The Edgefield County Players, an organization that began in 2004 to help promote a theater for the county, is alive and well again.

A meeting was held Thursday at the Edgefield County Courthouse to reactivate and revitalize the Players. The organization was put on hold in 2005 when efforts to obtain a grant for part of the funding failed. In the meantime, some members have continued to work along with members of the Edgefield Regional Arts to bring this project about.

The meeting Thursday night began with an historical skit in which Tanya Browder, director of the Tompkins Library, played the part of the beguiling Becky Cotton, Edgefield’s famous husband-killer. In the skit, Glenn Zimmerman of the Georgia Ghost Hunter’s Society led a séance to try to bring forth the spirit of Becky Cotton using the axe Cotton had used to kill her third husband, said in humor to be a hatchet from Broadus Turner’s estate.

When Cotton appeared, the lights flickered on and off in the Courthouse. Participants in the séance asked questions and received answers from Cotton.
The tale of Beck Cotton is told in Mason L. “Parson” Weems’ tract, “The Devil in Petticoats, or God’s Revenge Against Husband Killing.” Cotton, an Edgefield resident, is said to have murdered her three husbands and deposited each of their bodies in what is now Slade’s Lake. She killed her first spouse by running a mattress needle through his heart; the second she poisoned; and she split her third husband’s head with an axe. Put on trial in 1806, she “came off clear,” Weams said, “by using her tears and beauty.”

In fact, one juror became her fourth husband. Judgment eventually took the shape of one of her brothers who killed her on the Courthouse steps with a rock aimed at her head. He left town immediately and was never charged for the murder.

Tricia Glenn, an existing member of the Edgefield County Players, began the meeting by saying, “It is time to bring the Edgefield County Players back into existence. At one time, we had 120 members.”

Bettis Rainsford, also an existing member, commented, “We really do need to do this. Some people are already active in the ERA.”
Rainsford said a problem is that people want to see it happen right now, but many projects such as this take a long time. He referred to an article about the Museum of Black History which was 13 years in the making.

“I’m not an advocate of dragging things out,” he said. “But it does take time and patience. We have to find a grant source of one million dollars to get it rolling.”

Read the remainder of this story in this week's print edition of The Citizen News.