By delicately weaving candid reminiscences and humorous anecdotes into a descriptive history of McClellanville, South Carolina, Dr. Walter Bonner provides an intimate, firsthand account of life in a unique, small town. With a well-crafted blend of history and nostalgia, Dr. Bonner creates a warm and loving memoir of The Village he loves, while capturing the essence of a highly endangered species in the United States the rural coastal fishing village.
Home in the Village follows several of McClellanville's first families, especially the Loftons, throughout their existence in the community and in the surrounding areas comprising old St. James Santee Parish. These early settlers were influenced by the mystique of their predecessors in the parish: the Huguenot settlers and the Anglican rice planters. Small, isolated, and poor, but rich in natural beauty, "The Village" was much loved by its residents. When cotton failed in the 1920s and the Great Depression followed, the town was essentially frozen in time and preserved as a unique and special place. Only in the 1980s, especially after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, did the town begin to wake up and grow, and see its individuality threatened.
Home in the Village describes the economic, political, religious, and social forces that the residents contended with and believed in as they built their community and shows how these resilient people were influenced by the qualities the elemental spirits of the place in which they lived.