Mobile Home Sales in Plantersville, SC

GEORGETOWN — A damaged gate, knocked over headstones and satanic graffiti have desecrated the historic Old Gunn Church north of Georgetown in recent months, leading caretakers to work more closely with law enforcement.

The latest vandalism is “the tipping point,” said John Benson, who works with Prince George Winyah Parish Church that owns the Plantersville area church dating back to the mid-1800s. “We’ll put more ‘No Trespassing’ signs around the property. We’re going to make this crystal clear.”

Among the vandalism was a gate to the fence around the church ruins bent by a machine.

“You can see where it’s banged up out there,” Benson said. “As in the past, we’ve tried to patch it up.”

Benson said the most recent vandalism involved accessing the property: “They’ve ruined a very expensive gate, and by cutting a hole in the fence.”

The satanic graffiti was done at some earlier time.

There’s been a lot of theft on previous occasions. One of the stolen items was a headstone.

Several other headstones have been vandalized, broken, moved and knocked over.

There was one large granite marker with a cross that was pushed over. “It took four of us to put it back up.”

This past Halloween, Benson said, “we prevented vandalism because we had someone out there.”

In previous years some people have gone out to the Old Gunn Church area at Halloween.

“They think ghosts are on the grounds” because of the death of one of the Gunn brothers who were contractors. One fell to his death from the roof of the church. Sometimes at Halloween the people who come out will try to scare one another with ghost stories.

Benson said these incidents over the years have made him realize how important it is to contact the sheriff’s office, rather than simply trying to fix the damage on their own.

“We’ve got a lot of help from nearby plantation owners” who keep an eye on the property. “They’ve all been helpful,” Benson said.

If there are any further acts of vandalism, Benson said, he would contact the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office and ask them to go out there to investigate. The sheriff’s office has been increasing patrols along Plantersville Road.

“It is very, very frustrating,” Benson said. “This is a lesson learned. We’re just going to report everything, minor or big.”

Church leaders have received some accommodations tax money for an engineering study to preserve Old Gunn, which is formally known as Prince Frederick’s Chapel. The church got the nickname “Old Gunn” because a contractor with that name fell from the roof to his death in the 19th century.

As a historic marker by the chapel ruins states, the old church was left unused for many years. Church officials decided it was unsafe, so they had most of the structure torn down in 1966. The façade was left as a reminder of the old church building.

Along the back part of the property inside the fenced enclosure graves and their headstones are spread out.

“We’d like to have it one day where we won’t have a gate,” Benson said. “We’re trying to honor people for their history. It’s heartbreaking, really.”

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MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WPDE) — The Conway City Council fears that flood barriers put in place by the South Carolina Department of Transportation could lead to even more flooding.

SCDOT announced Sunday that it was beginning the construction of two barriers along U.S. 378 in the Pee Dee region in an effort to curb flooding caused by Hurricane turned Tropical Storm Florence.

One of the two U.S. 378 barrier locations is at the U.S. 501 Bypass in Conway.

In a statement, SCDOT said Florence floodwaters would "overtop" bridges by Tuesday if not for the pair of barriers, to be completed Monday evening.

Florence has already led to roughly a dozen deaths in the Carolinas, including one in Plantersville, South Carolina, early Sunday morning.

In a meeting Sunday afternoon, Conway City Administrator Adam Emrick expressed concern that the U.S. 501 barrier in Horry County, in which Conway is located, would not block flooding but instead lead to more of it.

He says Conway government representatives have asked SCDOT, state and county officials:

"Will those barriers cause any impact with the flooding that would not be caused but for those barriers?"

Emrick says the response he got is that the barriers are being put up without sufficient data in place on further flooding the barriers may inadvertently cause.

"That's an unacceptable solution," Emrick said.

Emrick went on to say that the council estimates the Waccamaw River may rise about 1 foot higher than it did two years ago during Hurricane Matthew. He says he's been told by Horry County that it could rise as many as 4 feet higher.

Emrick said, "4 [feet] of water above Matthew, we will likely lose about 944 homes -- well, not lose, but have water in them that we would not otherwise have water in but for that extra 4 feet. We don't know if that's coming from the barriers, we don't know if that's coming from just normal flooding. The unknown is what is the concern of council."

Councilman Thomas Anderson made a motion to "secure legal counsel to pursue an injunction against South Carolina DOT, the State of South Carolina and Horry County to prohibit the construction of barriers on U.S. 501 Bypass in the City of Conway until those agencies have provided sufficient, scientific modeling to show that the construction of barriers will not contribute to or cause additional flooding in the City of Conway."

The council approved the motion unanimously.

There are still chalk marks denoting weight measurements on beams inside the 200-plus-year-old rice barn that still stands on the old Hasty Point Plantation near Plantersville, which at its high point was a rice-producing complex of somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 acres.

“There’s actually three right in this neighborhood, but outside of that, there’s hardly any rice barns that are still in existence ‘cause they’re made out of hard pine, they catch on fire, or more importantly, termites get into ‘em and people just don’t want to spend the money,” said Craig Sasser, who manages Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge. “This one was pretty much fully-restored. The previous owner spent a lot of money.”

Last year, the land conservation organization Open Space Institute and Ducks Unlimited helped the refuge purchase the 773-acre plantation from the Schofield family, which wanted to preserve the land for the benefit of future generations. In January, Bob Schofield sold the 237-acre tract across the road from the plantation to the Open Space Institute, which will hold onto it until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can purchase it.

“In general, how our group works is we either use our own internal funds to purchase a property or some other creative financing strategy to be able to secure a property until our partners like Fish and Wildlife Service are able to take title to it,” said Maria Whitehead, a senior project manager with OSI. “The owner, Bob Schofield, who had sold this portion to Fish and Wildlife Service, was ready to sell the 237 acres. They didn’t have the funds assembled yet to buy that piece, so we were willing to buy and hold it until they were able to do that. We’ll be working kind of hand in glove with them.”

Together, the tracts represent more than 1,000 acres of undeveloped land that will eventually be publicly accessible. While the exact details for the property’s future are still being determined, Sasser said the focus will be preserving the history of the rice culture and environmental education. He said he’ll have a better idea next fall of the exact plans.

Plantations usually evoke images of cotton, but coastal South Carolina’s major crop was rice until the early 1900s, when the combination of hurricanes and lack of labor and technical know-how finally doomed the industry that had been built on the backs of slaves from the west coast of Africa, also called the Rice Coast.

Rice plantations like Hasty Point became popular around the late 1700s and through the 1800s. But end of slavery was also the beginning of the end for the slave-reliant industry.

“There was a huge transformation of this landscape to do rice. And in ways, it scarred the landscape,” Sasser said. “And the human dimension was also scarred because the people who were doing the clearing were enslaved people who were being forced to do that. And so there’s a lot of parallels to the landscape and the human dimension that carry on today, so I think it’s really important to tell that story and reconnect to it all.”

Digging out rice fields and installing rice trunks (gates that let water in and out of the fields) was a very labor-intensive process. The plantation owners would often leave their homes during cultivation in order to get away from the mosquitoes that carried malaria. They relied on slaves from rice-producing parts of Africa to do all the work, and generally run the operation. The freed slaves who left after the Civil War took the knowledge of rice operations with them. Today, their ancestors are known as the Gullah-Geechee, and their traditions have impacted so much of South Carolina’s culture, especially the food.

“The plantation owners had over time really relied on enslaved people to run the operations, and they went to various places for vacations during the rice production during the hottest part of the year,” Sasser said. “Basically, they had to come back after the Civil War and figure out how to grow rice because they didn’t have as much help and expertise. The post-Antebellum period where actually the plantation owners had to be here and figure all this stuff out; and they weren’t doing very well.”

Sasser hopes to use the plantation for educational purposes, teaching younger generations about the history of rice culture, and he wants to partner with local colleges to host environmental education programs. He’s planning on planting rice in one of the rice fields across the river to teach folks about the cultivation process and to create a habitat for ducks and migratory birds that feed on the rice.

“If we plant rice in the managed field over here, it’ll probably be one of the only places in the coast of South Carolina where you can actually go out, the kids can go out and see the rice fields, see rice trunks, it’s all in operation,” Sasser explained. “But you also have the barn, you’ve got structures where you can do programs, you can do interpretive centers, you can do visitor contact stations, the sky’s the limit.”

Ray Funnye, Georgetown County’s director of public services and founder of Plantersville-based nonprofit The Village Group, plans to bring kids to the site once it's opened. Funnye himself is Gullah-Geechee, and his mother grew up on Darlington Plantation.

“We work with young people to help direct them and give them guidance on life, lessons and also help them with after-school programming and summer programming as well,” Funnye said. “We’ve been working with Bob, the previous owner of this place, for many years. We like it here and we hope that we can continue that relationship.”

The plantation, he said, represents the area’s history and ancestry.

“Our young people need to know what this barn represents: rice cultivation,” Funnye said. “And our forefathers and mothers were big-time involved with the rice cultivation. They need to know how the entire process work: how you plant it, and you harvest it and you process it. This facility, this plantation really belies that kind of teachable moment for them. It’s about learning.”

The Village Group is also planning on partnering with Coastal Carolina University and the College of Charleston to host environmental engineering programs.

“Ultimately what we want to do is be able to enlighten our young people about career opportunities,” Funnye added. “Who knows, we might have the next soil engineer here, the next geotechnical engineer here, somebody who wants to be involved with architectural things. Somebody that wants to do water analysis. These are real jobs that I pay good money for, every day, to have people do these kinds of services. We want not only to be able to have this exposure, but also look at the end results. Who knows, we might entrap a young kid by digging in the dirt.”

The 237 acres will provide a parking area for folks who want to walk or ride bikes in the plantation after the gates close, said Sasser, although there’s a longer-term plan for that land.

The forest of loblolly pines has been used to supply wood to the International Paper mill since the 1940s. Loblolly is a fast-growing tree that makes it ideal for use in the paper mill due to its quick turnover. But the native longleaf had disappeared even before then, because its slow growth rate and tight rings made it excellent lumber for building ships and houses. Now, about 97% of the original longleaf pine in coastal South Carolina has disappeared.

Sasser and Whitehead hope to transform the area back to its original constitution of longleaf pine, which provides an excellent habitat for species like the bobwhite quail, snakes and amphibians that do well in ephemeral wetlands, and perhaps most importantly, the federally-endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Sasser said they’ll likely offer youth hunts there.

“A lot of rare grass and herbaceous plants thrive in the longleaf forest,” Whitehead said. “The density of the trees you’re seeing now, it would be a quarter as many trees standing. So it’s almost like a grassland underneath with a few trees standing, that’s what a longleaf forest feels like. They call it a longleaf savannah.”

Building trails in the new acreage is still a long way off, though.

“I’ve got a park ranger and I’ve got a lot of volunteers. And I tell them, ‘Go walk the woods, walk the roads, map everything, let’s see how this all interconnects. Could we have a loop trail during the off-season?’” Sasser said. But for now, he added, “I’m going to focus on across the highway for a lot of my trails.”

The 773-acre Hasty Point Plantation lies adjacent to the Plantersville Scenic Byway that’s popular with cyclists, and the plantation land will feature plenty of opportunities for walking and biking.

“Just to be able to have this facility in our community and to have access to it… to bring family in, and friends, and guests from out of town, it’s very special to me,” Funnye said. “Just to be a part of it, just to be able to feel welcome here, to be able to walk through the various areas and ride my bike in this area and feel comfortable doing it. Georgetown’s a wonderful place. We have wonderful beaches. Across the river, you have that kind of amenity. But on this side of the river, you have these kinds of unique experiences of natural life, a lot of it. It’s really exciting to be a part of it.”

GEORGETOWN COUNTY — Ray Funnye, Georgetown County’s public services director, never saw himself coming back to Georgetown after he left to go to college.

But when his brother passed in 1992, Funnye found his way back to the county for a few days, and haphazardly ran into the county administrator at the time.

Two days later, he was offered a job as a plans examiner with the county, and said he cannot imagine what his life would be had fate not taken control.

Through his work with the county, as well as with his nonprofit, The Village Group, Funnye was awarded the American Medical Association’s Outstanding Government Service award in early March.

“Mr. Funnye understands that economic and educational opportunities are crucial to every person’s health and to achieving equity,” said Russ Kridel, the AMA board chairman.

Funnye said he was nominated for the award by AMA president-elect Gerald Harmon, a local family physician and long-time friend.

AMA awarded five people around the country with the Outstanding Government Service award this year, and looks for candidates who contributed greatly to the public health through elected and career government service, are outstanding leaders in their field, have high personal integrity, promoted the art and science of medicine in or through government service and developed a special project that contributed to the public health of a given community or special population.

Funnye and his wife, Queen, founded The Village Group in 2005 to improve the Plantersville and Georgetown communities and build a brighter future for its children.

What started as a group of families playing baseball together transformed into a program that hosts a summer academy, rents bikes to community members and offers aviation education to enrich and inspire children in the county.

Funnye said just being nominated for the award was a humbling experience, and he hopes to use the award to heighten awareness of the power of community, faith, hope and love.

“These awards are given to people who try to make a difference … and I along with my wife have been trying to do this for 15 years,” Funnye said. “And so now we are being recognized for our efforts, and hopefully we will be able to leverage the award to do some other great things in the community.”

GEORGETOWN — For the last 10 years, Georgetown County Out of School Time Committee has offered youth in the county educational and recreational enrichment while they are on summer vacation.

This summer’s programs, though, are more vital than ever before, Ray Funnye said.

“This year, more than any other year, because of COVID-19, our young people certainly need some additional desk time just to catch up with what they have potentially missed in this year,” said Funnye, director of The Village Group in Plantersville and South Carolina’s ambassador for Afterschool Alliance, a national committee to expand support for afterschool programs.

Georgetown County’s Out of School Time Committee this summer is offering six programs for youth of all ages and interests in the county. During these programs, students can engage in reading competitions, recreational activities such as bike riding and swimming, work with robotics and go on field trips to places like the county water treatment center.

Virtual students in Georgetown County School District saw a learning loss this school year, said David Hammel in March. Hammel is the district’s executive director for accountability and assessment. Hybrid students averaged six points higher on their end-of-course assessments fall semester compared to their virtual counterparts, and 20 percent of high schoolers failed at least one fall semester course.

2021 GCOST Summer Program.pdf

While applications for The Village Group’s Plantersville Summer Academy program are already closed, students can still sign up for the five other programs, with most beginning in mid-June.

Not only do the programs allow parents to go to work knowing their students are being enriched during the summer, it shows students what career opportunities exist in their communities, Funnye said.

“At the end of the day, we want our young people to be able to be law-abiding citizens and be able to provide a better asset to our community so they are able to do wonderful things for themselves and their families,” Funnye said.

As part of The Village Group’s program, students from Gullah-Geechee communities can apply for the Culturally Sustaining STEM Summer Institute, a 5-day additional program at the end of June.

Forty fifth and sixth graders will work alongside teachers to develop projects that highlight historical and current STEM contributions of Gullah culture. Students can also apply for a half scholarship for the program, and projects will be shared with the public at the end.

In previous years, Funnye said the summer programs have seen up to 400 participants, and prices for attendance are able to stay around $40 a week due to help from places like the Frances P. Bunnell Foundation and the Waccamaw Community Foundation.

“I look at (these programs) as an investment into the future,” Funnye said. “As opposed to later on, having money sunk into prisons and other places that really don’t have any particular substance in the community. So let’s invest now.”

To learn more about the Georgetown County Out of School Time programs, visit youthcollabgtown.org.