A Lake Wylie man found two markers most people couldn’t. Now, to resurface them.

All this talk in recent months of bringing down monuments, and here George Meyer is trying to raise one up.

Meyer, who bought a place in Lake Wylie back in 1978 and retired to it in 2000, is about a month into an effort to bring a big hunk of history back into public view.

“I’m trying to get it raised to where it’s visible,” he said.

Just off the Big Allison Creek bridge, there are two historical markers. Many who drive by may not know it, with the smaller of the two behind and no taller than the northbound guardrail. The taller marker isn’t much higher.

Originally, the markers were a little ways off S.C. 274. Then York County voters approved a Pennies for Progress campaign in 1997. The more than $30 million project widened the highway to five lanes, from S.C. 49 to S.C. 161. The widening wrapped up in 2010.

The widening, and stormwater runoff since, put the monuments all but out of sight. Which Meyer finds odd, given the taller of the two is one of almost 50 state markers in York County.

“This is a state agency,” Meyer said. “(The department of transportation) is a state agency. I would have thought that when they widened the road, they would have handled it.”

From what he can tell, the smaller stone was placed by a nonprofit, service organization or similar group. On one side of the stone, Hill’s Iron Works gets a mention. Some of the “cannon used by the patriots of the Carolinas” during the Revolutionary War were made at the foundry — until the British burned it down in 1780. Until recently, little more was legible. Or even above ground.

“The thing sits on a millstone that I’ve since had my yard man go out there and partially dig out,” Meyer said.

The bottom half of the stone also notes the home of Col. William Hill, the “steadfast and uncompromising leader who kept the faith in the darkest hour of the struggle for freedom.”

Another side of the stone gives coordinates, a distance from the marker where Hill’s Iron Works stood. The original cornerstone, it notes, “was in a good state of preservation when submerged in 1925.”

That’s the year after a dam was rebuilt, expanding Lake Wylie to its current size.

Those coordinates are a main reason Meyer wouldn’t want to move the stone to a more visible place.

“I don’t want to move it because if we do, the directions will be wrong,” he said.

A third side notes the birthplace of Lt. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill. He served in the Confederate army. The stone notes he was a soldier, educator, author and “a worthy son of the land we love.” According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Hill was a college math teacher, textbook writer and military institute superintendent.

The larger state marker gives William Hill’s birth and death dates. He and business partner Isaac Hayne manufactured swivel guns, kitchen utensils, cannon, ammunition and various farm tools dating back to 1776. The opposite side of the sign, erected by the York County Historical Society in 1988, notes the iron works — the shorter sign has “Iron Works,” the taller one spells it “Ironworks” — being rebuilt in 1787-’88.

It has two furnaces, four gristmills, two sawmills and about 15,000 acres of land by 1795, according to the sign. A nail factory with three cutting machines was operating there by 1802. The sign states about “80 blacks” were employed as forgemen, blacksmiths, founders, miners and in other roles.

Meyer doesn’t have any family history tied to the site. He has an interest in local history, having worked on markers and research at Allison Creek Presbyterian Church. His church has a long history in the area, and Meyer went back-and-forth for a while with a historian on whether a sign should mark a “slave graveyard” or “African-American cemetery.”

At one point Meyer asked where he could buy the sign himself and put whatever the church wanted.

With the markers near the bridge, Meyer would like to see the Carolina Thread Trail run a route from Kings Mountain to Nanny’s Mountain, to the monuments and church nearby, then to Allison Creek Access Area. He has several groups he’s contacted, including one company he’s waiting to hear back from on how much it would cost to raise both markers.

Meyer sees the job as more logistical than political. He wants people to see them. One man mentioned on the stone served in the Confederate army, but the same stone marks Revolutionary War efforts.

Earlier this year the role of Confederate markers and monuments came under national scrutiny. A touchstone came with a rally in Charlottesville, Va. opposing the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a park. The aftermath of that rally, according to national media reports, left deaths and injuries after protestors and counter-protestors clashed.

Those events hit home with Meyer, who attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. His memories of time there are far removed from what he saw on television last summer, he said. Meyer recalls a time when he and classmates “wore coats and ties, and we had an honor code that worked.”

Violent protests weren’t something he would have imagined.

Meyer doesn’t imagine the local markers sparking any kind of protest. Especially since right now, they’re pretty hard just to find. Something he’d like to change by bringing history to the surface for all to see.

This story was originally published November 1, 2017 at 4:55 PM with the headline "A Lake Wylie man found two markers most people couldn’t. Now, to resurface them.."