Biography
Archibald Rutledge – First Poet Laureate of South Carolina
Archibald Rutledge was born in McClellanville, S. C., October 23, 1883.
Archibald Rutledge (1883-1973) is remembered as one of America’s best-loved outdoor writers, he wrote more than 50 books including An American Hunter (1937), Old Plantation Days (1907) and Wild Life of the South (1935).
As a young man, he became nationally known for his popular stories on nature, field sports, dogs and the Southern ethos. He was honored as the first poet laureate of South Carolina in 1934. His gift lay in his ability to poetically describe his hunting and life experiences growing up on his family’s Hampton Plantation and the annual treks back home to South Carolina in the summer and on holidays.
Rutledge’s rich prose brings the reader right in to the hunt. In his story, “Quail of the Kalmias,” he writes: “When Bell drew her point in the brown stubble, I thought it would be sport to walk right in, compelling myself to take the birds at a quartering shot as they passed me to escape into their mountain haunts. What they did always seemed to me about as adroit a maneuver as this crafty little aristocrat ever executes. They arose in two small groups, one led by the old cock and the other by the old hen. There was a difference in intelligence, though not in the size of the birds. Separated by only a few yards, the two groups came hurtling by on either side of me, in strong, low level flight.”
As a boy, he hunted birds and deer on the plantation with his father and brothers. He later went away to school in Charleston and to college, in New York, graduating with honors in 1904 from Union College. He spent his career teaching English at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, where he married and raised three sons. Like his father before him, he took them hunting back home in South Carolina and in the woods of the Appalachian hills.
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South Carolina Hall Of Fame
Dedicated on February 11, 1973, by Governor John C. West, was created to recognize and honor those contemporary and past citizens who have made outstanding contributions to South Carolina’s heritage and progress.
It is a nonprofit corporation conducted under a state charter. The South Carolina Hall of Fame is located in the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. On Sept. 21, 2001, Governor Jim Hodges signed into law a bill designating the South Carolina Hall of Fame, the official South Carolina Hall of Fame. (843) 918-1225