ABSTRACT
In 1876, when Nathaniel Gist Gee was born, “up country” and “low country” referred to more than the piedmont area and the outer coastal plain. A South Carolinian who spoke of up country and low country made social, cultural, and economic distinctions. By chance inversion of terminology, high culture was found in the low country. Low-country Charleston was the preserve of South Carolina’s gentility. Up-country Union, about sixty miles northwest of Columbia, the state capital, could not be compared with Charleston, the state’s cultural center. Union was only a small city, the seat and commercial focus of the farming county of the same name. 1 The town’s name, like the “Union” in Peking Union Medical College, indicated the common purpose of several Protestant denominations—in the case of Union, a log cabin they shared as a house of worship. Methodists were active in Union district starting in 1791, and in 1872 they built the pretty stone sanctuary of Grace Church on South Street in Union. 2 Reuben Gee and Gertrude Gist, married the following year, were among the church’s leading members. They were up-country people with low-country origins.
