Podcast….Jerry Martin and Olympia Mills, a baseball story
Jerry Martin recalls growing up in Olympia
Textile Project
Jerry Martin, Olympia Mills
Jerry Martin, Olympia Mills, Baseball 1950s-1960s Jerry Martin grew up around the winning sports traditions of Olympia Mills. He graduated from Olympia High school in the late 1960s. He went on to play in the major leagues and make a career out of a game that most just enjoy as a past time. Jerry started …
Paul Mills, Mooresville Cotton Mill, 1942
Sixteen dollars a week was good money for a 16 year old in the deep south in 1942. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities for a young man in Mooresville, NC in regards to steady pay. Those who lived in the mill village were happy to have a job. In fact, the Mooresville Cotton …
The Legend of Red Kelly
The legend of “Red” Kelly began on the streets of Olympia, among the textile workers in Columbia, SC. As a teenager he was a cigar smoking, hard drinking fighter with a traveling boxing ring. He went from town to town with his friend, fighting all comers for cash. ““Red” was bold and tough and the …
Major Hall, Olympia Mills
MAJOR JAMES HALLPersonal Anecdotes by Sherry Jaco When my grandfather, Major James Hall, was a child of about seven years, his family left their home in Chesterfield County, SC—about the year 1900. His family with six children packed all their belongings into a horse-drawn wagon and left their small share-cropping farm in search of a …
History of Jaco\’s Corner
HISTORY OF JACO’S CORNER August 2017 The intersection of Bluff Road and Rosewood Drive in Columbia has been known as Jaco’s Corner for over a century. The Jaco Family owned and continuously operated a business called Jaco’s Corner there on that corner. This intersection needs to be named officially by the City of Columbia because …
Corkball in Olympia Village
Corkball “You take a regular size cork like you would have in a wine bottle and wrap it in masking tape. That is how you make a cork ball.” Jake Jaco pulls from his pocket one of the cork balls used in a tournament he put on in 1993 at his family’s bar, Jaco’s Corner. …
Emily Dick
Against a backdrop of war and political strife, Emily Dick taught Sunday School to the children of the mill villages in Columbia, SC. Her calling was not the political picket lines in front of the White House, or the smoke and cinder of the battlefields, or even as a Red Cross nurse. Her passion was …
Olympia Mills, Columbia, SC
Major Hall sat by the window in the school house and stared out into the world beyond. The teacher droned on and on as he dreamed of something else, something that was more “hands-on”. The 9-year-old was physically present in that clapboard schoolhouse, but his heart was in the mill with its whirling spindles and …
Burlington Mills, Rhodhiss, NC
Of late, the old dam has a fallen tree hanging over the ledge that never seems to quite go over, despite the flooding of recent years. After traveling down the river it now hangs like an ancient warrior fighting to not go over. It hangs there as if it has something yet to say. Around …