Notes for Joseph Hugh HANNA

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Notes for Joseph Hugh HANNA

JOSEPH HUGH HANNA AND NETTlE ADELL (EADDY) HANNA
Of
GIFFORD SOUTH CAROLINA
By
Judith Eaddy (Hanna) Richards

There was music drifting through the house when I was born. My older
sisters, practicing on the baby grand and the upright pianos was part of
our life at the large rambling house built by my father Edward Henry
Hanna, I. He was born Henry Edison Hanna, but changed his name. We
lived in the small community of Gifford, South Carolina, on State Road
321. This road was only a trail when Joseph Hugh Hanna and his wife
Nettie Adell (Eaddy) Hanna came to settle and carve out their place
within the verdant pinelands of South Carolina.

Stories that were repeated in the family state that they came in covered
wagons with their household goods and five children that were born near
Indiantown, South Carolina. They migrated into Hampton County, South
Carolina to begin the farming, timber, and turpentine businesses.
Included, were a number of faithful servants which had worked for the
family in the Williamsburg County area. They were remnants of those
families which had been slaves on the old Hugh Hanna, Huggins, or perhaps
Eaddy plantations.

Joseph Hugh Hanna was already in the naval stores business in Charleston,
South Carolina, as he had been located on 167 Queen Street in the
Charleston City Directory. According to his obituary, he came to Gifford
in 1890*, as a pioneer in the naval stores industry of this section.
Since then, he has been a prominent planter in the county. A member of
the Methodist church, he was outstanding in civic affairs and in the
community and county.”

Many of the Hannas and Eaddys spread out to new beginnings at this time
in history. Joseph Hugh Hanna must have chosen this location near the
Savannah River because of the proximity of Charleston, where he was
delivering his sap in large barrels to the Navy base. The pitch was used
to make turpentine, paint solvents, and other industrial products.
Regardless of the use made of his naval stores, he was successful in his
endeavors.

Joseph Hugh Hanna and Nettie Adell (Eaddy) Hanna brought with them five
children who were born in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. They were
Lula Mae Hanna, Douglas Lamar Hanna, George Albert Hanna, Edward Henry
Hanna, I., and Eliza Louisa Hanna. Charles Franklin Hanna had died at
three years of age before they left and is buried in the Vox Cemetery,
with no marker. The family increased to nine children in Gifford with
the addition of Hugh Oliver Hanna, Sr., Leslie Eaddy Hanna, and Myrtle
Irene Hanna. Only five of their children survived childhood, with the
exception of Douglas, who lived to be only 32 years old.

The languid peaceful life in Gifford was filled with joyous romps in the
country on corn picking summer mornings, with peanut pulling in the
afternoon. Our clothes and faces were blackened with dirt and when the
fall came, the hogs were butchered and sausage made. Then once a year, a
barbecue was celebrated with neighbors and friends invited. The distinct
aroma of chitlins boiling would greet us on those fall afternoons, as we
stepped down from the school bus. Malvina was always there to prepare
them, as she did for other nearby families.

My father, Edward Henry Hanna, I., was a seedsman. He gathered small
lots of seed, and stored them in large warehouses, and in general,
marketed them in large lots. He had a successful business and shipped
the seed by truck and rail. He had a seed cleaning machine that removed
the chaff from the seed, a truck weighing station, and many government
bonded warehouses. My mother, Ruth Juliette (Bishop) Hanna, (whose
mother was a Happoldt from Charleston), worked in the business with him.
The office was located directly across the road from the back of our
house. With the help of wonderful servants she could keep close watch on
the younger children. They had six children in all.

In the beginning, Joseph Hugh Hanna and Nettie Adell (Eaddy) Hanna lived
in a long straight house, that I remember as a child. It had been
abandoned, a long time, and the doors stood open and I recall flowered
wallpaper faded, and torn on the walls. They built a beautiful two story
home with tall white columns, and spacious rooms, close to the other one,
across the street from ours. Lula Mae Hanna married Alton Abel from Avon
Park, Florida and moved away. He was a dentist, and they had citrus
groves. Uncle George Albert Hanna never married and lived in the home
with his mother and father. He spent most of his time farming, and
reading National Geographic and classical literature. He was an odd sort
of character, and our cousins think that he was one of the first original
hippies. My Uncle George, considering the fact that he was a heavy
smoker, outlived most of his brothers, with the exception of Hugh Oliver
Hanna, Sr., the attorney, who practiced law in Hampton, South Carolina.

When Grandmother Nettie died, some years after Joseph Hugh Hanna, their
son Leslie Eaddy Hanna, and his wife Ella Maude (Putnam) Hanna moved into
the house and shared the residence with George Albert Hanna. Leslie
Eaddy Hanna continued in the family business as it grew into many other
interests, such as saw milling and pulpwood. The sons and grandsons of
Leslie Eaddy Hanna continue the business at the present time.

Joseph Hugh Hanna was gored by a bull, and received a wound in his leg
that did not heal properly, as he was a diabetic. He died with
complications of the two, but still lived to be 75. He died when I was a
very small child of one and a half years. And even though they say a
child cannot remember much at that age, I remember a fleeting glimpse of
him walking with a cane across the yard, opening the front porch door,
lifting my sister Donna Patricia Hanna, who was two years older into the
air, and hugging her. Joseph Hugh Hanna was nicknamed Beaureguard, after
that beloved Southern General who had such wonderful qualities. He was
an exceptional person, who championed righteous causes during his
lifetime. In his business and personal life, he was beloved by the
community.

Joseph Hugh Hanna is buried at Beech Branch Cemetery, located out from
Gifford, with Nettie and many other family members. Also buried there
are Edward Henry Hanna, I. and Ruth Juliette (Bishop) Hanna, his wife;
Edward Henry Hanna, II. their son; and Donna Patricia Hanna, their
daughter. Douglas Lamar Hanna and George Albert Hanna, sons of Nettie
and Joseph, and the two little girls Eliza Louise Hanna and Myrtle Irene
Hanna who died in infancy, are also located there. Leslie Eaddy Hanna
and Ella Maude (Putnam) Hanna, his wife and their son Leslie Hugh Hanna,
Sr. are buried at Lawtonville Baptist Church Cemetery, Estill, South
Carolina.

After the death of Leslie Hanna's widow, Ella Maude (Putnam) Hanna, the
house was donated to the Town of Gifford, South Carolina, as a Town
Hall. Across the street, the rambling old home built by Edward Henry
Hanna, I. is presently still standing. It is abandoned, with vines
tumbling all over the beautiful heart pine timber, fading monuments to
receding memories of yesterdays that were filled with happy laughter of
carefree children, growing up in the quiet, serene countryside reflecting
the family continuity of the Hanna and Eaddy families.

* Joseph Hugh Hanna moved to Gifford, SC around 1893 and reared his
family there. Eliza Louise Hanna was born in 1891 in Williamsburg
County, South Carolina and Hugh Oliver Hanna, Sr. was the first child to
be born in Gifford, South Carolina in 1894.

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