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NewslettersFrogmore becomes St. Helena
Submitted by elida987 on Mon, 2006-12-04 07:29.
Today's Island Packet mentions that it was twenty years ago now that the Beaufort County School District voted to rename Frogmore to St. Helena. They say Frogmore was named for Frogmore Manor on St. Helena Island. To go back further, I remember reading elsewhere that the Frogmore, SC town was actually named by its early settlers for the town of Frogmore, England. Many places in our US carry names taken from our colonial settlers from European countries.
The Frogmore post office kept the little frog outside when the community was named St. Helena. Let's hope it is still there.
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How great would it be to hear, just one more time, "uncle Billy's" (Mr. Bill Peters) monologue on Beaufort and Frogmore. No more Uncle Billy, no more AM radio, no more Frogmore.
We may not have realized just how great those times were.
Yes, Frogmore is still kicking. Many of us still use Frogmore on our return address. Since that post office serves so many areas, like Dataw Island, Fripp Island, Hunting Island as well as St Helena Island, many people will use their location and I use Frogmore, because my birth certificate says Frogmore. The postal workers, who are very friendly, say that as long as the zip code is 29920, it doesn't matter to them.
The history of the post office goes back to the 1870s. Mr. MacDonald, an owner in the MacDonald, Wilkins cotton gin, lived in the Frogmore Manor on Seaside Road. It was named after a town in England named Frogmore, which was the summer home of the Duke of Beaufort.
Mr. MacDonald also owned a 2 story general store which still stands on Highway 21 and has several small businesses in it today. My grand father said he used to be able to buy anything including car parts (Model A and T), clothing, food, feed and seed, etc. Mr. MacDonald was asked to put a small post office in his store, which he agreed to do. They asked what he thought the name should be, so he named it Frogmore after his home. The post office has changed buildings several times, but kept the name until a group of local blacks objected and asked for a referendum to have the name changed to St Helena Island. They thought it was more representative of the service area.
Many maps still show Frogmore as a location and many of the dispatch calls for the county (I have a scanner) still use Frogmore as a landmark.
Frogmore is one of the Royal Residences in the UK and both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are buried there.
I still use "Frogmore" to describe the area where the Sanders' packing house (descendants of the MacDonalds), the old MacDonald Wilkins store, the Island Plaza, the old Feed & Seed, and the turn to the Penn Center are located. But, I still use Ann Fripp, Cuffy, Yard Farm, Tombee, Land's End, Eustis, Coffin Point, Fripp Point, Cuthbert, Saxonville, Orange Grove, Little Capers, and a lot of the older names for areas on "the Island".
I remember the great big keg parties at the Sanders home & going to the Mother Goose - Wow what great times back then, I really liked that area when I was younger & when I drive out on St. Helena now my mind often wanders back to those times.There were other places we used to go out there too but we won't go there LOL.... Happy Times
I have seen a ole plat with St Helenaville printed on it in the Dulamo and acreage just before Pine Island. Do you know if such a place/setlement ever existed?
Yes, it did exist in the mid 1800s to about 1880. It was a small village of about a dozen houses and a small Episcopal chapel, where the owners went during the summer to escape the heat and mosquitoes. It has a great southerly breeze during the summer. It was located on a high bluff on Village Creek (guess where it got that name?). Laura Towne, one of the founders of Penn School (now Penn Center) lived in one. She reports in her diary that a storm with a tornado destroyed the homes and none were rebuilt. These were more like beach cottages from one photo I've seen with her standing in front of hers. The only evidence now is some tabby foundations for the buildings and chimneys that are heavily grown over. I was given permission to explore the area and finally found it. Gerhart Spieler wrote an article about it in BG after I told him about it in the '70s.
It is still privately owned with no trespassing signs and monitored by a caretaker.
mregret I am not a conservationist, but some places should not be developed. This is just the info i needed to start the crusade to get the gubment to buy that 600 acres. I wonder if i can find a copy of that article at the library?
I think the library does have BG on archival media, either microfilm or microfiche. I have a copy here somewhere of the article , but Speiler may also have kept records if the BG archives don't show it. I'll see if I can find my copy. The owner of that property may have it in a conservation easement to help on taxes. I have some with conservation easements and have donated some to the Open Land Trust.
This is just a guess since I've never heard of St. Helenaville, but if I wanted to know more about the Laura Towne experience and the Penn Center history I'd try doing some research at the Quaker colleges in the Philadelphia suburbs. Those would be Haverford College and Swarthmore College.
Good luck.
Great story. I had known of it but have only been down there once and that was to fight a brush fire there back in the early 90's.
St. Helenaville DID exist. It was like McClellanville, Rockville, Legareville, Edingsville, Plantersville, Summerville, Bluffton, Pawley's Island, and any of the other lowcountry communities established as summer residences to escape the heat, malaria and "fever" back on the plantations during the heat. For a good history of the prominence of St. Helenaville, I recommend reading Mr. Thomas B. Chapln's diary in "Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter" as compiled by Theodore Rosengarten along with "A History of Beaufort County" by our own Dr. Rowland. The big storm of 1893 blew the remnants away.
Pine Island is owned by a man from Estill, I think
for not wanting to be known as Frogmorons?
Frogmorals. Reebit! REEEEEeeebit!
OK, laugh it up with the shortened versions guys. Some other distinguished names , like Port Royal, Yemassee, Okatie don't do well with the shortened names for natives. Besides, you should know that true southerners don't use those shortened versions. You make polite conversation the longer way by saying "I'm a native of Port Royal." Or "I was born in Okatie." What would you call natives of Chattannooga, Cincinnati or Rancho Cucamonga, CA? Face it, some names are better without shortening and Frogmore is one.
Thanks for your story on frogmore. We used to stop for a drink on the way back from the beach when I was a kid and it was always nice to get a cold dr pepper or orange crush out of the ice box. Places like that have irreplacable character and are missed. They should rename saint helena to Frogmore. Could you imagine eating Saint Helena stew?
How great would it be to hear, just one more time, "uncle Billy's" (Mr. Bill Peters) monologue on Beaufort and Frogmore. No more Uncle Billy, no more AM radio, no more Frogmore.
We may not have realized just how great those times were.
I listened to Bill Peters every workday while driving around my Lowcountry work area. I think it was 107.9 FM out of Hilton Head back then, with lots of old songs from the 30's and 40's. Probably as I came closer to Beaufort I switched stations to pick up Bill Peters - he was just great.
Is he maybe still doing advertising on 107.9 FM for cars or is that guy just someone who sounds like Bill Peters?
What ever happened to Bill Peters anyway? Anyone know?
I see him now and then at lunch at the Huddle House on LI, but haven't talked with him except to say hi. I always enjoyed his call in talk show on WBEU AM-FM in the '80s.
Good memories of WBEU-AM in that little building up from Sunshine car wash. In the early seventies it was a hard choice between Uncle Billy on WBEU and the Greaseman on WAPE 630 AM out of Jax, Fl.
I recall Uncle Billy being a guest at most Marine Corps Balls even though at times he would play the devils advocate about the Air Station.
What a character.
Do you all remember an old-timer who died many years ago that we called "the Captain"? He was slender, on the short side, wore a cap with a visor, and always seemed dressed in light tan colored clothes. He owned a small house on Sams Point Rd. I seem to remember he was involved with the Lady's Island marina, and seemed to be a fixture around Beaufort. A really nice guy!