BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

One of the important items I discovered in an archival file at Clemson was a photographic essay produced in 1973 by Ralph Beaumont Leonard, entitled “The Graveyard of the Keowee Plantation: A Photographic Essay.” This photographic essay, which consists both of commentary by Leonard and photographs he made of the John Ewing Colhoun family cememter at John’s Keowee Heights plantation, is entitled “Keowee Plantation Graveyard” and is in (box 1, mss 217) of Clemson University Library’s Special Collctions and Archives holdings.

In 1973, Ralph Beaumont Leonard photographed what remained of the Keowee Heights Colhoun family cemetery and John’s tombstone, noting that the graveyard and tombstone had been vandalized prior to that date. As a previous posting has noted, John Ewing Colhoun’s Keowee Heights plantation with its family cememtery are now on land owned by Clemson University, and the cemetery and what remains of the Keowee Heights house — only traces of its foundation, after the house burned years past — are now in Clemson’s Experimental Forest.

Ralph Beaumont Leonard’s essay is very valuable, since it provides photographic documentation of what remained of the cemetery in the spring of 1973 – and I suspect the cemetery has further deteriorated since that date. He states that all graves in the cemetery had been vandalized, and an attempt to repair what remained by 1964 was made by Clemson librarian Mary C. Stevenson in that year.

In 1973, only two graves were identifiable: that of John Ewing Colhoun and of his daughter-in-law Martha Maria Davis Colhoun, wife of John E. Colhoun Jr. The tombstone for John Ewing Colhoun Sr. was, Leonard notes, intact in 1973 after its pieces had been reassembled. Martha Maria Colhoun’s tombstone was identifiable only by a large slab lying on the ground, not over the grave itself. Leonard thought that this slab was once on top of a raised grave similar to that of John Ewing Colhoun. This slab is not over the grave, but is apparently where it was placed when the graves were destroyed. Scattered through the old cemetery were pieces of other grave markers that were not identifiable.

Leonard’s photographic essay show that the cemetery was surrounded by a stone wall, much of which remained intact in 1973. A photo Leonard made of John Ewing Colhoun’s tombstone is the best I’ve seen anywhere, and I have now uploaded that photo to this previous posting here. The photo is at the head of this posting.