Caroline Vervoort

Marvin Eugene Abrams Sr was a prominent businessmen and community member of Newberry County South Carolina and served as Senator from Newberry County for 20 years. He was a member of an old and prominent family and was the third of four sons of Thomas Worth and Josephine Scott Abrams. In 1903 he graduated with first honors from Newberry College, and then immediately after graduation worked as a salesman at the general store of W. H. Raser in Whitmire and later became bookkeeper. In 1906 Marvin established himself in the mercantile business and owned a store which had been in the Shell and Abrams families for more than 150 years. He also served as the director of the Whitmire Bank, and the clerk of the Town of Whitmire. It was noted that he passed an ordinance creating a fire zone. While chairman of the Whitmire School board of trustees he was instrumental in having the high school building erected, and secured the funds necessary to build the Whitmire library. He was formerly a member of the Junior Order, United Mechanics and Improved Order of the Red Men, and member of the Masonic Roseboro Lodge #195. He was a member of the Whitmire Methodist Church and served as steward for 50 years and Sunday School superintendent. According to the Newberry Observer newspaper, on January 27th 1939 Marvin spoke on station "WIS" out of Columbia regarding a proposed probation and parole system, and then three months later on April 25th he was part of the delegation who formed the Newberry County sesquicentennial celebration. During this time, his son Marvin Jr. was attending Whitmire HIgh School and competed in District Debates at Clinton. Jr. later accompanied the girls club group on a trip to Washington DC. Also that year according to the same newspaper, on August 22nd 1939 Marvin and his wife went to Trinidad Colorado to attend a Confederate reunion, and after the reunion they continued their trip to a California Exposition.. Their daughter Mrs. Carl Gibson and son returned to Richburg after recovering from an appendectomy. He was married twice: His first wife Miss Fannie Mae Henderson who died in 1946, and his second wife Mrs. Dewey M. (Malone) Abrams. He had three daughters Mrs. K. D. Lorick, Mrs. J. Carl Gibson, and Miss Josephine abrams, and three sons TT. W. and J. H. Abrams and M. E. Abrams Jr. In 2016 South Carolina made a resolution that the department of transportation name the bridge spanning the Enoree River along the US Highway 176 and South Carolina Highways 72 and 121 in Newberry and Union Counties the "Senator Marvin E. Abrams Bridge" in memory of the former South Carolina State Senator Marvin E. Abrams and to erect appropriate markers and/or signs at the bridge reflecting this designation. See Marvin Abrams: Obituary.