Charleston Time Machine: Recent Episodes

Nic Butler, Ph.D.

Dr. Nic Butler, historian at the Charleston County Public Library, explores the less familiar corners of local history with stories that invite audiences to reflect on the enduring presence of the past in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

In early December 1775, anxiety about food security drove the king’s mariners in Rebellion Road to commit spiteful acts of plunder. Illegal seizures made on both land and sea fueled contempt for royal authority across South Carolina and inspired rebel leaders in Charleston to pursue an increasingly aggressive course, tightening a metaphorical noose around the loyalist sanctuary on Sullivan’s Island.

The return of the sloop-of-war Scorpion to South Carolina in late November 1775 heightened rebel fears of an attack on Charleston, but the warship’s real mission was far less threatening. Rather than heralding the imminent arrival of reinforcements from England, the Scorpion delivered news that enraged the colony’s royal governor, while simultaneously accelerating rebel momentum to drive the king’s ships from Rebellion Road.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Featuring Dr. Nic Butler of the Charleston Time Machine podcast, our latest Listening Booth series celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution with short stories exploring Charleston's Revolutionary War history.

Episode 323: Firefight in Hog Island Channel: South Carolina's Tipping Point to War with Britain by Nic Butler, Ph.D.

The last vestiges of royal authority in South Carolina, huddled within two small warships anchored in Charleston Harbor, survived the autumn of 1775 by cultivating a largely forgotten terrestrial connection. Surrounded by increasingly hostile rebel forces, British mariners established a foothold on Sullivan’s Island, both to supply their wants and to nurture an improvised sanctuary for political refugees.

Episode 321: Posturing in Charleston Harbor, September 1775: Prelude to a Firefight by Nic Butler, Ph.D.

One hundred and five years after the founding of modern South Carolina, the king’s royal governor dissolved the provincial government and fled the capital in mid-September 1775. Lord William Campbell’s famous nocturnal flight to the warship Tamar followed a sustained summer campaign of rebel intimidation, and triggered an autumnal stand-off between hostile American colonists and British officials desperate to preserve control of Charleston Harbor.

Episode 319: The Tamar in Rebellion Road: Asylum for Loyalists in 1775 by Nic Butler, Ph.D.

In the summer of 1775, amid smoldering tension between the British government rebellious colonists, officers of the Royal Navy in Charleston quietly negotiated with an enslaved mariner named Sampson Waldron. The warship Scorpion briefly required his piloting skills to exit the harbor, but the prospect of freedom via service to the king induced him to remain aboard and commence a new life as an enemy to colonial resistance.

Lord William Campbell, the new royal governor of the colony of South Carolina, stepped ashore at Charleston in late June 1775 to an uneasy reception. Family, friends, and old acquaintances greeted him politely, but a pervasive spirit of rebellion clouded their sentiments. Insulted by apathy for his authority and direct expressions of seditious opinions, Campbell nevertheless chose to stand his ground and jettison a convenient means of escape.

The first sparks of the American Revolution ignited during the spring of 1775, while Lord William Campbell prepared to sail from England to his post as Governor of South Carolina. His contacts and conversations during that turbulent year presaged an uncertain reception in Charleston. As civil war erupted in Massachusetts, the king’s ministers empowered Campbell to choose his future course—either trim the sails of unruly Carolina, or abandon the provincial ship of state.

The newlyweds, Lord and Lady William Campbell, settled in England after their 1763 marriage in Charleston, but the young couple actively nurtured familial connections to South Carolina over the course of the ensuing decade. Political, financial, and naval alliances made during the 1760s, followed by a tour of the colonies and a relaxing sojourn in Charleston in 1772, fortified their bonds to His Majesty’s most profitable colony in North America.

In the late winter of 1763, a young British officer sailed into Charleston Harbor aboard a warship assigned to protect the trade of a flourishing colony. Weeks later, Captain Lord William Campbell married a local heiress, Sarah Izard, and became invested in the slave-owning community. Their hasty union marked the beginning of a longer saga that culminated, twelve years later, with the unraveling of British authority in the province of South Carolina.

In the autumn of 1775, rebellious South Carolinians raised a distinctive new flag over a waterfront fort just seized from British hands. Their commanding officer later described the creation of the state’s enduring banner in his memoir, but did not recall the date of its unveiling. Across Charleston Harbor, however, two British naval officers witnessed the flag’s debut and recorded a surprising detail regarding its appearance.

The enclave known as Butcher Town flourished around Cannon’s millpond until 1850, when the expansion of Charleston’s city limits propelled the slaughtering business northward. The migration of butchers’ pens across the Neck then triggered a decades-long battle between private enterprise and public efforts to regulate the industry. Following a suite of political and technological developments in the early twentieth century, a modern municipal abattoir ultimately scrubbed the ancient blood-soaked industry from the local landscape.

The residents of early Charleston lived cheek-by-jowl with the animals they consumed, and routinely witnessed cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats trotting through urban streets to meet the butcher’s blade. Efforts to push this bloody business out of the city center commenced in the late 1690s and evolved over the following century, during which local officials gradually pushed the slaughtering trade northward to a tidewater suburb that became known as Butcher Town.

In the spring of 1807, nineteen years after the initial creation of Market Street, Charleston’s municipal government faced a looming deadline to complete the proposed but long-delayed public marketplace. To avoid a second forfeiture of the extensive property donated by generous neighbors, City Council launched a rapid series of construction projects and drafted a landmark ordinance, the text of which defined the culture of urban food sales for the ensuing century.

Amidst another influx of French-speaking refugees in the spring of 1804, Charleston’s municipal authorities negotiated with property owners to resuscitate the Market Street plan scuttled more than a decade earlier. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the project’s principal donor, dictated new terms to city officials and set a three-year deadline, triggering a flurry of site work and legal negotiations that eventually secured the permanent establishment of the present historic marketplace.

Following the conversion of the city’s new Beef Market into a dormitory in the autumn of 1793, the business of vending fresh provisions in Charleston meandered across the urban landscape for more than a decade. The older marketplaces in Tradd and Queen Streets absorbed most of the central-city commerce, while residents of peripheral neighborhoods briefly patronized forgotten smaller markets on South Bay and the east end of Calhoun Street.

The legal foundation of Market Street, created in 1788, dissolved in 1793 when the City of Charleston scrambled to address a refugee crisis that shocked the community. Few in the Palmetto City today recall how a revolutionary struggle for civil rights in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola sparked a bloody insurrection that forced thousands of French-speaking migrants to seek asylum here and in other port cities of the United States.

Market Street and its venerable public buildings exemplify the spirit of preservation and resilience in modern Charleston, but forgotten details of the site’s creation in the late eighteenth century shroud a troubled genesis. The city’s broadest thoroughfare was mostly underwater during its early years, and the site’s first edifice sheltered butchers only briefly before a distant political crisis unraveled its legal foundation.

In the spring of 1751, Governor James Glen described the Cooper River as “a kind of floating market,” hosting “numbers of canoes boats and pettyaguas that ply incessantly, bringing down the country produce to town.” In today’s Time Machine, let’s follow those watercraft to a series of market sites along the Charleston waterfront and explore the daily routine of vending fresh victuals during the community’s first century.

Modern travelers across the city and county of Charleston roll across a continuous ribbon of asphalt that facilitates an expanding cycle of population growth and cultural diversity. The roots of this blacktop conveyor belt extend back more than century, when a series of obscure political changes unleashed an unprecedented burst of infrastructure development that literally paved the road to Charleston’s present economic prosperity.

During the twilight years of the nineteenth century, radical changes to local thoroughfares helped the City of Charleston evolve from a declining seaport into a tidy modern metropolis. Uniform blocks of durable granite displaced most of the city’s lumpy cobblestone streets during the 1880s, after which the municipal government achieved mixed results with trials of several curious paving compounds.

Amidst the financial doldrums that followed the American Civil War, Charlestonians struggled to reconstruct their politics, rebuild their economy, and repair a neglected streetscape. Budget constraints compelled officials of the late 1860s and 1870s to perpetuate old-fashioned paving habits and to recycle outdated materials, but a few novel additions to the public right-of-way cheered the spirits of local drivers, pedestrians, and velocipedestrians.

Charleston’s cobblestone streets fascinate residents and visitors alike, inspiring visions of pirates and horse-drawn carriages rattling through ye olde colonial capital. Imported from Europe as ship ballast since the 1670s, these roundish stones provided the city’s earliest street covering, but the campaign to pave local thoroughfares with cobbles didn’t commence until the early 1800s. To better understand the traveling conditions endured by early Charlestonians, let’s take a stroll through paving history from colonial times to the American Civil War.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a towering figure in the history of the United States, occupying the vanguard of the nation’s struggle for African-American civil rights during the nineteenth century. Near the end of his celebrated career, Douglass visited Charleston in the spring of 1888 as part of a lecture tour across several Southern states. His brief tenure in the Palmetto City inspired members of the local Black community, while their frank conversations challenged Douglass’ view of the state of American racial politics.

Orange trees and their delicious fruit are not native to North America, but they form a curious and poorly-remembered chapter in South Carolina’s early history. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, British settlers planted thousands of orange trees in the Charleston area to capitalize on the fruit’s high commercial value. Although cold temperatures ended dreams of an orange bonanza before the American Revolution, vestiges of Charleston’s colonial citrus experiment survive on the modern landscape.

Can you imagine navigating the streets and roads of Charleston County between dusk and dawn without the aid of street lamps? The earliest inhabitants of this area relied on moonlight to guide their steps at night, but a campaign to provide nocturnal illumination commenced in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The number of street lamps fueled by whale oil, then manufactured gas, then electricity gradually increased over the decades, establishing the comforting but unnatural glow that brightens the night sky over modern Charleston.

Thanksgiving, an American holiday rooted in harvest celebrations, acknowledges the bounty of food so many of us take for granted. This tradition in South Carolina recalls the meals shared by English adventurers who landed at Albemarle Point in 1670. They arrived with modest supplies of perishable provisions and planned to sow fresh crops immediately, but a series of misfortunes quickly eroded their food security. The survival of the infant colony depended on contributions from hospitable Native Americans who sustained the hungry immigrants during a season of need.

The place-name “Charleston Common” applies to a large swath of land reserved for public use since 1735. Conscious that the provincial capital lacked a traditional English common, South Carolina’s colonial government designated approximately eighty-five acres abutting the Ashley River for the perpetual use of all inhabitants. Municipal leaders violated that trust through a series of questionable sales, however, leaving just fifteen acres of the forgotten common at three sites now identified as Colonial Lake, Moultrie Playground, and Horse Lot Park.

The trial of Hispanic carpenter Joseph Lortia, accused of confederating with pirates aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora, unfolded through a series of episodes within South Carolina’s executive Council Chamber in July 1734. Conflicting testimony from the survivors recounted Lortia’s odd behavior at sea and challenged Anglo-American judges to determine the measure of his guilt. After settling the carpenter’s fate in court, Governor Robert Johnson restored the vessel’s remaining treasure to the widowed Doña Petrona de Castro, who sailed from Charleston with her newborn child.

The young Cuban widow, Doña Petrona de Castro, suffered in the shadows during the first half of this story, but moved to center stage after the bloodied vessel Nuestra Señora docked in Charleston. When her disheveled treasure came ashore in late June 1734, the pregnant lady’s plight attracted the personal attention of South Carolina’s respected royal governor. Under his personal supervision, members of the provincial government secured the señora’s private property and initiated steps designed to render solace to their distressed Hispanic guest.

The terrified survivors of a murderous mutiny aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora sailed from the Bahamas under the command of a hired English pilot in mid-June 1734. They sought to return to Havana with no questions asked, but the crew’s curious behavior alerted the new captain to mortal danger ahead. A secret pact forged in desperation spawned a violent counter-mutiny that spilled more blood and further depleted the crew, forcing the weakened schooner to make an emergency detour to the British port of Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina.

An affluent Cuban merchant and his young pregnant wife set sail from Havana in May 1734 on a peaceful voyage to Hispaniola aboard their private schooner, but a piratical mutiny at sea claimed many lives and set the vessel adrift. Aided by a passing Bahamian mariner, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion came to Charleston in distress and gained protection from local authorities. Interviews with the survivors sparked a formal trial that imposed British law on foreign visitors and delivered resolution to a grieving Hispanic widow and her newborn daughter.

Line Street isn’t the most glamorous thoroughfare in the City of Charleston, but it recalls a significant episode in the community’s history. During the darkest days of the War of 1812 with Britain, thousands of men and women—both enslaved and free—rushed to construct a zigzag line of fortifications across the peninsula between the rivers Ashley and Cooper to protect the city against the threat of hostile invasion. The peace of 1815 rendered their work superfluous, but the erasure of the “lines” after the Demark Vesey Affair of 1822 left a permanent record of the war on the urban landscape.

Just beyond the boundaries of urban Charleston, a hundred-acre pasture straddling modern Meeting Street hosted a variety of public events during the second half of the eighteenth century. Crowds flocked to Newmarket, as the site was called, to toll their livestock, to watch racehorses traverse a one-mile oval, to witness the auction of large gangs of enslaved people, and to see Native American visitors camping beyond the pale of South Carolina’s colonial capital. In this episode of the Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the tangled history of one of the community’s earliest and least-remembered suburbs.

From the dawn of the Carolina Colony to the early twentieth century, residents of rural Charleston County enjoyed no police protection beyond their own vigilance. Ancient customs, imported from England and transformed by the institution of slavery, obliged free men to patrol their own neighborhoods on horseback, apprehend lawbreakers, and deliver them to justice. A paid rural police force gradually emerged in the early 1900s, fostered by the proliferation of automobiles, and eventually led to the creation of the modern Sheriff’s Department in 1991.

Shortly after the creation of the nation’s first municipal orphanage in 1790, the citizens of Charleston contributed generously to the construction of a large and well-documented edifice on Boundary (now Calhoun) Street that housed thousands of children between 1794 and 1951. The location of the institution’s initial home, visited by President George Washington in May 1791, is far less remembered, however. A search for clues to the location of Charleston’s first Orphan House leads to a forgotten Pinckney family property in the heart of Colleton Square.

Colleton Square is a place-name rarely heard in Charleston today, but millions of people tramp through its historic boundaries every year. Granted to an aristocratic English family in 1681, the creek-side tract was subdivided in the 1740s by investors who envisioned a residential and commercial neighborhood fronting a working canal. Their efforts flourished after the removal of intrusive fortifications, but the subsequent transformation of the canal into Market Street at the dawn of the nineteenth century obscured the character and identity of the colonial square.

During their year-long incarceration, the criminal trio accused of plotting to blow up Charleston’s powder magazine had ample time to argue among themselves and plan their escape from the insecure jail. Only two of the villains survived to face the king’s law in the spring of 1732, prompting suspicion of foul play at the prison. In the dramatic conclusion of this explosive story, we’ll learn who escaped the gallows and why the government’s efforts to close the dangerous magazine dragged on to the summer of 1746.

Every successful thief (and screenwriter) knows that a daring robbery requires a powerful and well-coordinated distraction. That criminal axiom was evident in Charleston during the spring of 1731, when a gang of house-breakers allegedly planned to blow up the town’s brick magazine used for the storage of gunpowder. Authorities foiled the plot by arresting and executing the villains, but the inherently dangerous magazine in modern Cumberland Street persisted. Although citizens campaigned to move the powder elsewhere, a suite of issues delayed the completion of a more remote magazine until 1746.

The earliest recorded performances of drama, dance, and opera in Charleston occurred during the late winter of 1735, when a group of thespians advertised a brief series of ticketed events at a familiar venue. Their stage was a multipurpose room within a tavern at the northeast corner of Broad and Church Streets, which South Carolina’s provincial government rented periodically for judicial proceedings. These “Court Room” events were not the first dramatic productions in the colony, but they formed an innovative prelude to the creation of Charleston’s first purpose-built theater.

Charlestonians got their first taste of Hawaiian culture in December 1901, when a band of Pacific Islanders represented the newly-acquired territory at the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition. Local audiences were entranced by their mellifluous songs and the rhythmic gestures of scantily-clad hula dancers swaying to curious sounds produced by strumming ukeleles and guitars played in a most unconventional manner. After performing for segregated audiences—Black and White—in the Palmetto City, the roving Hawaiians trekked inland to impart a lasting influence on the vernacular music of the American South.

The site known as Union Pier has been a transportation crossroads for centuries past and potentially continuing well into the future. Now slated for redevelopment, the seventy-acre industrial complex on the Cooper River waterfront includes the vestiges of historic trails used by earlier generations to facilitate access between land and water via streets, alleys, ferries, streetcars, and freight trains. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll review the accretion and deletion of various pathways and consider their cumulative role in shaping the future landscape.

Frolicking in the ocean surf is today a familiar activity along South Carolina beaches, but recreational swimming was a novelty in centuries past. “Surf bathing” first achieved local popularity on Sullivan’s Island in the early 1800s, when the proprietors of oceanfront resorts began providing amenities like “bathing machines” to encourage shy swimmers. While the dearth of appropriate swimwear rendered skinny dipping a constant complaint, a rising tide of ocean tourism during the nineteenth century drew legions of Lowcountry residents and visitors to the island’s beautiful front beach.

Have you ever wondered how South Carolinians paid for goods and services before the advent of the U.S. dollar? The pound sterling formed the basis of their accounts until the 1790s, but the economic realities of frontier life obliged early Carolinians to embrace monetary tools and strategies that deviated from British traditions. For more than a century, inhabitants of the Palmetto State used foreign coins, paper bills, promissory notes, and sophisticated credit schemes that fueled upward mobility and set the stage for the financial systems we use today.

Phebe Fletcher was an intriguing woman of eighteenth-century Charleston whose unconventional lifestyle earned both derision and respect from her neighbors. Born to a respectable family of unknown origin, she was allegedly “seduced” from the bounds of traditional feminine “virtue” and obliged to associate with “vicious” persons, Black and White, to forge an independent career in a patriarchal society. She acquired a colorful reputation as a woman of dubious morals, but Charlestonians long remembered and praised the benevolent care she rendered to ailing soldiers during the American Revolution.

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) was a famous Irish patriot of the mid-nineteenth century whose agitation for independence from Britain led to his exile from the Emerald Isle. After settling in New York in 1852, Meagher visited Charleston several times to deliver public lectures on history and politics. South Carolina’s Irish immigrants embraced him as a national hero during the 1850s, but denounced Meagher in 1861 when he fought against the rebellious Confederate States. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the context and legacy of Meagher’s brief connection to the Palmetto City.

The Shaw Community Center at 22 Mary Street in downtown Charleston embodies an important historical legacy: It arose shortly after the Civil War as a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and members of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment who died in battle at Morris Island. Their comrades pooled money to establish in 1868 a school for African-American children that continued until 1937, when it evolved into the present multipurpose youth hub. Long managed by the City of Charleston, the Shaw Center perpetuates a noble commitment to the advancement of civil rights.

The Charleston County Public Library opened its doors to the public in 1931, but welcomed visitors unequally and conditionally until the early 1960s. Like nearly every other institution existing in the American South during that era, the Charleston Free Library, as it was then known, maintained separate facilities and unequal collections for two classes of customers identified as either Black or white. This long-standing practice continued until November 1960, when the opening of a new, racially-integrated library on King Street shocked some members of the community and signaled the twilight of a prejudicial tradition.

The recently renovated John L. Dart Library at 1067 King Street bears the name of a pioneering figure in the history of education in Charleston. Born free during the last years of slavery, Dart benefited from the first flowering of African-American schools after the Civil War and attained advanced degrees. He returned to his home town in 1886 as a Baptist minister and devoted the rest of his life to the creation of free schools providing practical, vocational training to African-American children. In the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll trace the mercurial progress of Rev. Dart’s educational campaign and the enduring legacy of his work.

Nearly a century before Charleston’s municipal headquarters moved to the northeast corner of Meeting and Broad Streets, residents gathered daily at this site to procure meat and other foodstuffs. The city abandoned this so-called “Beef Market” in 1789, following the construction of a new facility in Market Street, and the old market was briefly used for artillery storage. Events associated with the Haitian Revolution triggered its reactivation in 1795, until fire consumed the old Beef Market in 1796 and cleared the site for the present bank building that became City Hall.

The first exhibition game of American-style “scientific” football in the Lowcountry of South Carolina kicked-off in December 1892, when two teams of eleven college boys scrimmaged at Charleston’s Base Ball Park on Christmas Eve. Only few local youths had by that time seen or played the novel game developed up North, but their interest was keen. Furman University brought its record to bear against the first team ever fielded by South Carolina College (USC), battling for the title of state champion and infusing the roaring Charleston crowd with football fever.

Charleston’s venerable newspaper, the Post and Courier, is transforming its headquarters on upper King Street into an upscale mixed-use development called Courier Square. The present twentieth-century structures will soon disappear, exposing a piece of ground with a forgotten claim to fame. A few years before the American Revolution, a Scottish gardener named John Watson developed the site as South Carolina’s first commercial nursery, cultivating both native and exotic plants for sale. The war devastated Watson’s Garden, but the family persevered in the horticultural business until the turn of the nineteenth century.

Native American ancestry provided a measure of legal immunity to mixed-race people in antebellum South Carolina. Check out the latest episode of Charleston Time Machine to hear examples of their legal victories.

In the late winter of 1684, representatives of eight Native American tribes in the Lowcountry of South Carolina surrendered their traditional homelands to English colonists. A series of documents ostensibly signed on a single day that February ceded Indigenous rights to millions of acres between the rivers Stono and Savannah, ranging from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the forces driving this historic bargain, parse details of the several transactions, and consider their collective impact on the native peoples in question.

Petit Versailles, a forgotten residence in suburban Charleston, links the tragic stories of two women who expired prematurely during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The modest house fronting the Cooper River was built for a child named Elizabeth Gadsden but occupied by her godfather, Francis LeBrasseur. Following their early deaths, Francis’s wife, Ann, quit the property and withdrew into a life of religious introspection that lead to suicide. Petit Versailles disappeared during the American Revolution, but the memory of its brief existence still haunts the fringes of Ansonborough.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, South Carolina’s colonial government raised a fortified trace of earthen walls and moats around the nucleus of urban Charleston. These defensive works constrained the town’s growth for more than twenty years, but then quietly vanished before a burst of civic expansion in the mid-1730s. Questions of when and why the earthworks were dismantled have baffled generations of historians and inspired competing theories. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll unpack the forgotten story of government neglect that gradually erased the “Walled City” during the late 1720s.

Maritime traffic between Charleston and various ports in the Spanish-speaking Americas was once an important part of the local economy. Prohibited by British law for most of South Carolina’s colonial century, commerce with Cadiz, Havana, Vera Cruz, and other ports blossomed after the independence of the United States. The presence of a Spanish and later a Cuban consular office in Charleston between 1795 and 1959 provides framework for tracking the rise and fall of forgotten trade routes that brought Latin flavors to the Lowcountry.

In September 1973, a group of preservation activists coined the term “French Quarter” to describe a single block of urban Charleston that was slated for demolition. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places that same month to deter redevelopment, and the new name soon became part of the local lexicon. Residents and visitors have embraced and expanded the concept of Charleston’s “French Quarter” over the past half-century, but few recall the curious circumstances of its creation. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll review the events that inspired the name and explore its historical pedigree.

Patriots Point is a well-known landmark on the east bank of the Cooper River in the Town of Mount Pleasant, but its modern name obscures a much deeper history. Known as Hog Island before 1973, the site has been radically transformed by nature and humans over the past three centuries. Its evolution from a tiny but habitable island to an expansive, vacant marshland, to a thriving community atop a mountain of dredge spoil, illustrates the shifting dynamics of tidal forces and human engineering that have reshaped the local ecology.

Champneys’s Row was a conspicuous anomaly at the time of its construction in 1781, the only civilian edifice adjacent to the brick curtain wall defining the eastern edge of East Bay Street. The building’s height and novel placement violated provincial zoning laws, and the Champneys family persevered against community opposition to protect their investment. Details of the modification and eventual acceptance of Champneys’s Row in the 1780s illuminate an important moment in the history of Charleston’s built environment.

John Champneys was a Charleston factor and wharf owner whose loyalty to the British Crown deranged his life during the American Revolution. While surviving documents provide details of his imprisonment, exile, and return, the slender row of brick stores Champneys built during the war at the southeast corner of East Bay and Exchange Streets bear witness to his tumultuous experience. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll trace the dramatic rise and fall and rehabilitation of both John Champneys and his controversial, confiscated, and truncated row.

The cheapest and simplest form of bathing in early South Carolina was an ancient practice shared by numerous cultures around the world: one simply walked to the nearest creek, river, or beach and jumped in. Because specialized bathing garments did not exist until the early nineteenth century, most outdoor bathers swam in the nude. The rising popularity of swimming costumes in the nineteenth century did not eradicate skinny-dipping, however. Poor people and those bereft of modesty continued to swim au naturelle until agents of the law convinced them to do otherwise.

Before the advent of air conditioning and running water in the Charleston area, Lowcountry residents of all descriptions pursued a number of indoor and outdoor strategies to gain relief from the sultry summer heat. Some soaked in tubs within private residences and commercial bathing houses, while other paid to plunge into exclusive riverine pens. The most modest members of the genteel set drove bathing machines into the frothy surf, while bolder swimmers scandalized their neighbors by shedding their clothes in public and leaping into the nearest body of water.

Charleston’s new International African American Museum (IAAM) stands on ground formerly known as Gadsden’s Wharf, a man-made structure built along the Cooper River waterfront shortly before the American Revolution. During the previous century, however, the site formed part of a plantation that passed through the hands of John Coming and Isaac Mazyck before Thomas Gadsden sold it to Captain George Anson of the Royal Navy. Anson’s tenure defined the property for decades, and the tidal beachfront known as Anson’s Landing served as the staging point for Christopher Gadsden famous wharf.

The technology behind the creation of artificial ice, pioneered by a physician from South Carolina in the mid-nineteenth century, spawned new concepts of personal comfort and health in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Artificially-chilled air, a refreshing luxury that debuted after the jazzy era of Prohibition, rendered Charleston’s sultry summers more bearable and encouraged the influx of tourists and new residents. In the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll crank up the air conditioning and explore the chilling details of Charleston’s third “Ice Age.”

Sullivan’s Island holds a unique place in the history of South Carolina. Reserved in the late seventeenth century as a maritime lookout, quarantine station, and military post, this attractive barrier island remained in the public domain for nearly three centuries. Private residences began appearing on Sullivan’s Island in 1791, but their owners enjoyed little more than squatter’s rights for the next 162 years. The island’s colonial legacy, mis-remembered by later generations, precluded the possibility of private ownership until a 1953 law altered the legal landscape.

In the wake of the American Civil War, planters across the South considered the pros and cons of recruiting Chinese laborers to sustain the region’s agriculture traditions. An interstate summit on the topic, held in Memphis in 1869, stoked racial fears and produced mixed results. While some communities moved forward with plans to hire thousands of “Celestials,” South Carolina planters soon rejected the premise. Four years later, William Ah Sang, a connoisseur of Asian tea, became Charleston’s first resident of Chinese ancestry, opening the door for generations of urban immigrants.

A windowless warehouse on Charleston’s Union Pier conceals a forgotten site of historical significance. Near the present southwest corner of Concord and Pritchard Streets, a projecting point of sand and shells known as “the Hard” or “Rhett’s Point” served as a focal point of maritime activity from the dawn of recorded history in South Carolina to the turn of the nineteenth century. Subsequent wharf construction and landfill obscured the site’s colorful history, but the proposed redevelopment of Union Pier presents an opportunity to revive memories of an important local landmark.

Charleston County’s newest library, the Keith Summey North Charleston facility, represents a major expansion of the Cooper River Memorial Library, erected in 1948 to honor some of the local men and women who served in World War II. African-American citizens gained access to the facility in 1963, and the building expanded over the decades to serve a growing community. On April 21st, Charleston Time Machine will recall the library’s memorial efforts of the 1940s and the changes wrought in later decades to render it more inclusive.

Following the precedent of “market towns” in England, the founders of Charleston created a public marketplace with stalls for the sale of meat, fish, and produce, as well as a cage, stocks, and pillory to punish malefactors in public view. The town plan of 1672 reserved a prominent central space for such purposes, but a number of factors induced early residents to use an alternative, long-forgotten market site prior to 1735.

Blanche Petit was a child prodigy on the piano whose European career commenced at the age of nine in 1851. After she performed in New York the following year, her family settled in Charleston, where her influential father died suddenly in 1856. Thirteen-year-old Blanche then launched an illustrious career as a professional musician, teacher, and conductor in the Palmetto City that continued until her death in 1919.

Florence O’Sullivan was among the first European settlers who came to Carolina in 1670, and he played a significant role in the growth of the colony during the ensuing years. Few details of his life or his personality survive, however, beyond a litany of complaints and accusations made by his English contemporaries. Perhaps by considering O’Sullivan as a stoic Irishman struggling within an Anglocentric framework, we might lift the veil shrouding his enigmatic story and expand a curious narrative from the earliest days of the Carolina Colony.

Margaret Daniel was neither rich nor famous, but the sparse details of her career provide a window into life in Charleston around the turn of the nineteenth century. Between the 1780s and her death in 1817, she accumulated real estate, catered fancy dinners, hosted exclusive business meetings, and briefly ran a school for Black children. On February 24th, Charleston Time Machine will profile the life and times of Margaret Daniel, one of the most interesting free women of color in Charleston’s past.

Americans love novels and movies that portray detectives following a trail of clues to solve a crime. In our community, the City of Charleston hired its first plainclothes detectives in 1856, during the era of slavery, but a handful of Black detectives joined the force shortly after the Civil War. On February 10th, Charleston Time Machine will explore the brief careers of the city’s first Black detectives and the political forces that ended their employment.

If you’ve ever walked along the east side of East Bay Street in the heart of Charleston, you’ve stood atop a forgotten brick wall that once defined the city’s waterfront. This half-mile-long “wharf wall” or “curtain line” commenced in the 1690s to separate the street from the harbor, but it quickly evolved into a defensive fortification. Damaged by a series of hurricanes in the early 1700s, it was substantially rebuilt several times and finally leveled after the American Revolution. We’ll trace the rise and fall of Charleston’s eastern curtain wall and follow its path below the modern streetscape.

Can you imagine Savannah Highway as a narrow toll road traversing a patchwork of rural plantations? The present broad ribbon of asphalt covers a modest country path created more than two centuries ago by a private corporation. Its purpose was to funnel agricultural goods, animals, and people from the hinterland to markets in urban Charleston, across the first bridge connecting the city to the Parish of St. Andrew. We’ll explore the commercial roots of a nine-mile path that evolved into a vital transportation corridor.

During the era of legal slavery in the United States, most people living in bondage enjoyed a brief respite at Christmas. Their holidays often included celebratory meals, music, and dancing, sometimes in company with their White neighbors. This seasonal liberty also generated great anxiety, however: Slaveowners dreaded Yuletide acts of resistance against their authority, while enslaved people feared violent rebukes of their festive joy. Conversations about the history of Christmas in the South benefit from an honest appraisal of the holiday’s troubled past.

Long before the rise of the present municipality, a group of capitalists coined the phrase “North Charleston” in 1912 to describe a bold development scheme on the west bank of the Cooper River. The heart of the proposed, 6,000-acre city was an upscale segregated community called Pinewood Park, nestled within a circular array of broad streets and verdant lots. Economic gloom eventually crushed the corporate scheme, but the footprint of the circular neighborhood survived and evolved into the modern community called Park Circle.

How did a maritime forest between the rivers Ashley and Cooper become the urban streetscape we call Charleston? The spark of this long transformation occurred in 1672, when South Carolina’s Surveyor General drew a plan for a town on the verdant peninsula called Oyster Point. Although John Culpeper’s “model” of the town was imperfectly inscribed on the forested landscape, the grid of streets and lots created 350 years ago framed the growth of Charleston and continue to shape the way residents and visitors experience the Palmetto City in the twenty-first century.

Charleston on the peninsula called Oyster Point became the capital of South Carolina in 1680, but plans for the port town commenced a decade earlier. The first step in its creation was an act of displacement ignored by later historians. Like the Dutch colonists who purchased Manhattan from Native Americans in 1626, English settlers around the year 1672 paid Etiwan Indians to abandon the land between the rivers Ashley and Cooper. The Charleston Time Machine explores the context and the evidence of this forgotten transaction.

Many years ago, a local family dedicated a small, wooded island near the Ashley River as a solemn refuge for their deceased relations. A mortuary vault of brick and stone sheltered numerous coffins from the passing seasons, but could not repel the intrusion of gnawing vermin and curious humans. After scores of visitors vandalized the secluded crypt, descendants gathered more than a century ago to salvage the remains and demolish the vault. This Gothic story of decay and morbid curiosity underscores the virtues of remembrance and respect in our historic community.

During a decade of naval warfare in the 1740s, a number of British warships and privateers brought scores of Spanish-speaking prisoners to Charleston. South Carolina’s provincial government confined most of these mariners within cramped facilities behind iron bars, but provided comfortable accommodations and relative freedom to the gentlemen officers. Charleston Time Machine will explore the forgotten details of the capture, incarceration, and exchange of Hispanic prisoners during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, also known as La Guerra del Asiento.

The powerful hurricane of mid-September 1752 destroyed nearly every watercraft in the vicinity of Charleston, with two dramatic exceptions. His Majesty’s warship Mermaid was driven ashore near the Wando River, while HMS Hornet nearly capsized in the harbor. Descriptions of these harrowing events, written by the officers of both ships, have gathered dust in London archives for nearly three centuries. We’ll explore their forgotten eye-witness accounts of the deadly cyclone and the herculean efforts required to get their vessels back in ship-shape.

In early September 1739, dozens of enslaved men residing near the Stono River launched a violent campaign to gain their freedom. The events of that bloody uprising, commonly called the Stono Rebellion, form a pivotal and well-known episode in the history of South Carolina, but our understanding of its geography is imperfect. We'll review the documentary clues relating to the path of the rebellion and propose a new interpretation of its point of origin.

The waterways of coastal South Carolina once teemed with a large variety of wooden sailing vessels, all of which required frequent maintenance to keep their hulls in ship shape. The work of careening, or rotating a vessel to expose its lower hull, was difficult and dangerous, but so routine that few records of this work survive. In this episode of the Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the techniques, locations, and laborers involved in one of the Lowcountry’s least-remembered maritime traditions.

Ice was a summer luxury in antebellum Charleston, brought southward in huge blocks by ships from New England. The invention of ice-making machines after the Civil War transformed the industry, but a sour economy and consumer skepticism delayed local adoption of the new technology. Cheaper “artificial ice” finally debuted in the Palmetto City in 1888, while deliveries of imported “natural ice” slowly declined. The rise of mechanized ice production at the turn of the twentieth century transformed food and beverage habits across the Lowcountry, and established an appetite for a cooler, modern lifestyle.

Along a shady stretch of Highway 162 in Hollywood, South Carolina, stands a humble marker for Clementia Village. Local lore describes the site as the location of forgotten “ghost town,” but a search for its history reveals a different story. Formerly a part of a large rice plantation, the land bubbled with a font of spring water after the earthquake of 1886. The property owner marketed the wholesome, restorative powers of the mineral-rich water during the early years of the twentieth century, but the site devolved under a cloud during the turbulent Jazz Age.

Like most American colonists during the turbulent spring of 1775, the people of South Carolina were anxious about British military preparations to suppress the first sparks of the Revolution. When two Irishmen in Charleston expressed views that offended their pro-American neighbors in June, an elite secret committee ordered the pair to be stripped, covered in tar and feathers, paraded through the town, and exiled. Historians have identified the two victims as loyalists to the British Crown, but the extant evidence suggests a more nuanced interpretation: Religious discrimination, inflamed by political paranoia, fueled this episode of vigilante injustice.

Ship traffic flowing in and out of Charleston Harbor has played a vital role in the local economy for more than 350 years. For most of that time, however, a network of shifting sandbars at the mouth of the harbor complicated the passage of all large vessels. Early maritime trade blossomed with the aid of skilled pilots and navigational buoys and beacons, but natural silting threatened to choke commercial traffic in the late nineteenth century. Thanks to the construction of an artificial channel through two massive stone jetties, South Carolina’s principal port continues to flourish.

In 1724, the Royal Navy sent Captain George Anson with HMS Scarborough to protect the rice-producing colony of South Carolina. British sailors assigned to the Carolina Station received a gallon of strong beer each day, but supplies in the port of Charles Town were limited. Captain Anson served his king and likely made a small profit by operating a brewery in an orange grove on his Cooper River property, now called Ansonborough.

In this episode, we’ll explore the logistics, ingredients, and labor involved in colonial-era brewing and distill the archival evidence into a new, historically-informed brew.

In Part 2, we conclude the story as we follow Oqui Adair, the Chinese gardener, southward from Washington D.C. to the land of Sea-Island Cotton and slavery in the Palmetto State. During the second half of his colorful life, another Civil War forced Oqui to flee far from the fertile coast, but he found asylum, love, and family in the capital of South Carolina.

In Hong Kong in the autumn of 1854, a young man boarded a U.S. naval vessel and embarked on an American adventure. Arriving in New York, he worked briefly in Washington D.C. before moving to South Carolina to create a formal plantation garden on Edisto Island. Displaced by the American Civil War, he found asylum at the State Hospital and raised a family in Columbia. We’ll follow the story of Oqui Adair, master gardener and South Carolina’s earliest-known resident of Chinese ancestry.

Robert Smalls became an American icon when he absconded from Charleston with the steamboat Planter in May 1862 to free his family and friends from the bonds of slavery. To better understand the details of his escape, inquiring minds want to identify the location of Smalls’ residence within the city. Later biographies don’t mention an address, but Smalls dropped a few hints in his lifetime. We’ll sift the documentary record of Smalls’ life in the Palmetto City and examine the clues that might point to a specific site.

Fearing a Spanish attack on the capital of South Carolina in 1704, English and French colonists directed enslaved Africans to excavate many tons of earth to create a moat and earthen wall around Charleston. This continuous line of entrenchment, stretching nearly a mile in length, included numerous cannon placed within bastions and redans, while a single gateway with drawbridges controlled access into and out of the town. The defensive works of 1704 transformed Charleston into an “enceinte” or enclosed settlement of just sixty two acres that restricted the community’s growth for decades.

From the earliest days of the Carolina Colony to the Civil War, many White men in the Charleston area carried various types of swords as both emblems of status and implements of self-defense. Fashion and function dictated the types of equipment used in different eras, and fencing lessons formed part of the education of many young gentlemen. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the motivations for carrying different type of blades, the identities of the fencing masters, and the connections between music, choreography, and fashionable violence.

The forgotten story of Eliza Pinckney (ca. 1785–1839) was an open secret during her lifetime. Born into bondage on a plantation near the Ashepoo River, she was perhaps distantly related to a famous South Carolinian with the same name. Her owner, Thomas Pinckney (1760–1815), moved her to Charleston at the dawn of a new century and endowed her with property, jewelry, servants, and children. Documents relating to Eliza’s remarkable journey from rural slavery to urban freedom reveal signs of a turbulent and conditional relationship that shaped the trajectory of her family’s existence.

Irish immigrants who adhered to the Catholic faith were not free exercise their religion in South Carolina until several years after the American Revolution. In the years preceding the War of Independence, however, a handful of documents point to the existence of an “Irish Church” in Mr. Mazyck’s Pasture, just outside the boundaries of urban Charleston. In the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore clues pointing to the location and purpose of this forgotten institution, the identity of its visitors, and its connection to the more-famous “Liberty Tree” and the revolutionary “Sons of Liberty.”

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was born into slavery in Mississippi but gained freedom and education in Philadelphia. Her fine voice launched a musical career in the 1850s that took her across America, Britain, and to an audience with Queen Victoria. The “Black Swan” was a pioneering celebrity, and Charleston audiences eager to hear her voice packed several local concerts here in the winter of 1873.

Enslaved men in early South Carolina routinely shaved and coiffed their White owners. As the population of “free persons of color” swelled after the American Revolution, Black barbers in Charleston opened segregated shops catering to White customers. Desegregation altered that tradition in the twentieth century, but modern Black barber shops continue a tangled thread of shared history from our colonial past.

For more than a century, free people of African descent in the Palmetto State were required to pay a special "poll" or "head" tax every year to maintain their freedom. The amount of the tax and the range of exemptions changed over the years, and its application spread outward from Charleston as the state's population expanded in the nineteenth century.

Read more: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/south-carolinas-capitation-tax-free-people-color-1756-1864

To commemorate its fifth anniversary, Dr. Nic pauses the Time Machine for a brief review and progress report. Tune-in for an informal, behind-the-scenes chat about the path and process of the first 222 episodes and hear news about the future of CCPL's local-history podcast.

In December 1766, a man reported the theft of his wallet while passing through a crowd of enslaved people listening to a “banjer” playing on the waterfront of urban Charleston. A close reading of his description of the incident identifies clues that illuminate its context and help us reimagine a forgotten aspect of South Carolina’s musical heritage.

The declaration of war between England and Spain in 1702 provoked anxiety in South Carolina about the security of Charleston. The capital's waterfront fortifications provided some protection against invasion, but the rest of the town was undefended. After an offensive expedition failed to capture Spanish St. Augustine, the provincial government elected to build an earthen wall and moat around Charleston’s urban core.

In the decades after the founding of Charleston in 1670, more than a dozen tribes of indigenous people across the Lowcountry interacted with the growing population of White settlers and enslaved Africans. Disease, warfare, and displacement gradually reduced their numbers, however, and the first people of the Lowcountry were virtually extinct by the middle of the eighteenth century. https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/first-people-south-carolina-lowcountry

For more than three centuries, the government of South Carolina has used a ceremonial sword to represent the state’s military strength and civil authority. The original “sword of state” disappeared from the state house in 1941, however, and its theft is now a cold case of historical proportions.

A Charleston law of 1793 required the proprietors of pubs and barrooms to assist physicians attempting to revive the bodies of “apparently dead” persons lingering in a state of “suspended animation.” This medical endeavor, based on cutting-edge science of the day, involved procedures both ghoulish and comical that blazed a path towards the modern techniques of resuscitation.

The Apprentices’ Library Society, founded in 1824, sought to enhance the education of Charleston youths by providing reading material to teenagers studying traditional handicrafts, but its educational mission expanded to include programs and classes.

Although fire wrecked the society’s fortunes in 1861 and it dissolved in 1874, this forgotten institution pointed towards the future libraries of Charleston that we recognize today.

Rival claims to the land of South Carolina sparked hostility between England and Spain that shaped the first 78 years of the colony’s existence. The English considered Floridians to be jealous rivals, while the Spanish saw Carolinians as habitual trespassers. Spain held a better claim to the contested territory, but British colonists eventually won the land by force.

From Spanish perspective, the colony of La Florida once encompassed all of the land from the Florida Keys to the southern edge of the Chesapeake Bay. The creation of the Carolina colony in the 1660s usurped the northern half of that broad landscape, however, and sparked a fierce rivalry that shaped the first century of South Carolina’s early history.

Captured after a manhunt, the African prisoner Albro was committed to jail in Charleston with a former friend and an infamous pair of White criminals. A brief and biased trial judged him guilty of murder and sentenced him to hang. After a brief reprieve, the condemned man made a gallows confession before a crowd assembled at a well-known crossroads.

Following Albro’s fatal encounter with a White man on Dewees Island, the African fled through the waters of Copahee Sound and across several mainland plantations. Meanwhile, the victim’s father traveled to Charleston to summon help and initiate a manhunt. As militiamen pursued the fugitive’s trail, Albro was betrayed by an enslaved man who stopped him in his tracks.

When an enslaved African man named Albro asserted his freedom and fled from the Isle of Palms in 1819, the laws of South Carolina marked him as a criminal fugitive. Spied and then pursued by white men on Dewees Island one night in early 1820, Albro resisted their efforts to capture him and killed one of his assailants. The dramatic story of his flight and the ensuing manhunt and trial, recorded in a series of brief newspaper reports, illuminates a broader cycle of resistance and retribution that forms a large part of Lowcountry history.

Between the 1670s and 1865, thousands of enslaved South Carolinians rejected their condition and fled to gain freedom elsewhere. Some runaways succeeded, while others faced brutal punishments, and most returned to a life of servitude. Surviving details of their adventures are sparse, but a voluminous body of newspaper advertisements provides intriguing snapshots of thousands of stories of courageous resistance.

The Half-Moon Battery is a historic structure in urban Charleston that formed part of the town’s earliest fortifications. Construction of its curving brick wall commenced in the mid-1690s, and the structure was completed and armed in 1702.

Summertime for many Lowcountry residents is a time to shed the constraints of modern life and enjoy the great outdoors. Long before the convenience of modern transportation, Charlestonians developed a tradition of maroons, picnics, and parades that enlivened scores of summers. Although these traditions are now extinct, the 1925 novel Porgy captures the twilight of that fading tradition.

A plaque in Charleston states that the first lending library in the American colonies was established on the west side of St. Philip Street in 1698. The details of this misleading story are complicated, but South Carolina’s first public library was definitely part of a ground-breaking effort to create circulating libraries throughout the British colonies.

The words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were written in 1814, but the “Anacreontic” tune used for our national anthem was well-known in Charleston decades earlier. This blending of elements old and new was critical to the success of the patriotic anthem and reflects the cosmopolitan spirit in which Charleston audiences received it more than two centuries ago.

Elizabeth Jackson, mother of our seventh president, died near Charleston during the American Revolution, but the site of her grave is a mystery. Obscure clues to her final resting place have confounded efforts to celebrate her memory, and two monuments often mislead visitors. By reviewing the historic evidence, we can point to a forgotten site on the modern landscape.

Market Hall is a 180-year-old public building that has been occupied as a private museum for the past 120 years. That tenure has obscured the building’s the original purpose and the history of its earlier use. During its first sixty years, this architectural gem hosted a forgotten variety of events created and attended by diverse Charleston audiences.

For nearly a century between 1750 and 1858, local government dictated the weight, price, and composition of breads prepared by Lowcountry bakers for retail sale. The operation shaped the diets of all classes of Charlestonians and provoked debate about equal access to the necessities of life.

The saints’ names applied to numerous landmarks, institutions, and roads around the Lowcountry are vestiges of parishes that once defined the political geography of lower South Carolina. Counties replaced the colonial-era parishes after the Civil War, but the legacy of the state’s evolving political boundaries provides a key for understanding the landscape inhabited by earlier generations. https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/parishes-districts-and-counties-early-south-carolina

Commuter trains might not seem like an old Lowcountry tradition, but antebellum investors in the Charleston-metro area once embraced emerging technology to create one of the earliest mass transit corridors in the United States. Present efforts to revive that long lost transportation legacy draw inspiration from local history to spark a new era of regional mobility.

The public cemeteries for Charleston’s poorest citizens and enslaved people of African descent between 1794 and 1927 occupied nearly 35 acres beyond those used during colonial-era, but all of that real estate has been developed for other uses over the past two centuries. The paper trail of evidence suggests the existence of tens of thousands of unmarked urban graves.

The historic landscape of urban Charleston contains several large unmarked public cemeteries that are filled with the remains of thousands of nameless bodies interred by local government. Those buried between 1672 and 1794 are contained within a well-settled neighborhood on the city’s west side, where the forgotten graves were built over and ignored by successive generations.

Although the telegraph is functionally irrelevant in the 21st century, its legacy is more important to our modern lifestyles than we realize. The advent of the telegraph in the 1840s sparked a bold new era of telecommunication that connected South Carolina to an international conversation and brough Charleston “one line” in the winter of 1848.

The identity of the author of a well-known Charleston poem from 1769 is obscure, but clues imbedded in the manuscript suggest a candidate whose unfamiliar name recalls a distant era of local maritime history, and whose biography provides a colorful backdrop for the creation of a famously bold description of the colonial capital.

Granville Bastion, a brick structure mounting a dozen cannon, stood at the south end of East Bay Street from its creation in 1697 until its partial demolition in the 1780s. A new investigation of its genesis reveals that South Carolina’s oldest English fortification was originally conceived as one corner of a four-bastioned structure that was never completed.

Since the first bookmobiles hit the road in Charleston County in 1931, generations of drivers have carried books to remote corners of the county to foster a love of learning outside of traditional libraries. As CCPL’s thirteenth “mobile library” prepares to continue this ninety-year-old tradition, let’s review a brief history of the county’s books (and more) on wheels.

Dedicated recreational space was not part of the vocabulary of urban planning in colonial South Carolina, so early Charlestonians were obliged to borrow private land for use as public greens. The earliest evidence of a shared space for sport and leisure in our community points to a forgotten suburban site once known as the Bowling Green.

Charles Shinner garnered prestige and wealth after his arrival in South Carolina, but the enforcement of a controversial British law in late 1765 triggered a tidal wave of political resistance that undermined his life and career. During his final years, Shinner buried his wife and children while fighting a losing battle to defend his character against vengeful political assassination.

Charles Shinner was an obscure Irish lawyer whose wealthy English client nominated him to be Chief Justice of South Carolina. He and his young wife arrived in Charleston in 1762 and settled into a prosperous life. In the face of growing political opposition in the mid-1760s, the defects of Shinner’s education soon undermined his career and endangered his family.

Catherine was cheated out of freedom by an unscrupulous master, but she boldly asserted her independence and found an attorney to lobby for her emancipation. While they petitioned for justice, Catherine’s predicament was confounded by unresponsive litigants and the shifting sands of statute law. Legal manumission remained elusive, but she gained a measure of freedom in her later years.

In the early 1800s, a trio of French Charlestonians agreed to allow an enslaved woman named Catherine to purchase her own freedom. After laboring for many months, Catherine amassed the required sum and paid her master, Antoine Plumet. Rather than setting her free, Plumet defrauded Catherine and died without honoring their bargain. Undeterred, Catherine asserted her freedom until the law intervened.

In 1750, the South Carolina legislature emancipated an enslaved man known as Doctor Caesar for sharing his secret antidote for poisons and snakebites, prepared from a combination of familiar plants. This simple decoction earned Doctor Caesar immortal fame, but it also provided a modicum of comfort during his final years and benefitted his family members who remained enslaved.

In 1872, James Henry Conyers became the first man of color to enter the U.S. Naval Academy. Although he spent the majority of his life in Charleston, few here remember his legacy. In this episode we’ll trace the arc of his biography and try to place his family and his education within the broader context of our community’s past.

South Carolina has one of the most recognizable flags in the nation, but the details of its the creation and the meaning are elusive. While others debate the shape of its signature palmetto tree, we’ll explore the background of flags and symbols in early Charleston that led to the creation of a proud blue banner of hope and resilience.

Auctions of enslaved people were a familiar sight on the streets of early Charleston until local authorities sought to constrain such spectacles into enclosed “marts” during the second quarter of the 19th century. This commercial change endured into the era of Civil War, but historic documents illustrating this form of human trafficking are not always what they purport to be.

Local legend says that George Anson acquired Ansonborough in a card game with Thomas Gadsden. While the documents related to that 1727 conveyance contain no hint of a gambling debt, the circumstances surrounding two transactions with Charles Codner of Daniel Island in 1735 suggest that the legend of Captain Anson’s gambling success might have been applied to the wrong property.

The beginning of a new calendar year in January is one of a variety of “new year” anniversaries that our forebears observed to mark the advent of a new life, monarch, or entity. The various methods of annual calculations in early South Carolina might seem arcane today, but a familiarity with their underlying concepts can help us better understand the past.

The arrival of captured enemy vessels and booty was a familiar sight in Charleston during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, but the value of a French prize brought here in December 1744 surpassed all imagination. While unpacking her mysterious cargo in the days before Christmas, the crew discovered the most amazing cache of riches ever witnessed in the American colonies.

When Charleston sacrificed a forest of street trees in 1837 for the sake of civic improvement, the loss triggered a long debate about the value of various tree species and the role of local government in promoting public health. Before the Civil War, the city selected a specific native, deciduous tree and commenced to renew the lost green canopy.

The street trees of urban Charleston’s contribute greatly to the city’s beauty and historic atmosphere, but they haven’t always been there. Our colonial streets were largely naked, and less familiar species preceded the present palmettos, live oaks, magnolias and crepe myrtles. The story of when, where, and why these street trees arose is rooted deep in the city’s past.

The earliest surviving legislative discussion of fortifications in urban Charleston took place in 1695–96, motivated by an ongoing war with France and a persistent fear of marauding pirates. The provincial government’s plan to build an expensive brick fortress, flanked by men “arrayd for battle,” forms a significant chapter in the physical evolution of South Carolina’s colonial capital.

Charleston’s historic East Bay Street began in the 1680s as a public wharf or quay adjacent to the tidal mudflats of the Cooper River. To improve the logistics of maritime commerce and to protect the adjacent buildings, South Carolina’s provincial government initiated a public-private partnership that triggered the evolution of the broad waterfront landscape we see today.

What happens when politicians refuse to concede defeat and won’t leave office? During a period of smoldering racial and political tensions in post-Civil War Charleston, the city’s incumbent mayor and aldermen created a six-month legal soap opera by repeatedly refusing to heed the results of a municipal election and ignoring court orders to vacate their offices. https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/charlestons-contested-election-1868 #chsnews #chsreads

In early twentieth-century South Carolina, conservative White men manipulated the state’s legal framework to silence dissenting voices. The national campaign to dismantle barriers to Black suffrage gained steam in the 1930s and gradually undermined local traditions of White supremacy. Before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, a series of legislative changes unlocked the door to Black voting.

Read more: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/decline-voting-suppression-south-carolina-1900-1965

In post-Civil War South Carolina, White conservatives regarded suffrage as a privilege that the state’s Black majority did not deserve. The destructive war was followed by a fierce partisan battle over the fundamental right to vote. At the end of this violent and bigoted struggle, the Palmetto State adopted legal barriers that silenced the political voice of its Black citizens.

Learn more: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/rise-voter-suppression-south-carolina-1865-1896

To secure the natural landscape for colonial settlement, South Carolina’s early government offered bounty money to white, black, and Native American hunters for destroying “beasts of prey” that menaced settlers, crops, and livestock. Commencing in the coastal Lowcountry in 1693 and spreading westward to the Piedmont, bounty hunters pursued panthers, wolves, bears, and bobcats to extirpation by 1790.

The records of early South Carolina contain thousands of personal names applied to many generations of people held in legal bondage. By sampling this body of names, we detect trends and evidence of resistance that help us understand their experiences and acknowledge the personal identities of the men and women who once formed the state’s enslaved majority.

More: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/recall-their-names-personal-identity-enslaved-south-carolinians

The house of Nicholas Trott, one of the most important figures in colonial South Carolina, disappeared more than two centuries ago, but its former site is now part of a popular venue. The discovery of a trash pit in what was once Trott’s back yard unearthed curious artifacts that provide a new window into the narrative of early Charleston.

Did South Carolina's cantankerous Chief Justice Nicholas Trott (1663–1740) really live in a small house on the south side of Cumberland Street, or is there some flaw in this popular tale? The definitive answer lies buried in the archival record, where we find the details of a romantic story spanning 300 years.

The roots of voter discrimination in South Carolina are embedded in colonial-era traditions of exclusion that continued through the Civil War. The long campaign to establish the right for black men to vote in the Palmetto State finally succeeded in 1867, but that seminal event sparked a racially-charged backlash that reverberated through the generations to the present.

The City of Charleston addressed rising volumes of garbage in the early 20th century with traditional methods of open dumping and the new science of incineration. The advent of new landfill practices in the 1950s ended municipal trash burning, but creative recycling preserved one historic structure and smokestacks that anchor an important part of the city’s trashy history.

Professional dancer Bee Jackson’s brief sojourn to Charleston in April 1926 was immortalized on film, but the motivation behind her visit is less visible. She didn’t come here to work, nor was she paid for dancing at private parties and outdoor photo shoots. So why did Bee take a detour from her lucrative international career to do the “Charleston” in Charleston?

Two young dancers from Charleston went to Chicago in 1926 to compete in the first national “Charleston” contest. Their steps were judged the most graceful and refined, but they were overshadowed by more acrobatic interpretations of the popular dance. Nevertheless, the mayor and the local business community deemed the venture a marketing triumph for the city.

The “Charleston” was a national sensation in 1925, while critics in this city rebuked its charms. The prospect of a national dance contest, generating a bounty of advertising, finally convinced local leaders to embrace it. A series of contests in early 1926 determined the city’s best white dancers, who raced to Chicago with the mayor to receive a royal welcome.

Bee Jackson was a professional dancer in the 1920s who promoted herself as the “originator” of the “Charleston.” To bolster her claims, she sought validation from the source of the dance. But Charleston were “Charleston” shy in 1925, and Bee’s request for the keys to the city sparked a debate about the economic value of the popular dance craze.

The world-famous “Charleston” tune and dance arose from the melting pot of New York City in the 1920s and became an enduring icon of the exuberant Jazz Age. We might not have invented the “Charleston” in Charleston, but evidence suggests that Lowcountry residents provided the inspiration and key elements that define its iconic rhythm and footwork.

After citizens planned rebellion and celebrated independence beneath Charleston’s Liberty Tree, British soldiers tried to obliterate its legacy. Some sons of the Revolution never forgot its symbolic role, and preserved memories of the tree throughout the nineteenth century. Thanks to their trail of clues, we can reconstruct a path to the site of the tree that once symbolized resistance against injustice.

Charleston’s Liberty Tree is an important part of the story of the American Revolution in South Carolina. From the earliest protests over taxation in the 1760s to the British siege of 1780, it served as a venue for political debates and patriotic celebrations. Today we’ll examine the roots of its symbolic meaning and its role in the journey to independence.

Commemorating the end of slavery has been an annual tradition across the United States since the end of the Civil War, but there is no single date of observance. Whether one celebrates “Juneteenth” or some other “Emancipation Day” is largely a matter of geography. Today we’ll explore the history of emancipation and focus on the story of Charleston’s own celebratory traditions.

Scores of laborers transformed tons of oyster shells into a towering concrete barrier to protect the town’s northern boundary in the late 1750s, but the changing tide of world events convinced local authorities to abandon the Horn Work before its completion. This turbulent genesis forms a long-forgotten prelude to the gallant defense of South Carolina’s capital during the American Revolution.

The story of the tabby fort that became an American citadel during the British siege of 1780 commenced decades before the Revolution. It arose from efforts to protect Charleston’s backside, and superseded earlier works. Prompted by a new war with France in 1756, local officials and royal engineers ordered the construction of new fortifications that transformed the Lowcountry landscape.

Have you heard the story of the Horn Work in Marion Square? You know—that mysterious, unobtrusive, lumpy slab of concrete covered with oyster shells standing in the park near King Street? Did you know it’s actually a tiny remnant of a massive fortress that once controlled access to colonial-era Charleston? And it was the city’s first citadel during the American Revolution? The Horn Work is one of Charleston’s biggest secrets hiding in plain sight, and today we’ll review the most salient chapters of its must-read story.

The “golden age” of huckstering food in the streets of Charleston dawned after the Civil War, when formerly-enslaved people expanded this popular form of marketing. Urban hucksters became nostalgic characters in an increasingly romanticized version of local history in the twentieth century, but they never really completely disappeared and their legacy continues to the present.

Mobile hucksters, predominantly of African descent, formed an important part of the local culinary market from the earliest days of Charleston by carrying food around the city in baskets and carts. To trace their enduring influence on local culture and commerce, we’ll wind our time machine back to the roots of the hucksters and chart their rise into Antebellum days.

While most of the food and beverage industry is currently shuttered, we can look to our past in search of forgotten service models that might offer fresh inspiration for future business. The variety of food retail options in early Charleston is so diverse that we’ll begin this culinary history with a starter course of bite-sized samples of the big picture.

Pedestrians and draft animals moving at a “moderate trot” set the pace in Charleston’s streets for more than two centuries, until automobile drivers pushed local government for faster travel through the city’s narrow streets in the early 20th century. The story of street speed in Charleston forms an important part of the diverse legacy of our community’s shared roads.

In South Carolina’s early years, the provincial and imperial governments offered cash bounties to encourage local planters the grow hemp on a commercial scale. The crop showed promise, but its brief success was soon overshadowed. Despite its failure to take root, the rise and fall of hemp forms one of the most interesting and least-remembered chapters in this state’s agricultural heritage.

Charleston turns 350 this month, and the anniversary of its founding presents opportunity to contemplate our community’s long journey since 1670. To demonstrate the relevance of that distant story in the present world, we’ll consider a simple question: What decisions made at the founding of Charleston had the most profound and lasting effects on this community’s long history?

Separating the sick from the healthy has been a part of Charleston’s public health policy since 1698, when our provincial government instituted a novel quarantine policy for incoming ships. Over the ensuing 250 years, local authorities enacted a series of evolving and occasionally contentious quarantine laws that impacted nearly every immigrant and visitor who entered Charleston harbor until 1949.

Charlestonians were shocked to find a local magistrate at the center of an illegal black dance raided by police in 1795. William Cunnington defended his honor by publishing a narrative of the soirée, but historians have misinterpreted this intriguing story. Forgotten for more than two centuries, Cunnington’s text provides a valuable and entertaining glimpse of life in early Charleston.

The sounds of an illegal nocturnal “negro dance” in an East Bay residence in November 1795 aroused the wrath of local authorities who dispersed a party of mixed-race revelers. Meanwhile, a respected white citizen at the center of this merry scene was vilified by his neighbors and a shade of scandal still looms over his reputation today.

Under the shadow of the Great War in 1918, Charleston was ill-equipped to counter a major health crisis when influenza spread throughout the community in a wave of acute sickness and death. Quarantine, isolation, and volunteer efforts soon arrested the disease, however, and the city rebounded from its first modern epidemic with a lamentable but limited death toll.

Yamboo was an African Muslim whose faith helped him endure a life of servitude in 18th-century South Carolina. His brief autobiography, published in 1790, provides valuable evidence of Islam among this region’s enslaved population as well a rare narrative of the journey from Africa and his struggle for survival and dignity in the face of oppression.

Between 1720 and 1775, a succession of British warships anchored in Charleston to protect the port’s valuable trade and to assist His Majesty’s government. Their presence forms a significant part of South Carolina’s maritime history that is not well remembered on these shores. Today we’ll jog the collective memory with an overview of this important nautical topic.

Can you put a monetary value on your freedom? South Carolina’s early laws trapped enslaved people in a life of servitude, but a handful of them managed to generate sufficient cash to buy their own freedom. Today we’ll explore the phenomenon of self-purchase and review a few cases of men and women whose perseverance unlocked the yoke of slavery.

The laws of early South Carolina allowed slave owners to set free an unknown number of men, women, and children with little or no interference from the government. Today we’ll explore the phenomenon of private manumission from the colonial era to the legislative interventions of the early nineteenth century that restricted and finally prohibited this traditional practice.

On several occasions between 1708 and 1822, the South Carolina General Assembly purchased the freedom of enslaved people who had performed remarkable acts of public service. These public manumissions were not simply altruistic expressions of gratitude, but also the calculated efforts of nervous white lawmakers to cultivate feelings of loyalty within the enslaved majority population.

Freedom and slavery were the opposing states of being that defined the lives of most early Charlestonians, but our community also hosted a small population of people who lived between those legal poles. The city’s “free people of color” enjoyed a modicum of liberty, but the law viewed their skin color and ancestry as a bar from full civil rights.

From the 1670s to the 1830s, the Carolina Coffee House in London’s Birchin Lane served as the epicenter for conversations about this colony and state, its opportunities and challenges, and its residents. To better understand its important role in Charleston’s past, let’s review the history of this old coffee shop and take a virtual stroll through Birchin Lane.

The phrase “Holy City” is often used to describe Charleston’s deep history of religious freedom and diversity. Contrary to popular belief, however, early South Carolinians did not enjoy the liberty of conscience that we take for granted today. In this program, we’ll consider the systematic religious discrimination that once legally divided the people of this community.

The secret confederacy that formed in November 1719 assembled as an elected Convention of the people that December. In a showdown with the proprietary government, the Convention staged a bloodless coup d’etat that unhinged the colony’s political landscape. Born of frustration with the Lords Proprietors, the Revolution of 1719 was won at the end of a musket barrel and crowned by the royal approval of King George.

Frustrated by years of neglect and contrary government, the citizens of South Carolina asserted their political will in the closing months of 1719 by organizing a rebellious confederacy that descended on Charleston to seize the reins of power. It was a contest enacted exclusively by white men, but the outcome affected the entire population of the faltering colony. Today we’ll follow the chain of events that precipitated the political and military revolt that forms one of the most important, but least remembered, events of this state’s early history.

South Carolina was an English colony for its first century, but that era was marked by two contrasting periods characterized by different administrations: An initial “proprietary” era gave way to a “royal” government after a rebellion in 1719. To help us appreciate the impact of that uprising, let’s compare the two forms of colonial oversight that motivated one of the most important incidents in our state’s history.

Here in Charleston, we share a number of Christmas customs with communities near and far, but how deep are the Lowcountry roots of our modern holiday traditions? Today we’ll examine a few historic holiday anecdotes that are sure to please and might even serve as morsels of polite dinner conversation during the upcoming Christmas season.

Shade-tree history is on my mind this Arbor Day. While some people want to uproot the grand oaks bordering our scenic highways, others have defended the venerable trees from the ravages of modernity. The moss-draped canopy they provide isn’t just picturesque; it’s the manifestation of an ancient law rooted in protecting travelers from highway robbers in Medieval England.

The area called Harleston Village is one of the oldest neighborhoods on the Charleston peninsula, but the present definition of its boundaries differs from its original identity. From colonial grant to bucolic pasture to profitable subdivision, Harleston was annexed into urban Charleston in 1770 and evolved into a desirable address, though it was never technically a village.

Charleston’s newest library is nestled in a quiet setting that belies the depth and drama of its long history. From Native-American stomping grounds to fertile plantation, from bloody battlefield, to civil rights success, today we’ll surf through the pages of the past to follow a rich narrative that forms an important part our community’s shared history.

Veterans Day is a holiday created in the twentieth century, but its roots date back to the dawn of the United States. Today we’ll use the story of one veteran’s family—the wife and children of the famous Sergeant William Jasper—to trace the evolution of local, state, and national efforts to assist the survivors our nation’s brave defenders.

Thomas J. Mackey did not shoot the sheriff, but he shot at him during a meeting of Charleston’s City Council in October 1869. The community condemned the morphine-fueled assault, but justice was not served. In the turbulent world of Reconstruction-era politics, it was easier to sweep a violent assault under the proverbial rug than to disrupt the status quo.

Debate within Charleston’s City Council is sometimes harsh, but never as acrimonious as the night in 1869 when arguing aldermen drew pistols to settle a dispute. We’ll begin this real-life tale of drugs, liquor, bullets, and rage by profiling the elected gunmen, uncovering the roots of their disagreement, and following the scene of mayhem at City Hall.

Hampstead Village is a downtown neighborhood better known today as the heart of Charleston’s “East Side.” Created in 1769, it has endured a series of ups and downs that transformed it into Charleston’s most diverse and densely populated neighborhood. To better understand its challenges and potential, let’s review Hampstead’s history and its long struggle for dignity and survival.

The mayor of Charleston is a prestigious officer who commands respect throughout our community, but that hasn’t always been the case. Nearly two centuries ago, the city’s executive evolved from a nearly powerless, part-time, unsalaried intendant, to a powerful, full-time, salaried mayor. Today we’ll compare and contrast those titles and trace the gradual accretion of powers that define 21st-century Charleston’s most visible citizen.

Sentenced to hang in 1747, Elizabeth McQueen cried out for mercy from the Charleston jail. Her personal grief and Indian customs had been misrepresented as willful murder. Reviewing the facts of her case, the governor and his advisors were drawn into the chasm between patriarchal law and the realities of a woman’s life on the colonial frontier.

Accused of having murdered her newborn child, Elizabeth McQueen was arrested and transported to Charleston to stand trial in 1747. Contemporary documents allow us to reconstruct many of the experiences she endured, from incarceration within the prison under the care of a hot-tempered marshal, to the colony’s makeshift courtroom in a tavern where a brief trial condemned her to an ignominious death.

When an unmarried young woman of Native American ancestry lost a newborn child in 1747, her white neighbors on the South Carolina frontier interpreted her grief as a mask for clandestine guilt and summoned the law. Today we’ll begin to reconstruct the story of Elizabeth McQueen’s journey from “innocence and sobriety” to arrest, humiliation, and incarceration in colonial Charleston.

Charleston was once the most active marketplace for enslaved people in North America. While incoming Africans were sold from the vessels that brought them, enslaved people already living in the Lowcountry during the colonial era were commonly sold at at a long-forgotten, open-air auction site within the heart of Charleston known as “the usual place.”

The arrival of more than 150,000 African captives before 1808 forms one of the most important themes in Charleston’s history, but there are many details about this traffic that remain obscure. To acknowledge the suffering and legacy of those people, many people wish to retrace their first footsteps here. But where did they stand when they were sold into a life of slavery in Charleston?

Indigo forms an important part of the early history of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Although its memory flourishes today, lingering misconceptions have distorted our general understanding of the story. In an effort to help “grow” this colorful conversation, I’ve crafted a series of questions and responses that address some points of indigo history that every Charlestonian should know.

For the anniversary of the incorporation of Charleston, let’s take a close look at the legal document that defined the new municipality. Our focus isn’t politics, but spelling: The city’s 1783 charter shortened its name from “Charles Town,” and the surviving manuscript contains a curious spelling that provides new insight in the evolution of the familiar name “Charleston.”

Reeling from embarrassment after rioting spoiled an afternoon of baseball on Citadel Green, the divided people of Charleston anxiously prepared for a rematch against the Savannah Base Ball Club in August of 1869. The mayor’s show of force inflamed simmering tensions, and boiling frustration led to gunfire while the people hoped in vain for a quiet weekend of sport.

Baseball was a novelty in the summer of 1869. Charlestonians had only recently embraced the game, which provided a relaxing way to escape the city’s tense political climate. When sport, music, and racial politics collided on Citadel Green on July 26th, the pastime erupted into a violent clash that spilled into the streets and threatened to overwhelm the rule of law.

In the early months of 1869, the people of Charleston swooned rapturously over the arrival of the latest mechanical sensation called the velocipede, a precursor to the modern bicycle. Having embraced the new machine in mid-February, the city’s initial enthusiasm for the velocipede was overshadowed several months later by another fad that went on to spoil everyone’s summer fun.

In a short span of time during an international war, the S.C. legislature enacted a succession of laws related to the policing of urban Charleston. It was a confusing period of law enforcement experimentation during a crucial era in the town’s history, in which the colony first achieved a black majority, and produced the earliest evidence of enslaved drummers in Charleston.

Every 4th of July, our nation celebrates the anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. Here in Charleston, we gather on this date each year to commemorate a grand event that is less-well remembered—the first publication of the Declaration in the capital city of South Carolina on August 5th, 1776.

In 2018, the Palmetto Society invited me to deliver a speech at White Point Garden to commemorate the 242nd anniversary of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island, which took place on the 28th of June, 1776. For this year’s celebration of that historic day, long known as Carolina Day, I’d like to share the text of that speech in the hopes that people unfamiliar with the event might draw inspiration from the bravery and determination of those who fought for our nation’s independence.

The site of CCPL’s newest branch has a rich but invisible history. Formerly occupied by Native Americans, the land was controlled by a succession of owners who grew rich from the labors of generations of enslaved people. From forest land in the 20th century to modern suburban development, the land under the Wando Mount Pleasant library holds quite a story.

The “Negro” man Abraham used his courage and equestrian skills to blaze a path from slavery to freedom in 1760 during South Carolina’s Cherokee war. In the conclusion of his dramatic story, we find him dressed in a new blue coat, ranging across the colonial frontier with armed troopers, and then back in Charleston conversing with the royal governor.

Electric streetcars or trolleys dominated the streets of Charleston at the turn of the twentieth century, but their long reign came to an ignominious end in 1938. Although the rise of the automobile contributed to their demise, the resurgence of the humble omnibus, in a new, mechanized form, played a significant role in transforming the history of mass transit in the Lowcountry.

Horse-drawn streetcars and electric trolleys might seem like quaint vestiges of the obsolete past, but the debut of Charleston’s street railway in 1866 marked the beginning of a golden age of local mass transit. Since traffic is currently a major issue in the Lowcountry, and May is Mobility Month, let’s take a spin through history on a streetcar named “Progress.”

Today marks the centenary of one of the biggest public disturbances in Charleston’s history—the “race riot” of 1919. Late on Saturday, May 10th, young white sailors fueled by racial hatred roamed the city, smashing property and spilling blood as they went. It was an ominous beginning to what became known across the United States as the “Red Summer.”

The human remains discovered at the Gaillard Center construction site in February 2013 are returning to an earthly repose this weekend. As celebrations commence to honor those thirty-six people of African descent, let’s review the history of that burial site in search of clues to help us understand who they were and how their final resting place was forgotten.

In the climax of his dramatic story, Abraham’s efforts to bring hope to the garrison at Fort Loudoun ended in tragedy and despair. While assisting his comrades at Fort Prince George, Abraham dodged Cherokee bullets and flying tomahawks, and then rode like the wind through a gauntlet of Indians to carry news of frontier violence to the provincial government in Charleston.

Once a remote and desolate beachfront, Sullivan’s Island has developed into a bustling and chic destination since the first summer residents camped there in 1791. That transformation could not have happened without the aid of ferries, mule-powered street cars, and electric trolleys that carried weary people from the mainland to the invigorating island surf over the past two centuries.

Following the colonial army’s stinging, chaotic battle with the Cherokee in late June, 1760, Abraham carried devastating news back to the provincial government in Charleston. Over the next several weeks, he shuttled repeatedly between the capital and the frontier as South Carolina struggled to continue its war against the Cherokee and to find a means of rescuing the distant garrison trapped at Fort Loudoun.

Have you ever wondered what it was like to ride a steamboat from Edisto Island to Charleston around the turn of the twentieth century? Today we’ll board the steamer PilotBoy and make that journey with a young man who later wrote a charming description of the sights, smells, and sounds of that by-gone experience once treasured by generations of islanders.

As South Carolina shudders between the extremes of peaceful diplomacy and bloody warfare in the summer of 1760, the epic travels of Abraham the express rider continue along the knife edge between safety and danger. His great skills as an intrepid backwoodsman may have secured his freedom, but now they threaten to propel him into the vanguard of the frontier violence.

The death of Ellen O’Donovan Rossa, a poor Irish widow, in Charleston in 1870 might have gone unnoticed by the world, but for the international notoriety of her, incarcerated son, Jeremiah. His reputation inspired local Irishmen to memorialize Rossa’s mother as an expression of respect and solidarity. Their efforts were thwarted by the hands of time, however, as Ellen’s grave remains unmarked today.

Stricken with smallpox, Abraham convalesced in Charleston in the late winter of 1760 before embarking on another round-trip journey carrying official messages through the dangerous Cherokee territory. Having witnessed grotesque scenes of death and misery both in town and among the frontier forts, Abraham returned to Charleston to see the wheels of government slowly turning towards the legal confirmation of his freedom from slavery.

Today we continue our narrative of the enslaved man Abraham by following his perilous solo trek from the Cherokee mountains of eastern Tennessee to the port of Charleston, with a few pit stops along the way. Promised freedom if he could complete this dangerous mission, Abraham found a provisional reward extended by the governor, and a crowded town wracked by fear and disease in the spring of 1760.

The Oscar buzz surrounding the 2018 film, Green Book, has generated a lot of interest in the publication that inspired the name of the movie. Charleston isn’t part of the film’s 1962 storyline, but our community was definitely included in that eponymous African-American travel guide. Today we’ll investigate the history of the Green Book phenomenon and examine just how accurately mid-twentieth-century Charleston was represented in that long-running publication.

Abraham was an obscure, enslaved witness to the escalating tensions between Anglo-American forces in South Carolina and the Cherokee people who lived far to the west of their settlements. When misguided diplomacy triggered the outbreak of frontier warfare in 1760, the promise of freedom drew Abraham into the spotlight and set him on an adventure from which other men had cowered in fear.

I’d like to introduce Abraham the Unstoppable, the true adventure story of an enslaved man of African descent who won his freedom during the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1759–61. First we’ll explore the background of that unfamiliar war and learn about the world in which Abraham lived, and then we’ll follow the train of events that launched this enslaved man on an epic journey towards freedom.

The 400th anniversary of the arrival of Africans in 1619 Virginia provides an opportunity for reflection. In today’s episode, we’ll situate this anniversary in a broader perspective and connect it to the history of Charleston’s own African arrivals. Facts and figures form a big part of this story, but language and thread-pulling are also important to the ongoing conversation about the Africanness of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Charleston was once a heavily heavily-fortified town, enclosed by defensive works that accumulated over successive eras of warfare with our enemy neighbors. The campaign to fortify Charleston commenced early in the town’s history, but precisely how early is unclear. Today we’ll focus on the earliest years and ask—how prepared were Charlestonians of the 1680s to defend their homes? The answer just might surprise you.

Ropemaker’s Lane is a place name in Charleston that evokes images of antique men twisting long fibers into useful objects. That scenario is accurate, but it represents one facet of the site’s long history. To gain a fuller picture of its development over the past three centuries, lets reach back to the town’s early days and meet the people who created the lane and inspired its present name.

The City of Charleston, in my opinion, needs an official nickname, and perhaps even an official symbol. There are a few contenders out there, ranging from cheeky epithets to marketing slogans, but I think there's only one real option. Rather than inventing something new, or adopting something with a murky historical pedigree, I propose that we embrace Charleston's original nickname, which endured for more than a century: "The Palmetto City."

Charleston’s history is filled with stories that have a bright side and a not-so-bright side, and both aspects deserve to be told. Consider, for example, the story of Eliza Akin’s 1842 bequest to the city, which was intended to establish an institution to shelter the abandoned newborns of Charleston. Despite Miss Akin’s best intentions, the official politics of discrimination succeeded in stunting her benevolent design and failing those most in need.

If you’ve ever wondered what Christmas was like on a Lowcountry plantation in Antebellum times, William Gilmore Simms has the answers. His 1852 novella, The Golden Christmas, is a sunny take of romance and comedy that floats carelessly above the thinly-veiled darkness of slavery. Today we’ll take a quick overview of its author, its storyline, and its fatal flaws, and then sample a bite-sized portion of this holiday story.

The mass execution of 49 pirates in Charleston in 1718 is described in historical documents with a frustrating paucity of details. Despite the drama and trauma associated with this event, an air of mystery still hangs over the precise location of the pirates’ last stand. Today we’ll look closely at the local historical evidence and examine the larger legal framework that dictated the demise of so many pirate brethren.

Over the course of five weeks in the autumn of 1718, Charleston witnessed 13 trials of 58 men accused of piracy. Clerks made a paper record of this entire courtroom spectacle, most of which was published in 1719, but few people have seen the text of this dramatic narrative. This episode contextualize this valuable historical record and provides a summary of the confusing sequence of trials.

This month marks the 300th anniversary of one of the dramatic episodes in the history of Charleston—the trial and execution of 49 pirates captured off the Carolina coast in 1718. In this episode, we’ll explore the background preceding these extraordinary trials and focus on the efforts of South Carolina mariners to capture two of the most notorious pirates, Stede Bonnet and Richard Worley, and bring them to justice in Charleston.

Have you seen the tail of the horse in the portrait of George Washington that hangs in Charleston’s City Hall? Do you know the tale of how that painting’s origin, and why the horse’s rear-end is so prominently displayed? The popular version of this story isn’t entirely accurate rendering, so let’s use the Time Machine travel back to the early 1790s and explore the documentary evidence behind this artistic mystery.

As we conclude the 100th season of “Daylight Saving Time,” let’s pause to reflect on the concept of time keeping in Charleston’s past. Before the invention of “standard time” and “time zones, who determined the official time for our city, and when did we start synchronizing our clocks with those of other communities? Join me as we “fall back” in time and review the horological habits of our less hurried past.

In the spirit of Halloween, today’s program concerns one of the most prevalent and legitimate fears held by the people of eighteenth-century Charleston. I’m talking about taphophobia—the fear of being buried alive. Premature burial was a real concern back in that era, when the line between life and death was poorly understood. Today we’ll explore a few cases that are sure to leave a haunting impression.

The Akin Foundling Hospital was a short-lived, long-forgotten municipal institution located on the west side of Meeting Street in Charleston. Established in 1843 at the bequest of Miss Eliza Akin, the building was intended as a refuge for abandoned infants, but the structure’s poor condition hampered its mission. Today we’ll survey the City of Charleston’s management of the institution and look for its ashes after the fire of 1861.

From modest beginnings in the 1690s to great wealth in the 1750s and extinction in the 1840s, the lesser-known Akin family of South Carolina left an important legacy on Meeting Street that most of Charleston has long forgotten. Before we can appreciate the history of the Akin Foundling Hospital, we need to learn a bit about the family fortunes that inspired our community’s first and only home for motherless infants.

Between 1670 and 1808, nearly one thousand cargos of enslaved Africans entered the port of Charleston. This fact represents one of the most important chapters in the history of our community, but we the people of Charleston still struggle to wrap our collective brains around this weighty topic. How can we tell this important story to our children and to the millions of visitors who come here each year?

In 1868, the City of Charleston passed an ordinance making it illegal for a person to appear in public dressed in a manner “not becoming his or her sex.” Why would they do such a thing? The answer is wrapped in the confusing world of post-Civil War Charleston, a place filled with Union soldiers enforcing federal laws, formerly-enslaved people starting new lives, and members of the old guard trying to make sense of a topsy-turvy world.

Has this ever happened to you: There’s a knock at your front door late at night. You open the door to find a messenger with a letter and a soggy burlap bag. You open the letter—it’s news about a series of recent murders. You look inside the bag and find two human heads. What do you do? If you’re the governor of South Carolina, and its January of 1745, you breathe a sigh of relief, and say “Thank you—I’ve been expecting these.”

In the summer of 1744, two Native American men of the Notchee tribe murdered several Catawba Indians in cold blood near Four Holes Swamp. Fearing a general Indian war, the government of South Caorlina interceded and tried to maintain peace between the tribes while hunting down the murders. This dramatic story has all the elements of a prime-time detective series, but it survives only in the manuscript records of our early government.

The historical definition of “the Neck” once encompassed all the land between the rivers Ashley and Cooper, but the steady growth of development whittled it down until it was finally swallowed by annexation in the late twentieth century. In this episode, we’ll complete our chronological tour of Neck geography and consider how the identity of this once blighted area is about to be reborn as the final frontier on the Charleston peninsula.

How well do you know “the Neck,” that curious stretch of no man’s land bounded by the rivers Ashley and Cooper, and squeezed between the urban centers of Charleston and North Charleston? The geographic identity of "the Neck" evolved in multiple stages over the past three centuries, in step with the growth of the local population and with the rise of commercial development, but few know the details its transformation. It’s not just a neglected part of our local history—it’s also a big part of our community’s future.

In honor of the 235th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Charleston, I’d like to draw your attention to a little-known but incredibly important fact about the history of this city: During the early days of the Federal occupation of Charleston in the spring of 1865, nearly all of the city’s public records mysteriously disappeared. Because of this large-scale loss of records, our ability to learn, to know, and to tell the story of the city of Charleston was permanently abridged.

Sesame, or “benne” seeds represent an important vestige of the African cultures that came to South Carolina three centuries ago. Lowcountry settlers observed the value of the benne seed, adopted its African name, and once sought to produce it on an industrial scale. For a brief moment in the 1740s, it looked as if South Carolina would become a benne colony. That commercial venture never materialized, but the interest it generated here laid the foundation for the spread of benne throughout the American colonies, and into the culinary fabric of the United States.

South Carolina’s first police station was a brick “Watch House” constructed around 1701 at the intersection of Broad and East Bay Streets in Charleston. Built to shelter both the town’s nocturnal watchmen and the lawbreakers they caught on the streets at night, the Watch House was once a vital part of daily life in early Charleston.

After last week’s cliffhanger, we now return to the story of Charles Barker Nixon, a traveling magician and escape artist who came to Charleston in 1876 to be buried alive for the amusement of a crowd of spectators. This week we’ll witness his rise from the grave, learn how the feat was accomplished, and hear the pathetic conclusion to the story of Professor Nixon.

Over the course of a few weeks, this flamboyant, bohemian showman enthralled and terrified the local population by holding séances and speaking of ancient Egyptian prophecies. Nixon’s story is a tragi-comical tale set in the depths of the Reconstruction-era Charleston, about a mysterious enchanter who baffled the nation by charging admission to his funeral and inviting spectators to watch him rise from the grave.

For the first century of its existence, the urban landscape of Charleston was dominated by an evolving ring of fortifications designed to protect the city against potential invasion by Spanish, French, and later British forces. Our provincial legislature repeatedly devoted large sums of tax revenue for the construction and repair of walls, moats, bastions, and related works, resulting in what was undoubtedly the largest public works program in colonial South Carolina. Despite the impressive scale of this work, however, Charleston’s modern streetscape reveals scarcely any physical trace of those early fortifications. If the city once bristled with cannon, walls, moats, and drawbridges, how and when were such features scoured from the historical landscape?

You’ve probably heard by now that on June 19th, 2018, Charleston’s City Council adopted a resolution “recognizing, denouncing, and apologizing on behalf of the City of Charleston for the city’s role in regulating, supporting, and fostering” the institution of slavery. In the course of the debate in Council Chambers on that date, Mayor John Tecklenberg made reference to the enslaved laborers who built our present City Hall. To demonstrate the mayor’s point about the use of enslaved builders, one has only to look across Broad Street, at the colonial edifice of St. Michael’s Church.

In the late 1860s and throughout the 1870s, when celebrating the Fourth of July was almost exclusively a black phenomenon, the city’s annual celebrations commenced with a parade down Meeting Street, featuring brightly dressed citizens, politicians, brass bands, and uniformed members of the South Carolina National Guard, which, in the post-war era, was composed almost exclusively of formerly-enslaved black men. The parade ended at White Point Garden, where thousands of people would gather for a great picnic and a shady rest.

If you’ve ever wondered why there’s a palmetto tree on the South Carolina state flag, or why we’re known as the Palmetto State, then you need to hear this story.

This nocturnal force, composed of unpaid citizens who guarded the streets from sunset to sunrise, played an extremely important role in the everyday life of early Charleston, but you won’t find much written about it in the thousands of books and articles written about the history of this city.

It’s summertime in the Lowcountry, and the fish are jumping. Seafood season is definitely here, even if the shrimp are running a bit late this year. Fishing has been a big part of our community’s history since, well, long before Europeans and Africans arrived first here more than three centuries ago.

After a century of human- and horse-powered ferry boats carrying passengers across the Cooper River, the arrival of steam power signaled a sea-change in our sense of mobility. The convenience provided by fast and powerful steam ferries fueled the first suburban development boom in the rural areas east of the Cooper River.

In the past, Charleston-area commuters once had a variety of transportation options, including trains, trolleys, omnibuses, and bicycles. Today we’re going to talk about the predecessor to the modern water taxi—the ferries that once plied across the Cooper River, shuttling people, animals, and vehicles between Charleston, Daniel Island, and Mount Pleasant.

You might be surprised to learn that the roots of the Charleston police department, and of all law enforcement services in South Carolina, stretch back more than seven hundred years to thirteenth-century England.

The first bicycles appeared on the streets of Charleston in the spring of 1869, at which time the machine was general called a “velocipede,” after the Latin roots “veloci” (fast) + “pede” (feet). For about six months after the first velocipedestrian rolled through the streets of Charleston, the city experienced a case of bicycle fever.

On the afternoon of Thursday, April 20th, 1775, the members of the General Committee of the South Carolina Provincial Congress convened in Charleston. After discussing the latest news received from England, and the intelligence contained in the private mail stolen from the post office the preceding night, the president of the Provincial Congress, Colonel Charles Pinckney (1732–1782) appointed William Henry Drayton (1742–1779) to head a “Secret Committee” to execute a series of preemptive covert actions.

In last week’s cliffhanger, we were listening in on a committee meeting of the colony’s rebellious shadow government, when they were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of breaking news from Britain. Let’s return to that scene on Broad Street now, rewind our Time Machine, and pull up a chair at the beginning of that important meeting.

At the same time Paul Revere was making his famous midnight ride, and British soldiers were battling Massachusetts militiamen at Lexington and Concord, events were taking place right here that represent South Carolina’s first acts of rebellion.

Long before the invention of email, and long before the advent of the U.S. Postal Service, how did the people of early Charleston exchange letters and news with other towns, other colonies, and across the Atlantic Ocean?

In 1897, Charleston's leading cyclists prevailed in their fight for a bicycle path connecting the city to St. Andrew's over the Ashley River bridge.

A century ago, this community was just beginning to emerge from a social, economic, and cultural rut created by backward-looking politics. To move Charleston forward, we needed to embrace new, progressive ideas and policies, especially those recognizing the equal rights of women and of the African-American population.

During its brief tenure, this organization embarked on a promotional campaign to lure Europeans to settle in the Palmetto State. Who was the Emigrant Society, and what were their motivations?

James Hoban, Irish architect of the White House, was introduced to George Washington in Charleston in 1791. Their fortuitous meeting here in Hoban's adopted home propelled the Irishman to international fame in the new city of Washington, D.C.

Between 1670 and 1783, urban Charles Town evolved by degrees from a lawless market town to a corporate city with a robust municipal government.

Drafted here in Charleston 150 years ago, the South Carolina Constitution of 1868 was a "radical" document created in the midst of an important, but largely forgotten struggle for civil rights equality.

What do Denmark Vesey, Charleston lotteries, and the iconic "High Battery" have in common? Plenty. You can't tell the story of one without mentioning the others.

Rhettsbury or "Rhett's Point" was a colonial-era, suburban plantation that in the nineteenth century became homogenized into Ansonborough, but it has separate history and identity that deserve to be remembered.

President George Washington came to Charleston in 1791 with three objectives in mind: to increase support for the new Federal government, to view the area's Revolutionary battle sites, and to indulge the thousands of admirers who wished see the hero of the War of Independence in the flesh.

Let's explore the evidence behind the story of how, why, and when Gadsden's Wharf played a significant role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to North America.

A brief survey of the timeline of importing Africans into the port of Charleston, from 1670 to the Constitutional end of the trade in January 1808.

Long before the advent of modern air conditioning, tenacious investors at the turn of the nineteenth century surmounted great challenges to create a viable business of selling Northern ice to customers in Southern cities. By 1817, Charleston was receiving a continuous annual supply of natural ice that transformed the city’s culture of food and beverages.

Firewood was once a basic necessity of life in all seasons of the year. Let's explore some of the details of the firewood business to connect our senses to the sights and smells of Charleston past.

"Lady Day" (March 25th) was "New Year's Day" for the first 81 years of Charleston, until we switched to the "New Style" calendar in 1752.

Charleston celebrates the 155th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 2018.

Let’s pick up the story in early December 1782, when the end of the long war was quite literally in sight. Most of the American army in South Carolina, consisting of several hundred men under the leadership of General Nathanael Greene, was camped on a number of plantations on the west side of the Ashley River.

Let's explore the events leading up to the British evacuation of Charleston on 14 December 1782, a momentous day in South Carolina history.

In the autumn of 1927, Susan Dart Butler opened a free library in a building known as Dart Hall in downtown Charleston, and the present Dart Library is hosting a celebratory event this Saturday to commemorate ninety years of service to the community

At the turn of the seventeenth century, England was very keen to get involved in the European real estate bonanza in the New World. By that time, Spain and Portugal had already claimed nearly the entire continent of South America, the southern parts of North America, and most of the islands known as the West Indies, or Caribbean Islands.

It’s Thanksgiving season again, and for most people that means a day of rest, relaxation, and feasting with close friends and family. As a historian working in an old city, I have learned that Thanksgiving also includes at least ten people asking me the same question: “When was the first Thanksgiving in Charleston?” I don’t mind the question at all, but the answer is generally more complex than most people care to hear. If you don’t mind a quick stroll through the historical record of early South Carolina, however, I’m happy to offer an answer to this annual holiday question.

If you pick up any book about the origins of South Carolina in the late 1600s, you’ll be sure to find references to the island of Barbados and the great influence it exerted on our early history. Nearly 350 years later, in November 2017, a number of Lowcountry residents are collaborating with officials in Barbados to commemorate the cultural ties that continue to bind our two communities together.

When Charles II of England granted the colony of Carolina to a group of Lords Proprietors in 1663, the province included all the land between English Virginia and Spanish Florida. On paper, at least, the southern border of Carolina included the northern part of Florida, all the way down to what is now Jacksonville. Conversely, Spain considered the northern boundary of Florida to extend as far north as Saint Helena Sound, in modern Beaufort County, South Carolina.

At the close of the year 1856, the City of Charleston was just wrapping up the extensive repairs to the High Battery seawall and White Point Garden made necessary by the destructive hurricane of 1854. Immediately to the west of these expensive public projects, jutting out into the Ashley River, stood a series of rather unsavory private wharves, which the city viewed both as a nuisance and a potential liability to the public park.

I think it’s important to look back at the many generations of labor that led to the creation of the present “High” and “Low” battery seawalls. Our brief journey begins nearly 300 years ago, when the entire area in question was just a bit of underwater, imaginary real estate.

It’s time for our annual ShakeOut.! No, I’m not talking about some retro-themed dance contest, I’m talking about the Great Southeast ShakeOut of 2017, which is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to promote earthquake awareness in seismically-active areas–like Charleston.

Philadelphia Alley is not the shortest or narrowest thoroughfare in the city of Charleston, but it is sufficiently small to escape the attention of many residents and tourists. For those who have stumbled into its entrances on Queen and Cumberland Streets in the past, they have discovered a picturesque yet historically mute piece of Charleston.

The story of Dutch Town begins in the middle of the eighteenth century, but I’d like to begin our tour of the neighborhood in the 1670s. Why? Because the physical location of Dutch Town is rooted in a series of mathematical errors made long before the first Germans arrived in South Carolina.

The location of the recent sinkhole in front of 215 East Bay Street is not directly related to the old creek that became Market Street two hundred years ago, nor is it directly related to the colonial-era fortification called Craven Bastion on the opposite side of the street. Rather, the recent sinkhole occurred on natural high ground (or at least a relatively high spot) that may have been the southern end of an old feature called Governor’s Bridge. Not familiar with the story of Governor’s Bridge? Give me a few minutes of your time and I’ll bring you up to speed.

I’d like to share with you a little mystery that I’ve been trying to solve recently. Late one evening in early May 1822, a group of four men gathered on a Charleston street, under the cover of some overhanging tree branches, to discuss a secret plan. Three of the group, Frank, Monday, and Jack, were enslaved men of African descent, while the fourth, Denmark Vesey, was known as a “free negro.”

Hurricane season brings its share of anxiety, so I’d like to offer a bit of distraction from our current weather uncertainties. At the risk of adding to your stress, let’s turn back the calendar to early September of 1811, when a tornado measuring approximately one hundred yards in diameter churned diagonally across the city of Charleston, leaving a swath of death and destruction in its furious wake.

For the first 180 years of Charleston’s existence—from the arrival of the first settlers, through the entire colonial era and the American Revolution, through the War of 1812 and the Nullification Crisis, right up to the middle of the nineteenth century—Charlestonians rode their horses and drove their carriages on the left side of the road. Why?

Let’s roll back the hands of time to talk about a nineteenth-century transportation phenomenon that few people remember, but one that revolutionized the concept of mobility in the Charleston area and continues to impact our community in the twenty-first century. I’m talking about the omnibus.

Bees Ferry Road began as a path through the wildness more than three centuries ago, leading to an important crossing point over the Ashley River. Behind the well-known name is the forgotten story of a once-thriving gathering place and the generations of men and women who operated the slow-moving ferry for nearly 160 years.

Let’s travel back in Lowcountry music history to talk about South Carolina’s first state anthem, or at least the state’s first unofficial anthem. I’m talking about a piece of music called “the South Carolina Hymn,” which was written in the summer of 1807 and first performed in Charleston on August 22nd of that year.

From the opening of the new Centre Market in Market Street in August 1807, black vultures earned a level of government protection because they provided an important public service: the birds ate all of the animal scraps and leftovers cast aside by the butchers who plied their trade in the city’s busy food market.

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Today we’re going to travel back in Lowcountry history to talk about Bastille Day, which is celebrated on the 14th of July by Francophiles around the world. I wrote an essay about this topic a couple of years ago, before I launched this radio series, so I’d like to revisit the topic for the benefit of those who might not have seen the original post.

Longitude Lane is a short, narrow alley in urban Charleston that has captured the imagination of countless tourists and residents alike. Measuring approximately 540 feet long and just over ten feet wide, Longitude Lane is parallel to and approximately 150 feet south of Tradd Street. Like Tradd Street, it intersects with East Bay Street at a right angle. It offers one of the most picturesque views in the city, giving pedestrians a glimpse back in time to what Charleston must have looked like before the modern age of transportation.

Adam Gordon was born around the year 1726, the fourth son of Alexander, second Duke of Gordon. A native of Scotland, Lord Adam entered the British military at an early age, and in 1763 he was promoted to colonel of the 66th Regiment of Foot, a position he held until 1775. I n the early 1760s he was stationed briefly in the West Indies. Before returning home, 38-year-old Lord Adam sailed to Florida and began a long, slow northward tour through the other American colonies.

Today we’re going to travel back in Lowcountry history to explore the genesis and legacy of a public holiday called “Carolina Day.” Carolina Day is celebrated on the 28th of June every year, and that’s been the case since 1777. The day commemorates an important battle that took place on Sullivan’s Island, an action that could rightfully be called the first significant American military victory in the early days of our war for independence from Great Britain.

Today we’re going to travel back in Lowcountry history to explore the roots of a site in urban Charleston called Vendue Range. Almost everybody who’s been to Charleston in the past twenty-odd years has probably visited Vendue Range, but the small site may not have made much of an impression besides serving as the path to the popular splash fountain in Waterfront Park. Most visitors are a bit confused by the street’s odd name, and I’ll bet very few locals know much about the origins of this Charleston landmark.

In our last episode, we talked about history of the Charleston park called Marion Square from the early 1700s through the American Civil War, so let’s resume the narrative with the Confederate evacuation of Charleston in February of 1865.

Today we’re going to explore the history of a specific piece of property in urban Charleston called Marion Square. I’m sure most of you know the piece of land I’m talking about, but in case you’re new to the Lowcountry, we’ll begin with the basics.

Today we’re going to travel back in Lowcountry history to explore the life story of a man who lived in the Charleston area in the eighteenth century and today is remembered by very few people. I’m talking about a man named Thomas Grimball, who was born in rural South Carolina in 1744 and died in Charleston in 1783. Never heard of him? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

I’ve been collecting information about the history of bicycles in our community for several years now, and almost all of the information I’ve gathered comes from old Charleston newspapers. At first I wasn’t even looking for information about this topic. I was actually browsing through some post-Civil-War newspapers a few years back, looking for facts to use in a program about Civil Rights history, when I happened to stumble into a very brief description of the first bicycle in the Lowcountry, which appeared on streets of downtown Charleston on the 14th of February 1869.

If you want to understand the expansion of South Carolina in the first half of the eighteenth century, or if you simply want to learn about the roots of our state’s German population, you need to hear this story, so stick around.

In the past two episodes we’ve focused on the “normal” legal parameters that shaped the lives of women in early South Carolina, but the legal rights and “disabilities” of enslaved women, free women of color, and Native American women in early South Carolina were not quite the same as those of their free white counterparts.

In our last episode, we began to survey the rights and “disabilities” (to use an old legal term) that framed the lives of women in the first century of South Carolina. In this episode we consider the antiquated options for marriage dissolution and explore the precarious legal existence of widows, with examples from the lives of real women to illustrate our points.

This week we’re traveling back in Lowcountry history to talk about women. Every March we celebrate women’s history month, and in the past I’ve presented some programs on various aspects of this topic around the community. Rather than profiling the lives of famous South Carolina women, or talking about famous events in local women’s history, I’ve taken a different tack and tried to focus on the bigger picture, and to include the voices of obscure women.

Today we’re going to travel back in Lowcountry history in search of something to drink. Time travel can make a body thirsty, you know. Let’s imagine that we’re traveling back to colonial South Carolina, that is, sometime between the arrival of the first European settlers here in 1670 to the 1770s, the era of the American Revolution.

We’ve followed the adventures of John Laurens from his childhood in Charleston to the America siege of British-held Yorktown, and now we conclude this dramatic story by tracing the last ten months of his tragically short life.

This week we continue our narrative adventure through the life of John Laurens (1754–1782), with comparisons to his portrayal in the hit musical, Hamilton.

Over the past several months I’ve spoken with a number of people around Charleston, fans of the hit musical, Hamilton, who asked me what I thought of the portrayal of John Laurens in the musical—was it accurate, was it fair, and wasn’t it just so cool?

The cultivation of rice in early South Carolina had a tremendous impact on the development of Lowcountry culture and history. It inspired the forced migration of thousands of people from West Africa, created a wealthy elite, and dominated the economy and culture of our state for many generations. In an effort to raise awareness about the local story of this humble grain, I’ve assembled a list of what I consider the most significant facts about Lowcountry rice history that form the basis for our community’s shared heritage.

November 2016 marked the 250th anniversary of the first concerts of the most significant musical organization in the early history of the United States—Charleston’s St. Cecilia Society. In this episode, we’ll take quick tour of the society’s history, from its origins in 1766, through the Revolution and the War of 1812, to its final concerts in 1820.

Rather than following one large topic from beginning to end, this episode offers a bowl of Charleston alphabet soup—an A-to-Z feast of 25 short biographies profiling (mostly) obscure Charlestonians, each of whom would make a great subject for your next historical novel, screenplay, or school report. Bon appetit!

Here’s the conclusion of our overview of notable hurricanes in the history of Lowcountry South Carolina, from the dramatic storm of 1804 to the mild passing of Matthew of 2016. Learning about these old tropical twisters will help you get in the grove for the next hurricane season, which is always just around the corner.

Hurricanes are an inescapable part of living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and our community has weathered quite a few storms over the past three centuries. Join me for a look back at the most memorable and significant hurricanes to hit the shores of Charleston, from the Spanish-thwarting storm of 1686 to the battery-breaking cyclone of 1804.

Benne (or sesame) seeds are a staple ingredient of many Lowcountry dishes and desserts, but when and from where did it come to Charleston? In this episode, we’ll explore the earliest descriptions of benne cultivation and use here, and the colonial-era traditions we continue to enjoy today. South Carolina was once mad about benne, but it wasn’t just the taste that made it so important to our economy.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my first podcast: a digital audio version of my recent “Invasion of 1706” radio program. You can listen to the program here on the Charleston Time Machine whenever you like, and soon you’ll be able to subscribe to my podcast feed through iTunes and other podcatching services.