Balaam Gunter and his wife leave Wagener SC (then Gunter's Crossroads) in 1807

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Wagener was previously known as Pinder Town and later as Gunter’s Cross Roads, (Guntersville) after the large number of North Carolinian settlers named Gunter.   These men helped make up Company I of the 20th SC Infantry, which was part of Kershaw’s Brigade during the Civil War. 


Balaam Gunter b ca 1773 or before left Barnwell/Orangeburg Districts area thru Augusta GA in 1807 with 3 Conestoga wagons accompanied by other pioneers as well. There is a great story about Gunter and Patience in "Historical Sketches on Aiken" published 1985 on the 150 year anniversary of the founding of Aiken. The Gunters lived in the part which became Aiken Co in 1871. He founded Guntersville AL. Did he come home to die? In 1807 he was called an old pioneer- his wife drove one of the wagons in 1807 and was chewing tabacco and smoking a corn cob pipe as she was last seen.

Quote from

THE WAY OUR PEOPLE LIVED

LOTTERY  BREAD AND CIRCUSES  GEORGE WASHINGTON The Image and the Man  MEET GENERAL GRANT  MONEY FOR TOMORROW  EVELYN PRENTICE  A NEW AMERICAN HISTORY  LAFAYETTE   THE WAY OUR  PEOPLE LIVED   An Intimate American History  By W. E. Woodward   With at, Supplement of Illustration*   ; P. BUTTON ; COMPANY, INC  New York, 1944   FIRST PRINTING, APRIL 1944  SECOND PRINTING, MAT 1944

THIRD PRINTING* JUKE 1944 :

"D'you know old Balaam Gunter, any of you," Joseph  Hutchinson asked during a lull in the conversation. "I mean  Balaam from across the river in South Carolina." His glance  circled around the table and rested on William Clayton. "Oh  yes, William, you know him, unless my memory's wrong."   "Old Balaam," said Mr. Clayton ponderously. "Surely. I  used to know him well. Bought his cotton, but I haven't seen  him in several years. Has anything happened to him beyond  the usual mishaps of life?"   Before Hutchinson could reply Harvey Earle chuckled and  said, "I knew him, too. Queer character like all the Gunters.  Queer and stubborn. I mean those over in that part of our sister state. When I was in the tobacco business I used to take  Balaam's crop every year. One year the price of raw tobacco  fell to some ungodly low price, as I remember it was about five  cents a pound, owing to overproduction. When Balaam heard  about it he did not bring his crop to market at all, but burned  every leaf of it. Piled it up like a pyramid, a layer of pinewood  and a layer of dry tobacco leaves until the whole pile was about  thirty feet high. Then he set fire to it. They said you could  smell tobacco smoke for twenty miles."

THE WAY OUR  PEOPLE LIVED     LOTTERY   BREAD AND CIRCUSES   GEORGE WASHINGTON The Image and the Man   MEET GENERAL GRANT   MONEY FOR TOMORROW   EVELYN PRENTICE   A NEW AMERICAN HISTORY   LAFAYETTE   THE WAY OUR  PEOPLE LIVED   An Intimate American History  By W. E. Woodward   With at, Supplement of Illustration*    ; P. BUTTON and COMPANY, INC  New York, 1944   FIRST printing, APRIL 1944   SECOND PRINTING, MAT 1944  THIRD PRINTING* JUKE 1944 
  A Georgia Town in 1807 183   "What in the world did he do that for?" was young Francis  Earle's question. "Even if the price was only five cents a pound  that was better than nothing."   "Hunh! I'd think so, and so would all of us, but that's not  the way Balaam Gunter's mind works. He said, when I asked  him why he burned the crop, that if he'd taken five cents a  pound for it he would have been ashamed of himself for the  rest of his life whenever he thought of the toil and sweat of  raising the tobacco. So he burnt the whole crop and well, he  kept his self-respect, I suppose. Pardon me, William; you were  saying something when I interrupted you."   "That's all right," Mr. Clayton said. "Joe Hutchinson  wants to tell us something about old Balaam."   "All I wanted to say is that I saw him today," said Mr.  Hutchinson. "He passed through Augusta in quite a caravan.  Balaam, his wife, sons, daughters, niggers, horses, cows, goats,  and even some coops full of chickens. Going to Alabama. I  thought maybe some of you had seen him and his folks."   "I did see them, I think," said Ella Clayton. "They came  across the bridge and passed right by me on Washington Street.  Were there three big covered wagons, pulled by oxen?"   "Yes, three large wagons. Conestoga wagons," Mr. Hutchin-  son continued. "Old Balaam and the men rode horses."   "The older man had on a leather coat and a coonskin cap  with the coon's tail hanging down his back."   "That's right. Well, I was riding around the town as I do  every day, to look after things, when I saw Balaam and his  string of wagons ambling along, and I rode with them as far as  Rocky Creek."   "There are so many Carolina people crossing that bridge  every day on their way to Alabam, as they call it, that I don't  pay attention to them any more," said William Clayton. "Lots  of land in the middle section of South Carolina is worn out.  Poor farming methods. The land is not rich in the first place,  they never rotate the crops, never use fertilizer, and the rains  wash the soil into gullies. Then when they can't make a living  any more they start for Alabama to ruin some more land."   "That wasn't Balaam Gunter's trouble," said Joe Hutchin-  son. "I asked him why he was going to a wilderness to start     184 The Way Our People Lived   over at his age, and he said his part of South Carolina was get-  ting too crowded and he couldn't stand it, so he's going where  there ain't any neighbors."   "Crowded!" exclaimed Robert Harrison. "Why over there  in that Godforsaken backwoods the houses are miles apart.  What does he expect to be? The only inhabitant?"   "Balaam said that this spring a newcomer settled down  within half a mile of his place," Hutchinson said, "and there  are several neighbors within two or three miles. He said he  felt hemmed in, so he's on his way. He's by nature a pioneer."   "Yes, that's right," said Harvey Earle. "All our forefathers  were pioneers, or we wouldn't be here today. But I think it  takes a good deal of resolution for a man who has settled down  to pull up everything, lock, stock and barrel and go into a new  land. Were there many in Balaam's party?"   "Well, he had two of his sons and their wives the others  wouldn't come and his two daughters and their husbands,  and a man who is just going along with 'em, and Balaam's six  negroes. I saw several small children. They have tents for  camping, and they have tools, seed, plows, clothes, a little  furniture."   "Have they decided where they are going to settle?"   "Yes, so the old man said. On the Tennessee River. It runs  through northern Alabama and makes a big bend toward the  south. They're planning to settle down on the most southern  point of the bend. 10   "They hope to get there before the first of February, say in  eight or ten weeks, living in the tents on the way, and stopping  for several days at a time, here and there, to shoot game. As  soon as they get to the place they're heading for they'll put up  a house or two.   "I met Balaam's wife, a chatty old woman. She drives the  leading wagon."   Martha Harrison wanted to know how Mrs. Gunter was  dressed for her journey into the wilderness.   "Well, I'm not much on fashions," Hutchinson replied, "but  she wore a gray woolen dress with some little white stripes on   it. One result of this family migration was the settlement of the town of  Guntersville, on tie Tennessee River, in Marshall county, Alabama. But long  before Guntersville became a village old Balaam had passed into another world.     A Georgia Town in 1807   It sewed on like little ribbons. Well, let's see what else.  Why, her shoes were big, loose and rough, and she wore on her  head that milliner's creation you call a poke bonnet. In spite of  her gray hair she looked brave enough to tackle a den of wild cats."    "Ah, that's the pioneer woman," said William Clayton.  "These women are as strong, as fearless, as able as the men.  They carry civilization on their shoulders make homes in the  wilderness. I propose a toast to the pioneer women of America."   Everyone seemed pleased, and Caesar filled the glasses of  the whole company. Mr. Clayton rose and made a short speech,  and the toast was drunk.   Joe Hutchinson wiped his mouth with the back of his hand  and resumed his discourse. "When I saw Mrs. Gunter she was  using tobacco in a double fashion, smoking and chewing at the  same time. She smoked a corncob pipe while she chewed a cud  of tobacco. I made a remark about it and she said that smoking  made the chewing taste better."   "I've seen men do that," Robert Harrison said, "but never a woman."    Cecil Lowther listened to this dialogue with an air of aston-  ishment. In England, he said, women never smoked pipes and  certainly were not given to the habit of tobacco chewing. He  had never seen a woman use tobacco in any form. Some men  chewed tobacco, he asserted, and there was a great deal of pipe  smoking and cigar smoking among them. 11   "Oh, I think we ought to have all this in the Chronicle," said  Mrs. Hutchinson. "It's such a human story."   "Have all what?" her husband asked.   "The story about these Gunter people, and their going  through Augusta. It is so picturesque."   11 Women of the higher classes in America never chewed tobacco, but it was a  common habit among the women of the backwoods. It was eventually sup-  planted by the habit of snuff taking. The cigarette was unknown until after the  'Civil War, and for many years thereafter cigarettes were smoked only by boys  and young men, and the habit was frowned upon by preachers, parents, teachers  and employers. Cigarette smoking was usually a secret practice. The great popu-  larity of the cigarette dates to the first World War, when women took up the  habit of smoking. In 1915 the production of cigarettes in the United States was  400 per capita (meaning 400 individual cigarettes, not packages) ; in 1934 it was  1,400 per capita, and in 1943 three hundred billion cigarettes were produced  "which figures out as 2,300 cigarettes for every man, woman and child in the  .United States.     186 The Way Our People Lived   "Don't worry about the Chronicle , my dear; their man went  with the Gunter caravan about a mile and got all the facts,' 1  said Joseph Hutchinson. "I think we'll see it all in print next  week."

Gunter genealogy:

Gunter family of Lexington SC (now Aiken Co)