THE HARTZOGS OF SOUTH CAROLINA

This is the story of a remarkable family, even without reference to its most famous ancestor, General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, that small, wizened eagle-nosed, vinegar-drinking tormentor of the British during the Revolutionary War.

My Aunt Frankie, Frances Marion Hartzog, used to say that all she ever got from her namesake was his nose. I recall taking what I was told was his pewter spoon to a school assembly, a glorified show-and-tell, in sixth grade.

The General married late in life and never had any children. He adored his nieces and nephews, and raised his cousin’s son Nathaniel after the death of Nathaniel’s parents when the boy was still young. Nathaniel was my direct ancestor.

I began the first version of this history of the Hartzogs with George Hartzog, who was born in 1635 in Bavaria. According to family lore, George at the age of 41 was granted a coat of arms by the Bavarian king. The honor suggests that George was wealthy and powerful. A parchment copy of the coat of arms and photos of it are in various Hartzog households.

In that version of our history one of George’s sons, George Jr. (ca. 1690-1737) did not stay in Bavaria. He moved to Switzerland and at the age of 18 married Anna Waber. When he died, Anna sailed for South Carolina with her five children: Tobias, Barnard, George, Barbara, and Elizabeth.

My nephew Jon Seed has given me a book by Virginia Buckalew called The Hartzog and Hardy Families. Virginia spent 40 years collecting information for that book, and traveled to Germany for much of her research. The records she found in Germany match our traditional family history beginning with George Jr.’s children, but in her book they aren’t his children. They are the children of Bernard Hertzog. It seems I might not be the direct descendent of the Hartzog who received the coat of arms.

Bernard’s father, Hans Henrich (1695-1744) and his father Henrich, who was born in about 1660, lived and died in Sandhausen, and both married young women by the name of Katharina. Seven of Bernard’s nine brothers and sisters died before the age of 20. We have no information on the other two.

In The Hartzog and Hardy Families the chapter called “Hartzogs in America” begins with Bernard Hertzog’s petition for land which was entered in the court records in Charleston as follows:

The petition of Bernard Hertogs humbly setting forth that the petitioner came into the Province by the “Cunliffe,” Capt’n Cleater, from Rotterdam on the encouragement given by foreign protestants. He has payed his freight to Mess’s. Austin and Lauerence and desires to settle on land between Savannah and Santee Rivers and that he has a wife and four children viz. Tobias, about 18 years, George, about 16, Barbara and Elizabeth about 10 years old and never has had any land for them nor for himself, and therefore he humbly prays his Excellency and their Honors to order the Surveyor General to lay out for him 300 acres as above.

Bernard Hertogs

Charles town the 19^th day of Oct’r 1752

Note in the petition that Bernard never had any land in Germany, but at least he was able to pay his own way and did not have to become an indentured servant, so he was not as poor as many others. Note also that the names of the children are the same as those of our traditional family history, so from that point on there is no difference of accounts.

Bernard Hertzog was born in 1707 in Sandhausen, near Heidelberg, Germany. The Germans and Swiss that immigrated to South Carolina in the first part of the eighteenth century left a land devastated by continuous warfare. The year of the voyage was the year Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a storm to prove that lightning is electricity. Ships in those days had not changed much since the time of the Mayflower. The trip for Bernard, his wife, and their four children took many weeks.

Bernard’s petition for land was granted in 1754. He received 300 acres in Cow Castle Swamp below Orangeburg Township, SC. He and his family probably followed the trail from Charleston to Fort Charlotte, walking about 75 miles from Charleston. The Orangeburg District is where the first Hartzogs from Germany settled in 1735, clustering their homes and their Protestant church on the banks of the Edisto River.

Bernard married Maria Saloma Meyer in 1732 or 1733, but he married his second wife Anne Mary Chevilett in February of 1755, so Maria did not survive over three years in the new land after the long journey across the ocean. She was born in Germany in about 1712. Bernard and Anne had two children.

Bernard and Maria’s son George is my direct ancestor. He was born in Sandhausen, Germany, November 23, 1738, so he was not yet 14 when he joined his parents on the trip to America. I take his age from the German records, despite what the land petition says.

There is a story of George’s service during the Revolutionary War. He and his friend James Berry on one occasion hid in Berry’s Bay from the Tories. Berry’s Bay was then a dense wilderness on the other side of Berry’s home near the Edisto River.

Old Tom, a slave of Hartzog’s, was hung by the Tories to a walnut tree on the edge of the swamp to make him tell where his master and others were hiding. While the Tories were thus occupied, Francis Marion’s men came upon them, gave the rope a slash with a sword and dashed on after the Tories. Tom, then a young Negro, lived to be quite aged and handed the story down to the young.

In the last year of the conflict, 1782, after hostilities had almost ended, a Tory stabbed and killed George at Rush’s Mill in Orangeburg District. George was 44.

George’s brother Tobias, who supplied the Continental Army with corn, forage, and at least 1,200 pounds of beef, had over 750 acres of land on and near the Edisto. Tobias died sometime before 1790.

The men of the next two generations lived to age 55. John Hartzog (1766-1821) married Margaret Felder (1774-1851). Henry Barnard Hartzog (1791-1846) married Rebecca Reed (1798-1871). Henry and Rebecca had thirteen children.

One of these children, named Rebecca after her mother, wrote in 1898: “My mother told me many times that John Hartzog’s father, George, was killed by Tories in 1782 and his wife Catherine was killed by lightning coming down the chimney where she was sitting in the corner of the fireplace.” Rebecca was born in 1836. Her father Henry was my great-great-great-grandfather.

The Hartzogs were a part of the world of slavery. In 1828 Henry Hartzog bought the slave Cuffee for $413.00.

In 1844 Henry’s brother George Felder Hartzog evidently died; his goods were auctioned off that year. His horse and buggy sold for $30.00, cow and calf for $7.12, spinning wheel for $2.00, ten logs for $5.00, and some cowhide for $.62. No slaves are mentioned. Perhaps they were so valuable that Henry kept them.

Henry was wealthy enough to give at least one of his sons, Samuel, a good elementary school education. Henry had six sons. Four were killed in the War Between the States. Nine of eighteen Hartzogs died in that war.

Samuel Jackson Hartzog (1823-1890) was Henry’s oldest son. Sam was a quiet and unassuming man who commanded respect. Because of his elementary education, he was in demand for writing wills and other tasks requiring academic skill.

Samuel owned 30 slaves on a 930 acre plantation. His lovely home was of brick, as were the slaves’ quarters in back. There was a mill pond at the bottom of the hill in front of the home.

By this time the farmers of this section of the state had a special benefit. Until 1833 they and their Negro wagoners hauled cotton and other produce to Charleston. They camped out at night on the long dusty trip, and again in the “wagon yards” in the city. Then in 1833 the railroad from Hamburg to Charleston after years of labor was finished. It was the first in the United States and at its completion the longest in the world. It served the farmers well.

In 1855 Samuel at age 32 married 22-year old Mary Eliza Owens. She had a keen mind, and was a good conversationalist and a practical housekeeper. Plantation life was good, and it was profitable.

Then came the war. Samuel sends a letter home in June, 1864. After listening to the shrieks coming from the hospitals, he writes, “Freedom should be appreciated when it is won for our country.” Sam hears of Confederate successes. He hopes the armies will terminate the war soon, but it is hard for him to get information.

The war was soon to be terminated. When Samuel wrote his letter, William Tecumseh Sherman had begun his march to the sea. Early in 1865 Sherman turned north from Savannah and entered South Carolina. His forces reached the Hartzog plantation in February or March.

By that time Samuel had been wounded and had returned home in very poor health. The Union soldiers stole every bit of food the plantation had stored and then demanded the family silver. Sam would not tell them where it was hidden. The soldiers put a rope around his neck and pulled it tighter and tighter. They almost strangled Sam, but he would not tell them where the silver was.

Finally the troops left, taking with them the only cow left on the plantation. At that point a slave followed the Yankees, abusing them at every step, because without the milk from that cow a baby at the plantation was surely going to die. “You give that cow back,” she kept saying. She got the cow. The child died in 1869.

Neighbors brought the family a large sack of peas, which kept everyone alive until they could do better.

Samuel had a younger brother Henry (1824-1879), who also had a plantation. Henry was a successful farmer and businessman. He amassed a small fortune. He was widely regarded as the most outstanding citizen of Bamberg County, and represented his district in the state legislature in 1878. Wade Hampton, the Confederate general, was governor that year. Governor Hampton was famous in this violent time for leading his followers away from repression of Negroes, and into a policy of seeking their votes.

Henry was married to Ann Goodwin Graham (1826-1882). After living for many years in Olar, Henry and Ann built a fine colonial home about two miles outside of Bamberg.

Of the six brothers, Samuel and Henry were the two who survived the war. The South began its recovery from that conflict, and the brothers reestablished lives of prosperity.

It was a time when there was no running water or refrigeration, no ice for an icebox, or fans overhead, and no easy travel on the dirt roads. But it was a time of many pleasures. It was a time of bad dentistry, but good food and good activities.

There was hunting (everyone had a gun), and there was fishing. There were fruits and vegetables to pick and eat. There were five-cent novels.

For the children there were rafts on the ponds and egg fights at Easter. There were sociables, when the boys invited their belles by sending Negro messengers at a cost of five cents. Hoops and bustles disappeared. A circus came to town. Students studied in primers. Baseball was played with underhand pitching. The Hartzogs were neither bored nor unhappy.

There were also robberies, Negro killings, and almost a lynching of a Negro robber. There was a fire in town. There were the deaths of three of Samuel’s children, at the ages of one, three, and four. The three-year old was a girl, who fell down the well. The four-year old was a boy, who died of brain congestion.

Although the new hotel in Bamberg was made of brick, the churches remained old-fashioned wooden buildings. The saloon prospered, but religion was at a low ebb. The town was given to gaiety, dancing being the most popular amusement for the young people.

In imitation of those giddy youths, the school children on June 5^th, 1866 held their customary dance in the lower story of the Masonic Lodge, then in use as a schoolhouse. As they danced, a cyclone struck, destroying the building and killing seven of the children, while wounding many others.

Many of these things were recorded by Samuel’s son Henry S. Hartzog (1866-1953) in his memoirs of 1944. Henry recalls the trip to his family’s new home at Bamberg in 1871, “in a wide carriage with two side lanterns.” This home had been one of those in which General Sherman had set up headquarters, and was the best house in town.

Henry S. loved visiting his uncle Henry, whose colonial home was only two miles away, out in the countryside. Fire destroyed the house in 1892 or 1893.

Henry S. became the president of Clemson University. Later he became the president of the University of Arkansas, and about that time, when he was speaking on trends of education in the South, he shared the speakers’ platform with three United States presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.

The youngest brother of Henry S. Hartzog was Sidney, who was the mayor of Greenwood for many years.

Henry S. Hartzog’s son was Kim, who married Louise (“Weezie”) Hodges. Louise was a lively and spirited woman who taught Sunday school even past the age of 94, and who took pleasure in organizing her own 100^th birthday celebration in January of 2001. She died the following summer.

We have followed the line of Hartzogs descended from Samuel, the survivor of the War Between the States. Samuel’s younger brother Henry, the other Hartzog survivor of that war, who built the fine colonial home outside of Bamberg, also has descendents today, of whom I am one. Bamberg is in the part of South Carolina where the first Hartzogs coming from Germany settled.

Henry had a son, Henry Graham Hartzog (1846-1925), who married Ann Melissa Tarrant, called Annie. Annie was petite. Her wedding band was so small, it looked like a baby ring. She wore it for 75 years.

Henry G. (called Graham, or the Major) joined the Bamberg militia when he was 20 years old. The militia was formed after the Battle of Gettysburg. Graham was first a captain in the militia, and later a major.

Eventually Graham moved to Greenwood, where he built many homes. His cousin Sidney followed him there, as did Kim and Louise Hartzog.

When Louise Hartzog was the head of the Physical Education Department at Lander College in Greenwood, she invited Ann Hartzog at the age of 90 to come to a student assembly, where Ann was given a corsage in recognition of her fine posture. Everyone always noticed how straight Graham and Annie sat up in their buggy as their horse pranced down the dusty road. Annie at 90 still had perfect posture. She started early, she told Louise’s students, and never wavered.

Graham and Annie died in Greenwood in a spacious bungalow which stood on land now owned by the Presbyterian Church, on the corner of East Cambridge and Bailey Circle.

One of Graham’s three sons was my grandfather Percy Graham Hartzog, whom I knew as a fine elderly gentleman. “PG” was tall and slim.

I spoke recently with Ruth Hartzog, who married Ted Hartzog, the son of PG’s youngest brother Mott. Ruth remembers PG as a kind, quiet, and easy-going man who cooked a huge turkey, about 30 pounds, every Thanksgiving and Christmas. He basted and roasted the bird all day in a big oven, then carved it for the family.

PG and his wife Mary (Mamie) Vass Hartzog, and their four children, lived for a time in a spacious bungalow which still stands on Presley Street, first house on the right as you turn off of Cambridge. Louise Hartzog remembers being fascinated when she visited that family, since they had been up north and had stories to tell of that region of the country.

PG bought the lovely home with white columns which our family called Tranquility. PG’s second daughter was my mother, Ann (Nancy) Tarrant Hartzog, who met my father on one of those trips up north. Nancy was married in Tranquility, which now houses the Greenwood Women’s Club.

PG was a tire salesman. During the Depression he traded Tranquility and its 100 acres for a home on Barksdale Street and cash. I visited that home and recall a bed in a screened-in porch on the second floor.

It became the lot of my Aunt Frankie to care for her mother and father. She did so cheerfully, and also took loving care of her nephew Sidney, whom PG and Mamie had adopted. Frankie never married.

Mamie Vass was the daughter of a fine South Carolina man. John Leland Vass was pastor to the First Congregational Church in Spartanburg and was the first superintendent for the Connie Maxwell Children’s Home in Greenwood. He met his wife, Emma Brown, while selling Bibles and religious books during summer vacations. He was captured during the War Between the States and was shipped off to a northern jail.

I knew Mamie as a kind, gentle, and gracious lady.

Ruth Hartzog says that Mamie waxed her floors until they gleamed. If you were going fast and hit a rug, you were a goner.

Of PG’s siblings, Ruth says she loved the two ladies she knew, Bessie and Ann. Few people loved Gerard, who was not affectionate and had a temper. Gerard shot a cow that kicked him.

Everybody loved Mott, the youngest of PG’s bothers and sisters. He was a jovial man fond of dancing, smoking, and occasional drinking. Bridge-playing parties started after dinner and lasted most of the night.

Mott had a garden full of tomatoes, peppers, onions and other vegetables, and he also raised turkeys. The last turkey he raised weighed 40 pounds. The entire neighborhood feasted on it, but Ruth couldn’t take a bite. She had petted that friend too often.

Mott loved to cook. One day he must have been commenting on his wife Emmie’s skills in the kitchen. She took off her apron, and said to Mott, “Here. From now on you do the cooking. I’ll clean up.”

Mott hated FDR. If someone placed a dime face up on the table, Mott would jump up and dance in a fit, saying, “Get that thing off the table! I don’t ever want to see that head on my table!”

Mott fought in World War I, as did his nephew Hal. Hal was gassed, always had lung problems, and died when I was young. Mott was wounded, also, though his appearance, like Hal’s, was fine. Mott received disability pay and worked at odd jobs. He returned from Europe in 1917 with a valuable Burma ruby. He lived most of his life in Greenwood. He died in Asheville in 1954 at the age of 69.

Mott’s son Ted, whom Ruth married, was a pilot in the Air Force.

From Virginia Buckalew: Hartzog, a variant of Herzog, one who led an army; a duke or lord. German.

SOURCES

I regret a lack of cited sources or a bibliography for this offering. I decided to do something with the material I had in the time I felt I had. Source materials include the following:

1. the memoirs of Henry S. Hartzog, 1944

2. a book on the Hartzogs at my cousin Peter Pelham’s house

3. the book my nephew Jon Seed discovered called The Hartzog and Hardy Families by Virginia Hardy Buckalew, who engaged in family research for 40 years. The book is extremely well documented. It covers many branches of the family.

4. conversations and correspondence with Louise “Weezie” Hartzog

5. notes called Commsoft Roots III given to Louise at church from an unremembered source who served as town clerk in Bamberg, 1866-68 and “as a boy made occasional visits there previous to 1866”

6. conversations and correspondence with Ruth Hartzog

7. conversations with my aunt Frances Marion Hartzog

8. books on the Swamp fox

9. books on ocean voyages of this time