Ltg joseph anderson biography of mahatma

When W.W. Ball said of Edgefield, “Edgefield has had more dashing, brilliant, romantic figures, statesmen, orators, soldiers, adventurers and daredevils than any other county of South Carolina, if not of any rural county of America,” he probably had in mind many of the following heroes and villains who colored the town’s vivid history and who made an impact on its political, spiritual and social makeup. Like our Governors, many of the following persons were not just placeholders. They made a significant difference in the way South Carolina and the nation developed. Our famous Edgefieldians follow in chronological order of their birth:

George Galphin (1709-1780). A native of Ireland, this prominent Indian trader came to South Carolina in 1737. In the early 1740s he established his home at Silver Bluff on the Savannah River at what became the southernmost tip of the Old Edgefield District. He built a trading post there together with a substantial brick home where he dispensed hospitality to prominent visitors, including Henry Laurens and William Bartram. He actively traded with Indians from the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi River, maintaining good relations with both the Creek and Cherokee tribes. He left a wife in Ireland and had three common law wives here, including a White, an African and an Indian, with children by each of these. He remembered all of them in his will. During the Revolution, his sympathies were with the Patriot cause, and he was largely responsible for neutralizing the Creek Indians in the War. He died in December of 1780, leaving a very substantial estate with large landholdings in South Carolina and Georgia. He is believed to have been buried near his home at Silver Bluff.

Lawrence Rambo (1713-1782). One of the early settlers in Edgefield District, Lawrence Rambo played a significant role in the Regulator movement in this part of South Carolina. Of Swedish extraction, Rambo was