz, Founder and Proprietor of Hamburg, SC, was born too early - he would have loved social media. He was a salesman and a showman; he poured his soul into proclaiming the greatness of his town. Shultz did not take sides politically - his sole passion was to crush Augusta, GA, and establish Hamburg as the best place to live and to trade. In the early years he pushed for this goal by lobbying South Carolina’s state government to lend him money for building Hamburg. But in 1838 an article in a North Carolina newspaper galvanized him into using the printed word for his purposes.

In March of 1838, a reporter from North Carolina traveled by Railroad to Augusta, GA, to attend the Commercial Convention. He wrote in the 1838-04-04 Fayetteville (NC) Weekly Observer: 

The country through which we passed, is exceedingly poor and uninteresting...Hamburg may be called the suburb of Augusta, [and is] scattered and shabby. Augusta is beautifully situated, and as far as I have seen, handsomely built up, with the widest streets in the country...Every thing about [Augusta] has the appearance of active and prosperous business.

The "Best Friend," early passenger train in South Carolina. LOC.

Shocked by the negative comparison, Shultz and his fellow Hamburg-loyalists

Post # 11 ~ Do You Like Advertisements? I Do!

Cheerfully Tendering His Thanks to Loyal Customers

Well, not really. Not current ones. But old advertisements? You could study the history of the world through that lens.

When I searched for material to understand the experience of the Jeffers family in Hamburg, SC, during the years 1830 to 1860, the vast majority of the puzzle-pieces surfaced as advertisements. The Edgefield Advertiser is a particularly rich source for mining the hundreds of “Cards” placed there by Henry L. Jeffers, an ambitious merchant who earnestly believed in the power of advertising. 

The Edgefield Advertiser, 1845-10-29. LOC.

Post # 12 ~ Shipping Bat Guano

Jeffers' Factorage and Commission Business

~ Shipping All Kinds of Merchandize and Produce ~

Henry Langford Jeffers enjoyed placing long, wordy advertisements in the newspapers. Even better if he could advertise in other states; in those distant locations he had no need to tout the molasses and nails stocked in his retail store. Instead he presented his heart's desire: commission work, cotton factorage, and the shipping of goods. 

The Asheville Messenger, Asheville, NC, 1842-01-07. LOC

Post # 13 ~ Delivering the Mail

Care of Cothran and Jeffers

Speaking of transportation and delivery services: as well as moving steam-ship passengers and bat guano, Henry L. Jeffers delivered the mail - even in times of war. 

In the Jeffers brothers’ 1860s Civil War letters, I see frequent requests that their father send boxes of supplies to their camps via “Adams Express.” Adams Express was the big nation-wide shipping company, the FedEX of the day. But in the up-country of South Carolina, H. L. Jeffers maintained his own recognized place in the transportation of goods and mail. 

This line of business continued from Jeffers’ solo ventures in the 1830’s, through the years of partnership with Wade S. Cothran, and right through the Civil War years. 

I instantly recognized a reference I ran across in the intriguing book of Civil War letters written by the Boyd brothers of Abbeville. In 1861, Robert P. Boyd wrote to his father requesting letters from home, and telling him how to mail them: “back yor letters RP Boyd, Barnwell Dis, Woodward post offis, car of Cathern and Jeffers.” (The Boys of Diamond Hill: the Lives and Civil War Letters of the Boyd Family of Abbeville County, South Carolina. Edited by J. Keith Jones, 2011.) 

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Post # 16 ~ Gyascutus or Whig?

Gyascutus Activism

I learned from Tom Downey's book, Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860 (2005), about currents of thought in Hamburg that alarmed many upstate planters. Political activism by Hamburg merchants and bankers (joined by like-minded businessmen from Augusta) angered the agrarian majority in South Carolina and Georgia, staunch Democrat party voters. Downey wrote of the Hamburg Whigs:

Their platform accused Van Burenites [Democrats] of hereditary pretensions and stifling the republican principle of rotation in office. In their stead, Hamburg Whigs called for political reform and an end to the corruption and cronyism they associated with the Democratic Party.

"Set-to between the champion Old Tip & the swell Dutcheman of Kinderhook - 1836." Political cartoon from the 1836 presidential campaign. LOC

Abundant evidence of this growing friction is found in newspapers from 1835-1860. Early on, the Hamburg Whigs were accused of supporting a national bank, which would erode states’ rights. Even worse, Hamburg merchants vigorously resisted South Carolina's popular, emotional call for secession. They opposed nullification, separate-secession, and the Democrat political machine. (And that was true. Henry Langford Jeffers and his colleagues worked for "co-operationist" goals for decades. But in 1860 they laid it aside - after Secession they joined with their state and their people.) 

Post # 21 ~ Henry's Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Jeffers of Anderson, SC

Warning!: Genealogy Research

~ Also: Which Jeffers Engaged in Manufacturing and Trade? ~ 

In an earlier post I mentioned my search for the genealogy of the Jeffers family. I have not found much about Henry Langford Jeffers' parents, Nathan Jeffers (1783-1842) and Rhoda Delph (1784-1849). But I have questions - was there a breach between Henry L. Jeffers and his father Nathan? How did Henry interact with his mother?

A silk weaver of olden times.

Post # 22 ~ How Henry L. Jeffers Defended Himself

Defended Himself Against Designing Persons
~ And Never Let a Good Crisis go to Waste ~

Henry Jeffers can be described in many ways: gregarious, loquacious, ambitious, enthusiastic, restless, energetic. Here is my current favorite description: Henry was an Explainer. 

 When troubles came, he knew that if he could lay it all out there, anyone would see his point of view. He took to the press to defend himself against those who besmirched his good name.

Post # 23 ~ The Monster Horned Elephant in the Lower Regions

Henry L. Jeffers Pondered His Troubles

~ From His Lonely Couch ~

Somehow, I think Henry bowled right through that attack on his reputation by designing persons. But there was another enemy not so easily dealt with. Debt became a creeping foe to H. L. Jeffers. The causes for  his growing trouble with debts were complicated; then, as now, debt was a familiar risk for entrepreneurs. Suffice it to say, starting with his large losses after the Great Freshet of 1840, and pushed forward by his enthusiasm for newer and bigger enterprises, he went into debt, and then struggled to get out. A serious situation occurred in 1854, which I don't really understand yet, but seems to have resulted when someone working for him in a new corporate alliance (Chambers, Jeffers & Co.) drew an enormous bank note and signed it in the name of the company; and then the responsibility fell on the senior partner in charge.

All Henry Jeffers’ communications that I have seen kept up a strong and self-confident face to the world. All the reactions toward him from other people - family, friends, and business colleagues - tell me he was trusted. But I can get a closer glimpse of how he felt inwardly. 

Henry's fears.

In the collection of letters that I have, there is one written by Henry L. Jeffers to his wife Eliza in 1863.

Post # 24 ~ A Partner and a Friend

Jeffers & Cothrans
~ Factors and Commission Merchants ~

Henry L. Jeffers had several different partners during his career, and the announcement of new partnerships always coincided with big new plans: water-proof warehouses, free wharfage, steam-boat travel, liberal advances to planters, new stores, fine silks and calicoes, boots, and bonnets.

The Edgefield Advertiser, 1844-01-03. LOC. After partnering with Dr. J. F. Griffin.

Most partners lasted only a few years, until Jeffers found one as driven as he was: Col. Wade S. Cothran.