Community Corner

Collaboration Rescuing Pumpkintown Community From Obscurity

Work between Clemson professor and Pumpkintown woman are "giving voices to the voiceless."

A serendipitous meeting is leading to further explorations of a portion of Pickens County's past.

Around 2007, Dr. Mike Coggeshall, an an stopped to take a picture at Soapstone Baptist Church in Pumpkintown.

Mable Clarke, one of the church's most loyal advocates, came out to talk with him.

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“I said I was studying mountain culture and I'd heard of the Liberia community, just because I'd seen the name Liberia on a map,” Coggeshall said. “I thought that was an odd name for a road up here in the upper part of Pickens County.”

Coggeshall asked her if she knew anything about the Liberia community.

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“She said, 'Yes, my name is Mable Owens Clarke, my family has been here for four generations,'” Coggeshall said.

That first meeting between Clarke and Coggeshall lead to a fruitful partnership that continues today. Coggeshall is now a member of the advisory board that led the efforts to clear and protect the historic slave cemetery discovered on the Soapstone Church site.

“Since then, I started working with her to try to document the story, tell the story of the Liberia community,” Coggeshall said. “I'm about two-thirds of the way through.”

Coggeshall and Clarke are collaborating on a book about the community.

“It's an oral history of the Liberia community from approximately the mid-nineteenth century all the way through the present day,” he said.

The idea started as a small pamphlet, Coggeshall said.

“But the more that I wrote, the more stories that I heard, the more information I collected, the more dramatic a story I think it is,” he said.

Soapstone Baptist Church was founded by members of the Liberia community.

The Liberia community, sometimes known as Little Liberia, was settled by freed slaves sometime after the Civil War.

“They were enslaved African-Americans living here prior to the Civil War,” Coggeshall said. “Then they were either sold or given land off the Oolenoy Valley, supposedly because it wasn't as valuable – that's the story. By 1870, the first time I can see them in the census, there were hundreds of African-Americans living between Pumpkintown, Marietta, up to Bald Rock, hundreds and hundreds of people. By the 1960s, of course, most of them had gone, for all kinds of reasons.”

He said it's hard to tell how many people are buried in the cemetery.

“Most of the graves are unmarked,” Coggeshall said. “We know a few people. I've traced most of the people who have marked graves through the census. What's interesting is the stories of some of these individuals, and I've tried to document the stories.”

One of the graves is marked only by a small metal funeral home inscription.

“The man's name is James Kemp, Jim Kemp,” Coggeshall said. “There are still people around who remember him, remember him working for their families.”

Coggeshall believes Kemp around1936s. His name appears in the 1930 census, but does not appear in the 1940 census.

Coggeshall said there's a local history that “barely mentions Liberia,” but includes a photo of two African-Americans.

“One is Emerson Kemp, the father is James Kemp,” he said. “So we know a little bit about Emerson Kemp from these local histories. I know a little bit about James Kemp from oral traditions. I suspect that Emerson Kemp is also buried here, but I don't know that because it's unmarked.”

Mable's great-grandmother, called Aunt Katie, spent all her life in the Oolenoy area and appears in several local histories.

“She was born in slavery, died about 1928,” Coggeshall said. “I found her obituary in the Pickens Sentinel, so I know a little bit about her life. I asked Mable one time if she knew where her great-grandmother was buried, and she said she had no idea. I told her, 'She's two miles away at Mt. Nebo cemetery,' and she started to cry. She said she had never known that.”

Coggeshall said he's telling the Liberia community story through generations of Mable's family.

The cemetery contains the graves of former slaves, non-slaves and the descendents of former slaves.

“The problem is, since the graves aren't mark, we have no idea who's buried here,” Coggeshall said. “There may indeed be more slaves here.”

Two years ago, Coggeshall brought members of the Clemson Anthropology Club in to map the locations of the graves in the cemetery.

Clemson recently announced the creation of an anthropology major, and Coggeshall said he thought the site would be useful for students.

The cemetery and the oral history speak to why Coggeshall became an anthropologist.

“I like to be able to speak for people and document the lives of people who might otherwise not be able to speak for themselves,” Coggeshall said. “It's an opportunity to tell the story of people who otherwise wouldn't have their stories told.”


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