Welcome to the Beech Island Heritage Day website. This year's Heritage Day festival will be held again at Granville Plantation.
Click here for photos of previous year's Heritage Day Festivals
Adults - $2.00
Children 6-18 - $1.00
The first historical celebration of gigantic area-wide proportion ever held in the small community of Beech Island, S.C., was the Beech Island Tricentennial Celebration on April 26, 1986 sponsored by the Beech Island Historical Society. At least 10,000 people attended, including mayors of many nearby cities and towns, state and U.S. senators and representatives, Aiken County Council members and many other distinguished guests. The event went down in history as the first and biggest such event ever held in Beech Island.
Kicking off the celebration was Beech Island's first-ever 53-unit parade down Sand Bar Ferry Road. Following the parade, the 301-year celebration moved to Redcliffe Plantation State Park with the society serving up the biggest barbecue ever cooked in Beech Island. A Tricentennial program followed with speeches by dignitaries and the dedication of the Fort Moore-Savannah Town historical marker, which was later placed near the site of Savannah Town, which dates as far back as 1685, and Fort Moore built in 1716.
Since the Tricentennial was such a success, the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism suggested that the Beech Island Historical Society make this a yearly event. The 1st Annual Beech Island Heritage Day was held at Redcliffe, the 1850s home of S.C. Governor James Hammond, on April 25, 1987, and Heritage Day has been held there every year through the 11th Annual Beech Island Heritage Day in 1997.
The 7th Annual Beech Island Heritage Day, held May 22, 1993, was named one of the Most Outstanding Tourism Festivals of the Year at the 1994 S.C. Governor's Conference on Tourism and Travel sponsored by the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism.
As in the past, the theme of Heritage Day is and always will be - HISTORY - 318 years of Beech Island history. To illustrate that history, the society invites artists and craftsmen to demonstrate ancient skills practiced by Native Americans and early American skills that settlers brought with them to Beech Island. Re-enactors also recreate Beech Island history from Colonial days to the Civil War era.
Each year Heritage Day will feature a wide variety of craftsmen demonstrating traditional, but almost forgotten, skills, such as; gritsmaking, soap making, blacksmithing, spinning, quilting, basketmaking, flintnapping and chair caning. These master craftsmen will show visitors and explain how early settlers fabricated much-needed articles from materials grown on their farms or supplied by nature.
A select group of contemporary crafters also will be selling unique, handmade items, such as; woodwork, toy metal soldiers, stained glass and pottery under the moss-draped trees of Granville Plantation.
Crafters pay a $25 fee for a 12' x 12' space. Exhibitors are limited in each category and the craft must be handmade by the crafter. Applications are due by May 15, 2003. For more information or an application call Mary Beth Berry at (803) 471-3824 or the society at (803) 867-3600.
The Heritage Day Festival will be held at Granville Plantation which is located at 6198 Atomic Road, Beech Island, SC, about two miles south of the Atomic Road (US 125) entrance to Redcliffe State Historic Site, toward Jackson, SC (see map).
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
BEECH ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
144 OLD JACKSON HIGHWAY
P. O BOX 158
BEECH ISLAND, SC 29842
(803) 867-3600 (Phone and fax)
Jackie Bartley (Heritage Day
Chairman)
(803) 867-3600 or (803) 827-0184 (Phone and Fax)
http://www.beech-islandhistory.org
http://www.duesouth.net/~granbooks/heritage.html
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If you have comments or suggestions, email us at granbooks@duesouth.net.