The property where Clarendon Baptist Church sits in Alcolu now has another building, but it’s not new.
One of the few remaining mill houses left from the early 20th century was moved several hundred feet Tuesday from a spot off Hotel Street to an empty lot next to the church’s fellowship hall.
Alcolu Preservation Society member Russell Harrelson said the building was donated by its owner, Wilma Harper.
“She was an Alcolu resident, born and raised here, and she has given us this house,” Harrelson said Tuesday while Joe Powell House Moving of Kingstree worked painstakingly on moving the building down Hotel Street.
“Our interest is in restoring it to its 1930s, 40s or 50s condition,” said society President Janice Richburg. “Right now we have a room at the Clarendon County Museum, but that is a transitional historic presence.”
Richburg said items collected from various Alcolu residents were presented at the museum during the last few years in celebration of the town’s history.
“Our biggest concern is when that room transitions to something else, we don’t want all those relics to again be scattered,” she said. “We hope we can fix up this old mill house, and then have a place to store these relics. We want this to operate like a museum.”
To that end, members of the group are looking for donations and even more artifacts.
“We’d like furniture, anything really from this early 20th century time period to help furnish the home,” Harrelson said.
Society member Jewell Brown said the group has about 15 members, but that more than 100 inactive folks helped donate the $4,000 to move the building to the church.
“We’d like all the help we can get,” Brown said.
Violet Carter Moody agreed.
“We are thankful for the donations that helped us get the building moved,” she said. “But, of course, we would love more to help us fix it up a bit.”
Clarendon Baptist Church Mike DeCosta said church leaders allowed the group to move the building on church property because “it’s important to remember your history.”
“The church is a large part of this community’s history,” he said.
That history started with the Alderman family, who founded the town in the 1880s and founded a sawmill a few years later. The mill provided employees with housing and Alcolu-specific money that could be used at the community’s general store.
“This is one of the few mill houses left from that time,” Richburg said. “There is one across the street from where this one sat, and that was one we also looked at moving.”
Brown said that home, however, was in “a little bit more bad shape than the one we’re moving.”
“That’s actually the one I wanted to move, because it reminds me of the houses we grew up in,” she said. “But it was in worse shape. I hope some day that we can save that one too.”
The building moved Tuesday fared OK during the process, despite parts of the chimney falling through the floor.
“Edward McCabe, one of our members, came and cleaned this place out, and you wouldn’t believe the snakes he found in the fireplace,” Brown said.
“It was just snake after snake, just a pile of them,” Richburg added.
Bricks from the fireplace fell just about each time the truck from Joe Powell House Movers attempted to move the building. Workers eventually tore down the chimneystack to help the problem, after which the building was moved without incident.
The Manning Times will have more on this story as the group continues to work on the building.
