Down South Down South

A story about change

This is part 2 in a 3 part series.

In 1760, not far from the school’s site, 100 Cherokee warriors killed 23 settlers. The Long Cane Massacre was the result of a boundary dispute.

From here, a few back-road turns spirit you to Badwell Cemetery, resting place of the French Huguenot Petigru family. You’ll remember the inscription on a four-sided white marble marker of a woman who died at 25. “Her sun went down while it was yet day,” Jeremiah 15:9.

At nearby Mount Carmel you’ll step into desolation. In the late 1880s it was a bustling railroad town but the Great Depression, boll weevil, fire, and automobile did in Mount Carmel. Fate bequeathed us its boarded up churches and homes, remnants of glory days.

Nearby Fort Charlotte sits 50 feet beneath Clarks Hill Lake. There, colonial South Carolinians seized the fort marking South Carolina’s entry into the Revolutionary War.

Another country road or two will lead you to the French Huguenot memorial. Turn left onto a dirt road. Deep into pines you will see a granite Maltese cross that marks the New Bordeaux Huguenot place of worship. New Bordeaux, 1764, was the last of seven French Huguenot colonies in South Carolina. The village prospered in the 1760s and early 1770s, but the Revolutionary War ruined things and New Bordeaux faded.

Drive down a long dirt road and you’ll come to the Noble family cemetery. Within this brick-walled cemetery sleeps former governor, Patrick Noble. He graduated from nearby Willington Academy, an early 1800s prestigious prep school for boys whose founder, Moses Waddel, became the first president of what would become University of Georgia.

Innovative education is a heritage in the region where John de la Howe sits, and it sits off to itself. Magnificent isolation? That’s one of its strengths. Nary a stoplight nor congested highway. No sirens, no tacky fast food joints, no urban sprawl, no light pollution. Here you can photograph the Milky Way, that neon purple-red, milky white, star-salted river of interstellar light arcing over de la Howe’s fields and forests.

In front of the Administration building a millstone rests in grass with a large block of stone upon it. Largely gone are those blends of farming and technology, but they remind us that change grinds away the past while reshaping the future. In the 1990s, the school’s focus changed to helping students with behavioral problems, but enrollment declined as school districts developed alternative programs for students in need. Leadership lost its luster as well. The specter of an uncertain future reared its head and lawmakers grew edgy about allotting state tax dollars to the school.

The sun always rises though. A 2017 feasibility study for the Legislature determined de la Howe could become a school for agriculture, a timely turn of events. I write features for South Carolina Farmer magazine. Farming nowadays resides in the realm of high-tech science.

Dillon’s Cullen Bryant operates Bryant Farms. “Early in the growing season, you turn on your tractor’s GPS monitor, which pinpoints your exact location to within one meter. Another button displays GIS maps that show where the soil in your field is moist and where soil factors limit crop growth. You upload remote data that shows where your new crop is thriving and where it isn’t. An onboard machine automatically applies fertilizer and pesticides exactly where they’re needed. You enjoy the ride, saving money as the machines do most of the work.”

Today’s farmers wear coveralls and white shirts and ties. De la Howe’s new mission? To become a statewide, residential agricultural school for high school students—to give young students a head start in agriculture and technology on 1,310 acres of farmland, pastures, forests, residential, administration buildings, and school, an ideal laboratory.