December 29, 2017
Ridge Spring News
Harriet Householder
Happy New Year
Go Clemson Tigers!!!!
Library News!!! The Ridge Spring Library will be closed from Dec 12th, 2017 until January 8th, 2018. When it reopens it will be reopening at its new location in the Art Center Building behind the Civic Center.
The newspapers have an early deadline for the news this coming week for New Years Day comes on Monday. Sso I wish you the best of all and lets continue with Miss. Elise Carwile's Short History of Ridge Spring. Enjoy.
Col. R. B. Watson tells me that Simkins built the old part of his house ---the kitchen--- which is built of logs, and weather boarded many years afterward. Jesse Simkins must have been the man. In August 1814, Jesse Simkins bought from the executors of Stanmore Butler's estate that half of the Stent grant, already mentioned , bordered by the Ridge Spring Branch and another tract across the road, somewhere in front of Col. R. B. Watsons about 150 acres. Stanmore, Sampson, Thomas and William Butler were the sons of Capt. James Butler, who with his son James a lad of 16, and a number of other Whigs , was massacred by Blood Bill Cunningham on Clouds Creek. I think below the quarry. They had surrendered to superior numbers and were murdered and so mutilated that their bodies were unrecognizable. Capt. Butler's sister and other women gathered the parts of the bodies together and buried them. I have not been able to find that any of the Butlers ever lived at the Ridge. In 1821 Elijah Watson, only son of Capt. Michael Watson bought all these tracts of land from Jesse Simkins, and also the tract called the Old Ridge Tract for $4000.00.
I could not find how Jesse Simkins got possession of the Old Ridge Tract. The soil of Ridge Spring was cheap in those days. The highest price paid for land in any of these papers was in 1777, when Michael Watson paid $2000.00 pound current money for 300 acres. I do not know whether this was pounds sterling or proclamation money---about $8000.00 in one and $6000.00 in the other. This indenture fo James Howell is the oldest original paper I have had to examine except the grants and one other. I believe this paper to be written by Capt. M. Michael Watson. These tracts of land, the Stents, Pope, Powell, Lamar grants and the Old Ridge Tract, are the land on which the town of Ridge Spring to the east of the Baptist Parsonage stands. I do not know to whom the western part of the town was granted. In 1817 Mathias Jones was living where Mr. J. B. Jones lives now. Farther on, probably where Mr. Demps Jones lives, lived the Widow Spann and still nearer Ward there lived another Spann.
This land finally became the property of some of the sons of Elijah Watson, Sr. beyond Peters Creek on the Ninety-Six road, there were two settlements of Daniels.
FOOTNOTES FROM JOE CAL WATSON:
1. The oil mill was where they crushed cotton seed to make oil and it was behind George Strother's home, 203 E. Main Street. It burned sometime in the late20s.
2. Old grave yard is at the Ridge Spring Cemetery but in the stone-walled area.
3. Col R. B. Watson lived in the home that is now known as the Watson House and the fist packing house is located behind this home and has been remodeled into a catering kitchen and dining room. It is known as the Packing Shed. The address is 410 E. Main Street.
4. Mr. Demps Jones home was J B Jones also known at Brick House Jones Home for what it was made of. This home is at 2698 Hwy 23, Ridge Spring.
5. Miss Carwile lived at 2199 Ridge Spring Highway.
6. Mr. Clifford Boatwright's home is at 1002 W. Main Street.
7. Mr. Watson Sweeny's home was destroyed by fire and it was at the intersection of Hwy 23 and Norris Brook Rd.
I could use the same way Miss Carwile did and say who lives in that home now to help you identify where these homes are. Now we have street addresses though.
ARMY THOUGHTS
The captain wanted a rugged lad,
But Mike Yacello was all he had.
Now Mike is sergeant, he thinks its swell
But the orderly room, it looks like hell.
He has CQ, that helps him some
But with a sergeant that is so dumb
The more they try, the worse it looks,
For he keeps his records in comic books.
The captain at last to clear the mess
Is sending Yacello to O. C. S.
By Archibald Linley Fripp 1943
who went to OCS during WW II and graduated
OCS stands for Officer Training School
One more for fun!
NONSENSE RHYMES
Aunt Harriet, did you know
I stumped my toe upon your door
I grabbed my hat and slapped the cat
But I promise to do it no more.
(I think I know the author but just in case I am wrong I will not mention his name this time. Aunt Harriet was my mother.)
Review from David Marshall James: "The Woman in the Window" by A.J. Finn
This thrill-zilla will be hard to top in the year ahead-- and beyond.
First-time novelist A.J. Finn (aka book editor and journalist Dan Mallory) delivers a psychological-suspense extravaganza that borrows, with due credit, from Alfred Hitchcock and other auteurs' noir classics.
Gotta love it when Finn writes, "Sorry, wrong number" (a 1948 thriller starring Barbara Stanwyck as an invalid in peril), and it's groovy to find someone who likes the Bogie & Bacall noir-fest "Dark Passage" (1947) as much as we do.
In Finn's narrative, Harlem townhouse (five stories counting the basement, in which dwells a hunky tenant) resident Dr. Anna Fox is hooked up to such noir thrillers when she's not mainlining Merlot and a pharmaceutical cornucopia of psychotropic meds. "Meds," never "drugs," according to her psychologist. Sure, whatever, Dr. Orwell.
Still, all that DVD and vino consumption is not enough to fill the on-stretched hours of her shut-inward-ness. So, Dr. Fox-- onetime child psychologist-- takes a a cue from James Stewart's gimped-low character in "Rear Window" (1954).
That is, she points her high-powered camera lens at her neighbors' goings-on, and some are up to some wild times indeed, while others are just progressing through their lives at a steady pace. Anna knows most of them from her pre-cloistered years, prior to the trauma that's pushed her into her comfort zone.
A new family moves in across the small park outside-- Mom, Dad, teenage boy-- and Anna naturally gravitates to viewing them, but she's going to regret her voyeurism when she views something from which she cannot retreat.
Sad thing about being a "chase your pills pretty" agoraphobic: No one's inclined to believe you. You're hallucinating; you're "acting out"; you watch too much Hitchcock. Pathetic you.
Finn puts a fine spin on his story, some points of which have gone unmentioned because it wouldn't be fair to cross over into the spoiler zone.
We're not fans of unreliable narrators, but Finn expertly cues the reasons behind Anna's delusions. We see them coming. There are no "jerk the rug from under the reader" moments. The author plays fair, so the reader probably will have at least an inkling of ninety-something percent of the twists.
'Twouldn't be surprising if this nifty volume breaks the Top Ten Bestsellers list and remains there until 2019. It's a book that many readers will start over again, as soon as it's over.
Harriet's Garden Tips: We are really in a deep freeze right now. One way to protect your plants is to water them. Water freezes at 32 degrees which means the temperature around your plants and t heir roots will not drop below that. The temperature will get down in the 20s this time. All the camellia blooms will be damaged but hopefully more will come. Camellias have early middle and late blooming species. Hope you have one of each. Don't forget the birds. Make sure there is water out for them.
REMINDERS
Ridge Spring Library hours: Reopen January 8th
Ridge Spring Post Office hours: Mon-Fri. 7:30 am – 11:30 am; Sat 9 – 10 am
Recycling Center Hours: Mon/Wed/Fri 1-7; Sat 7-7; Sun 3-7; Tues/Thurs closed
First Thursday of the Month: AARS meets at 6:30, 685-5783
Every Friday & Saturday: AARS hours 10 – 4 or by appt, free admission
January 18: FORS meeting at Town Hall 5:00
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