“Historic” Laurens County

I put quotes around the word historic because the town didn’t feel historic as we drove through. I did read that Andrew Johnson worked as a tailor there for a short time before he became president. The battle at Musgrove Mill took place not too far away. Initially, we didn’t set out to explore Laurens. Driving home, I always see the brown “Historic Downtown Laurens” sign on the highway. This time, I impulsively swerved onto the exit.

I was not impressed with downtown. If you’re going to have a brown sign, you should maintain the area and make it look nice, IMO. It was a ghost town. Lots of abandoned houses and run down buildings. Definitely nothing to write home about. If you guys know of a different part of town that we missed, let me know! We’d love to check it out!

Laurens City Cemetery was the only enjoyable part of today’s adventure (a story for another day). Seems like we always wind up in a cemetery this time of year.

Lots of history buried beneath this ground.

The most interesting grave. Say hello to Earle. I dove into Google as soon as we got home and came up with almost nothing. I wanted so badly to find a story about this eleven year old boy. No such luck.

Check out the following headstones…

Mr. Henry Powers and Mrs. Mary Poole have three of their four children buried beside them. Two of the three died at the age of two. One was born and died on the same day. I also noticed that Mary was in her thirties when she died. Henry lived until 1940.

Once again, I was hoping to find a story with this family. I know there were diseases back then, but I still thought it was strange that both children lived to be two.