Imagine yourself back in 1923. Your child’s school just wrapped up another year and is readying to close for good – right after the school performs a short play for parents and family members. The date is May 27, 1923. You’ve gathered up the family and are sitting in the auditorium of your child’s school. The auditorium is located on the second floor of the old, wooden school house. The play is about to wrap up when an oil lamp falls from the wall, igniting the drapes on the school’s stage. Attempts to put out the fire are unsuccessful.
What happens next is a tragedy in South Carolina that should never be forgotten.
After unsuccessful attempts to put out the fire, the 300 people in attendance in the second floor auditorium panicked. And understandably so.
In a matter of moments, that single lantern and the fire it caused quickly swept upward to the ceiling — and then began to fill the entire room with smoke and flames.
Three hundred people. One narrow set of wooden stairs to get them all to safety. Some jumped out the second story windows. Others were trampled to death trying to get through the narrow opening for the room's only exit. Others suffocated. And still others perished on those stairs when they collapsed under the weight of everyone escaping the fire.
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It was a horribly tragic event that occurred just six miles from downtown Camden at the Cleveland School located on SC-28-91, Cleveland School Road.
And some of them simply weren't claimed. (Could it have been because the whole family perished in the fire and there was no one left to claim any of them?) We may never know.
The unclaimed souls were buried in a mass grave at Beulah United Methodist Church Cemetery in Camden.
It's been nearly a hundred years since this tragic event occurred.
Today, respects can be paid at the Cleveland School Memorial found on Cleveland School Road just outside Camden and across from the SCEP (South Carolina Equine Park).
Virtually no living person can remember the actual event of this fire in South Carolina – but that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten. Had you heard of this tragic fire before today? Interested in paying a visit to the memorial? It’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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