The Poe Family Papers document the lives of H. T. (Harris Tinker, or “Hal”) Poe, Sr.; his son, Harry Tinker Poe, Jr.; and other members of the Poe and Sloan families. Much of the material relates to business and professional activities, particularly utilities in Greenville, SC and the Santee-Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project. The Papers span the period from 1785-2012, with the bulk of the items dating from 1891-1901 and 1932-1939. The material in the collection is arranged into three series: Harris T. Poe, Sr.; Harris T. Poe, Jr.; and Other Family and Genealogy. Material within each series is arranged alphabetically by folder title. Photographs (including a portfolio and scrapbook), a video of the 1999 Poe family reunion, and compact disks from Santee-Cooper containing digital images of the photographs from the Harry T. Poe, Jr. scrapbook are filed at the end of the collection.

The Harris T. Poe, Sr. Series primarily documents his activities with the Greenville Gas and Electric Light and Power Company, the Greenville Traction Company (a street railway), the Paris Mountain Water Company, and the South Carolina Railway Company. The power and water companies were major public utilities that facilitated the economic growth and development of the city of Greenville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Much of the correspondence—mostly incoming—in this part of the collection is with the with the American Pipe Manufacturing Company and the National Gas and Construction Company, both of Philadelphia, PA. The American Pipe Manufacturing Company owned the Paris Mountain Water Company until 1918, and because of its link to George M. Bunting & Associates of Philadelphia, helped organize the other Greenville utilities. Correspondents include H. Bayard Hodge, Secretary of the American Pipe Manufacturing Company and the National Gas and Construction Company, both of Philadelphia, PA and Joseph S. Keen, Jr., General Manager of the American Pipe Manufacturing Company. There is also a map and other material on Keowee Farm, a farm Poe owned in Pickens County, SC at the confluence of the Seneca and Keowee Rivers and Twelvemile Creek, just north of Clemson.

The Harry T. Poe, Jr. Series include personal papers and material relating to his career as an engineer. Among the personal papers are those relating to his time at Clemson and Poe’s efforts to obtain a civil engineering degree, as well as his involvement, as president of the Class of 1902, in the awarding of a United Daughters of the Confederacy Cross of Military Service to Medal of Honor recipient Daniel A. J. Sullivan and transfer of his medal to Clemson in 1941. There are also files relating to financial matters such as income taxes and stocks . Some of the contents of the series relate to his stints as a city engineer for Americus, GA and Greenville, SC as well as his work for the U.S. Housing Authority. There are photographs of the early construction of Cooper River Court, the African American section of the Meeting Street Manor and Cooper River Court Housing Project in Charleston, SC where Poe served as Project Engineer for the Public Works Administration (PWA). There is also information about his membership in professional organizations such as the American Society of Civil Engineers and the South Carolina Society of Engineers, and Poe’s work as a South Carolina State Engineer Examiner. There are also maps of Greenville relating to a proposed realignment of the city’s boundaries, as well as maps of Charleston, SC and maps of the state.

The bulk of the career-related material has to do with the Poe Construction Company and his involvement in the Santee-Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project for the PWA as Senior Engineer and later as Principal Engineer. Two large projects are documented in the collection for the Poe Construction Company: the paving and resurfacing of roads in the Charleston Navy Yard (later the Charleston Naval Shipyard) and landscaping for the Veterans Hospital in Columbia, SC, now a part of the William Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Affairs Medical Center complex.

In addition to clippings, contracts, job classifications, memoranda, organizational charts, and other material Poe gathered as part of his work with Santee-Cooper he also compiled two volumes of “general information”, a portfolio, and a scrapbook about the Project. The volumes consist of budgets, charts and diagrams, correspondence and memos (both incoming and outgoing), maps, orders, photographs, reports, and other material for the period 1933-1940—with most of the items dated between 1938 and 1939—relating to all aspects of the Project arranged alphabetically by topic. The portfolio contains photographs of African American homes in the Pinopolis Basin inundation area; the captions for the photographs give the name of the homeowner, the number of rooms in the dwelling, and the number of individuals living there. The scrapbook chronicles the construction of the Pinopolis and Santee dams and reservoirs from April to December 1939. Digital copies of the scrapbook photographs were made by Santee-Cooper and are available on four compact disks. A project cost memorandum report donated by Santee-Cooper can also be found here.

Correspondents in the series include F. A. Dale and L. F. Harza of the Harza Engineering Company; Kenneth Markwell, Project Engineer for the Santee-Cooper Project; F. R. Sweeny, Chief Engineer of the South Carolina Public Service Authority; Joel D. Justin of Philadelphia, Consulting Engineer to the Project; and Stephen Taber, professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of South Carolina and consultant to the Harza Engineering Company; and L. P. Slattery, a partner in Slattery & Henry, a construction firm.

Among the family members documented in the Other Family and Genealogy Series are Isadora Rebecca Poe, the daughter of Harris T. Poe, Sr.; N. C. (Nelson Carter) Poe, Sr., the brother of Harris T. Poe, Sr.; B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Sloan, Jr., Harris T. Poe, Sr.’s father-in-law; and the writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Isadora Poe’s papers are concerned with her investment in local textile mills such as Woodside Mills, other financial activities, and her interest in the history of the Sloan family. Material relating to N. C. Poe, Sr. document his involvement in the Greenville Gas and Electric Light and Power Company and the Calhoun Land Company, which existed to lay off and sell lots of Poe’s property at Fort Hill. Poe was the secretary-treasurer of the Calhoun Land Company and most of the correspondence is from the president and general manager Henry Aubrey Strode, former president of Clemson College.

The B. F. Sloan, Jr. material relates to his activities as the executor of the estate of John T. Lidell from 1901-1907 which includes land plats and other financial records. This material includes two letters from Jephtha Norton, who lived in the Pendleton District. The Edgar Allan Poe folder contains certified copies of letters to William Poe, the father of H. T. Poe, Sr. and N. C. Poe, Sr. and a copy of a letter to George W. Poe, as well as a reprint of a letter from William to Edgar Allan Poe in The Century Magazine. All the letters relate to family genealogy and financial support offered to Edgar Allan Poe by George and William. Genealogical material includes a Poe family genealogy and several volumes of the Poe Pages, a publication providing genealogical information about various branches of the family. There is also a video of the 1999 Poe Family reunion.

Significant topics documented in the collection include the Santee-Cooper Power and Navigation Project; the Poe family, including Edgar Allan Poe; the history of Greenville, SC; the economic development of South Carolina; the general history of South Carolina public utilities; and Black housing in the state. The papers include information relating to the history of specific utilities such as the Greenville Gas and Electric Light and Power Company, the Greenville Traction Company, and the Paris Mountain Water Company, as well as the South Carolina Railway Company. There is also material relating to Anderson, SC; the Sloan family; and Woodside Mills in the collection.