A really long time ago, there was an Asian elephant kept at a place called Hollywild, in South Carolina. Sadly, it is no longer alive. Were there any other South Carolina facilities known to have had Asian elephants?
In 1940, a farmer named Matthew Ferguson of Camden purchased a female Asian elephant named Alice from Clyde Beatty's Jungle Zoo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When he departed for training with the National Guard, he moved her to the Grant Park Zoo in Atlanta, Georgia, with the intention of her returning after his training (she did not).
In 1954, WUSN-TV Channel 2 owner Drayton Hastie purchased a young female Indian elephant from an importer as a mascot for his Charlestown, South Carolina, station. She was sold to an amusement park in the 1962.
Numerous circuses with Asian elephants made winterquarters in South Carolina like the Fogg, Quick and Mead menagerie in 1826, Dales Bros. in Union 1948-1949 and Bob Stevens' Bailey Bros. Circus in Newburry of the late 1940s and 1950s. There are likely more I didn't see in the quick search of my records.
In the mid-1960s, Allen Schaeffer imported a year-old female Asian elephant from Vietnam for his tourist attraction South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina. She was named for and a mascot for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
David Meeks' Donna was the longest Asian elephant resident of South Carolina, arriving in the mid-1970s until her passing in 2006 at the age of 48.
Regarding South Carolina's two major zoos in Greenville and Columbia, only the Greenville Zoo had an Asian elephant Joy (1971-1976), purchased from Boston's Franklin Park Zoo.
