By Denise Hendrix
Staff Writer
Web-posted June 21, 1996 at 4 p.m.

Barnwell County is known for its old churches, historic homes, and perhaps for its legend of the Healing Springs.

The county is also part of South Carolina's Thoroughbred Country; horse training and racing facilities abound throughout its 557 square miles.

But horses, old buildings and legends of healing waters take a back seat to Barnwell's history in Palmetto state government.

Near the end of the World War II era, the county sent a handful of dynamic politicians to the General Assembly whose influences spanned nearly half a century.

``Barnwell County is the land of (political) giants,'' said Tom Boulware, a Barnwell lawyer. ``Historically it has always produced a lot of judicial and governmental leaders. It has a history of being a leader in the state,'' he said.

Its most powerful grouping of political big-wigs was headed by the late Sen. Edgar A. Brown and the late House Speaker Solomon Blatt, both of whom hailed from Barnwell and gained statewide prominence.

``Their power was probably based on their intelligence, long years of service and the friendships they made at the time,'' said Mr. Boulware, who used to work with Mr. Brown.

Often called the ``Barnwell Ring,'' the group was frequently the subject of lively debates in and out of the halls of government.

Mr. Brown, an Aiken native who later moved to Barnwell, was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1920. He rose to the House speakership five years later and served as a South Carolina senator from 1929 to 1972.

From 1942 to 1972 - 30 of those 43 years - Sen. Brown was president pro tempore and chairman of the Senate finance committee.

Mr. Blatt, his counterpart, joined the House delegation in 1933. It took him a short while to become a formidable force in state politics. He was elected speaker pro tempore in 1935, and two years later to the speakership.

He was elected speaker for five consecutive two-year terms, and he did not run for the office for the 1947-1949 term. However, he was seated in the speaker's chair again in 1951 and was re-elected for the next 21 years.

Mr. Blatt served a total of 53 years in the state House, which won him recognition by the National Council of Governments as the country's longest serving legislator.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Blatt wielded extraordinary power in their lawmaking days. Many people believed they were the men to go to when it came to getting things done in Columbia.

John K. Cauthen, an newspaper reporter for the Columbia Record during some of the years of the Ring's political reign, wrote, ``So overwhelming is the strength of these two men, separately or together, that when they had a falling out in the early 1960 s, the bedrock foundation of good government in South Carolina quaked and crackled.''

While the Barnwell duo had the most noted dominance in the General Assembly, the Barnwell Ring was thought to extend to at least two more men - Winchester Smith of Williston and Emile Harley of Barnwell.

Mr. Smith joined the ranks in Columbia in 1930 when he was elected to the House. Nine years later he became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Harley was actually the move to the state's capital city. He served in the House from 1905 to 1908, later returning in 1927. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1934 and was re-elected in 1938.

Though all of the positions and connections among the men were not concurrent, they overlapped through most of a few decades in one form or another, reasonably justifying the public's thinking that the Ring existed.

From 1941 to 1942 all four men - Barnwell neighbors - were at the top of Columbia's lawmaking body. Mr. Harley was governor; Mr. Blatt, speaker of the House; Mr. Smith, chairman of the House Means and Ways Committee; and Mr. Brown, chairman of the Sen ate Finance Committee and on the verge of becoming presiding officer of that body.

``At that particular time in the '40s the president pro tempore, the speaker and the governor lived in the same neighborhood,'' Mr. Boulware said. ``The Ways and Means Committee chairman, which was the most powerful office in the House, he lived about 10 miles away.''

So you can judge for yourself how powerful the Barnwell men were, he said.