Pickens County Journalism Since 1999
Honoring the life of local historian, author, and teacher Anne Sheriff
By Karen Brewer, Publisher & Editor, The Pickens County Chronicle
On May 1, 2018, the day of the Cherokee Path historical marker dedication in Six Mile, Anne Sheriff is pictured with Mary Louise Worthy (Chief of the Lower Eastern Cherokee Nation of South Carolina) and Anne's fellow board members of the Pickens County Historical Society, Ken Nabors, Wayne Kelley, Nancy Pace, Ron Masters, Brenda Meyer, Mildred Brewer, Linda Starin, Jane Chastain, and Dennis Chastain (who researched the Cherokee Path and was the keynote speaker for the event). (Photo by Karen Brewer)
The town of Central and the county of Pickens lost a leader and pillar of the community with the passing of local historian and author and friend Anne Sheriff on September 23, 2025, after a brief battle with cancer.
At the time of her passing, Anne was serving as Central Vice President and Chief Genealogist for the Pickens County Historical Society, was the Curator of the Faith Clayton Family Research Center (which she founded, in the Claude Rickman Library at Southern Wesleyan University), was the Curator of the Central History Museum and Gardens (Central Heritage Society), was a member of the Andrew Pickens Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), was a member of (and past Vice President and past state representative for) the Old Pendleton District Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society, and was a member of the Pickens County 250 Committee. She also assisted with Wreaths Across America at Mount Zion Cemetery in Central. She helped preserve the town of Central’s historic depot, which was dedicated almost two years ago.
In the past, she was involved with the Birchwood Center for Art and Folklife, helped organize the Reunion of Upcountry Families (100-Year Reunion of the Old Pendleton District, held at Southern Wesleyan University), served on a committee for the book Pickens County Heritage (published in 1995), co-wrote with Julia Woodson the book Liberty, South Carolina 1876-1976 One Hundred Years, was involved with the cemetery survey books for Pickens, Oconee, and Anderson Counties, and, as a teacher, published books about local history, with her students as authors. In 2018, as part of Pickens County’s sesquicentennial celebration, Anne, as a Board member for the Pickens County Historical Society, helped document the contents of the 1968 centennial time capsule, which was unearthed by Pickens County.
Anne Sheriff is pictured manning a booth at the April, 2018 Pickens Azalea Festival on behalf of the Pickens County Historical Society, with a cake made by Brenda Meyer, celebrating Pickens County's 150th birthday in 2018. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Anne Sheriff, representing the Pickens County Historical Society at the May, 2018 Issaqueena Festival on Main Street in Six Mile, is pictured with then Six Mile Mayor Roy Stoddard. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Anne Sheriff mans a table for the Pickens County Historical Society at the Blue Ribbon Birthday Bash, a Pickens County sesquicentennial event held at the J.B. 'Red' Owens Recreation Complex in Easley on October 6, 2018. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
She was born in West Virginia and grew up in West Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, and Ohio, before coming to Central Wesleyan College (now Southern Wesleyan University), where she graduated in 1963. (She earned her master’s degree at the University of Georgia.) On August 31, 1969, she married Brigadier General Jimmy Don Sheriff (who passed away on June 30, 2011). For more than half a century, she made her husband’s native Central her own hometown, which she loved and whose history she researched and helped preserve. The Sheriff National Guard Memorial Flag Plaza was dedicated at Southern Wesleyan University in 2014 and named for Anne and her husband, both alums of the school.
At Anne’s graveside funeral service at Mount Zion Cemetery in Central on Saturday, September 27, Rev. Joy Bryant called her a lifelong learner and teacher who “left a legacy of generosity” and who “became a vault of information” who loved libraries, loved to travel, and loved the stories of museums and of cemeteries. Bryant said that Anne studied history, celebrated history, and made history. She added that Anne’s legacy is now with the rest of us, as it is now our responsibility, she said, to visit museums, to be on boards and committees, and to make a difference.
Wayne Kelley, Senior Vice President of The Pickens County Historical Society and a longtime friend of Anne’s, spoke at her funeral service. He had first met her, he said, at that same cemetery while visiting his uncle’s grave on the hillside about 25 years ago, as Anne, with a clipboard in hand, was writing information about families buried in the cemetery. That was the beginning of a long friendship, in which they worked together on many projects for the Pickens County Historical Society, including the installation of state historical markers in Pickens County and also working toward the rebuilding of Fort Prince George, which, he said, he wished that she had lived to see begun.
Anne had spoken with The Pickens County Chronicle on March 4 of this year for a story about the rebuilding of Fort Prince George. “I’m just really excited about it,” she said at that time. “Apparently, it is going to happen that we’re going to get Fort Prince George.” She spoke of how Fort Prince George would become a field trip destination for students in the near future. “This will be a field trip of a certain grade level,” she said, “and that will tell the early history, and I think that’s just wonderful. Everybody will take their kids up there, and people will come in from out of state to see it. They’re going to be coming from everywhere.” The rebuilding of Fort Prince George, she noted, is “going to add a lot to Pickens County tourism and the history. All these people are going to learn the history of this. It thrills me that it’s finally going to happen. It has so much history to it – the Indian history, the Cherokees, and then the white people. So, it’s going to tell two stories. I think anybody that’s interested in history, they’re going to love it. They are going to love it when it happens…I guess that’s my favorite statement — It’s going to happen!” Anne once taught Pickens County Administrator Ken Roper about Fort Prince George when he was in the fifth grade and was bused from Liberty to attend the gifted and talented program at Forest Acres Elementary School in Easley. He remains excited about seeing Fort Prince George rebuilt and told The Chronicle back in March, “I remember, as a fifth grader, thinking, ‘We need to rebuild that fort.’” When this writer visited with Anne shortly before she passed, Anne again spoke with excitement about Fort Prince George. “We’re going to do it,” she exclaimed.
Sketch of Fort Prince George (Courtesy of The Pickens County Historical Society to The Pickens County Chronicle)
Wayne Kelley, with fond remembrance of his friend, told The Pickens County Chronicle: “Anne Sheriff served the Pickens County Historical Society as an officer of the board for many years. As Vice President for the Central Area, she promoted the town she loved best. There are some folks who are just irreplaceable, and Anne was certainly one of those. She was a teacher at heart and a leader of many of our projects. The one I remember most fondly was the Confederate Graves Survey in Pickens County that took eight years of research that she did, and then a team of us had to physically locate and mark every veteran and their wives’ graves in the entire county. It was grueling and unforgettable and very worthwhile. In the heat of summer and winter’s cold, she led the leaders of the various historic organizations through the formal cemeteries and then the remote fields and mountainous woods where single families or lone graves were located. We dubbed her the “Generalissimo”, and the name stuck. Sometime later, she asked me what that nickname actually meant. I told her general of generals, leader of leaders. And that’s who she was. I am thankful to have known Anne Sheriff and will miss her as a lost resource of knowledge and a very dear personal friend.”
Barbara Clark, who serves as the newsletter Editor for the Old Pendleton District Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society, spoke with The Pickens County Chronicle about working with Anne on the newsletter and about their friendship: “She mentored me for all the years that I did the newsletter, and she became a wonderful friend. I treasure her friendship, and I’m going to miss her very much.” Clark said that Anne had been the sixth grade history teacher for one of Clark’s children at Forest Acres Elementary School in Easley. “That was my first acquaintance with her, but it was really 20 years later, when I started doing the newsletter, that we became friends. She was such an enormous help to me with the newsletter, but, more important than that, she was such a mentor. She taught me so many different research skills, and I just treasure her so much and miss her.”
Pickens County Historical Society members on October 1, 2018, the day of the excavation of a 1968 centennial time capsule: Senior Vice President Wayne Kelley, Louise Hope, Joe Black, Billy Crawford, Kathy Black, Barry Crawford, Central Vice President/Chief Genealogist Anne Sheriff, Membership Director Jane Chastain, Blue Wall Vice President Dennis Chastain, Treasurer Linda Starin, and Chief Archivist Mildred Brewer. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Pickens County Historical Society Board members Anne Sheriff (Central Vice President/Chief Genealogist) and Mildred Brewer (Chief Archivist) are pictured on December 16, 2018, the day of Pickens' sesquicentennial Christmas parade and the day of the burial of the 2018 time capsule, which is to be opened in 2068. Both of them documented the contents of the 1968 centennial time capsule, which was excavated by Pickens County on October 1, 2018. Brewer is pictured wearing the dress her mother made and wore during the 1968 centennial celebration in Pickens. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Tom Cloer, the Town of Central’s Assistant Town Administrator, also spoke with The Pickens County Chronicle about his friendship with Anne and the projects they worked together on for the town of Central. “I’ve been here at Central now going on my 34th year, and I’ve had the pleasure, over all of those years, of working with Mrs. Anne. It started way back when I first got here, helping them and learning about the Central Heritage Museum. She was always giving us information. I was put in charge of trying to create a town seal, and we used Mrs. Anne to help us with that, telling us some important items. The very first seal we did was the town seal of the old high school. That’s the one that you see in the courtroom. Later on, they did a branding program, and they wanted to focus it on the train, so our second logo was designed by the railroad club for the historical significance of the Green Crescent train.
“Also, she put the historical signs throughout the town. She and I worked together. She would do all of the history, and I would do all of the installing.
“There were so many aspects of the town she was involved in. She was grand marshal and volunteer of the year. She helped with so much. I know the folks at the railroad museum tapped into her for all the history stuff they’ve got. She was known for keeping the history of the town. She and former Chief John Head, who passed away, were the two that I would go to for anything. He was the fire chief that had been here for 50 or 60 years. He and Anne Sheriff had all the information you could ever want about the town. As a matter of fact, Anne Sheriff went to Southern Wesleyan University, and I think she was a student there when the students were killed in the big fire, and John Head was with the fire department even then.
“She was always coming to my office. As a matter of fact, the last time she was up here, she was giving me a picture she had found of the old mill. Somehow, she got hold of it. It was taken right after World War II, when somebody was coming back, from one of the war planes that had a camera on it, and they took the picture of Central. She managed to get hold of it. It’s actually setting over here on my desk. It’s going to be going up someplace special.”
An important project, he said, was the restoration of the town’s historic depot, for which he credited her. The depot had been purchased by the town in the 1970’s, he said, and it was moved to its current location, where it became an office for the public works department. The depot began rotting and falling in, he said. “She was directly responsible for saving the historic depot,” he said. “She came to us, because it was at a point that thing was falling apart, and we thought we were going to have to bulldoze it, because we didn’t have the money. They told us it was going to take a quarter to half a million dollars to fix. So, she actually started by making several large donations, and we were able to acquire some grant funds to match the donations she gave. And we went through a private individual she wanted to use, and she and I worked together. I was in charge of handling all of the construction, working with our contractor, which was Kelley Builders. They did a fantastic job restoring it. It took almost two years. Covid hit, and that made it a struggle, because she wanted the period lights and everything in there just like they would have had, and, of course, you couldn’t hardly get anything during Covid, so, that delayed us a little bit. We had the big dedication and ribbon cutting on Tuesday, December 5, 2023. She personally is responsible for saving the historic depot. And, now, it’s an event venue that is used by everybody. She wanted to see it done. We’re just thankful that she got to see it done. She wanted something that all the folks could enjoy. She loved that old depot. We’ve also got a little museum inside the depot. She is responsible for all the information in there. For special occasions, we open it. It’s got the original desk that was in there. She secured it. When the old depot got moved, the desk went over to one of the museum houses somewhere else, and she managed to track it down and get it back. And, of course, she’s got pictures and books and everything of Central.
“She meant so much to this town,” Cloer said. “We lost a treasure when we lost Mrs. Anne. If it wasn’t for her, I’m afraid what was known of Central would have been long forgotten.”
Anne Sheriff cuts the ribbon as the Central depot is dedicated on December 5, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Tom Cloer to The Pickens County Chronicle)
The Town of Central's Assistant Town Administrator Tom Cloer with Anne Sheriff inside the historic depot on the day of the depot's dedication, December 5, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Tom Cloer to The Pickens County Chronicle)
Anne Sheriff standing on the porch of Central's historic depot. (Photo courtesy of Tom Cloer to The Pickens County Chronicle)
Central's historic depot (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Local historian, naturalist, writer, and the Pickens County Historical Society’s Blue Wall Vice President Dennis Chastain also spoke with The Pickens County Chronicle about Anne Sheriff: “Anne Sheriff has instilled a love of history in more people than I could even count,” he said, adding that she had once taught Pickens County Administrator Ken Roper. “His love of history and specifically Fort Prince George still persists today. I know of dozens of people, literally, that she has helped trace their family genealogy. It’s really just remarkable how one person could accomplish all that in one lifetime.”
Referring to the Faith Clayton Family Research Center in the Claude Rickman Library on the campus of Southern Wesleyan University in Central, which Anne founded and served as Curator for many years, he said, “People don’t understand what a tremendous resource that is, not just for genealogy but for history, too. I don’t know how many times I’ve been over there. Every time I go to the Faith Clayton Library to research a subject, I come back with something that I didn’t even know existed. It’s obviously a tremendous resource. I wish more people knew about it, and I appreciate Anne’s work on that for all these years. People talk about dedication. That was total dedication. She has put in untold hours over there. I know she and your mother worked over there to get everything organized. People bring in their family documents and everything. Well, they don’t do anybody any good unless they’ve been filed and categorized, where you can find them by subject matter. That’s the kind of unseen work that she and others have done for all these years to put that resource together.”
Speaking of Anne’s work with the Pickens County Historical Society, Chastain said, “It seems just about every meeting that Anne would show up with a handful of books or some documents or a box full of photographs or something that most of us had never seen or didn’t know existed, and she was asking for help from anybody who knew anything about all these old photographs. There are boxes and boxes of photographs in people’s closets and in different places, but they don’t do anybody any good if you don’t know who the people are or what the scene is being portrayed. So, Anne has spent a ton of time. She reminds me of Jerry Alexander. Jerry did the same thing. He spent a ton of time going around and finding these old documents, old photographs, and things like that. And with their vast network of folks, they would eventually find out what it is. So, they’re worth so much more after all that work.
“I remember just recently, two or three meetings ago, she brought me an armload of books. What they’re called is the Indian books. They’re the actual transcript of the Colonial government in South Carolina starting in the 1600’s. I think she brought me five volumes of it and wanted me to go through them and find any reference to Fort Prince George, which I did. It took me a couple of weeks, but I did. I made page notations, and, in some cases, transcribed, because the books were so old that I didn’t want to try to scan them on my scanner or photocopy them. I felt like, if I bent the cover back, the whole thing would fall apart. So, I just went through and made page notations. I think it’s about 12 legal pages worth of references to either James Beamer, the Indian trader, or Fort Prince George that are in those old Indian books. I had no idea she had that collection, or I probably would have already been over there, to go through them over there.”
Chastain also referred to the book Cherokee Villages in South Carolina by Anne and her students from Forest Acres Elementary School. “I use that book about once a week. I often see that book referenced in scholarly works of the Lower Towns of the Cherokee. It’s my go-to source for references to virtually any of the Lower Towns, Indian trader James Beamer, and Fort Prince George.”
Regarding the rebuilding of Fort Prince George, Chastain noted that he had worked on a committee many years ago with Anne and journalist Dot Jackson and others. “We all met over at Jay and Dot Pence’s and put together this plan to rebuild Fort Prince George,” he said. After working on the plan for several years, without it coming to fruition, “I think we had all basically given up hope,” he said. Now, there is hopeful optimism that the dream of rebuilding Fort Prince George may become reality.
The Central History Museum, where Anne Sheriff served as Curator (Photo by Karen Brewer)
The Sheriff National Guard Memorial Flag Plaza at Southern Wesleyan University (Photo by Karen Brewer)
The Claude Rickman Library, which houses the Faith Clayton Family Research Center (Clayton Room), on the campus of Southern Wesleyan University (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Pat Collins, who owns Collins Ole Towne, built by her late husband, Roy Collins, spoke to The Pickens County Chronicle about their longtime friend, Anne Sheriff, who loved to help decorate Ole Towne at Christmas time and to teach elementary school students visiting Ole Towne. “If we had a class (visiting), she would come talk about the Cherokee Indians,” said Collins. “They didn’t know anything about stuff like that. I didn’t, either, so I was always learning from her. When kids would have a field trip out here, she would come in the chapel and give them a lesson on the Cherokee Indians.” Anne also helped demonstrate to elementary school students when molasses was being made at Ole Towne by Roy Collins and Pat’s brother, Bob Shirley.
“She was just involved with everything,” Pat Collins said of Anne. “When I joined the Museum group, with Beverly (Cureton) and everyone, I was sort of ‘green’, and they taught me a lot. I will never have the wealth of information that they had, even though I’ve lived here all of my married life. She was a wealth of information, and she was always looking for additional information. She was a wealth of information on Central and history and genealogy, and, if she didn’t know it, she would find out and tell you about it.”
Collins spoke of Anne’s founding and collecting information for the Faith Clayton Room at SWU, Anne’s giving of funds to the town to renovate the depot, her desire for Fort Prince George to be rebuilt, Anne’s classes when she was a teacher, Anne’s having been involved with Ann Warmuth and the town of Central for Wreaths Across America, Anne’s discussions with Carl Garrison, who donated the Pickens Chapel cemetery to Southern Wesleyan University in 2018, and Anne being Curator of the Central History Museum, where she would set up displays. “She was involved with everything,” Collins said. “We are going to miss her and Beverly Cureton for the history of Central. They were great to work together for the betterment of Central. They really were. And we won’t have a team like that again, I don’t think.”
Collins spoke of traveling with Anne on trips. “I loved her,” she said. “She was special, and we had so much in common. Roy loved her, too. He would do whatever Anne said she needed. She was an outstanding friend. She and I were close friends. I am going to miss her like a sister. She was a wonderful lady, a spectacular person, a special friend. We loved her, and we’ll continue to love her and fondly remember all that we worked together on, and that’s gone now. I’m trying to remember the good times. I’m going to miss her terribly.”
Anne is pictured more than 20 years ago at Collins Ole Towne in Central, as she demonstrates to Central Elementary School students how molasses is made. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
Anne Sheriff is pictured more than 20 years ago giving cane to Central Elementary School students during their visit to Collins Ole Towne, while Roy Collins and his brother-in-law, Bob Shirley, made molasses. (Photo by Karen Brewer)
As Wayne Kelley stated to everyone gathered at the graveside, “I will miss her forever, and I know you will, too.”
As Joy Bryant said at the graveside, “This is truly not a forever goodbye.”
