How well do you know your home town’s history?

“Let’s see,” said David Sides, director of tourism and community development for the Town of Cheraw. Sides recently introduced his well-researched project to bring cell phone tours to historic Cheraw by testing the general knowledge of town council members.

Cell phone tours aren’t exactly a brand new idea; they’ve been available in larger cities and at major tourist attractions such as the Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C., for quite some time. But they are new for Cheraw and should be in place in time for the South Carolina Jazz Festival Oct. 14-16.

Phone tours allow visitors or local residents wishing to bone up on their history an opportunity to learn about specific historical cites by using their cell phones. The new system replaces audio information that used to require people to rent headphones, or at least press a button and stand by a speaker. According to Sides, current research shows that 82 percent of the world’s population is currently equipped with a cell phone.

The only physical evidence of the audio history of 25 historic sites in Cheraw will be a small green sign at each of the stops. At any time of the day or night, locals or tourists can call one central number, punch in the site number and hear a one or two minute professionally-recorded history of that location.

Sides asked these four questions: What standing order did Queen Victoria of England have shipped by boat directly from Cheraw? Where was the only public library for Chesterfield County located prior to 1961? Where was the Cheraw Police Department housed in the 1940s? What was the only building to survive the Front Street explosion of 1920?

Sides has worked in advertising and marketing for most of his professional career, but his bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina is in journalism. Sides’ thirst for knowledge and his excitement in sharing it is contagious when he speaks about this project.

“I really enjoyed doing the research and writing the scripts for this project,” said Sides. “I’ve come across countless tales, some of which are pretty funny, like the running preachers.”

Apparently, said Sides, at one time there were not enough churches in town to host each of the different Christian denominations such as Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist or Presbyterian. So each of the preachers would race — literally — running to the church on Sunday morning. The winner determined the orientation of the service for the day.

The answers to each of the four questions Sides asked council can be learned in the first stop, which will be The Lyceum on the Town Green. If you can’t wait until October for the answers, maybe a trip to Matheson Memorial Library would help. History this rich isn’t available on the web.

What? No answers?

Check out next week’s Chronicle and we’ll fill you in.

Check out the original article here!