Meet George Alfred Trenholm

I grew up just off Trenholm Road in Columbia, SC, and never once thought of where the name came from. George Alfred Trenholm was a financier, banker, cotton broker, shipping magnate, the richest man in the South, and Secretary of the Confederate Treasury when Richmond fell and the Confederate gold evacuated. The “gentleman from Charleston” was also the person on whom Margaret Mitchell based the character of Rhett Butler. George Trenholm’s role in preserving Charleston is now part of Roger Newman’s new Civil War novel, “Will O’ the Wisp: Madness, War, and Recompense.”