2021 in-between times – part 5: day trip to Newberry, SC, best veggie scramble ever

Why would we take a 3-hour day trip to Newberry, SC? Good question. Our California granddaughter got a recruiting call for college soccer from Newberry College, and we wanted to see what this town and school were all about. The town (red button in the map) is between Greenville/Spartanburg (location of a good size airport) and Columbus. Southeast of Newberry is Charleston on the Atlantic Coast and the location of Fort Sumpter, where the 1st shot was fired in the Civil War. North is Charlotte in North Carolina, and south is Augusta in Georgia. Now you know where we are.

This part of the state is called the Piedmont because it’s the flat area at the base of a mountain range (the Appalachians). Cotton was the main crop grown here in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s.

history

Originally the area settled by European farmers (primarily German, Scots-Irish, and English) who arrived in great numbers in the 1750s because of the availability of land that they didn’t have in Europe. Prior to its formal founding, the area now known as Newberry was the site of several American Revolutionary War battles.

Newberry County was formed in 1785 from a judicial district in the late 1700s known as the Ninety-Six District because of its central location. The town of Newberry was founded in 1789 as the county seat and was sometimes called Newberry Courthouse for that reason. This locale was part of the extensive area of cotton plantations that grew short-staple cotton in the South; county and town politics were dominated by planters. Processing of the cotton had been made profitable by the invention of the cotton gin in 1794. Cotton was the primary crop grown in Newberry County before the American Civil War.

Newberry became a trading town since it was also the county seat, and expanded with the arrival of the railroad in the early 1850s, which connected it to major towns and markets.

Newberry College was established by the Lutheran Church in 1856. During the Civil War, the college was used as a hospital by the Confederate and later the Union troops. Fortunately the historic Newberry Court House wasn’t burned by William Sherman’s troops as he swept through the South.

The Civil War interrupted economic growth in the county; the warfare and loss of lives of many southern men disrupted the state’s economy.

After the war was settled, the first cotton mills were constructed in the county in the 1880s, and they quickly became an important part of the economy and a source of jobs. With the mechanization of agriculture in the early 20th century, labor needs were reduced.

At least 4 cotton mills operated in Newberry up to the 1980s when the demand for cotton dropped. Cotton grown locally stopped being available, and manufacturing of all types in the U.S. was being shipped overseas to lower costs. The mills closed quickly, and life changed overnight for thousands of workers and their families. What happened here in Newberry was happening all over this area of South Carolina.

Since the 1970s, the population of Newberry County has been growing due to increasing local economic prosperity. As of the 2000 census, 10,580 people lived in town. More companies are moving to town (see the end of this post), providing more and more jobs

touring the town

Newberry has been named one of the “Most Charming Small Towns in America” by the Travel Channel. It’s also earned recognition in both Crampton’s “The 100 Best Small Towns in America” and in Sweitzer & Fields’ “The 50 Best Small Southern Towns.” It has lovely antebellum mansions (pre-Civil War) on tree-lined streets. The historic downtown is actually active with few closed businesses. The community gathers for festivals and events in the Public Square. Many of the downtown buildings are on the National Registry of Historic Places. We think this is a town to come back to!

Since we arrived around noon, we had lunch first and saw some of the highlights of historic downtown Newberry. In the next post, we’ll walk around Newberry College. Let’s go exploring.

The ladies at the welcome center recommended Figaro’s Dining Room that was just across the street, and we were so glad we went there. Breakfast and lunch were being served, and I had the best veggie scramble ever. Originally the bank in this building served the town.

This restaurant is one we want to come back to, especially since the prices were so reasonable. Reservations are needed for dinner.

old court house

When we parked downtown, we were in front of this lovely old building.

downtown historic buildings

Across from the Old Court House was this view of some other buildings and main street.

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old hardware store and a Nobel Prize in Physics

The ladies at the visitors center suggested that we visit this historic hardware store that was founded in 1928. It’s now run by the grandson, Bill Shull, and customers come from miles around to find those hard-to-get items. If the item isn’t in the store, it’s probably at the warehouse. The store was only a couple of blocks away from the restaurant and the Old Court House.

Merchandise scattered throughout the store includes red fire buckets, bear traps, horse shoes, weather vanes, wash pots, red rubber inner tubes, leg tubs (?), fixtures, snow sleds, wrought iron, and all kinds of hardware. Let’s see if any of these items are in the following pictures.

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The most unique piece of “hardware” is this bronze copy of Bill’s father’s Nobel Prize.

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The prize was awarded almost 50 years later to Dr. Clifford Shull for his research in establishing neutron scattering techniques at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1946. He was one of the first researchers to find a peaceful use for the nuclear developments that came during WWII. This technique reveals where atoms are within a material like ricocheting bullets reveal where obstacles are in the dark.

The Hardware Store is a main tourist attraction in Newberry since it was highlighted on the History Channel’s “American Pickers” in 2011. It’s on the same street as the Newberry Opera House.

Newberry Opera House

This local gem is a fully restored historic building that is a live-performance space for popular artists (only a 6-hour drive from Nashville), touring theatre companies, and local organizations. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building was designed in the French Gothic style as both a place of entertainment and as a seat of government for the city. The building, completed in 1881 and dedicated in 1882, had a clock tower 130 feet topped with a garfish weather vane.

The first floor of the building was used by the town government for offices, a jail, and the fire company, which had one engine there. The upper floor was designed as a theater and supporting spaces. For years it attracted national touring companies, individual performers and a variety of theatre acts.

The Opera House quickly became known as “the entertainment center of the Midlands.” Touring companies from New York City, plays, minstrel and variety shows, famed vocalists and lecturers, magicians and mind readers, novelty acts and boxing exhibitions were all featured there. Not only was the Opera House used by professional performers, but it was also used by the community for meetings, dances, college commencement exercises, and musicals. Notable artists, such as Edwin Booth, John Barrymore and his family, and Tallulah Bankhead performed here.

The first film shown there was the silent movie The Birth of a Nation (1915), and others followed. The early Edison “Talkies,” using a phonograph record for sound, were introduced in the 1920s. Slowly, movies replaced the stage shows, so that in the 1920s, the Opera House was remodeled as a movie theater. It showed its last movie in 1952.

From this time to the late 1990s, The Opera House wasn’t used for much and lost its appeal and charm. Beginning in 1998, a group of townspeople combined their energy and money to start a restoration project that included an addition so it could be used for full theatrical productions.

inside the Opera House

Back stage in the Green Room where the performers get ready, one whole wall is filled with signatures.

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Since the theater is so small (only 400 seats), if a larger band is scheduled to play, only a few people from the band actually come. A singer may only bring one or two people for backup instead of a whole band.

past views of the Opera House

The newspaper clipping reported the city council decided to purchase a town clock to be put in the Opera House steeple. The price at that time was about $500 ($16,250 today).

inside the theater

Remember the picture of Barney and Heather pointing at the wall in the orchestra pit? Here’s the rest of the story.

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Usually stages were slanted so the back was higher than the front. Now we can understand the meaning of the terms “upstage” and “downstage.”

Doughboy was a popular nickname for the American infantryman during WWI. However, according to Wikipedia, the term first appeared in accounts of the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. While the origins of the name aren’t certain, the nickname was still in use during the early 1940s. Wikipedia has this information about the possible origins.

• Cavalrymen used the term to deride foot soldiers, because the brass buttons on their uniforms looked like the flour dumplings or dough cakes called “doughboys,” or because of the flour or pipe clay which the soldiers used to polish their white belts.
• Observers noticed U.S. infantry forces were constantly covered with chalky dust from marching through the dry terrain of northern Mexico, giving the men the appearance of unbaked dough or the mud bricks of the area known as adobe, with “adobe” transformed into “doughboy.”
• The soldiers’ method of cooking field rations of the 1840s and 1850s into doughy flour-and-rice concoctions baked in the ashes of a camp fire. This does not explain why only infantrymen received the appellation.

One explanation for using the term in WWI is that female Salvation Army volunteers went to France to cook millions of doughnuts and bring them to the troops on the front line, although this explanation ignores the usage of the term in the earlier war. One joke explanation for the term’s origin was that, in World War I, the doughboys were “kneaded” in 1914 but did not rise until 1917.

growth of the town

One of the tips we have about figuring out the prosperity of a town is whether it has a Starbucks or a Chick-fil-A. As we were driving out of town going a different way than when we came in, I saw a sign for a Starbucks. About 1/2 block away by the Walmart, we saw this sight:

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I talked to the young man after he finished taking the order about what they were doing. He said that the company is thinking of putting in a franchise but not sure about the best location. By moving the food truck to different locations, they can figure out where to expand. Pretty clever. (The college does have a Chick-fil-A dining area of its own.)

The main reason we left town going in this direction is that we were told that Samsung had its American headquarters in Newbury. From this sign we saw that other companies were located down this road. We drove to the end and were shocked by the number and size of businesses that have built plants here.

Barney and I agreed that if we were to relocate to a small town, we’d seriously consider Newberry!