York and Western York County: the Story of a Southern Eden

Publisher Marketing: Like many Southern states, South Carolina is a vivid mosaic of urban centers and pastoral landscapes, a unique blend of New South advances and agrarian traditions. It is within the Palmetto State's countrysides that many of its leaders in education, industry, and politics emerged, marked by an enduring pride of home and its importance and relevance in the shaping of the state's history and future. York County is representative of the Carolina experience and its dual identity, with its "big city" opportunities along its eastern boundaries and its rustic, austere charm lingering in its western sections. This volume explores the county's bucolic setting from the centrally located county seat of York to its western border along the Broad River and traces the history of the county from an era dominated by early American Indian tribes, to the arrival of the first Scotch-Irish settlers, across three centuries of struggle and progress, to the present. York and Western York County: The Story of a Southern Eden brings to life, through word and image, the personalities and events that shaped York and its western rural paradise, including the small towns of Sharon, Hickory Grove, Smyrna, McConnells, and Bullock's Creek. Contributor Bio:  West, Jerry The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West was actually written by Andrew E. Svenson, a prolific yet somewhat anonymous, writer of books for children. Jerry West was the pen name assigned to Svenson when he started writing The Happy Hollisters for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a book packager well-known for its development of children's book series including Tom Swift, The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew. Many of these series were intended to have long publishing lives, and were written by multiple authors using the same pseudonym. The Happy Hollisters, however, were all written by Andrew Svenson, whose identity as Jerry West was kept secret until several years after his death in 1975. Andrew Svenson was born in Belleville, NJ, in 1910, and his interest in writing started early. He was editor of his high school newspaper and yearbook at Barringer High School in Newark, and then went on to study Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. After his graduation in 1932, he worked as a reporter and editor for the Newark Star Eagle and the Newark Evening News. He also taught creative writing courses at Rutgers University and Upsala College. Andrew Svenson was encouraged by his friend Howard Garis (author of Uncle Wiggily) to try his hand at juvenile fiction. He joined the Stratemeyer Syndicate as a writer in 1948, where he contributed to established series as Franklin W. Dixon (The Hardy Boys) and as Laura Lee Hope (The Bobbsey Twins). The first volume in his own original series, The Happy Hollisters, was published in 1953 by Doubleday & Company, and he was made a partner in the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1961. As he wrote and developed 33 titles in The Happy Hollisters, he was also creating additional series for children under other pen names: Bret King by Dan Scott and The Tollivers by Alan Stone, one of the first series written for and about African-American children. Under various pseudonyms, Andrew Svenson wrote more than 70 adventure and mystery novels for children, which were published in 17 languages and sold millions of copies.