Day: November 19, 2021

The face is said to be the remnants of emancipated slave Henry Wells, who according to legend, was arrested in January 1878 for robbing of a store and burning of the Pickens County Courthouse on November 16, 1876. This is the county’s second courthouse as the first one was destroyed during the American Civil War (1861 – 1865). The arrest of Wells comes after the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), a period where the Reconstruction Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments) guaranteed freedom and civil rights to the freed slaves.