Saturday, September 11, 2010

Little known facts Mitchelville

"One of the places they settled was Mitchelville, established by Maj. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel. He set aside about 1,000 acres, and in 1863 started selling it off. It went for about $1 an acre. People saved money to buy land because they knew land meant freedom," explains Campbell as he drives his small bus toward Mitchelville. This was the country's first settlement of Freedmen (former black slaves), and its founding came before President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Residents elected their own officials. The town council passed laws, including the state's first compulsory-education law.




The U.S. government abandoned this fledgling community in 1868 because President Andrew Johnson was "very sympathetic with the Confederates," Campbell says.



After the Civil War, many former slaves remained on Hilton Head and on other South Carolina islands, such as Johns and Daufuskie, and Georgia 's Sapelo, Harris Neck and Cumberland . They fished and farmed. They operated sugarcane mills and gristmills. They grazed their livestock and hunted on the open, common land.

No comments:

Post a Comment