Afterword

Page 245 →– Julian Buxton III –

When I was ten years old my grandfather took me to the Williams Furniture Corporation’s factory and offices in Sumter, South Carolina. It was the first of our many visits there over the ten years to follow. As we approached the towering manufacturing plant, my chest rumbled, both from the deep vibrations the factory threw outside into the ground and the air, and my growing anxiety about what might be happening inside to generate such vibrancy and roar.

With me trailing him, we entered through tall and heavy wood doors. We passed through a plain, paneled wooden corridor lined with cracked open doors to rooms along each side. Busy people occupied them, but I had no interest. My entire focus, all that I wondered about and feared, was directed toward whatever caused the din behind the next set of heavy doors.

When they opened, my hands jumped to my ears—the noise hit me with physical force. My grandfather smiled, which made me feel a little better, but not much. I’d never witnessed so much diverse activity, so many constantly moving parts. After a few yards, he carried me over a mechanized conveyor that ran low and high throughout a cavernous space sweeping upward several stories. The sound was constant and fierce and whopping. He coursed through the factory at a gait that appeared measured, but at times I had to run to keep up with him. He moved with confidence and his face registered intent and purpose. I watched him exchange nods with workers of big machines and stop to answer questions and requests for advice from section managers. He inspected a furniture part fresh out of molding that was about the size of his arm. While holding it Page 246 →with his left hand, he ran his right up it softly and slowly, with a look that reflected reverence. All eyes were on him wherever we went.

That experience marked my initiation into a lifelong fascination with the story of Williams Furniture and its chain of associated businesses, Julian Buxton Sr., and all things related to the historical, political and economic impact of the South Carolina wood industry.

Family lore and professional research often do not intersect. The stories that we tell are essential to the fabric of who we are. And yet, we know these stories are not the whole picture. The chapters of this book bring historical perspective, professional solidity, and grounding. They are not lore, but one stands out like a bridge between lore and research, as more narrative than academic. “Seven Hours of the Santee Cooper Century” takes a reader on a great ride as Kent Germany weaves documented history into a colorful and sensory filled reading experience.

Lore reaches back to oral traditions of the earliest times. Cultural and family mythos string through generations of story. (The American South lives this out in an amplified way—often to the point of blind ancestor worship.) It’s how we tell each other things about ourselves that academic research cannot. It fills in the gaps. Over time, updated research and understanding alter what’s in those gaps. They don’t negate each other even if at times they contradict each other. What we really need is both.

That’s the beauty of what Jessica I. Elfenbein and Mark Kinzer have cultivated in this diverse anthology and throughout the “Wood Basket of the World” project. It gives voice. It’s an integration. It holds the tension between professional work and the passion of the storyteller’s provision of oral history. I suspect the latter is the reason they made room for me among these author researchers, professors, and PhDs. Otherwise, much of what I have to contribute does not fit.

For instance, ghosts intrigue me, always have. The South, and particularly Charleston, my hometown, is filled with them. Some people discard spirits as out of the realm of possibility. Not me. I’ve always loved ghost stories. Even now, their fantastical and supernatural elements fill me with childlike wonder. But from the time I was a boy, and throughout the now six decades that I have lived, something much bigger than ghosts from ages past has haunted me. My whole life, I’ve found it unbearable to have people and their stories fade over time into nothing. Their loves, losses, cherished and terrifying experiences, memories and more … gone. Just writing those last two sentences brings a swell of melancholia. It often interferes with my daily life, not just because of the emotional weight of it, but also because of the constant rush of colorful memories and vivid Page 247 →stories people have told me. Telling or writing stories transforms them from persistent agitation into a stillness that comes with giving voice to what haunts me.

I heard about a submerged ghost town in Lake Marion when I was eleven. Because I found no photos to impede my imagination, I exalted the ghost town into mythical proportions. To stave off melancholy, I pictured apparitions of the many people who once lived and worked there still communicating, as they did in life, albeit with an elegant and exaggerated underwater slowness.

From the South Carolina Room at the Charleston County Library, I discovered that it was a lumber mill town called Ferguson, owned and operated by northern businessmen named Francis Beidler and Benjamin Ferguson. I pictured them striding the floors of their factories and the grounds of their sawmills, much as I’d seen my grandfather do a year before at Williams in Sumter. The library papers filled me with facts that only expanded my romanticized vision. I found lots written about Beidler and Ferguson’s towering ambition and prodigious accomplishments, and nothing about who they were at their core. What constituted their spirits? What forces propelled them? Not knowing, my dreamy boy self-conjured these men into giants—the unknowable, but all knowing and benevolent, Lords of the Ghost Town.

Years later, after my grandfather died (1982) and well into my twenties, the same questions that haunted me about Beidler visited me about him. These men built things. In Beidler’s case, a whole town on nothing but a river island and swampland. They employed thousands of people and built wealth for themselves and others. Was it all driven by an unquenchable thirst for money? Was it the satisfaction of bringing something into the world that had never been? How blind was their ambition—did they treat people under their influence with compassion?

Julian Buxton Sr. was born in October of 1898 and died on July 10, 1982, twelve days after my twenty-first birthday. Francis Beidler was born in 1854 and died in March of 1924, one year before my grandfather moved to Sumter. By some ineffable magic trick of fate, out of all the people in the world that might have become my stepchildren, Henry and Alexandra Colas des Francs are the great-great-grandchildren of Francis Beidler. I hope to someday know about the spirit and character of Beidler. I want to know more about the spirit and character of Julian Buxton too.

I wonder what conclusions they came to when reflecting on their lives in later years. That they were generative and productive is a vast understatement. In countless ways, their impact on the people, economy, and Page 248 →landscape of South Carolina was large and lasting. Yet, with all the abundant and undeniable good their worldly gains generated, how did they grapple with their role in the shadow side of the wood industry: the destructive force it sometimes wrought on our state’s people and forests. Maybe they didn’t struggle with it, but I have a hard time believing that. Regarding Beidler, I only know family lore. In the will that he wrote at the end of his life, he charged his descendants to use the wealth he left them to live meaningful lives that improved the world. As for Julian Buxton Sr., what I know comes from direct experience, and from what I’ve heard.

Six months before he died, I drove with my best friend from New Jersey to Sumter on what would be my last college visit. My grandfather took us on a ride in his green International Scout. He wanted to show us some undeveloped land he owned on the edge of town. Down dirt roads deep into woods of tall, thick pines that obscured sunlight, we eventually came upon a long and wide overgrown clearing. He drove slowly around it, occasionally stopping to look from side to side. After forty minutes of going round and round and none of us seeing the road we came in on, I asked myself how this eighty-two-year-old man could possibly know the way out. Soon after, he said, “At one of these bends, a passage cuts back at an angle that makes it hard to see.” He peered to the right, raised his hand and pointed—“That way.” One hundred yards down this next road the way out was blocked by a thick fallen pine. For a long time, we just stared at it, dreading to go back through the maze we had just left. He stepped out, saying, “Let me take a look.” As he inspected the tree, he touched its bark, and for a short while, gently ran his fingers along it. Next, he straddled the pine and wrapped his big arms around it. We jumped out and ran toward him but got there too late … he’d already pulled and shuffled the heavy pine to the side of the road.

I am still astonished that he possessed that level of strength and determination only six months before he died. He sure didn’t look sick. Stories abound about his character and integrity. I only really got to know him on my visits those last two years. He made every minute count. I wish it had been otherwise, but the amount of wisdom he tried to impart to me at twenty was beyond what I could take in. There was not enough time. I didn’t know that. What I did learn continues to guide me. I grew in substance just by standing near him.

From the tone and content of our conversations, I knew he’d wrestled with the impact his ambitions, accomplishments, and mistakes had on the lives of others. He became less attached to accomplishment and gave away most of his wealth. He sent me articles about how being of service Page 249 →was essential to living a meaningful life. These things confused me. As a young man, his material achievements were what inspired me most. He was in his final years, and I was just starting. Only after life delivered a few severely humbling experiences did I make a sustained effort to integrate his quiet wisdom.

As an integral part of the Wood Basket of the World project, this book coalesces history from a variety of angles and advances understanding about how the South Carolina wood industry impacted South Carolina, the nation and the world. It provides grounding and historical context for family and cultural lore. I hope the dynamic chapters in this anthology stimulate readers to tell their own stories or ones they have heard passed down through generations. And to then contact Jessica Elfenbein so that she and her partners can continue to amplify the power and potential of what they have already actualized.