South Carolina community gets into the game by helping to save Civil War home in Union, see that unbeaten streak of all-black high school is recognized

The Dawkins House exterior, interior (Preservation SC) and a news clipping on Sims High streak

After 40-plus years working in Charlotte, N.C., and Southern California, Bill Comer returned to his native South Carolina in June 2020, ready to lend passion and his services to causes that mattered to him and his hometown.

He helped lobby for the all-black Sims High School of Union to receive its due: Last year, the South Carolina High School League recognized the football squad’s 96-game unbeaten streak from 1946-1954 as the longest in state history. 

Comer, 69, a retired health care and finance executive, decided to get off the sidelines for a second endeavor in Union, a community between Spartanburg and Columbia.

Preservation South Carolina, working with state and local partners, is trying to save and restore the Dawkins House, which briefly served as the Confederate state’s capitol during the waning weeks of the Civil War. 

A view of the home's beauty and restoration challenges (Preservation South Carolina)

The deteriorated property was up for a 2023 property tax sale, and Comer thought of buying the site and fixing it up. “I just wanted to save it.” Instead, Preservation South Carolina bought the home and Comer, a board member and treasurer with the group, is project manager for the restoration.

His credo of “I’m always up for a challenge” and getting involved proved beneficial when observers lamented the appearance of the Dawkins House, which has been vacant for many years. 

“I heard so many people say they, ‘They should have done this. They should have done that.’ I don’t see any ’they’ around here,” said Comer, summarizing the attitude of many in this small community to get things done -- whether cementing the record of a football team or saving a building from further decay. (Sims High School closed many years ago. More about that campaign later in this post)

The Dawkins House is destined to become the alumni center for the University of South Carolina Union, a small campus in the heart of the city.

Officials hope the venue will provide an economic boost for Union and Union County, which is home to 27,000 people. About 21% of residents are in poverty, according to the Census Bureau. The median household income lags well below the state average.

The project comes at an opportune time for the campus (right), with enrollment reaching a record 1,378 students this spring. That upward trend will equate to more students, thus more alumni.

Annie Smith, USC Union marketing and development director, said an alumni association is being established to enhance recruiting efforts, develop a community between current, former and future students, and to provide outside funding and resources.

The Dawkins House will aid that effort as a space for campus, corporate and community events, she said.

“Bringing USCU alumni back to functions at the Dawkins House Alumni Center will not only benefit USCU but will serve as an economic engine for the city and county of Union bringing alumni dollars back to Union for visits and potential employment with local companies,” according to Preservation South Carolina.

'There is a lot of energy ... and optimism'

Comer travels about 70 miles once a week from Lexington, S.C., where he lives, to his hometown Union.

“Whenever you go to your hometown, you like to visit places that meant something,” Comer recently told the Picket. “Several (textile) mills have since disappeared. Most importantly, the high school I went to burned.” The gym is the local YMCA and one classroom remains. “You start to miss those things. Part of your heritage is gone.”

The home had additions built on in the 19th century (Preservation South Carolina)

So he wants something positive to happen with the Dawkins House.

Preservation South Carolina has about $300,000 in the bank and that will be eaten up just stabilizing the structure. Comer expects the overall project cost to reach up to $1.5 million, with the goal of opening in 2027.

People in the community say the Dawkins House is an important landmark. “It anchors one end of Main Street and the courthouse anchors the other end,” said Comer.

Union County has a rich black history and has seen reconciliation after decades of racial violence during and following the Civil War. The board member believes the community is all in for restoring the home. 

Local government officials and economic bright spots are encouraging. “There is a lot of energy and a lot of optimism," said Comer.

The city of Union and Union County thus far have provided about $10,000 in funding for an engineering and stabilization study.

“Union County stands ready to discuss and participate as deemed by the majority of council,” county Supervisor Phillip Russell said. “It is an important piece of history in Union County and we are happy to see all of the support to rehabilitate this house.”

Burning documents in the fireplaces

The Dawkins House is best known for several weeks in the spring of 1865. It was nicknamed “The Shrubs” and was occupied by Judge Thomas Dawkins and his English-born wife Mary Poulton Dawkins (right, Union County Historical Society).

Gov. Andrew Magrath, before fleeing Columbia as Federal troops closed in, got in touch with college chum Dawkins about using the home and others nearby to conduct business amid the chaos.

From about Feb. 15, 1865, until sometime in March or April, Magrath ran the state from the Dawkins House as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman sacked Columbia and moved on other cities, bent on destruction and submission of Rebel troops. Magrath apparently worked from an informal library near the drawing room. Chaos ruled across South Carolina.

Nearly 160 years later, the two-story clapboard structure is in pretty rough shape and in need of a rescue.

Andrew Kettler, an assistant professor of history at the Union campus, has amassed a lot of research about the town’s history and Judge Dawkins, a prominent political figure who came from a wealthy family. While a unionist before South Carolina seceded, the judge came to support the Confederacy.

One of several remaining fireplaces in the home (Preservation South Carolina)

According to histories and local legend, Magrath and his subordinates burned possibly incriminating documents and correspondence in the home’s fireplaces. (The building served as South Carolina's capitol while the city was briefly is capital.)

Confederates burned documents for myriad reasons, Kettler said. 

“Generally, burning would be to avoid military secrets getting into the enemies hands,” the professor said. “But, at the late stages of the war, such secrets may have become secondary as Confederates may have also wanted to hide evidence of the original treason of the Confederacy in the first place, and any other actions that could have led to prosecutions and trials after the war.”

Quick! Hide the silver, and the documents

A few years before her death in 1906, Mary P. Dawkins wrote her recollections of England and life in Union. She recalled Magrath fleeing Union (he was later captured and held in captivity for several months).

“On parting Gov. Magrath put in my keeping an old-fashioned ladies hat box and a thick …. package as large as a tea-waiter, saying, ‘This is silver, and these papers (packed in package) would hang many a man.’”

The box and package were put away in the store room for safekeeping and placed by her maid Lizzie near a chimney. (Comer said a chimney will have to be taken apart and reassembled; it is uncertain whether this is the same one.)

In 1866, the Dawkinses traveled to Charleston, where the freed and newly married Magrath was working as a lawyer.

“We reached Charleston and stopped at Mills House. After dark Mr. and Mrs. Magrath came to the Mills house. Mr. Magrath worth a large circular cloak under which he hid the package and my husband took the box from the carriage to the door. Thus the Magrath silver got home.”

Mary Dawkins' writings are featured in the book "South Carolina's English Lady," compiled and edited by Sarah Porter Carroll.

Before the Civil War, Magrath had served as a federal judge, and made a ruling that most certainly made him unpopular with the North, as an article about him states.

“Although opposed to the trade personally, Magrath nevertheless handed slave-trade proponents a signal victory in 1860. In a decision associated with the cases surrounding the Echo and the Wanderer, ships seized for illegally transporting African slaves, Magrath stated that the 1820 federal statute on piracy did not apply to the slave trade.”

Thomas Dawkins' property is listed on two pages of the 1850 schedule (click to enlarge)

The 1850 Federal slave schedule (above) indicates Thomas Dawkins of Union County owned about 30 enslaved persons. It is unclear whether they were on more than one property.

Mary wrote that a few months after hostilities ended, "our servants (were) free and sought for by (Union) soldiers.” One book says she presented a paternalistic view of slavery.

Enslaved people had become a majority in Union County during the 1840s, and the area became a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity during Reconstruction.

Group documents racial violence, backs healing

Curtiss Hunter (right), tourism director for the county and a member of the Union County Community Remembrance Project (UCCRP), which documents racial violence and lynching and promotes healing through preservation, said the restoration of the Dawkins House will boost tourism and community engagement.

Hunter said its full history should be part of its interpretation. “I believe … the story of the Dawkins House should be told as authentic as there is history to prove the content. The integrity will stand on its own merit.”

Comer said the site will provide lessons from the past.

“Those who were slaves should be identified and recognized, just as much as the Dawkins family and their prominent guests. Going forward, people of all races and religions should pass through the Dawkins House's doors and occupy its spaces, to do good without discrimination and to learn.”

Hunter’s group in 2021 put up three marker detailing racial injustices in the county. Among them was Sax(e) Joiner, who was hanged by white men just before Union fell during the Civil War. He allegedly wrote an insulting letter to a white woman and was taken from the jail by a mob.

Timika M. Wilson, co-lead of the UCCRP, said Union County residents have generally embraced its work.

Leaders of the UCCRP take part in 2021 Juneteenth celebration (Photo: UCCRP)

“We acknowledged early on that this project was about ‘History, Not Division’ and the coalition achieved that perspective with open and honest discussion of the generational trauma that has been a part of the fabric of a segregated county in SC,” Wilson told the Picket in an email. “We have come very far, but there is more work to be done.”

The UCCRP supports the Dr. Lawrence W. Long Resource Center in Union and has partnered with it to educate students about the historical markers, the center and a hospital that served the black community for more than 40 years, said Wilson.

Backers notch win for black football team

Discrimination was the law of the land when Comer grew up in Union. School desegregation finally occurred in 1970 across South Carolina, the same year Sims High School closed.

Comer played football at Union High School, including on an integrated 1971 squad.

Sims High was a middle school for many years after it closed (Tom Bosse/HMdb.org)

The former businessman got involved last year in the campaign to recognize the Sims record (92-0-4). He and local archivist and historian Mary J. Gossett pored through records and news clippings.

A 1999 article in the Contra Costa Times in Northern California talked about such unbeaten streaks and included quotes from Paul Glenn, who played on the Sims team. (The football squad did not have state recognition at the time of the 1999 interview).

''It was a grand ride and it helped make men out of us,'' Glenn told the newspaper. ''We knew the whole county was pulling for us and we owed it to the whole county to try and win our games. It will die with all of us,'' he said of the streak.

Comer told the Union County News that the South Carolina high school association lost or did not receive records after desegregation. The Sims streak could not be validated without additional research.

Romanda Noble-Watson, director of communications with the South Carolina High School League, told the Picket she did not have any information about the records.

As Comer pointed out at the November 2023 meeting of the South Carolina High School League, the Sims streak has been recognized nationally.

That came with a 2004 publication of its record book, said Chris Boone, a spokesperson for the National Federation of State High School Associations. The NFHS recognizes Sims' mark as the third-longest in the country, behind De La Salle High School (151-0-0) in Concord, Calif., and Independence High School (113-0-0) in Charlotte, N.C.

Willie Jeffries, who played for Sims High School and is the legendary former coach of South Carolina State, also spoke in favor of the school streak being recognized, which the South Carolina HIgh School League's executive committee voted to accept.

You can see a video of that meeting on the Sims record here.

Bill Comer, Mary Gossett and former SC State coach Willie Jeffries (Bill Comer)

Gossett told the Union County News last year she spent more than a month on research.

“It was a challenge. I was trying to reconstruct the past from 1946 to 1954. Not a lot was written about Sims High School, which is why it became quite a challenge to gather the facts but I was able to find records and even understand enough to make use of it to support the winning streak. I just had to find it.”

The Picket has reached out to Gossett for comment. Comer said her “documentation was indisputable.”

The high school, meanwhile, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places and there are hopes the building, which has been empty for 15 years, may be reused, perhaps for a performing arts center. The building was a middle school from 1970-2009.

Breathing new life into an old residence

While Comer feels passionately about the Sims record, the Dawkins House is perhaps a bigger project, with uncertain future funding and questions about the home’s integrity. Preservation South Carolina hopes to get a report soon on the latter.

Given the age of the house and wear, any college or community events will need to occur on the main floor. The upstairs won’t be able to handle large crowds, so it likely will be office space, according to Comer.

Although many rooms look bad, the house still has quality features including, beaded and dovetail wood, joints and beams (photo left, Preservation South Carolina).

“We’re bucking the odds,” said Comer of the project. “The people in Preservation South Carolina are very determined.”

The retiree said his desire to give back stems from growing up in the community.

People are tired of familiar places disappearing.

“The more these landmarks fall away, there is less talk about them,” Comer said. And forget about throwing up your hands in despair when confronted with a daunting task.

The time to act, Comer says, is now.