December 26, 2016
Ridge Spring News
Harriet Householder
Happy New Year!!
It
is time for the hopes to continue into the new year. The New Year's Resolutions we make hopefully
will contain peace and kindness to all and for all.
The
town of Ridge Spring has come a long way over the years. It was founded in the 1700s
and incorporated in late 1800s. When the
grocery store closed many thought that was the end. But that did not keep our small town
down. Look at Main Street. We only have two buildings empty. Several
people have tried to rent them but it has not worked out. WOW!!!!
Here
is a short history of Ridge Spring submitted by Converse Cone when we were working
on a tourism project in 2008. I hope you
enjoy the review or first time reading this.
History of Ridge Spring
To a lover of history, Ridge Spring holds an irresistible charm. Here is a community that was settled over two
hundred and fifty years ago and is still populated to some extent by
descendants of the original families.
Ten generations have lived side by side, loved the same soil and have
offered their loyalty to the Ridge.
Prior to being settled by those who received land grants in the mid 1700s,
The Ridge area was occupied by the Native Americans who maintained pristine
beauty of the area. Their presence here
is evidenced by arrowheads and spearheads found in freshly plowed fields of the farmlands. Through generations it has been told that the
Native Americans chipped out the basin in the rock into which flows the water
form the spring for which the town was named.
The first “settlement” was made about one mile east of the present town of
Ridge Spring where the public wagon road to Orangeburg forked off of the road
to the Congarees (the Columbia Road). On
an early map this is referred to as The
Ridge. A tavern was located where the Sweeney House once stood.
IN 1751 there was an Indian Trader named Issac Cloud in The Ridge
area. He and his two children were
killed. His wife Mary (Gould) after
being struck twice by a tomahawk escaped on horseback.
On November 29, 1752, John Carlin was granted 200 acres situated on a
branch of the Little Saludy River called Clouds Creek. This was just North of present day Ridge
Spring. Also, on October 3, 1758 William
Watson was granted 300 acres on a land on a branch of the Little Saludy. His son, Captain Micheal Watson, fell in
action against the British in the Revolutionary War at Dean's Swamp, Orangeburg
District in 1781. A large granite rock
monument stands on Main Street in his memory
On May 21, 1791 President George Washington stopped, dined and spent the
night at the Michael Watson house with Micheal Watson's widow Martha and his
children. The house stood just out of
the present town limits near the cemetery.
In the decades which followed beautiful plantation houses were built
throughout the area. Cotton began as an important crop in the early 1800s. Vast acreages of cotton were grown for many
generations and the cotton was transported by wagon to Hamburg, S. C. for
shipment by barge to Savannah, Georgia.
Many of these lovely homes have survived and grace the countryside.
When the railroad was constructed through The Ridge area in 1869 a water
tank was build near a good supply of water. Hence the earlier “settlement”
moved to the towns present location where the train stopped for water. Stores, homes, and hotels began to be built
around this train stop by the water tank and depot. The town was named Ridge Spring for the
natural raised ridge of the land and for the spring of pure water which
provided delicious drinking water.
From early days the cultivation of the peach seemed particularly suited to
the soil and climate of The Ridge.
Through the years other crops such as corn, asparagus, soybeans, cotton
and numerous more have been grown in the fertile soil of Ridge Spring. It is a peaceful sight to see herds of cattle
grazing in the open pastures and timberlands.
First incorporated on December 23, 1882, the town held a
Centennial Celebration in the Fall of 1982.
From this celebration grew the annual Harvest Festival each
October. The charm and gracious southern
living of this agrarian community continues today for those who call “the
Ridge” their home and for those who are fortunate enough to visit.
REMEMBERANCE: SIX
YEARS AGO
December 27, 2010 Check out the new
pictures on the website banner on the front page. www.ridgespringsc.com
They are of snow and winter time. When it snows around here we all close
down. I am glad that snow is so seldom that we get
to really enjoy it, and then say good-by to it rather quickly. Now it is snowing. It missed Christmas Day by two hours. It began to snow around 2:00 AM Christmas
night according to the television.
Therefore, the snow pictures on the web site are just right.
The new electronic sign for the Town or Ridge Spring is also available
for advertising community events. You
can also advertise your business for a small fee
The RSM
Young Famers
have the Ridge Community Calendars in and they available for purchase. These calendars are $5.00 each. Please contact the following if you are
interested Mary McKay at 803.627.6289 or Heike Scott at 803.646.3193. This is a fund raiser for the RSM Young
Farmers.
Spicy Sweet Nuts from One Ash
Homestead
2 tsp. olive oil 3/4 cup
natural walnut halves
3/4 cup natural pecan halves 1/2 cup natural whole almonds
1 tsp. ground cinnamon 1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. paprika 1/2 tsp.
ground cayenne
1 TBS. light brown sugar
Heat the olive oil over low-medium
heat. Add the nuts and spices
and cook for 8-10 minutes until golden and fragrant, stirring often. Crumble the brown sugar over the nuts
and heat for another 3 minutes until the sugar has melted and covered the
nuts.These can be served warm or cool. (give them about 15 minutes to cool
if serving warm so that no one burns their tongue). Will keep in an airtight container at room
temperature for one week. (if you have any left!)
RSM Elem (Rene
Miller): Ms. Linda Washington, Parent Educator with
our Aiken County First Steps Countdown to Kindergarten Program, recently
visited RSM. She came to bring tidings
of great joy and to wish a very “Merry Christmas” to students and teachers. We appreciate her involvement and help at RSM
Elementary.
Congratulations
to our 5th grade Spelling Bee
winners. Our first and second place winners will be participating in the Group Spelling Beeat Aiken Middle
School on Jan. 11. First place was Zacharea
Cannon, 2ndplace was Cody
Davenport and 3rdplace was Johnathan
Storey. We wish them lots of luck!
Congratulations
to Mrs. Najmola for being RSM’s Distinguished Literacy Teacher for the
2016-2017 School Year. Mrs. Najmola is
also one of the teachers who welcomed RSM High’s Teacher Cadets into her
classroom!
Thank
you to the Boosterthoncompany who
led our school wide "Fun Run"
in the fall. They visited our school recently to wish us a Merry Christmas, and
to donate two oversized umbrellas. We will use them in the car line dismissal
area.
Last
week our Walk/Jog club made 11.3
miles. That puts us at 167.7 miles for
the year out of the 516 miles that we need to get to Washington D.C. Students meet at 7:15 on Friday mornings and
will resume their walking/jogging on Jan. 6.
Thanks
to our PTO for giving our school a Christmas play by Porkchop Productions. The
play, The Christmas, the Measles, and Me,thoroughly
entertained the whole crowd. We
especially loved watching our own Emely
Jiminez appear on stage to be dressed as a snowman.
RSM
would like to say a big thank you to several businesses, churches and clubs for
their generous donations to our school for our students. Thank you to Bethel Baptist Church, Ridge Spring Baptist
Church, Ridge Hill Baptist Church, and Cedar Creek Church, along with local
business Valley Proteins and Ken and Judy Fallaw and their church
home group.
Review from
David Marshall James: "The Whole Town's
Talking" by Fannie Flagg
Elmwood Springs,
Missouri, is Fannie Flagg's Yoknapatawpha County. Flagg's readers know the burg from at least
three of her previous novels, notably "Standing in the Rainbow,"
which I still contend ought to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Here, in what she's
saying is her final novel, Flagg follows the town from its founding during the
second half of the nineteenth century by a Swedish emigre who becomes a highly
successful dairy farmer. During the time covered, the author takes the
reader from box-supper socials to big-box stores. She pulls out the Rockwell-ian stops, with
Fourth of July parades and inviting storefronts operated by colorful
characters, with an ice-cream-truckload of small-town bonhomie. Naturally, tragedies and disappointments
invariably cross paths with Elmwood Springs, along with the
less-than-progressive developments fraught by the World at-large.
Readers will revel in the
return of familiar characters, such as Elner Shimfissle, whose first name should
have been "Good Ol'," for Elner never met a stranger, never dismissed
any case from the human or animal kingdom as hopeless. She's renowned far and wide-- all the way to
Harry and Bess Truman's White House-- for her fig preserves, which naturally
belong on Elner's piping hot homemade biscuits. She even entertains Bonnie Parker and Clyde
Barrow, who have taken a wrong turn on their route to Joplin, MO, for
breakfast. Elner warms Bonnie's and Clyde's innards so effectively, never
realizing that they are the notorious criminals, that they decide to skip
robbing the local bank, run by Elner's brother-in-law, Herbert Jenkins.
Ida Jenkins is the
antithesis of her sister, Elner, so obsessive-compulsive about
everything-in-its-place, prim-and-proper, that she misses the beauty of the
sunrises and sunsets. Ida nearly drives her daughter, Norma, bat-guano
crazy, as well as members of the local garden club. Forsooth, Ida is not
above digging up and replanting a member's camellia bushes when they're out of
town. Her philosophies are further
manifested in her local newspaper column, "The Whole Town's Talking."
Readers will readily
recognize Mrs. Tot Whooten, a hairstylist who should have been
anything-but. With a drunkard husband
and two children fond of illegal drugs and frequent divorces, Tot's woes accrue
like peroxide blonds in a roadhouse. Still, she finds solace during the disco era,
teeter-tottering on her platform shoes to the strains of "I Will
Survive," which she co-opts as her theme song, along with every other
been-done-wrong loser-at-love who kept a-twirling on a dance floor.
Although Flagg has mined
much of the riches from her Elmwood Springs locale, I live in hope that she
hasn't closed the book on her novel-writing career, that she'll one day come
forth with a Proustian-- by way of Balzac-- account of 1970s Hollywood, a time
and place she could remember with gusto.
REMINDERS
Ridge Spring Library
hours:
Mon/Tues 8:30 am - 12 pm; Wed., 8:30 – 4:30; Thurs 8:30 am - 12:30 pm; Fri 8:30
pm -4:30 pm
Ridge Spring Post Office hours: Mon-Fri. 7:30 am – 11:30 am; Sat 9 – 10 am
Saluda County Library Hours:
Mon/Wed
8:30 am-5 pm; Tues/Thurs 8:30 am – 6 pm; Fri 8:30 am – 5 pm; Sat closed
Recycling Center Hours: Mon/Wed/Fri 1-7; Sat 7-7; Sun 3-7; Tues/Thurs closed
Every Friday & Saturday:
AARS
hours 10 – 4 or by appt, free admission
Every first Tuesday of the Month:
AARS meets at 6:30, 685-5783
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