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Stephen Millet Park.
http://www.historicmillett.com/stephen_millett.htm
The Man For Whom Millett Is Named
From Lucius Sidney O’Berry Ellenton, SC: My life…its death, edited by Richard David Brooks and Tonya Algerine Browder. (Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, Community History Project, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1999).
Millett’s full name was Stephen Caldwell Millett and he was not just the superintendent of the railroad construction, but was the President of the Port Royal Railroad Company. The Port Royal Railroad was finished in 1873, but plans had been made to build it back in the 1830s. George P. Elliott of Beaufort, South Carolina formed a stock company for an Augusta to Port Royal Railroad, with Richard J. Davant serving as president of the company. In 1857, after countless public meetings in both Beaufort and Barnwell Districts, the Port Royal Railroad was incorporated by an Act of Legislature of South Carolina. However, all of the plans and dreams went up in ashes after the devastation of the Civil War. The company went bankrupt and President Davant resigned.
Nevertheless, by fall of 1868, the new company president, Stephen Caldwell Millett went looking for investors in the railroad. Finally, he convinced D.F. Appleton and R.E. Robbins "of that wealthy and highly respected firm of Robbins & Appleton of Boston and New York" to come to his assistance. However, Millett had another hurdle to cross before he could begin construction and that was to secure rights-of-way for the railroad. This was a difficult task since land had changed hands quite frequently during and after the war. Therefore, Millett spent a lot of time finding the new property owners and having deeds for rights-of-ways executed. It was probably during this time that he visited the Dunbar family. By May 1870 construction had begun on the railroad that would eventually extend 112 miles from Augusta, Georgia, to Port Royal, near Beaufort, South Carolina.
On Friday, February 28, 1873, Millett telegraphed to Beaufort from Augusta: "Friends in Beaufort, thank God with me. We came through in our own cars." On Friday, March 7, 1873, the last spike was driven and the first work train from Port Royal arrived in Augusta at 10:00 that night on March 11, 1873, The Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel praised Millett, stating that: "…his energy has never tired, his efforts have never intermitted, his hope has never faltered. To him, more than to all the others put together, we owe our present success."
One year later, Stephen Caldwell Millett died at the age of thirty-three.
On March 11,1874, a resolution was passed by the Beaufort Town Council regarding Millett:
"(H)e had accomplished what others had spent a lifetime in doing: he opened a new country to capital that is developing our resources, and establishing new enterprises and trades that are bringing the natural advantages of Port Royal to the notice of the world. This was the chief ambition of his life and he did it well."
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