(Updated 3 February 2021)
Throughout 2020 I’ve taken or accumulated images that have not made it into this 52 Sams in 52 Weeks series – but they deserve some attention. Here are pictures which span about 150 years, each with their own short story. Most have never been published. Many came from the storage bin in Miss Ting’s home in Beaufort. This week I present a collection of pictures from our DHF shoebox, with short stories.
Click on any image below to see a larger version.
Emmett Decker
Emmett Decker was the Dataw Island head of security for many years. His first day was December 4, 1984. He had served in the military for 10 years, then worked for ALCOA opening new hotels all over the country. As a single parent, he was raising two young sons and wanted to stop traveling. An ALCOA friend told him about the Dataw Island job. He came for an interview and was hired on the spot. Emmett was actually the second person to head security here at Dataw; the first lasted about three weeks. Emmett lasted 28 years. [Craigmile]
Dental Office
Below is the building which housed the dental practice of Dr. Robert Randollph Sams, D.D.S. (b1827 – d1910). His story was featured in Week 29 – Trailblazer. This structure was on The Green in The Point neighborhood of Beaufort at the corner of Pinckney St. and King St. I don’t know the date of the picture, but Dr. R.R. Sams lived and practiced dentistry in Beaufort for many years. After the war, he returned to Beaufort as the town dentist. He also had several other occupations along the way, including Beaufort County Auditor and Beaufort County Corner.
Melvin Toland Sams
Melvin Toland Sams (1889 – 1967) was born in Florida. Below he is shown with his dog, Tip. M. Toland spent nearly all of his adult life in Beaufort, SC. After service in WWI, he was employed as a bookkeeper with the Bank of Beaufort for 21 years. He has a unique ancestry, as you can see in the relationship chart below.
Dr. Melvin Melius Sams
Below is a Webster’s Practical Dictionary given by Dr. Melvin Melius Sams (1815-1900) to his youngest son Dr. Milledge Bonum Sams (1855-1906) in 1886, who then gave it to his only son Melvin Toland Sams in either 1908 or 1909 (both dates appear in the image below.) Dr. Melvin M. was an 1839 graduate of Medical College of South Carolina (now MUSC). After the war, he was another of the very few Sams who returned to the Beaufort area. I wrote about this in Week 4 – Sams Close to Home. The 1850 Federal Census reveals 9 out of 10 Sams in S.C. resided in Beaufort County. After the war, in the 1870 census, that number had dropped precipitously. Some left the state. Many that stayed in SC never returned to Beaufort. Dr. Melvin M. Sams got a position as a Health Officer at the Quarantine Station on Buzzard Island on Bull River. [Sams, C.W., 1880 Federal Census, Rowland] The son, Dr. Milledge B., became a dentist.
Horace Reeve Sams
Horace Reeve Sams (1869 – 1949) was the youngest child of Dr. Robert Randolph Sams and his wife Sarah Graham Sams (1C1R). He was born in Beaufort, never married, and spent his life here. Our friend Ting Sams Colquhoun remembers “Uncle Reeve” fondly. Uncle Reeve was actually her great uncle. His sister, Sarah Sams Sams, was Ting’s paternal grandmother. Both grandparents on this side of the family were gone before Ting was born. Only Ting’s grandfather was alive when she was born; he died when she was very young. Uncle Reeve was Ting’s only connection through her teenage years to her grandparents’ generation. His occupation in the 1910 Federal Census is ‘farmer.’ However, after Kate Gleason bought Dataw, she financed the construction of causeways between St. Helena, Polowana, and Dataw Islands. This project during the depression was a welcome relief to the many island residents she employed. H. Reeve Sams was hired to oversee construction [Gleason]. The progression of photos below shows you Uncle Reeve through the years.
Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams? Yes!
I’ve included the photo below because I find the gentleman so striking but was unsure who he is. The photo has handwritten on the back, Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams. It was taken in a studio in Taylor, Texas area. The problem is this gentleman looks much too young to be the Dr. Sams that took his family to Texas in October of 1866 – see the photo in Week 5 So Far Away. Dr. Sams and his wife Sarah Graham Sams did have a son named Lewis Reeve Sams, who went with them. But this gentleman does not look much like the son, in my opinion. Besides, we don’t really know when the picture was taken. Given Texas, it must have been after 1866. At that time, there were four of ‘our’ Sams with that name. Which one is he?
See my epilogue.
Dr. & Mrs. R. Randolph Sams
will end this article with a set of photos of Dr. Robert Randolph Sams, DDS, and his wife Sarah Graham Sams (daughter of the Sarah Graham Sams mentioned above.) A few you’ve seen. We have beautiful portraits of this couple hanging in the History and Learning Center on Dataw Island. Below, I display them next to the original daguerreotype & ambrotype images you have not seen and from which they were expertly reproduced. The portraits in our History and Learning Center are impressive for several reasons.
First, Dr. RR Sams’ portrait is from a daguerreotype taken in 1849. The Library of Congress has a catalog of 865 daguerreotypes dating back to 1844. None are of a South Carolinian, nor are any attributed to our state. Thus, this portrait of Dr. Sams predates any photographs associated with South Carolina in the Library of Congress. Sarah and Phoebe’s photo is an ambrotype taken about ten years later.
Second, they survived the Civil War.
Third, they had been in Miss Ting’s shoebox for decades and were so degraded, as you can see below, that no one knew who they were, including Miss Ting.
Finally, through a collaboration between Miss Ting and Teresa Bridges (her 4C1R), the 19th-century photos were restored, and enlarged reproductions were made. This took a professional’s efforts in Tennessee and phone calls to The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.
Below are also images, late in life, of Randolph and Sarah Sams. Despite enduring the hardships of a post-Civil War Beaufort, they lived into their 80s.
Epilogue
1500 hours on 24 Nov 2020. Got some interesting feedback from readers today.
Keith Aspray pointed out that I had the wrong Buzzard Island listed in the caption to the picture at the beginning of this article (now corrected). The correct one is the other Buzzard Island, about 6 miles north-northeast of Dataw Island Marina, at the confluence of the Coosaw, Bull, and Combahee Rivers, across from Morgan Island.
Teresa Bridges weighed in on the Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams, MD mystery. She believes the dapper gentleman above is indeed the patriarch of the Sams family who took his family to Texas after the Civil War. I had considered that but thought the two seemed like different people (see picture above and the photo in Week 5 So Far Away). Teresa brings up several points that swayed my opinion. When the family moved, Dr. LR Sams and his wife Sarah left their oldest daughter behind. Their daughter, Sarah Jane Graham Sams, was married to Dr. Robert Randolph Sams. They had several young children and decided to stay in Beaufort. It would make sense for her father to have a portrait taken and sent back to his oldest daughter once he was settled down in Texas. We should also expect her father to look a bit different right after the war versus a few years later. Lastly, consider the source. This photo belongs to Ting Sams Colquhoun, a direct descendant of Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams. She is a very reliable source on such matters. Mystery solved.
Sources
Craigmile, Ann – Interview with Emmett Decker, April 26, 2010
Gleason, Janice F. – The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason, 2010, page 118
Holden, Joel and Riski, Bill – The Sams Family Tree, Ancestry.com, accessed Nov 22, 2020.
Rowland, Lawrence S., et al. – The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume 2, 1861 – 1893, 2015, page 534.
Sams, Conway Whittle – History of the Sams and Whittle Families, circa 1925, unpublished.
Photos courtesy of Ting Sams Colquhoun. Reproductions courtesy of Teresa Bridges.
#52Sams Week 47 – Short Stories