Qualla: Edgefield, South Carolina

Edgefield, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dave Drake threw forty-gallon stoneware jars from local Edgefield clay and signed them. He was enslaved. He had taught himself to read and write in a state that made teaching enslaved people to read a crime, and he incised rhyming couplets into the wet clay before firing - "Dave belongs to Mr. Miles / wher the oven bakes & the pot biles," one reads. He made them between roughly 1830 and 1870. Today his work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum, and curators speak of him as one of the most important American artists of the nineteenth century. He did it in a town the historical signs warn was always known "for violence and scandal."

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edgefield, South Carolina: Dave the Potter

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. The pottery that made Edgefield internationally important was alkaline-glazed stoneware, a tradition developed in the early 1800s by Dr. Abner Landrum, who exploited the rich clay deposits in the area. Enslaved potters did much of the work, almost all anonymously. David Drake (c....

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edgefield, South Carolina: Ten Governors and a Cane

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Edgefield's political reputation is darker. Ten South Carolina governors came from this small town and county, an extraordinary concentration for a place of a few thousand people. Edgefield Congressman Preston Brooks made national headlines in 1856 when he walked onto the Senate ...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edgefield, South Carolina: Fire, Brick, Boll Weevil

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Like many Southern towns built largely of wood, Edgefield burned. In 1881 and 1884 fires destroyed the eastern and northern portions of the commercial district. In 1892 the southern and western sides of the Public Square burned too. An 1884 ordinance required new buildings within...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edgefield, South Carolina: What Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LukeK1365, CC0. Edgefield's town square, with its courthouse and brick storefronts, still functions as the center of a county seat. The town is the headquarters of the National Wild Turkey Federation, a quirky national reach for a community of about 2,300 people. The Federal Correctional Institu...

Image: LukeK1365 | CC0