The Ardis family originated in Scotland and German-Lithuania. The Ardis facial features of reddish wavy hair, and blue eyes, a strong jaw are characteristics of both the Scots and the Germans. The original family landed in Pennsylvania, then made their way down through the Shenandoah Valley and the Appalachians to arrive in central South Carolina, where they married with the Scots in the upland SC Piedmont area.. Other Ardis family immigrated directly from Lithuania, which has is largely German. As with my favorite great-uncle, Kaiser Ardis, only a German would haved name their child kaiser in 1914, as WWI started.
Our Ardis history starts in 1750 in Pinewood, in Sumter County, SC. It later shifts to Cortland, NY and Baltimore, MD, then back to Pinewood and Sumter.
The family history was documented at the National Archives in Washington, DC. by Larry Ardis . The family traces back to John Ardis, born 1750 in Kershaw, SC. He was a Revolutionary War soldier, riding with General Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox”, in the swampy lowlands of South Carolina. After the revolution, he settled in Pinewood, a small town in Sumter County, SC. Most of the Ardis history has centered on Pinewood, population of 600 today. At least 3 family groupings in Pinewood are named Ardis, all claiming not to be related.
During the Civil War, the Ardis’ fought for the Confederacy. They signed up for the Palmetto Brigade from SC. They fought and died at Antietam, the bloodiest day in US military history. John, Abraham, Thomas, and James Lawrence Ardis were captured and held as prisoners during the war on Ship Island, MS, near New Orleans. James Lawrence Ardis was exchanged in a prisoner swap in 1865 and continued on fighting. John Ardis was released from Ship Island POW camp at the end of the war. Copies of their release from P.O.W. war camps are included in the National Archive documents . Several of us have copies. Family stories tell tell of Ardis women hiding food as Gen. Sherman’s Union Army marched from Charleston up through Sumter County to Columbia, burning their way with a swath 60 miles wide across the South. On the monument at the Sumter County courthouse honoring the Civil War dead, the first three names are Ardis, Ardis, and Ardis. The Sons of the Confederacy club in Sumter still maintain the Ardis cemetery in Pinewood. The Daughters of the Confederacy offer Ardis descendants who go to college in SC. (I did not know this until my sister Cheryl’s sons won the scholarships.)
Their Civil War heritage is proud but sad. Larry’s research describes the Ardis bravery and fighting spirit in the Palmetto Brigade. In hindsight, the Ardis’ had no personal or economic stake in this war. They were just ordinary dirt farmers with their own land and acreage, raising corn, hogs, and tobacco. They did not have a plantation. They did not own slaves. Slavery benefited only plantation owners. In actual effect, slavery created a large pool of unpaid labor, which depressed wages for the local working-class white population, which was Ardis’. The plantation owners had the best of both worlds. These wealthy slaveholders exhorted the local poor whites, like the Ardis’, to go to war on their behalf. They shouted about protecting “states’ rights”, which really meant protecting white supremacy and slavery. The Ardis fought under the leadership of Robert E. Lee. If Gen. Lee had surrendered after Gettysburg, he would have spared the Ardis families in Sumter County a lot the suffering for years and generations to come. The poverty created in the rural South the Civil War caused a cultural deficit that has affected the Ardis’ to this day.
During the post-Civil War years, the Ardis’, like many small white farmers who were thrown into poverty by the war, started growing cotton. That was a major change from prewar days when they concentrated on growing just food for their own families. The prices on cotton remained low, so the Ardis’, along with all dirt farmers in the South, were caught in a cycle of indebtedness called debt peonage. This meant the money they made selling their crops was not enough to pay back the loans they had taken out for seed, tools, and farm equipment. They were left owing more after a year of labor than they had when they started. Since no one had any money to spend, the local economy stagnated. The Ardis’ always had a defiant streak, and this treatment by creditors created in them an antipathy and disrespect for business and authority that lasted across 100 years and several generations.
Turning to Word War I, not much was said, for two reasons. Some Ardis heritage is German. An example is great-uncle named Kaiser Wilhelm Ardis. Secondly, the Ardis’, like other dirt farmers in the south, saw World War I as another case of a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. They had already given enough blood for a cause. If they were drafted, they served. If not, they didn’t.
The Ardis family clustered in Pinewood married in to the McLeod, Weeks, Osteen, Blanding, McElveen, and Geddings families. Enough genetic distance existed between branches to allow Ardis’ to intermarry without a problem. Randall Ardis married Tabitha Ardis. They had 8 children: Inez, Thelma, Clarence, Elise, Ray (Dubbie), Charlie, Jerry, and Roger W. All were born in Pinewood, except Roger Wilson Ardis, who was born in Cortland, NY. Pinewood is a small crossroads town with a railroad siding and population about 570.
Randall had a second marriage. His sons there included Richard Ardis, the only one not to know his half-siblings.
Many of the Ardis’ who left Pinewood and moved north forever longed to go home. They nurtured a remembrance of warm mornings and honeysuckle in the air. The main homestead was sold by Clarence’s Uncle Bob, who then got drunk and squandered whatever little money they got for it. Allan visited the one of the old homesteads, still belonging to a cousin, as late as 1955. The house was clapboard construction house and it still had a hand pump for water. Clarence was back in SC on vacation from Cortland and went out there to buy a mason jar of moonshine. It was a tradition, and a family curse.
Randall Ardis had a severe mean streak. He probably had a brain tumor that was undiagnosed in those days. I met him only once. The early 1900’s were poor and hard times for dirt farmers in Pinewood, and Randall made it even meaner. They had a few bits of Easter candy, and he fed it to the dog. He chopped down a man’s tobacco crop during a storm to settle a grudge. He was found with his head chained to a tree, and only released by the kindness of a black man who wandered by. Randall went into a sanitarium Columbia, SC, in the late 1950’s. Clarence and Jerry visited him there but found that his mind was gone. Randall died there in the 1960’s in the mental hospital.
The children of Randall and Tabitha Ardis were taken away from the farm in 1940. Everybody was poor, but Tabitha’s s family were worse off than most because of Randall being derelict. That decision was made by social do-gooders from Sumter. Elise remembers a car pulled up to the farm, the kids were grabbed and whisked in to it, and away they were taken. They were dispersed, some to an orphanage and others to relatives up north. Inez was sent to live with Tabitha’s brother Fred and his wife Lola Ardis in Baltimore. Elise, Clarence, and Charlie were placed in the John De La Howe Orphanage in McCormick, SC. They were then 200 miles from Sumter and family. Elise has described the orphanage experience as pleasant. They were at least better fed than at home. Clarence never said anything nice about what he called
“Del-a-hi”. Life in most Depression era orphanages was harsh. They were there about 4 years. Elise and Charlie went home. Clarence went directly in to the Army; it was 1944, at age 14. Although he was young, World War II was at its peak and no questions were asked when a big strapping farm boy volunteered for the Army.
During their lives, Clarence and brothers Ray, Charlie, Jerry and Roger were all disdainful of authority figures. That resulted in part from the family being heartlessly broken apart by do-gooder authorities.
When World War II broke out, the Ardis’ enlisted and did their duty fully. As a GI stationed in the Philippines as war, Lawrence “Big Boy” Ardis fought the last-ditch battle on Bataan against the Japanese invasion. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March and then three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He returned to Pinewood at the end of the war. And managed the Second Mills park. Miller Ardis was in the Army and was severely wounded in beach landings in Operation Anvil, the Allied beach landing in southern France that was made to draw German forces away from Normandy in advance of D-Day. Miller was among the 4,000 casualties and 2,000 dead in this campaign. He returned to the US and was disabled the rest of his life. He made moonshine to supplement VA benefits. Clarence joined the 101st Airborne paratroopers at age 15 in 1944, the height of the war. He served in combat action fighting the Nazis in northern Italy, was wounded, and received a Purple Heart award. His Army Airborne jacket hung in our closet in Cortland for years after. At the height of World War II, recruiters were asking few questions when a big southern plowboy volunteered to join up. He joined the Airborne paratroopers because it paid a little extra, which he sent home to his mother.
During the war years, several of older Ardis men moved from Pinewood to Baltimore to work in the ship yards. These included Tabitha’s brothers Kaiser, Jim, and Fred. There they met and married women from Cortland, NY, Arlene and Mable Hilliard, also working for the war effort. Cortland was an industrial hub, and several of the Ardis, including Kaiser and Jim, moved there during the war to in support of factory work for the war effort. Somewhere during this time, cousin Laverne Weeks married a girl in Syracuse (near Cortland) and moved there, as did cousin Lenwood Geddings. Fred Ardis and his family including Larry and Lonnie lived Glenn Bernie, MD, the rest of their lives.
Tabitha went to Blodgett Mills, just outside Cortland, with Jerry. She gave birth to Roger Wilson Ardis in 1942 in Cortland. She moved back to Sumter after the war.
Clarence was the oldest brother, and for many, the father figure in the family. He was tall, handsome, and after the war, a decorated veteran. He was introverted at the time, as many young vets are. He later became sociable and relaxed.
Ray (Dubbie) Ardis was severely burned as a child. In those days, round smudge pots filled were oil were lit and used in long rows to mark road construction. One was knocked over on Dubbie when he was about 4 years old. He spent 17 years in a burn center. As he recovered, the scars healed, and he led a normal a long normal life.
After coming of age after the war, Inez went to Cortland to visit Thelma at Uncle Jim Ardis’ house. . Great-uncle Jim was an alcoholic. Roger W. was raised by his uncle Jim in the small house was on a hillside outside Cortland. It was a lonely place to raise a boy and away from the family. Roger W. expressed a yearning ever after to get back closer to the family. It helped when Clarence moved to Cortland for a few years. Clarence had a house built next door to Uncle Kaiser on River St.
Clarence, Kaiser, Jim, Fred, Laverne Weeks, and Bob all had serious alcohol problems, stemming from their days making and running moonshine back in Sumter County during the Depression. They continued to make it occasionally even there in Cortland. By the time of the 1950’s, they didn’t need to, but they missed the old-time kick of 100 proof liquor. Making moonshine sounds humorous now but being with alcoholics in the 1950’s was not fun for anyone.
Despite these adversities, all the Ardis men were good natured, positive, optimistic, industrious, often charismatic, and fun to be with when they were sober. When drinking, they were the opposite.
The Inez and Thelma worked in factories a short time, then returned to Sumter for a vacation and invited with them Jeanette and June, two friends from Cortland. Clarence, Miller, and Lawrence “Big Boy” Ardis were now back in Sumter from the war. Jeanette met Clarence and married. June met and married Miller Ardis. June and Miller remained in the Pinewood area the rest of their lives. Jeanette had her first child, Allan. June had her son Butch (Charles) Ardis.
Clarence and Jeanette had a period of life in 1948-49 living with the family in a big rambling house on Levi St., in Sumter. All were poor, but life was simple then. Downtown was a short walk away. The streets were safe for an evening walk, and evenings ae pleasantly warm nine months a year in SC. A drive-in movie was a treat. Jeanette walked from Levi St to the hospital to have her first baby. Living poor interferes with living romantic, so she got on a bus and went back home to Cortland, NY. Clarence soon followed.
(Fifty years later, after Clarence’s death in 1995, Jeanette had idyllic memories of those days on Levi Street with her first love, Clarence. She seemed to be trying to relive those days. She spoke in old southern dialect, though clipped with a New York accent. She lived like a hillbilly in the house they had had since 1963. )
Inez, Thelma, Clarence, Elise, Ray, Charlie, Jerry, and Roger W., all the children of Tabitha and Randall, went various ways in the next ten years.
Inez was a good looker and sassy She married a young optometrist, Dr. Jacobsen, who was stationed at the Air Force base in Sumter. Inez moved to Skokie, I, to live an upper middle class life, but near the end often visited Sumter. She visited Jeanette regularly, and although they were old friends, Inez was always an annoyance because she complained about the clutter in Jeantte’s house and life style. Probably reminded her too much of her own beginning.
Thelma Ardis Rogers married an Army sergeant, Ted, from Fort Jackson, Columbia, SC, and moved to Japan for a few years, but eventually back to Pinewood. When she returned from Japan, she and her daughter temporarily lived with Clarence and Jeanette. Thelma encouraged Clarence to move back to Sumter County, which he did. Thelma divorced Ted and moved back to Sumter, living in the Pocalla area near Clarence. Thelma was attractive and liked young men. She died of breast cancer.
Clarence and Jeanette moved to Cortland, NY, near Syracuse, in 1950 and quickly had 4 more kids for a total of five.. They had good paying factory jobs in Cortland. Heavily influenced by Thelma, they moved back south, first to Sumter , then to the Pocalla Swamp area of Pinewood in 1963.
Elise moved to W. Columbia and worked in various local government jobs until retirement. She is still living as of this writing. Elise became a mother figure to ten nieces and
nephews of Ray, Jerry, and Charlie when their parents went through divorces. Each one was with her until they graduated. A highlight of Elise’s life was visiting Allan and his family for 3 weeks while he worked in London, England, for an international company in the 1980’s.
Ray got a job as a dredging machine operator near Sumter and loved his work dredging and draining swamps during the long development period of South Carolina. He eventually became owner of a trailer park in West Columbia. Several of the children eventually gravitated to living in W. Columbia, which is about 35 miles from Sumter. These included Elise and Jerry and most of Jerry and Ray’s children.
Charlie went in the Army and served in Germany. He got out of the Army about 1957 and stayed in Germany until 1964. When he returned to the US, he lived and worked in Cortland, NY, at the steel mill where Clarence and Kaiser worked, then moved back to his mother Tabitha’s house on Pinckney St. in Sumter with his 2 kids. Charlie, like Clarence, had many stories to tell. Later Charlie moved to Atlanta. Charlie’s daughter, a beauty queen, married a car dealership owner , Ron Swatty, much older than herself, and Charlie worked at odd jobs for Swatty until his death. Charlie was family oriented and visited Allan when he lived in Atlanta in the 1990’s.
Although Clarence and Charlie were totally friendly with each other, there developed some deep “Freudian” antipathy between the two while Charlie lived with Tabitha. That culminated on a drunken weekend when Clarence had Allan drive him down to the house so that he could shot Charlie. Jeanette and Tabitha talked him out of it. As Uncle Wayne Congdon had said in another context, “the Ardis’s always had something going on.” Charlie had an affair with the housewife across the street; the husband retaliated by breaking eggs on Charlie’s care during the night.
Jerry managed a fence building and moving and storage business in Sumter and repaired motorcycles on the side. He was an ace motorcycle mechanic. Jerry separated from his wife and 3 daughters in Sumter at about age 30 and moved to New York City, where he became the manager of a large motorcycle repair shop in mid-town Manhattan. He moved back to SC when he was about 60. He is still living as of this writing. Jerry was always cocky and had a quick laugh, so he was a pleasure to have visit the house. Clarence always had a project going, from fixing car engines to putting on a new roof after Hurricane Hugo, and Jerry and was a helpful.
Roger Ardis was born during a visit that Tabitha made to Cortland, NY. Roger grew up in the Cortland area and stayed in central NY. Following a major motorcycle accident in 1961, Roger worked construction the rest of his life and played guitar on the side. It was a sad note on life that he was separated from his siblings for most of his life. He heard a lot about Pinewood and the family there and longed to be there with them. Occasionally, he made it. Roger died at age 65 in a motorcycle accident after getting a new Harley.
As to their children, these I know of. Inez-2 Thelma-1 Clarence-5 Elise-0 Ray-3 Charlie-2 Jerry-3 Roger-2
Allan is the oldest of all cousins, hence for this history, his connection starts the earliest and goes back the farthest.
The family farm in Pinewood was lost during the depression. Great Uncle Bob was the last to try to run it. The money he did get for it went to booze
Today, this branch of the Ardis family lives primarily in Sumter and West Columbia, South Carolina; in Tampa (Allan) and Miami (Barry), Florida; in Glenn Burnie, MD, and in central New York state. An Ardis-Weeks-Geddings family reunion is still held in Sumter each year, and all are welcome to come on down and join in. A source of contact in Sumter County is my sister, Cheryl Morse. She’s active on Facebook.
The complete family tree back to 1750, as prepared by Larry Ardis, is available from myself, Allan C Ardis. Part II of this history will focus on Clarence Ardis..
In a 2015, John W. Osteen published a history of Pinewood. The Ardis’ family was mentioned, but not much. Osteen’s ancestor may have been at the same Union POW camp on Ship Island, LA, during the Civil War. John Ardis has a release from POW camp at the National Archives.
In the 1970’s, Pinewood became the site of a premier Hazardous Waste landfill. Pinewood has a large deposit of underground “Fuller’s earth”. Initially, it was mined to produce kitty litter. Later, the open pit mine was filled back in with the most hazardous waste allowed east of the Mississippi. Somebody became rich, but it was not the Ardis’. Several Ardis on the McLeod side of the family worked there. Allan, as a young engineer at a chemical company up north, was called by hazardous waste collection company in Boston and told that they had a great place to dump chemical waste in the middle of no place, and that was Pinewood. Allan replied that the caller was speaking to the only plant engineer in Massachusetts from Pinewood, and, no more waste was welcome there
The Ardis’ were practical, good humored, well mannered, generous, and industrious.. They always had some activity going on, ranging from building a still, to overhauling cars and motorcycles, to building an annex on the house. On the creative side, Kaiser tinkered with inventing a perpetual motion machine. They didn’t hesitate to open their houses or freezers to folks around them that needed a hand or a handout. They were tolerant during the long civil rights era in the south. Although they used the N-word, like all white southerners did, they personally treated blacks with respect and often kindness. Both Clarence and Jerry hired Blacks in to their businesses and treated them well.
Although they were intelligent, as evidenced by their mechanical aptitude and inventiveness, most of the men never got through school. Clarence got to the 6th grade at the Bethel School on Rt. 7. Kaiser to the 3rd grade. Getting an education was a struggle during the Depression, especially in Pinewood. Economic circumstances and rural isolation were major obstacles.. Kaiser made it to the 3rd grade, and Clarence to the 6th. Nevertheless, they were both avid readers the rest of their lives and appreciated the value of an education..
Alcoholism was a problem for many of the Ardis men in Randall’s generation. They were hard liquor alcoholics, including great uncles Kaiser, Fred, Bob, Jim, and others. In the next generation, Clarence and his cousin Laverne were severe alcoholics. During the Depression, they all made moonshine to create a cash income down on the farm. That skill and tradition went on until the late 1960’s. Alcohol was a curse that caused them and their families great suffering across multiple generations.
Regarding religion, all the Ardis’s believe in God, but not necessarily in church. Ardis men never went to a church. They would, however, “get religion” when there was a crisis like a serious injury to a child; then they prayed. Some Ardis women went to church regularly and were quite pious. All were Protestants, usually Baptist or Nazarene, not that the sect made much difference to anyone. Clarence would later joke that when in church, thump the offering tray as it passed by to make it sound like you put something in. In the next generation after that, (Allan’s generation) the kids were sent to church sporadically, usually hauled in by spinster aunts.. Perhaps as a result of the Ardis lack of respect for authority, organized religion never caught on with the men in the family..
The Ardis’ were not involved in politics. However, they supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. and programs that helped workers and farmers. That support continued up through the Kennedy-Johnson era.
PART II of the Ardis History will focus on the life of Clarence Ardis and family after 1950.
Written by Allan Ardis, February 2017, updated 8/7/19
COMMENTARY
FOOT NOTES:
National Archive genealogy and war records were documented by Larry Ardis. Allan and several others have copies. of Glenn Bernie, MD. The “Release from POW” camp was used to get the scholarships for Cheryl’s sons..
-Uncle Jim Ardis’s house outside Cortland was lonely and barren and made for a harsh upbringing for Roger W. Ardis as well as for Thelma who spent her teenage years there.
-As in movie NO TIME FOR SARGEANTS , Clarence was a big friendly out-spoken farm boy much like the character played by Andy Griffith.
-Movie Gone With the Wind was the only movie that Kaiser Ardis ever saw at the theater.
Additional Information:
- Larry Ardis’s National Archive Report on the Family. About 40 pages.
-Allan Ardis’ Eulogies to Steve Ardis and to Roger J Ardis
-Eulogy to a Hammer Man on Facebook
-Ardis history prepared by Barbara Ardis Coker (Sumter)
-Larry Ardis’ genealogy
cc