ELLOREE HERITAGE MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER

An educational view of South Carolina’s rural past
Authentic exhibits of area’s rural heritage

What’s the Attraction?
The Elloree Heritage Museum & Cultural Center depicts rural life in the southern Midlands of South Carolina as it was in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, in addition to changes that have taken place since then.

The authentic exhibits of the area’s rural heritage enable visitors to explore, through visuals, interactive pieces and original tools, some of the old cotton farms, farm implements and animals that made up this agricultural area.

Elloree was a center of commerce and railroad shipping for the farmers of eastern Orangeburg County in the 1880’s. The museum is located in the historic commercial district on Elloree’s main thoroughfare.

Distance
From Charlotte it’s 130 miles, about a 2-1/2 hour drive, one-way.

Getting there
Take I-77 South to Columbia, SC to I-26 East. Exit onto US 301 North at exit 154 to SC State Road 47 to Elloree.

To see and do
Entering the museum visitors are told, through a talking display, how this cross roads town was developed and how its importance grew with the railroad, which enabled farmers to ship their crops to Columbia and other regional markets, as well as to seaports where the cotton was exported overseas. During the fall months bales of cotton lined the depot platform awaiting each train.

Dr. Dantzler’s Drug Store (a pharmacy and optometric shop) is a typical exhibit of the time-- with the original chair from Dantzler’s optometry practice on display.

View the front of the Bardin Hotel, built in 1886-87 by Dr. J Dantzler. The original doors of the Bardin Hotel are used as part of the display’s glass front. The hotel had a reputation for excellent food and provided meals for train passengers passing through Elloree. It even had a catering service along the tracks to serve passengers when the trains had only a brief stop in town. In the early 20th century Elloree had four passenger trains a day.

With costumed guides telling personal stories of life on the farm, visitors may explore a plantation cotton gin house with its original gin, press and mechanicals, and notice the variety of horse-drawn plows and cultivators that farmers once had to operate to work their land. The children will have fun looking at all the old exhibits, discovering what it was like to live in a log cabin and feeling the hardships experienced by tenant farmers who struggled to make a living-- without realizing they are learning history. Visitors may also learn how cotton is grown, picked and ginned today.

Walk into the reconstructed log cabin and visit the birthplace of Elloree’s founder—a worn pole log cabin, determined by the saw marks to have been built in the late 1700’s. One room of the cabin has been reconstructed using the original cabins outside and inside walls, pegs and hardware. The furnishings are items similar to those found in the 1868 family inventory. Surrounding the cabin is a farmyard, complete with smokehouse, farm bell, chicken nest and a well.

A mule and blacksmith exhibit demonstrates the importance of mules to South Carolina’s rural economy of that era. Typically farmers preferred mules to horses because mules usually lived longer, learned faster, and were better tempered than horses. The mules plowed, harrowed and hauled crops to market in every county in the State of South Carolina—as well as many other states. South Carolina’s mule population peaked in the 1920’s to around 210,000, but by the 1940’s tractors and trucks had started to replace mules on the farms.

The Farm Wing of the museum is completely interactive with wall photomurals, photographs and bales of cotton.

Details
The museum is located at 2714 Cleveland St.; 803-897-2225; hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday only. Call 803-897-2225 to schedule group tours for adults and children. Admission charge: adults $5; seniors $4; students $3; children under six free. Elloree’s historic commercial district offers an excellent day trip with its antique stores, specialty shops and restaurants.

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