Temperance Hall: A Place to Debate and Proclaim Vows of Abstinence

Old historic structures always have a tale or two to tell. Temperance Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, near Wagram, NC, has had an important role in its community for decades. Although it's a simple brick building, it has many stories to tell.

Formally known as the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society Hall, this historic structure in Scotland County is believed to be the only structure in North Carolina built to house a temperance society. The hall was the scene of lively debates in its early days and is still used for meetings of civic groups.

The simple structure of Temperance Hall was completed in 1860.

To elevate the moral and cultural life of its community, the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society was founded in 1855 in what was then lower Richmond County in an area settled in 1773 by Highland Scots. Built of hand-molded local bricks, the hall is still standing in tribute to its sturdy construction in 1860 by the Scottish descendants, although it was sacked five years later by U.S. soldiers advancing toward Fayetteville during Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign of the American Civil War.

Influenced by the temperance movement, the charter members vowed to “neither make, sell, buy, nor use as a beverage any intoxicating drink whatever.” The cultured and worried citizens at that time were troubled by the “deadly influence” that alcohol consumption was “exerting over the morality of our country and seeing the ravages that it is daily making in our midst.” Within a few years of organizing, the society built the small one-story, one-room hexagonal building with sixteen-foot sides near what is now the town of Wagram. Here they met and coordinated their “uncompromising hostility to intemperance and untiring zeal for the advancement of literature.” 

The finial on the roof portrays the twin aims of the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society.

The society’s twin aims are illustrated at the peak of the building’s roof by a wooden finial that represents an inverted wine goblet on top of a closed Bible. Both pieces of the finial were reportedly shot down by Sherman’s troops, and pot marks made by their bullets fired during target practice can still be detected on the hall’s exterior. The interior ceiling was once painted blue with a constellation of gold stars; each star represented a member of the society. However, if the member broke the vow of abstinence, the star was painted black. (Several stars had alternating coats of gold and black.) When a member died, the star was gilded with silver. 

The society continued to meet in the hall until the 1890s. In 1899, the area around Wagram became part of the new Scotland County, and the hall found a new role until the 1920s as a school for white students (as segregation ruled during the Jim Crow era). After many years of neglect and decay, the hall was restored as accurately as possible in 1959 by reconstructing a two-tier wooden platform that supports a lectern used by speakers, adding a cast-iron stove similar to the one that originally heated the hall, and rebuilding the pairs of recessed bookshelves on the northeast and south walls. In its role as a museum today, it serves a symbol of cultural attitudes of a bygone era. 

A two-tier platform with lectern was reconstructed in 1959.

The restored home of North Carolina poet-laureate John Charles McNeill, a Scotland County native and grandson of Scottish immigrants, was moved to the site of Temperance Hall in 1960 and serves as the visitor center for both properties. 

Although hexagonal, the hall is architecturally significant because it is a diminutive version of the octagonal mode popularized in North Carolina in the mid-1800s by the concepts of Orson Squire Fowler, who analyzed that an “octagon house” (a term that refers specifically to octagonal houses built in North America during this period) with its eight sides encloses more space than a square one with equal wall space.  

The Richmond Temperance and Literary Society still meets all these years since its founding, although now only annually. The hall is about 1½ miles west of US 401, which is Main Street in Wagram, off Old Wire Road near Spring Hill Cemetery.

Temperance Hall has survived decades as the area around it has changed, and its history is quite phenomenal. Although meetings held in the hall today no longer promote abstinence, its continued use guarantees that its history is not yet complete and it may inspire more tales for future generations to tell.

---

Note: The post is influenced by two articles about Temperance Hall that I have written. One is an entry uploaded in June 2019 in NCpedia, the online encyclopedia about North Carolina. The other is an article published in the May 2019 issue of OutreachNC Magazine.

Ossabaw Island: Culture Preserved on the Coast of Georgia

The barrier islands that line the Georgia coast offer special opportunities to explore history and culture of the American South. Ossabaw Island, about twenty miles south of Savannah, has a rich history that can teach us many lessons about survival, freedom, and perseverance.

Ossabaw is the third largest barrier island of Georgia, according to the Ossabaw Island Foundation, which promotes and manages educational and scientific programs on the island. Not linked to the mainland by bridge or causeway, the island is used by colleges, universities and researchers as an “unspoiled living laboratory for monitoring environmental changes over time and for learning from one another in a setting where humans lightly tread.”

For example, the foundation has presented programs with the Georgia Historical Society on interpreting the Gullah/Geechee heritage. The Gullah/Geechee people were enslaved Africans captured from the rice-producing regions of Senegambia, Angola, and Sierra Leone in West Africa and brought initially to the port of Charleston. When Georgia removed its ban on slavery in 1750, many West Africans were brought to Ossabaw Island and other parts of coastal Georgia as enslaved labor.

On the island are three restored tabby cabins built in the 1820s-1840s by skilled enslaved labor. The cabins were the homes for enslaved families who worked the fields and tended livestock. The buildings were later used by their descendants who worked as sharecroppers for the island’s owners. To create tabby, a cement-like material, the enslaved workers mixed oyster shells, sand, and water with lime from burned shells, according to Paul Pressly, Director of Ossabaw Island Education Alliance. Other examples of early life on the island that are less visible are now being uncovered by scholars.

For example, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has conducted investigations at North End Plantation, one of the plantations where indigo, rice, and sea island cotton were grown, to develop an archaeological record of enslaved Africans at that part of the island. The earliest human artifacts found on Ossabaw date to more than 4,000 years ago when Native Americans inhabited the island. Records of early Spanish explorers (who left hogs that became feral and produced offspring that still survive 400 years later) indicate that a Guale Indian village called Asapo was probably located on Ossabaw. In the 1730s the British began to occupy the area, although an early English treaty reserved the island as a hunting and fishing area for Creek Indians. However, the Creek in 1758 (25 years after Savannah and the colony of Georgia were established) were forced to convey the island to King George II.

In the decade before the American Civil War, almost 300 enslaved people called Ossabaw home, according to Allison Dorsey, professor of history at Swarthmore College, with whom I visited the island as part of a workshop. During the war, Union General William T. Sherman confiscated the Ossabaw plantations as part of his March to the Sea campaign. In the spring and summer of 1865, under the authority of Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, the plantations were redistributed in 10- to 40-acre allotments to former U.S. Colored Troops soldiers and emancipated blacks. The field order was in response to Sherman’s meeting in January 1865 in Savannah with black leaders who convinced him that true freedom required ownership of land “to turn it and till it by our own labor.” However, the U.S. government revoked the order and returned the land to its Confederate owners in January 1867, thus ending the hope of freedmen to start life anew on Georgia’s sea islands.

The Ossabaw Island Foundation sponsors several events each year, including a Gullah Geechee day trip in the spring so participants can learn about the African roots of enslaved and freedmen families who lived on the island from the early 1800s through the mid-20th century, although the island is no longer inhabited by African Americans. In the late 1890s after severe hurricanes, island residents began moving to the mainland and established the Pin Point community (where U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born in 1948).

In 1978 the state of Georgia acquired the Ossabaw. The island has now been set aside as the Georgia’s first Heritage Preserve, which restricts its use to natural, scientific and cultural study, research, and education. However, the island, with 26,000 acres of forest and tidal marshland, is still listed as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

When I visited the island as part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ossabaw seems more than 20 miles and minutes away from modern America. I hope to return one day and learn more about its rich history.

Motivated Students and Dedicated Instructors

Imagine being a student in the first class of a school that provided the opportunity to achieve an education that had been long denied. Consider being an instructor in that school as it opened and being able to educate such a student. Because firsts in American education are such major achievements, the Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia, has a noteworthy place in the heritage of educational triumphs, particularly in the American South.

Standing next to a chalkboard first used only two years after the American Civil War had ended, I had a sense of awe when I stood at the front of a classroom in the Beach Institute. As I looked the desks used when the school opened for newly emancipated African Americans, I tried to understand the obstacles that both students and instructors faced and consider their goals to improve lives through education.

The Beach Institute opened in 1867 with 600 students. With only eight classrooms, the institute was operating at more than full capacity as it tried to meet the needs of such eager students. A male principal led a staff of nine female teachers, most of whom were white and from the North.

Although Georgia custom and law prohibited teaching slaves to read and write, several secret schools in Savannah helped many enslaved Africans become skilled readers and writers (as the example of Susan King Taylor illustrates). Thus, when the Beach Institute opened, scores of students who enrolled could already read and write. According to Vaughnette Goode-Walker, director of cultural diversity and access at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, the number was as high as 200 (because learning was not against the law – only teaching).

Named for Alfred E. Beach (a philanthropist who donated land for the building), the institute was funded by the American Missionary Association (AMA), a society founded in 1846 by Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian abolitionists of New Haven, Connecticut. After the start of the American Civil War, the AMA began focusing on education for freed slaves. By 1868, the AMA, which also established many historical black colleges and universities, had more than five hundred teachers and missionaries throughout the South.

When the Beach Institute opened, its Greek revival style of architecture made it an impressive building. Even more impressive than its architecture is its social history, including efforts to fund and build it, supply skilled teachers and administrators, provide a credible education to its students, and maintain the structure as a historic structure when its days in education had ended.

Located in the historic district of Savannah, the three-story wood frame structure is the oldest surviving African American educational center in Georgia. The Beach Institute continued as a school until 1970 and has had only a few modifications to its floor plan, even though it also served as an elementary school high school, trade school, and center for adult education. It has now been recast as the Beach Institute African American Culture Center with a charge of collecting, interpreting, preserving, and presenting African American history and culture through educational events and exhibits, according to Darlene Wilson, a staff member and docent. As a result, the center continues its ability to generate public interest that dates back to October 3, 1868, when Harper’s Weekly featured the institute in an article about newly constructed schools for African Americans.

Other college instructors who were participating in a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities shared my sense of awe when we entered a classroom. Although the original student desks are hard and uncomfortable by today’s ergometric standards, no one could pass the opportunity to sit at such historic desks and imagine being in the classroom in 1867. The educational challenges of today seem so minor when compared to the significant achievements that others before us accomplished.

Sapelo Island: Preserving the Past and Studying the Forgotten

The Georgia coast and its barrier islands have been invaluable for recording and preserving information about the people and cultures of the American South. Islands such as Sapelo, about sixty miles south of Savannah, are treasures of Geechee-Gullah heritage; the sea islands were also early scenes of vibrant African Muslim communities whose traces have faded over time. Even with a documented historical importance, only a few locations have been protected for future generations (and sometimes unintentionally by unknowing stewards).

Gullah-Geechee Heritage

The Gullah-Geechee were taken from the rice-producing regions of Senegambia, Angola, and Sierra Leone in West Africa and brought to rice plantations of the American South as enslaved labor. They were brought to Sapelo in 1802 when Thomas Spalding, who introduced the cultivation of sugar cane and manufacture of sugar to Georgia, began buying portions of the island and created several plantations (which included a sugar mill) operated by as many as 400 enslaved workers in cotton, sugar cane and livestock activities.

The porous soils, temperate climates, tidal influences, and saline atmosphere of Sapelo and its marshes are ideal for the cultivation of rice and Sea Island cotton, according to Buddy Sullivan, manager of the reserve when I visited as part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities. In fact, the freshwater rivers of the Carolina and Georgia coastal areas permit rice cultivation to thrive, particularly as alternating cycles of flooding and draining fields (skills brought by enslaved West Africans to the Atlantic coast) are repeated; this coastal system was later adopted by the planters on large river plantations.

The 1860 census indicates that the Spalding family had 252 enslaved residents living in 50 cabins. Following the American Civil War, the freedmen created several communities throughout Sapelo, although only Hog Hammock now remains. This community, home to about 50 Gullah-Geechee descendants, includes the historic Behavior Cemetery and the First African Baptist Church that traces its origins to 1866. Because Hog Hammock no longer has its own school (the last one closed in 1978), children take the ferry to the mainland and then a bus to school.

Accessible by only ferry or airplane, the island is remote. Because the Gullah-Geechee were so isolated, many generations were able to preserve their distinct culture. When I visited Sapelo, I met Cornelia Bailey, storyteller and folklorist, who wrote about growing up on the island and preserved many Gullah-Geechee memories in her book God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolito Man. “We still drink, love, hate, and remember we are still living for our ancestors,” says Bailey (who traces her lineage back to an African Muslim named Bul-Allah, the head enslaved manager for Spalding) in her essay “I Am Sapelo.”

Islamic Heritage

Although the First African Baptist Church congregants continue to worship on the island, what has faded is awareness of how significantly Sapelo and neighboring coastal islands constituted the largest assembly of African Muslims in early North America. Such knowledge is the result of painstaking research by scholars such as Michael Gomez, professor at New York University, who describes the Muslim presence in the coastal American South as “active, vibrant, and compelling.” As Gomez points out, of the 388,000 Africans brought into British North America during the Atlantic slave trade, more than 224,000 came from regions influenced by Islam.

By analyzing interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and related family narratives, Gomez has identified how many practices of enslaved Africans show a picture consistent with serious pursuits of Islam, such as attempts to adhere to Islamic dietary requirements, observance of Muslim feast days, and other elements of Muslim life, such as prayer mats, veiling, and daily ritualized prayer. The longing of many to preserve their religion and culture is also shown by the pattern among American-born enslaved to carry Muslim names and retain vivid memories of their ancestors’ religious practices, even as the number of Christian converts increased. In addition, Gomez has confirmed Sapelo as an important Muslim community based on listings of enslaved Africans when plantations were sold as well as advertisements for enslaved runaways. (Names are clearly Muslim such as Mustapha, Sambo, and Mamado.) Other research by the Georgia Historical Society substantiates the Islamic influences in early African communities on the southeastern U.S. coast.

Protection

What protected Sapelo from the boom of coastal real estate development, the fate of some islands such as Hilton Head, S.C., that also share the Gullah-Geechee heritage? Several islands were acquired by wealthy Northerners in the fifty years after the American Civil War. The story of Sapelo is similar to Ossabaw and a few other islands whose purchase protected them from the typical development. For example, in 1912, Howard E. Coffin, a Detroit automotive pioneer, purchased all of Sapelo from its various owners except for the African American communities. During the Great Depression, Coffin sold his property to North Carolina tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds, Jr., whose widow later sold it in two transactions (1969 and 1976) to the state of Georgia.

The 16,500-acre Sapelo Island, the fourth largest barrier island of Georgia, is now home to an estuarine research reserve (6,110 acres as part of the 27-reserve national system) and a wildlife refuge (8,420 acres). Equally important is that Hog Hammock is the last intact sea island community of Geechee-Gullah people in Georgia. As a result, Hog Hammock has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Except for this small community (434 acres), the island (97%) is state owned and managed.

Preserving Culture

The Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society annually conducts several educational events, including a cultural day each fall that features storytelling, arts and crafts (including quilt-making and sweet grass basket-making), dancing, music, and food. These efforts, although small, are vital for preserving the full history of the American South. More concerted actions are needed to retain a critical awareness of how past generations have shaped our values and traditions.