One of the subjects I most enjoy photographing are small towns that have old train depots, abandoned houses, or other scenes in their downtowns that recall their heydays when they were bustling communities, often on the railroad line connecting them to larger towns and cities.
In my newspaper days many years ago, I profiled a number of such towns, taking photos and interviewing townsfolk. I loved doing it because I learned so much about communities and their histories and met so many interesting, mostly older, folks. When I started doing this in the 1970s, it was a very novel experience for me, having grown up in the suburbs of a large city.
It’s now been quite a few years since I last visited Mayesville, S.C., birthplace and hometown of Mary McLeod Bethune, a noted educator and civil rights leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McLeod_Bethune
It’s a fascinating place with a population of around 500, half the number in the 2000 Census. You’d never know there were even that many.
On a still and quiet early October afternoon back in 2009, I explored the town and photographed the long-abandoned Kineen Hotel, sadly lost to a fire just a few years ago. It was a long and imposing brick structure which must have been the central focus of the town decades ago.
Most of the downtown buildings directly and diagonally across from where the hotel stood are empty now, some overgrown with kudzu. There are nice residential streets and several grand mansions in the heart of the town.
The surrounding countryside is quite rural, with farmers planting many thousands of acres of soybeans and cotton . My ancestors lived in this general area of Sumter County, and so it’s always especially poignant for me to visit this part of the state.
When in Mayesville, one gets a feeling of fleeting time and a long past, filled with memories of better times when such small towns were the focal point on Saturdays for all the area farmers who came to town to purchase needed items for the farms, and, while at it, bring the children to visit a five and ten or the drug store on main street for a soda or penny candy. The general stores usually had just about everything a family could need.
After these visits, I returned to Charleston along 80 miles of rural back roads, enjoying the wind coming in the windows and a mellow, late afternoon glow in the fields and countryside as the sun began its descent. Autumn of 2009 seems like a long time ago now.
Some historical background:
The area that would become Mayesville was originally part of the plantation owned by Matthew Peterson Mayes (called “Squire” Mayes), a Virginia native who settled in the Black River region of Sumter County in the early 1800s. His plantation served as the early nucleus of settlement in this rural landscape.
In 1852–1853, the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad was extended through Mayes’s property, and a depot was established called Mayes Station. This event was the key catalyst for community development: farmers could now ship cotton and tobacco to market, and goods and people could move more easily across the region.
At that time the settlement had previously been known as Bradleyville, but with the coming of the railroad it became widely known as Mayesville, taking its name from the Mayes family.
The town was officially incorporated in 1878, and the coming decades saw agricultural prosperity and steady community life centered on cotton and related economic activity.
Here are some photos I’ve taken over the years in Mayesville:
This, the home town of Mary McLeod Bethune also had reminders of its Confederate past. This photo was taken in 2009:
One of the other grand mansions in town:
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Two of my favorite houses:
The business district — I don’t know what it looks like now in 2026, 15 years after some of these photos were taken. I would imagine the building remain, just more noticeably deteriorating and crumbling in the ground.
Main Street
Kineen Hotel, destroyed by fire in late 2020. It was built in 1911.
Main Street
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