History of the Enoch Hanford House
Enoch Hanford, the second son of Stephen and Phebe Hanford of Norwalk, Conn., and grandson of Phineas and Hannah Hanford, was born in Norwalk in 1777.
His mother was a daughter of Elijah and Phebe Fitch of Norwalk. He entered the Yale Class of 1800 after the opening of the sophomore year. He studied law with Roger Sherman (Yale 1792) and moved to Fayetteville, N.C., to begin practice.
There he was employed by Col. William and Mary DeWitt of Society Hill to join the family as tutor for their son. During his first year, he married Col. DeWitt’s daughter Margaret, and conducted classes at St. David’s Academy in Society Hill in 1804.
In April 1804, he was elected Professor of Languages in the newly organized South Carolina College. He resigned his chair in 1806, was admitted to the Bar in 1807, and settled in Society Hill (formerly known as Greenville for a while after the Revolution), where he had a successful career.
He was making plans to return to his native state when he died in 1817.
His daughter Mary married Alexander McIver. Among their children was their son Henry, who became chief justice of the S.C. Supreme Court and who signed the Ordinance of Seccession.
Alexander and Mary McIver moved to Cheraw before the children were grown. Judge McIver’s law office was on Market Street in Cheraw.
The second daughter of Enoch Hanford, Margaret, married John Pedicaris. Their son Ion was the Pedicaris who was kidnapped by Barbary outlaw Ahmed er Raisuli, which set off an international incident, helping Teddy Roosevelt claim the Republican presidential nomination.
The Hanfords sold the house to Alexander Sparks, whose youngest daughter, Margaret Jane, married Isaac D. Wilson, a graduate of Brown University, a member of the S.C. House and Senate, a colonel in the S.C. Militia, and a delegate to the S.C. Secession Convention of 1860.
The Wilsons sold it in 1866 to Maj. B.F. Townsend of Bennettsville, whose daughter sold it to John Blackmon in 1892.
