Francis Chaney by W. D. Ritter

was a South Carolinian and when a boy his father took him to see Lord Cornwallis when he raised the "royal standard" in South Carolina under which to swear the people to allegiance to the British crown, the "royal standard" being the great national ensign of England, a flag a hundred feet long. Mr. Chaney’s father had gone to see the general for a purpose I have forgotten. Cornwallis persuaded the boy to enter the British army. He said he was extermely ignornat of the cause of the war and would have done so ins a minute, but he was under age and his father would not let him. Cornwallis gave then a bottle of wine. On their way home they drank the wine and threw the bottle away. Afterwards General Sumpter (after whom Fort Sumpter was named) sat on a log all day and explained to him so that he enlisted in our army. He was in the siege of Ninety-six, battle of Entaw Springs and elsewhere. He was a blacksmith by trade and worked in the shop with FRANCIS MARION in that ever to be remembered making of swords out of mill saws. At Entaw Springs he saw the use of hids own swords when a battery was playing on the Maryland Line". So highly was that body of men prized that great exertions were made to save them. There was one thing about those old veterans that can never be told – the heartfelt reverence the people had for them wherever they were seen. A man in Greene county sued Mr. Chaney for twelve and one-half cents (that was before they day of dimes), and on trail Mr. Chaney proved that he had already paid it twice. This was then supposed to e the meanest trick in the world.

When a little boy I was passing a sugar camp in company with a man driving a wagon in which Mr. Chaney was riding. He said he wanted one more good drink of sugar water before he died.

The man who drove the wagon and myself got over the fence and brought a trough of sugar water to the wagon so he could drink out of it. As we were climbing the fence with an earnestness I never heard equaled, "I do love to wait on the old man"