A Woman and Her Cow

Written By Alicia Holbrook

Photo by Kristy Graham

So the story goes, there is a woman and her cow. One version says that a woman named Mary was walking in what is now downtown Pomaria with her last cow. As she was walking near the railroad tracks, the cow got loose and was hit by the train. Everyone nearby said, “Oh Po Mary.” Like Little Mountain, Prosperity, and Whitmire, back in the day, the train meant life. The train brought goods and people to the little towns throughout South Carolina. Without the train in that time, people had to travel miles and miles via horseback to get items that could take days or weeks…

Another version of the story says that Mary had a cow and her cow got loose from its pasture. It was hit by the train in downtown Pomaria. Everybody said, “Po Mary.” It was her last cow and her husband had died in the war. And it stuck.

The details at the end of the story get embellished by whomever tells it, but, if you are from the areas of Pomaria, Little Mountain, and parts of Prosperity, you have heard this story in some form. Pomaria was first settled by immigrants of the Lutheran church. Its deep history has places such as The Hope School, the Folk-Holloway House, Hatton House, Pomaria (Summer-Huggins House), and St. John’s Lutheran Church, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

If you have a mailing address of Pomaria, you know that its downtown reach extends to close by Little Mountain and Prosperity, but its further corners touch Peak, Whitmire, and Maybinton. Its ball fields exceed the number of caution lights SCDOT ever considered for downtown. The classic field has seen years of intense church softball games and the new field named for the legendary baseball coach Mr. Bennie Luther Sease has developed Division I, II, and III softball and baseball players. There is a MLB player or two that played on those fields as well. It is an area that used to be filled with a little country store on every street corner through the area where, if your name was good, your credit was good.

It’s a pass through town most people never stop in these days, unless they are avoiding traffic on I-26 between the Peak exit and Newberry. Those passers-by miss something special. They don’t know what love each neighbor has for one another. As I prepared to write this, I asked my Facebook “friends” what does Pomaria mean to you? I got back comments like Love, Family, Memories, Community, Where everyone knows your name, and lastly… Everything!

Many of us that grew up here moved away to what we thought were bigger and better things. We went to college or jobs in “far off” places like Columbia, Charleston, or Greenville. Some of us even tried places like New York, Texas, and Puerto Rico. We wanted to live that “big city life” and some realized we wanted to come home. We didn’t like reaching out of our doors and touching our neighbors and not knowing who they were. If they were in Pomaria, they simply had to introduce themselves as “I am Insert father or mother’s name’s kid” and they knew exactly who you were.

Photo By Alison White

Pomaria is a place where an old school was repurposed instead of torn down, where the new elementary school is filled with teachers that know each child and their parents, and where students are treated by teachers as if they were their own child. The best perk… most of the teachers ask, who is your mom or dad? It is a town where the kids fear doing much wrong because it “takes a village” still in Pomaria.

It is filled with farms that grow corn, wheat, cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. It is filled with family values and hardwork. Yes, we may be a few extra minutes to Walmart or Food Lion and yes, Columbia for most of us is 45 minutes away, but we know our neighbors. We know that in times of need or times of plenty, there is someone willing to give tomatoes, corn, or squash they grew too much in their garden, brim they caught the limit of fishing from the bridge at “the Fields”, or give a fitting to fix the well to avoid a trip to town.

Needing closure, I read this to my mom and husband. My husband, a Yankee (I know… my daddy fussed at me enough but he liked him), did a Wikipedia search. He gave me all the supposed, more historically accurate details that I should include instead of a story about a cow. I told him, maybe our story was better and to add that to Wikipedia!