"The second time my father was wounded was in Kingston, N.C. He shot a Yankee from behind a tree and he saw the blood spurt from him as he fell. Just about that time he saw another Yankee behind a tree leveling a gun at him. Father threw up his gun but too late, the Yankee shot and tore his arm all to pieces. The bullet went through his arm and struck the corner of his mouth knocking out part of his jaw bone. Then it went under the neck vein and finally it came out on his back knocking a hole in one of his shoulder blades large enough to lay your two thumbs in. His gun stock was also cut into. He lay on the battlefield for a whole day and night; then he was carried to a house where some kind ladies acting as nurses cared for him for over four months. He was sent home and dismissed from the army just a mile below Maybinton, S.C. in Newberry County. Father was unable to do any kind of work for over two years. The war closed a year after he got home. From that time on I cared for my mother and father.
"We had moved to the plantation of Mr. Ben Maybin in Maybinton before my father was sent home wounded. Father lived until March, 1st, 1932 when he died at the ripe old age of 102. When he died we were living at one of the Jeter plantations near Kelley's Chapel, in Fish Dam township, one-half mile from Old Ninety-Six Road. Father is buried at Kelley's Chapel.
"Mr. Harvey has a bullet that Gov. Scott issued to the negroes during reconstruction times when he was governor of South Carolina under the carpetbag rule. Scott issued these bullets to the negroes to kill and plunder with. Mr. Harvey says that bullets like this one were the cause of many negroes finding their graves in the bottom of Broad River. Mr. Harvey, so it is said, is still a Ku Klux. They were the chief instruments in getting him into the County Home of Union in 1925.
"The Ku Klux made a boat twenty-five feet long to carry the negroes down the river. They would take the negroes' own guns, most of them had two guns, and tie the guns around their necks in the following manner: The barrel of one gun was tied with wire around the negro's neck, and the stock of the other gun was fastened with wire around the negro's neck. When the captain would say, 'A-M-E-N', over the side of the boat the negro went, with his guns and bullets taking him to a watery grave in the bottom of Broad River. The wooden parts of the guns would rot, and sometimes the bodies would wash down on the rocks at Neal's Shoals what was then Jeter's Old Mill. Old gun stocks have been taken from there as mementoes.
"Bill Fitzgerald was my first Ku Klux Captain. He organized the clan in Newberry. When I came to the Klan over on the Union side, Judge W. H. Wallace and Mr. Isaac McKissick were leaders.
"When we got the negroes from the county jail, the same jail that we have now, that were arrested for killing Matt Stevens, I broke the lock on the jail door. Buck Allen was the blacksmith. He held a sledge hammer under the lock while I threw a steel hammer overhanded on the lock to break it.
"I think Abe Lincoln would have done the South some good if they had let him live. He had a kind heart and knew what suffering was. Lee would have won the war if the mighty Stonewall Jackson had lived. Stonewall was ahead of them all. I had two uncles, Jipp and Charlie Clark in Stonewall's company. They would never talk much about him after his death. It hurts them too much, for Stonewall's men loved him so much. Jeff Davis was a great man, too."
Source: Mr. Charlie Jeff Harvey, Rt. 4, Box 85, Union, S.C.
Interviewer: Caldwell Sims, Union, S.C. 8/18/35.