S. Wolfe

Born in Prussia in the early 1800s, Saling Wolfe (1817-1893) established a dry goods store—S. Wolfe—in Winnsboro around 1841. Over the course of the next two decades, he amassed great wealth operating the shop, managing a substantial farm, and—according to the 1860 US census—enslaving twenty-eight men, women, and children. Of those twenty-eight individuals, 75% percent were in their teens or twenties at the time of the census. According to Saling’s grandson, the Civil “[W]ar ruined [Saling] as it did the entire social structure in which he moved. What little remained of his fortune after four years of war was destroyed by Sherman’s raiders. The house, the other buildings, and the cotton were put to the torch and the cattle driven off.”¹

In 1866, Fairfield County’s Tri-Weekly News announced that Saling sold his dry goods stock to his brother Jacob (b. c. 1826) and moved to Brooklyn, New York. Meanwhile, in 1868, Saling’s wife, Sarah (1827-1892), was listed as a salesperson in her brother-in-law’s store and declared that she would begin operating as sole-trader—or an independent female merchant—in Winnsboro in March.

Around the time that Jacob closed his business in the fall of 1869, Saling returned and briefly operated his own business once again. By July 1870, he turned his full attention to his farmland. In 1870, the US Census notes that Saling’s property was valued at over $12,000 and comprised 600 acres of improved land, 350 acres of woodland, 11 mules, and 3 cows. Primarily harvesting wheat and corn, Saling paid his farm workers a combined $200 in yearly wages and board.

According to Fairfield County Museum Director, Pelham Lyles, Saling’s store later became Landecker and then Propst’s. Lyles also notes that Tom Rosboro, who was formerly enslaved in Fairfield County, recalled in an interview with the Federal Writers’ Project that he met his wife, Mattie Nelson, as she left Saling’s.

¹ Bernard M. Baruch, “Boyhood Days in Camden, Turbulent Era Recalled,” State, January 26, 1958, 3.