3/6/08
Francis Marion Days Celebration brings living history to Clarendon’s Camp Bob Cooper locale
By Eric Goold

ERIC GOOLD/Manning Times

The Soap Ladies, (from left) Eleanor Smith, Ruth Watts and Louise Stock, demonstrate how to make lye soap for a group of third graders on Friday morning during Francis Marion Days Celebration at Camp Bob Cooper.

Good crowds, good times and good learning experiences marked the Francis Marion Days Celebration last weekend at Camp Bob Cooper.

The three-day event featured educational opportunities and living history demonstrations for children as well as a lantern walk and learning experiences for adults.

If there is a hotbed for reenacting Colonial History in South Carolina, surely it is found in Clarendon County.

“Events like these really bring home the fact that the American Revolution was fought and won right here,” said George Summers, one of the organizers of the event and President of the Swamp Fox Murals Trail Society. “With our presentations to children on Thursday and Friday, I’d say we reached roughly eight percent of the whole population of Clarendon County.

“If those kids go home and talk to their parents about it and then talk to their friends about it, we can generate some real interest,” he added. “I know I can remember a lot of stuff from when I was a third grader. Hopefully they will, too.”

A generous grant from Representative Cathy Harvin and the Harvin Foundation allowed the event to occur. That and the donation of time and effort by over 60 volunteers, who worked tirelessly over three days to really make history come alive.

“All of our volunteers were great,” said Summers. “All of our people did a really good job, especially on the lantern walk.”

The lantern walk was held Friday evening. Tour guides directed a crowd of over 100 people, including children and their parents as well as numerous history buffs, around different locations at Lake Marion and went back through time.

There were wounded soldiers, Hessian soldiers, scenes from the home front, weapon emplacements and all sorts of costumed volunteers along the way to provide context about what the patrons were seeing.

The lantern walk was an overwhelming success, especially considering the large crowd.

“It was so much fun,” said Louise Stock, a volunteer who reenacted scenes from the home front during the lantern walk. “We were doing all the work while the men were away fighting. We sewed and knitted clothes, churned butter and directed the children to help us work, too.”

Stock, Eleanor Smith and Ruth Watts were some of the most memorable volunteers over the weekend, forming a trio everyone liked to call The Soap Ladies. They showed how to make lye soap, starting from scratch with nothing. The process was long and arduous.

“I think the children were surprised to see how much work it took to make soap,” said Smith. “And they were surprised to see how hard it was just doing simple things like carrying water from the well.”

The Soap Ladies became the Pioneer Women during the lantern walk, changing roles to demonstrate all of the many difficult chores that came along with family life during the Colonial Era.

“We made our own costumes, we made our own soap,” said Watts, acknowledged as the leader of the group. “We wrote our own scripts for the lantern walk, which was just so much fun. We learned a great deal about history, just like the children did.”

All of the volunteers expressed a common joy, seeing children get interested in the past in an environment outside the classroom.

“The kids are so much into video games, they just don’t know about our history,” said Watts. “This is such a great way to bring it to life. They actually get to experience it. And we get to experience it along with them.”
Mark Johnson, a volunteer originally from Clarendon County and now living in Sumter, was a backwoodsman. He demonstrated how Native Americans in the region used to make their own pottery, molding the clay and then firing the pots in a wood campfire.

“These are replicas from pots that were dug up right around here. A story from a long, long time ago in a place far, far away is actually right here,” said Johnson. “Indians camped and hunted on this land we are on right now. They lived right here.”

Participation from the children, an overwhelming turnout by volunteers and a successful reenactment of living history all combined to make the 2008 Francis Marion Days Celebration a memorable one.

“It’s been great working with Camp Bob Cooper,” said Summers. “Already they’ve expressed an interest in doing it again next year. They’ve been very cooperative and helpful. And our volunteers are all talking about bringing more people back with them next year. It’s going to get bigger and better.”