by Walter Rhett
Besides mica and quartz, pressed or heated, what's in a gravestone? What can images of torsos cut in half, skulls garlanded with wings, a skeleton resting on an hourglass tell about an invisible world, long past? Can these markers for the dead be brought to life?
Death was a frequent visitor to Charleston, and with it came new ideas. In the early to mid 1700s, Charleston was evolving its own standards of conduct and thought. A slave-holding colonial port (like Boston, New York, Newport, and Salem), its plantation system for growing rice made it a world capital of wealth, consumption, law and diplomacy, and high taste. Its silver handcrafted by English smiths, its field hoes forged from Swedish steel, its rum distilled in Rhode Island from Jamaican molasses, its elms transplanted from China, its Africans from Senegal to Angola sold in public auctions marched along its streets in coffles, Charleston's code of social graces was bounded by a new freedom and a blind eye, a rough hewn optimism whose elegance reveled in rough edges. As the French writer Voltaire slyly observed in 1756, "slaves work in plantations, . . .to gratify our newly acquired appetites for things unknown to our ancestors."
Death brought an opportunity to literally set these new ideas and appetites in stone, and the drawings, carvings, symbols on Charleston's grave markers (purchased mainly from New England) comprised new attitudes and feelings about death, eternity, life, and society.
With slavery excepted, the oldest American institution is gravestones. Before food, music, religious worship or democracy, the art of carving gravestones was the very first institution to express uniquely American ideas while receiving widespread cultural and national support.
Just how did remembering the dead become the first institution of American culture?
First, American stone carvers broke completely with Europe's traditions. Ornate statures, carved effigies, elaborate altar tombs (table-tops) graced many upper class European and English graves. Commissioned artists executed glorious angels with oriented wings flying in the depth of an infinite sky; they carved robed prophets with raised and bowed heads mingled with sheep, lions, and crowns. They “spoke” in symbols and embedded ideas to be reflected upon.
American carvers valued brevity, blunt images, immediate impact. The earliest American stone carvers also worked as masons, carpenters, smiths, and farmers. Diverse demands and tasks competed for their time. They borrowed simple elements from the over-the-top sacred splendor of Europe, and re-assembled these parsed-out pieces. America carvings aimed ideas like a billboard. Their direct images snapped straight out of the stone.
The most popular American emblems were skulls and wings! From Boston to Charleston, grave markers by the hundreds displayed carved wings attached to bare human skulls! The wings filled the overthrow (the stone's top; its crest or tympanum), crowding out heaven or earth, or the passage between
In Europe, winged creatures soared, escorted, celebrated, grieved. In the American allegory, the soul is stripped of devices and desires. Awaiting the call, power, and outpouring of the Light to reanimate its expired, impotent mask, it is a bereft vessel abated with unmoving wings.
The churches and cathedrals of Europe lifted up the glory of Christ and salvation, but the American church stressed the darkness. The grave was a gateway to glory, but first the consigned soul passed through its night. The American journey proceeded through a surrounding void, the territory of human frailty. In death it was too late to ward off afflictions. "Beware," the stark skull foretold, "my lessons are done." "Remember," it proclaimed with grim ease: a soul can be lost--its escorting wings debarred before salvation.
The skulls on Charleston's grave markers are flat orbs, chiseled in two dimensions. They are "drawings," not so much human, as powerful visual notes posted by humans. The noses, ears, and eyes are removed, almost sunken (eliminating the senses). Only the teeth are fixed in a macabre clinched grin with sealed teeth, offset like brick courses. (Shutting off from living ears a shout of joy or a horrifying scream, leaving mystery--and dread--in its wake.)
American gravestones heightened the human scale of responsibility and reduced heaven's significance by putting wings on humans rather than sacred figures. American gravestones emphasize the internal, their images set against temptation or bad example. Wings expound the human choices: will you rise or fall when the judgment comes?
Skulls appear in few English memorials, and then in three dimensions; the first sitting effigy in Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth Russell (d.1601) has a left-handed finger pointing toward a fully formed skull without a lower jaw revealed beneath the hem of her dress, visible because her right foot is resting on its crown. George Monck, the General who restored Charles II to the throne (and namesake for Moncks Corner, SC) has a nearby memorial with a carved mast, two anchors, and a cameo.
At St. Nicholas, Chiwick, near the gravesites for English artist James Hogarth and American James McNeill Whistler, Richard Wright (d. 1734) has a sculpted skull's head resting on crossed palm fronds---exact in proportion and detail to one on a tomb in St. Philip's (Charleston) south churchyard.
Near the Tower of London, close by the tombs of Sir Thomas More, two wives of Henry VIII (Anne Boleyn and her cousin, Catherine Howard), and Lady Jane Grey (a frail, star-crossed child, who married at 13, became English regent for 9 days, and was beheaded at 16), the Wood family display a skull and crossbones, and the Tradescant family (the world's leading gardeners, est.1620-40's) have a tilted skull with hollow orbs for the nose and eyes, hollow cheeks above oversized teeth, toppling (the illusion of spinning) in the air at the feet of a seven-headed dragon/griffin set in a grove of densely forested, long limbed trees, roots above ground.
II
"Draw Lebel, the Angels are a-coming Down"
--Carolina Rice Spiritual
Charleston's earliest grave markers are mirrors without reflections, as the deaths they hail are beyond sight. But the marker mirrors the corpse: the corpse lies down among the dead; the marker sits upright to prod the living (think of the corpse propped up). Cold, stiff, the marker's inscription and emblems are chiseled by removing bits of rock--just as time lesson's will leave its marks as slivers of bone from the corpse decay and break away.
Many early stones are tablet letters, listing life histories, offices and honors, a kind sentiment. Charlestonians were ambassadors to England, France, Spain, and Russia; Charlestonians ran for President of Vice-President in every election (4) from 1796 to 1808; four Charlestonians signed the Declaration of Independence; a different four signed the Constitution, one of whom became the second justice of the US Supreme Court. A Charlestonian was both the 4th President of the Continental Congress and a Peace Commissioner for the Revolutionary War, several served as governors of the state, and one was the namesake for the gardenia--but none of these achievements are cited on their original tombs. Modesty was its own bravura. Their underplayed narratives put leading Charlestonians on the same level as their loyal friends.
The spare appearance in Charleston of traditional Christian symbols going back to the 10th and 11th centuries is a striking absence.
Africans, by contrast, continued the use of traditional signs and deep Christian elements in the words and phrases of their 18th century spirituals, especially the spirituals concerned with death. The Resurrection is a constant theme in the spirituals, as is the glory of heaven, the welcome table, feasts of milk and honey, discussions with Peter and Paul, the miracles of Jesus, robes and wings, falling stars, streets of gold, bands of angels, joining the saints bound for the promiseland, pilgrims of sorrow trying to make heaven home, and Gabriel blowing the trumpet to summon people to judgment.
These parallel views of death, its separate celebration in word and stone by Africans and Europeans, point to a broad freedom of expression, even in a society where people were enslaved. The stones and the songs help define evolving theologies and worship styles, differing belief systems. Both develop metaphors, symbols, and simple phrases to express faith while commenting on daily life.
The few wooden makers for African graves deteriorated rapidly. Several surviving stones refer to "benevolent masters." But neither wood nor stone grave markers for their chattel exist. Special symbols from African tradition, shells, or personal items may have marked African graves. It is impossible to tell: their burial sites have all been built over--from more than 25,000 deaths, despite having been a majority of the city's population since 1710, no 18th century marked African grave survives!
Despite the absence of graves or sites, the African spirituals tell of a diverse, flourishing creativity combined with a brilliant intellect belied by custom and institutions of control.
For example, the spiritual,” Balm in Gilead" is a pointed exposition of two differing positions expressed in the Old and New Testament.
In Jeremiah 46 (the Old Testament), it says, "Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you." This verse denies forgiveness and attests no counters to the full measure of God's wrath as He applied divine justice to an unchasten Egypt. But in the New Testament, Jesus heals the blind and the lame and raises the dead, and strikes away afflictions as asked. In a specific reference and contradiction to Jeremiah’s admonishment about Egypt's inevitable fall in the Old Testament, the spiritual lyric concludes affirmingly that we are not irrevocably condemned: "There is a balm in Gilead, [Jesus] to make the wounded whole." (This interpretation, shared in a plaintive ballard, developed from sensitive listening, thoughtful insight, and humble courage!)
The shout songs have a call and response pattern of fills, hollers, echoes, and melody lines weaved in counterpoint. Africans use the rhythms and tempos of the spirituals, especially the "shout" songs, to "open" a passageway for the listener.
The masters of time, especially the lead singers, carry these rhythms, mystic in origin and transmitted through the oral tradition. The clapping and stomping, the voice's careful sliding pitch and placement, call the living spirit, the person of the Holy Ghost from the Trinity. (See The Swan Silvertones, "My Rock" on youtube.com for an extraordinary contemporary example!)
Biblically, as God struck the rock and produced water and honey, the striking hand, stomping feet, and praising voice extolled the mysteries in the sacred rhythms until they brought forth the Holy Ghost. A state of being inside and outside of time all at once, vivid senses and inner feelings, increased intensity in the texture of sound and colors conveyed the presence of the Holy Ghost.
There were no flashes or thunder, but the experience was undeniable. Instead being at the footstool of mercy, bowed before the feet of Christ, think of the revelation experienced if Christ (in the service of the person of the Holy Ghost) were sitting at the believer's feet!
William H. Grimball, a Charleston lawyer whose family owned plantations before the Civil War, wrote in 1984: "In their spirituals our black breathen face death with a boundless hope founded on an unshakeable faith. Their faith and hope stand as an inspiration to us all. They say in these songs, all I wanna know is my sins forgib'n; all I wanna know is my soul is free."
This pluralism of African and European attitudes widened the circle of American meaning, and that circle in Charleston also included all the mainline churches. Despite differences in faith traditions and beliefs, Charleston's Anglicans, Congregationalists, Huguenots, Methodists, Baptists, Jews, and Catholics all conformed to the common style in grave markers, and every denomination has examples. This consistency across faith lies continues even as skulls and wings give way to winged faces and then to portraits and cameos. By the 19th century, Greek and Christian symbols return to Charleston’s memorials, as urns, vines, and chaises.
Also shared by all faiths in Europe was the technical skill of carving from every angle the folds and drapes in the gowns, robes, dresses, and cloaks of the statuary; the garments of many carvings are so natural in proportion their drape, folds, and pleats look like cloth.
The favorite technical motif of early American carvers again breaks tradition. Charleston's favorite? Wings that evolved into feathers! Feathers? Yes, feathers!
Layered, elaborated in many forms (arches, curves, tapers), evocating mythic ad real creatures, wings were contoured into feathers, blending the environmental naturalism of the American landscape with the spiritual naturalism of death. Missed by Charleston's grave art experts is the secret passage of shared traits that by analogy connect feathers to faith: feathers have strength and are lightweight; they represent the freedom and strength of the soul absolved of its grievances and guilt. Feathers molt once a year: the old damaged contours shed and drop away as sin confessed sloughs away from the saved.
In the New World around them, in the skulls of animals found in the forests and in the dead they buried in graves, they were vigilant witnesses. In the changing seasons--in the molting of feathers--they observed and found meaning, and in natural law, a confirming logic. And in stone, they chiseled, in plain tongue, and warned, in plain sight, of the stumbling blocks (acting out of accord with Divine Law) that denied passageway to the comforts of high mercies.
The spirituals passionately confirmed the warnings of the stone and lead the way from danger. Conversely, they tell right actions led to high mercies, for death was fatal, but not necessarily final. Perhaps passers-by (black and white) knew the verse from Ezekiel (37:5), "Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live." Or this verse from Acts (20:10), "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him."
The best expression of the life, style, and ideas of Charleston is found in its churchyard and cemeteries, both present and absent. The grave holds only one body (some, two!) but its marker brings together a thick tangle of beliefs, styles, technologies, and life histories--and forms an American connection that binds life, death, and the eternal. Charleston has no natural stone. Yet Charleston became the arbitrator of the foremost expressions of American public art, and has today the most diverse and extensive surviving collections of colonial grave markers. Plied by carvers "from off," mainly Massachusetts, Charleston became the judge and guardian for forging and elaborating the spiritual sensibilities that formed the American identity. Began in New England, Charleston's wealth and status, its acceptance, purchase, and support helped turned a regional expression into an American ideal.
Laughing to Keep from Dying
The bizarre images meant to get your attention were also meant to be funny. As startling as the images can be another excepted surprise is their humor. Laughing was a way to keep from dying. The humor has pratfalls and subtle wit, demonstrates ingeniousness and outrageousness, and runs from sophisticated to slapstick.
For example, the skulls are masquerade masks meant to alarm the living. The skulls, so ghastly and frightening, mock death by disguising its peace, a subtle sophistication hidden by the skull's glaring fix. The skull's gruesome, exaggerated hyperbole mimics and defy death's sting as it stares unchangingly and inescapably out into the living world. Like an ever shining beacon, death joined life and never let go. But here is the overstated joke: The dead are dead. Dead and buried. Sent for sugar. Gone but not forgotten. But these skulls, with their hollow eyes of stone never leave! In their unstinting vigilance, without rest, they mock the living and the dead!
There are books of epitaph humor. Here three (two undated) epitaphs from stone maskers show close ties between humor and death:
"A bird, a man, a loaded gun,
No bird, dead man, Thy will be done."
for a dentist:
"View this with gravity
He is filling his last cavity
or:
Here lies a poor but honest expert angler,
until Death, envious of his art
threw out his line and hooked and landed him (1790)
The underside of grief is a memory that continues beyond life, and humor is often the tender vehicle for the long distance.
Enter a colonial churchyard and enter a comedy zone. At St. Philip's Church, (America's second oldest Anglican Church) in the West Cemetery, a skeleton lies in full lateral repose, head comfortably resting on an hourglass, hands folded, knees elevated--but upon close notice, with feet too big! This is gruesome slapstick; so is a skull with a thatch of hair that even stone leaves unruly. A parson's collar symbolized as a bib of feathers is contrived; the image of a colonial preacher dressed morning coat and cravat, carved in a classic, Grecian bust, flanked by two cheerful, rosy cherubs, one with his elbow resting on a human skull is outrageous--and hilarious.
As does death, humor abounds in unexpected ways. John Bull, who carved in Charleston and Newport, marks the grave of a two year child, with a human figure cut in half by a scythe, and an hourglass halved and toppled by its blade tip! Macabre horror!
John Walker, one of the few active Charleston carvers, for example, accentuates his feathers on John Collins at Circular Church (repeated on the marker for Richard Wilkinson at St. Philip's), making his neck look an inverted Native American headdress. But for baby sisters, Esther and Elizabeth Gordon, born nine years apart (buried the Circular Church yard) he carves an elaborate hourglass, enclosed in spindles that resemble a cradle's rocking arms, adds miniature crossbones and a tiny skull. Chiseled on a stippled background in Latin caps is the phrase, MEMENTO MORI (REMEMBER YOU MUST DIE), the children scream out. But the joke is the little dickens are helpless victims of their own advice.
And in the tombs of death, fruits and vegetables are abundant.
Throughout the historic churchyards, the snapped off tops of many fluted columns, though intentional, have slapstick appeal. These markers remind the community another topped out too soon!
Plain text has deadpan humor, too. Elizabeth Prioleau (at St. Philip's) who has perhaps the most grisly marker in the city (her skull's lower and upper jaws are smashed, ripped off; leaving no trace of teeth or bone, a fractured nose bridge, a broken high cheek bone with a detached joint. One visiting family caught the humor, and even suggested that the family ordered the carver of the skull to "smash it, just smash it" with a sledge!). Her stone, with its smashed skull, and an hourglass with its last grain of sand (the measure of time) passed to the bottom, has an aphorism on its scroll top: sic transit gloria mundi--"so passes the glory of the world."
As history points to the future, it is well to reflect upon the impact of an similar but less ironic text message carved by John Bull: "What one moment gives, the next destroys."
And the story on Governor Robert Daniell's marker gets a chortle and a raised eyebrow. The governor died at 72 in 1718. He fought on behalf of King William, leading naval forces against Spain in Florida, capturing St. John's and St. Mary's. He was appointed colonial governor of North Carolina from 1703-05. He divided the lands captured from the Yemasse and served as SC's colonial governor for a year, from 1716-17. Daniell's received a royal title, landgrave, and the King granted him Daniell's Island in 1717 for his service. The next year he died at his plantation home on the island during a window of ten days. He left behind a 34 year old wife who remarried. His daughter also married; the son of her mother's new husband! Coincidence?
How does a society record change, celebrate its principles of faith, share its humor, communicate its attitudes about life and dying, and make sure these thoughts are passed on? In Haiti, the tradition was "tell the horse."
In Charleston, parse it out in pieces, and put it in stone.
Highlighting the sacred, and the Gullah View
Did you know camels and elephants once roamed Charleston’s lowcountry? That sharks as big as school buses (35-ton megalodons) plied the coastal waters? That the Battery was once a Native American oyster bed? That rice—Carolina Gold—the great cash crop of the lowcountry, had an unusual Romeo and Juliet: a pirate and princess from the east African island of Madagascar?
Charleston’s history, its surprises and new twists, also celebrates international ties, especially its Gullah heritage. Gullah, the name derived from Angola (An · gola— “gullah”), represents the speech, belief, and customs of the lowcountry’s unique Euro-African heritage developed over two centuries by melded communities from West, Central, and Southern Africa.
The Gullah believe that 4 pillars spotlight time’s passage: faith, family, work, and learning. Believing faith to be a deep inner mystic (beyond sense or reason), the Gullah make and use symbols, stories, songs, memories, and physical sites to mark and make known their faith—to enable all to see and understand their beliefs.
Faith/
For example, towering above the city and the sea since 1761, the Biblical meaning of the 187 ft. octagon steeple of St. Michael’s Church is right out of Genesis. God made the world in six days, rested, then called the world to new life on the eighth day (The same day He made sweet tea! The animals were thirsty!) Recall the eight souls saved on the ark. The eight-sided steeple extols the city to begin or renew life in Christ.
Interred at Circular Congregational Church is Rev. G. Hutson. Cherubs flank his cameo, one resting an elbow on an hourglass (life has expired); the other’s elbow propped on a human skull without a jaw, its teeth sitting on a ledge (a symbol of the silence consigned by the grave . . .).
Praise House, held most Tuesdays at 7 pm at Circular, presents a rare cultural opportunity—witness the Magnolia Singers singing spirituals spanning 200 years, in the call and response tradition of the Africans who created this deeply moving, spirit-filled music. Somehow the rhythms of this live performance touch and enter the body to access an inner mystic.
Born in the rice fields, forest groves and clearings near the slave quarters, in wooden “praise houses” and modern churches, the spirituals passionate outpouring chronicle a history that laughs, cries, and prays, but always moves forward. All the while the voices swing—healing by memory, moving forward in praise, offering thanks for the mercy of the present.
“Rhett’s deep knowledge let’s you embrace Charleston’s charm and history. You will also know where to eat, shop, and visit.”—Charleston Post and Courier
The lantern windows high in its bell tower sealed and dark, Emmanuel AME Church still illuminates the world beyond horizon and sight. A bellwether African-American congregation, Emanuel AME Church is one of the most important houses of worship in the USA.
Founded in 1791 as a prayer band, Emanuel’s discipleship (at slavery’s peak in 1817, its 5,000 members were drawn from 3 Methodist congregations) shadowed the number Moses led through the parted Red Sea (5,000, protected and guided by God), echoed the number touched on the day of Pentecost (5,000-filled with grace by His Spirit), and eerily matched the number Jesus fed with the barley loaves and fish on the mountain across from Galilee (5,000 blessed by the gift of faith: sustained, nourished, and strengthened).
In 1865, Morris Brown, Emanuel’s founder (and AME Church’s second bishop), Daniel A. Payne (the first African-American college president, Wilberforce), R. H. Cain (later a SC Congressman), and Henry McNeil Turner (the first African-American chaplain in the US Army) re-opened the congregation. At Emanuel, faith is deeply personal: Raphael’s famous 16th century cherubs (seen in the recess of the ground level entrance) have the sculpted faces of 19th century Charleston youth! The prayer circles, Sunday sermons, the private and public witnesses, altar calls, and shout rhythms adorn the church whose plain beauty is enhanced by its magnificent proportions. Ex-slaves and their children built the present church from their craft and financial resources. Opened in 1891, it retains the original gaslights, Victorian embossed ceiling, and heart pine floors.
The Baha¢i faith emphasizes the unity of all people and embraces historic, physical, gender, and ethnic diversity and world peace. Charleston’s Louis Gregory, born in 1874, a slave’s grandson, became a lawyer and a leader of the US Assembly of the Bahai. (His restored childhood home is 2 Deportes Court).
Planters’ letters and archived notes affirm greater trust, higher responsibility, and new work roles for colonial and ante-bellum Charleston’s African majority. Slaves brought "across the waters" became captains of ships sailing into oceans and waterways to pick up the rice harvests from plantations spread from Myrtle Beach to Savannah.
Called patroons, these enslaved Gullah captains commanded 20 ton schooners through shoals and creeks, river channels changing with the tides, open seas lashed by storms to stage 600 lb. Barrels of rice along Charleston's colonial and ante-bellum wharves for shipment to Asia and Europe.
The builders who erected the city's most recognized landmark and its famed bell ringers have been left out of the city's record until recently. St. Michael's church is a shrine of history—and now a silent monument to the rediscovered names of enslaved craftsmen who laid its brick, stuccoed its exterior, cut and hoisted timber for its belfry and spire. Their English, Spanish, Biblical, African, and Native American names (Simon, Sandy, King, Sancho, Cain, Cuffee, Wando, among others) speak to Africa’s global presence.
Silent, too, are St. Michael bell ringer Washington McLean Gadsden’s afternoon concerts of hymns (“It is well”) and popular tunes such as “Lay Down that Watermelon,” “Rib, Rab de Bong, Jing, Jing,” “I am not fondly thine Own,” and “Charleston Girl.” George W. Williams cites the Courier: When the 1885 hurricane “howled through the city, casting destruction on every side,” Gadsden coolly sent the “melodies of old hymns over the gale-swept town.” An admirer, Edward Nathaniel Harleston wrote a quatrain: I am longing for sweet music. / Play me your most sublime, / But it will not be as soothing / As St. Michael’s morning chimes.
Get outdoors and go behind the scenes of a lowcountry plantation at Caw Caw Interpretive Center, a county park carved from the 5,500 acre rice (later, tea) plantation of patriot Thomas Rose. Bald Eagles nest in its pine snags, more than 50 bird species fly-by, and alligators sun on the dikes and romp over the markings of ancient quarter mains overgrown by nettles.
A canal bringing water to these fields outlived its purpose: its channel became a manifold memorial of reclaimed hope. Slave hands built the canal, endured their oppressors, pitched dirt to its banks. As they worked, an enduring heart shielded and strengthened the slaves’ digging hands. The heart’s inner voice commanded the lifting hands to fling away sorrow and rage, doubts and fears—just like the dirt on the banks.
The water-filled canal became a work of inner liberty. It witnessed a presence born from within, standing beside the slave, calling from above, to let go—to transcend. Will faith be the servant of power? The slaves’ silent slung answer: no.
Under the enduring heart and digging hands the mile-long canal thrived. (As did the slaves,) for 200 years the canal bore up without collapse. Its seamless waters mark an unbroken love, praise an everflowing, timeless will greater than the human master’s. (For those) healed, purified, welcomed and received, the waters are a gateway into blessed faith.
In England, when church stones were used to build cow stables and carved religious figures burned for limestone, the colonial Rose canal dug by slaves remained a sanctuary.
It recalled the canals of the Tigris (by the rivers of Babylon), an embedded triumph of those who “sat and wept”—and a living reminder that Pharaoh’s army “got drown.” It recalled the “water from the rock” sent to alleviate sufferings.
In these re-shaped rice lands, where dirt was lifted up and burdens laid down—where the lost of external freedom called forth the rushing swoop of a powerful inner freedom, the land and the Africans share a powerful communal memory. The canal’s presence observes, in the landscape of time, how the “waters (slavery) chilled my body, but filled my soul (like burning coals).”
For the Gullah, family is a divine gift that links present and past. New books recall living memories. Joyce Coakley’s book, Sweetgrass Basket- making and the Gullah Tradition, sold out its first printing in two months. She grew up in a Mt. Pleasant sweetgrass community with a rich oral history. Elizabeth O’Neil Veneer painted her grandmother, one of the original Charleston flower ladies. When the 1911 hurricane (the Duncan storm) wiped out plantation work, the flower women walked seven miles to catch the ferry downtown. Harassed and arrested, the ladies sent their children door-to-door, telling them to “look for the pocketbook” (signs of wealth). A sympathetic judge often suspended their fines.
Gathering “slow coins” was “no flowerbed of ease.” Tuesday’s earnings paid insurance. Saturday’s coins bought groceries. December’s paid property taxes. A 1947 New York Herald article proclaimed, “Flower Ladies Bring Distinction to Charleston.” Their descendants sell sweetgrass baskets in spaces around the city.
Jack McCray's new book, Charleston Jazz, explores the powerhouse tradition of Charleston jazz, and persuasively argues through pictures, artifacts, and interviews that jazz had roots in Charleston as early as it did in New Orleans. McCray follows Charleston performers to New York, Paris, Denmark, Japan, on sojourns with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, among others. Migrating to New York City, the Gullah, at “The Jungle,” (a west side club), created America’s biggest dance craze—the Charleston! On YouTube, check out Ginger Rogers’ out take from the 1942 movie “Roxie Hart,” and “Charleston Style” for the indomitable steps and rhythms pianist James P. Johnson copied into music—the dance actually came first!
On YouTube, listen to the signature adagio swing at the heart of Charleston jazz. Review Charleston composers, Freddie Green’s grammy winning “Corner Pocket” (by Count Basie), Chris Smith’s “Balling the Jack,”(by Brenda Lee) and Julian Dash’s Tuxedo Junction (with paintings by Edward Hopper). Hear live indigo jazz at Circular’s Jazz vespers, Tristan, Fish, and at Charleston Place.
For the Gullah shared food is a family rite. Join the table, join the family. International visitors extend their stay for the joy of sampling, “What’s in the pots?” at Dave’s (843 577-7943) lunch and late night (closed Sunday). Locals, too, find their way down to Dave’s place for the tastiest seafood (whiting, scallops, shrimp) in town. Saffron’s, 333 East Bay, Sunday buffet includes fresh fruit, lamb, saffron rice, cajun boiled shrimp, and giant
King crab legs for around $10.
Ms. Wali's (as everybody calls Wali's World Famous Fish Supreme) has superb fish sandwiches piled high with filets, topped with cheese and sliced fresh tomato. Her homebaked bean pie is supreme—as is her spice fire ginger tea!
Kennedy’s, Jack’s, and Brent’s have warm hospitality and good food!
Martin Delaney, the first African-American admitted to Harvard’s Medical School, lived in Charleston after the 1861 war. So did Francis Cardozo, who was elected South Carolina’s Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury. Cardozo graduated the University of Glasgow, Scotland with honors in Latin and Greek.
Susan King Taylor, privately educated from age six, enlisted in the army as a 16-old laundress, and quickly became an unofficial secretary and letter writer for Union officers and soldiers on Hilton Head. On the SC battlefront, she worked as a nurse beside Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman. Her book, Reminisces, (it recounts her regiment’s march into Charleston), is the war’s only account by an enslaved African-American woman.
Called “Uncle Moro or Prince Omero,” royal-born and wealthy, captured and shipped to Charleston, purchased and enslaved in Bladen County, NC, Omar Ibn Said, known for his intelligence and humility, became an active Presbyterian, converted from Islam. He often spoke and wrote Arabic for interviews.
The Gullah love poetry and proverbs. Here are a few favorites:
“Come see ein like come stay.” “Come see (dating) isn’t the same as come stay (a life-long commitment).” Advice to anyone thinking of marriage.
Yiddle so. I hear you.
“De dog hab fou’ foot, but dey all go down de same path.” “A dog has four feet, but they all follow one path.” LeRoy Robinson, Jr. of Wadmalaw Island credits this proverb to his grandmother. Meaning? Concentrate on one task at a time!
Plantation 101. Joyce Coakley’s term for introducing plantation life to those naive about its history.
Rabble ‘e mout’. The person talks too much!
“Soon ma foot strike Zion, And de lamp light up on
de sho’
Bid dis world a long fa’well, I ein comin’ back no
mo.”
A Mt. Pleasant spiritual expresses the Gullah view of death, as a transition to a new world, with treasured memories of family and friends.
Homebound soldier. A homebound soldier “whose foot strikes Zion,” journeys to the “welcome table”(heaven, the seat of grace). Also refers to a person dismissed from “seeking,” a rite of fasting and all-night prayer vigils as a vehicle for beatific vision. Breech the rules of seeking and you were a “homebound solider.”
A buck. A dollar is nicknamed for the price of a deerskin, a buckskin. 400,000 buckskins shipped from Charleston.
Interested in more? Gullah Tours, Sites and Insights, and Tourific Tours offer guided tours by knowledgeable community scholars. Go on line at the web site, Charleston's Black Heritage. Or pick up the Black Heritage Guidebook by Avery Institute for two free walking tours.
Bring two hundred to three hundred thousand African slaves to the 18 wharfs and 28 auction blocks of a single American city set on a tiny peninsula only a mile and a half wide, establish the only American colony with a black majority at the time of American independence, and there are bound to be historic footprints that lead to epic stories of achievement, triumph, and celebration.
Tour Charleston and its homes and gardens, and everywhere your heart and mind look back through time. Near the river views of Waterfront Park, still stands one dock on which slaves landed - a site later used by black churches to baptize the faithful. For over a century, the harbor itself was home to a celebrated group of "bluewater," ocean fishermen called “ the mosquito fleet” for the small size of their boats. Inside the Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of the city, their balconies once echoed with the powerful rhythms of lowcountry spirituals. Members of the 33rd South Carolina Volunteers, USCT, the first black United States soldiers, brought freedom to the city's slaves, and preserved Charleston's peace after the Civil War. The city’s best sail maker, a slave, was elected to the US Congress. On the city's oldest streets, opening the way to the city's historic homes, are the wrought iron gates of America's greatest blacksmith. And along the highways, markets, and downtown streets are sweetgrass baskets once used to hull rice and gather eggs on the low country rice plantations, now used for serving bread, holding flowers, or decorating a door or table; ”das’um dere,” still made in the traditional, centuries-old techniques of West and Central and Southern Africa.
E-mail: walterrhett@yahoo.com.
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Picture credits (in order): Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church, Bull St. Slave cabin interior, Georgetown, SC. Gates to Philip Simmons Memorial Garden, Menotti St. Garden behind St. Stephens Church, Anson St. Marlis Stalder, visiting from Germany. Walter Rhett, griot. Circular Church column, Meeting St.
Henry Laurens, a Charleston planter and merchant, one of four Peace Commissioners to settle the American Revolution, was the fourth President of the Continental Congress. One of America’s largest slave brokers, he established the port’s preference for Angola slaves. His plantation today is an abbey for Trappist monks. (wr/griot)
Henry Laurens’ first official act as the President was to preside over and vote for a Day of Thanksgiving and "to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God". In his first letter to the States as President he wrote:
"Dear Sir, The Arms of the United States of America having been blessed in the present Campaign with remarkable Success, Congress have Resolved to recommend that one day, Thursday the 18th December next be Set apart to be observed by all Inhabitants throughout these States for a General thanksgiving to Almighty God. And I have it in command to transmit to you the inclosed extract from the minutes of Congress for that purpose.
Day of Thanksgiving
Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy not only to continue to us the innumerable bounties of his common providence, but also to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure to prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success:
It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favour, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessing on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God, to secure for these United States the greatest of all human blessings, independence and peace; that it may please him to prosper the trade and manufactures of the people and the labour of the husbandman, that our land may yet yield its increase; to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth "in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
And it is further recommended, that servile labour, and such recreation as, though at other times innocent, may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment, be omitted on so solemn an occasion.
November 1, 1777 Thanksgiving Proclamation – Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Word Travels!
On April 21,1791, at 11 o'clock, George Washington left Philadelphia, embarking on a tour of the southern states that passed through Charleston. His "equipage & attendance consisted of a Chariet & four horses, light baggage Waggon & two horses--four Saddle horses, a led one for myself--and five Servants including my Valet de Chambre." On the way, he lost horses, ran aground at water crossings, slept in cramped quarters, dined well, and attended the nation’s affairs.
In late April, George Washington arrived in South Carolina. In early May, the President spent eight days in Charleston. Monday, May 2, the President "breakfasted with Govr. Pinckney," then journeyed six miles west to the "ferry at Haddrels point." Here, he met "two boats with music," and "Genl. Pinckney & Edward Rutledge Esqr. in a 12 oared barge rowed by 12 American Captains of Ships." Rowed ashore, the President's arrival in Charleston was greeted with artillery salutes, lusty cheers, bell ringing, and a boisterous song:
He comes! He comes! The hero comes. / Sound, sound your trumpets, beat your drums,
From port to port let cannons roar, / His welcome to our friendly shore.
Today, visitors are eager witnesses to what George Washington saw: Charleston has preserved its homes, historic sites, its memories and society. Yet outside of Charleston is a landscape that Washington passed through that holds a communal memory, preserved by time, human community, and an unseen hand.
In freedom’s early dawn, Bishop Francis Asbury, the founding bishop of the American Methodist Church was the highway's most insistent traveler. He crisscrossed the passage for four decades, trekking through its swamps and "sand and pine barrens" to proclaim the faith.
Naturalist and painter James Audubon journeyed the road in the 1830's, telling of "delightfully fragrant clusters of yellow jessamines." Audubon’s two sons married the daughters of the Rev. John Bachman, a Charleston Lutheran minister. Bachman’s daughters drew lowcountry backgrounds for many Audubon’s prints.
The Ocean’s Highway
As Route 17 quietly glides pass the fishing village of Murrells Inlet, it marks a famous crime scene. Every family has a tradition. In the Bigham family, it was murder. In 1909, Dr. Cleveland Bigham persuaded a simple-minded young man that Bingham's wife was a ghost. Preying upon the younger man's superstitions and instability, Bigham prompted him to kill his wife by shooting the ethereal figure who walked the beach near dusk in pale flowing dresses.
Bigham's brother, tried three times for his mother’s and other family members murders, cursed those who sought to nail him. His oath coincided with the death of a witness and the "Bigham Flood," which nearly drowned Conway, the seat of the trail. Bigham's mother's severed head was kept in a hatbox as evidence for many years.
Cape Romain Refuge, a national wildlife refuge set in sheltered Bull’s Bay, the first landing site for the English expedition that settled in Charleston, preserves more than 25 small barrier islands, including Cape Romain, Bull and Cape Islands, for local wildlife and migrating birds routed and scheduled by internal compasses and clocks, arriving from Canada and South America by the North Atlantic skyway. Otters, bobcats, foxes share the habitat with loggerhead turtles, oyster-catchers, wood storks, painted buntings, pipping plovers (an endangered species), bobolinks, and red tail hawks, for example. So powerful is the red tail’s eyesight, it could read the New York Times from a mile away!
Entering Charleston from the “Ravenel,” the new 3.5 mile-long, cable-stay bridge with two 575 ft. diamond towers, the longest cable-stay main span in the Western Hemisphere has a protected, separated lane for walkers, runners, and bicyclists, and a benched area for viewing. Daniel Island is upstream, to the north. For more than a century, the island’s African-American residents described a British soldier in full revolutionary uniform galloping thru the night. The island is Philip Simmons’ birthplace, the city’s lauded blacksmith, who moved to Charleston at age eight.
The town name, Cainhoy, comes from a Wando ferryman, Cain, who, as he rowed the crossing to shore, called out, “Cain ahoy!”
Native America first recognized Charleston as a place with pleasure, resources, and prosperity abundant. Today, Indian trailways underpin Charleston’s travel and commerce.
In 1775, Henry Mouzon, a local Huguenot mapmaker, mapped six main Native American paths in South Carolina. Five of these trails (including (1) the Wilmington Path) led to Charleston! (5) The Virginia Path (I-85; US 29 to Atlanta) was the one exception.
(2) The Cheek Path connected Augusta to Charleston (roughly paralleled today by SC 61 and 78). In colonial times, this path developed economic and political ties with the Yemassee and other Native American communities in Georgia’s interior, and west, in the Gulf and Mississippi territories. Pocotaligo was the largest Yemasee trading village, swapping skins for seeds and dried seafood. Later it was a stagecoach stop.
(3) The Cherokee or Keowee Path (called the Broad Path, widened by heavy use) tied
Charleston to Columbia (I-26; US 178, 176). This path linked the state’s capital and its richest
city. The path moved more than a million animal skins to Charleston before 1715! SC’s Emily
Geiger, a teenager living with her family near the Conagree River, carried a message from patriot
general Nathaniel Greene to the Gamecock, Gen.Thomas Sumter. She showed
the loyalty of Paul Revere, and exceeded him in guile and courage.
Her solo ride along
the path crossed enemy lines and British scouts captured her. Blushing when questioned, she was confined to a room to be searched by a matron. She quickly memorized the message, tore it into bits and ate the pieces. Released, she traveled round-about to Sumter’s Wateree camp, relaying the message and her story! In May 1781, Greene sieged the frontier trading post of Ninety Six to break the base of British upcountry operations (the town, thought to be 96 miles from Keowee, a Cherokee village in the Blue Ridge foothills, sited the first revolutionary battle south of New England [1775]). Nearby Ninety Six are the birthplaces of Preston Brooks (who clamored “freedom national, slavery sectional,” and caned Charles Sumner (MA) into unconsciousness and a year’s rehab, on the US House floor, 1856) and Benjamin Mays, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s college president (Morehouse).
(4) The Catawba Path linked Charleston to Camden (now shadowed by US 52, 521—known as the Charleston highway). Its trail system opened the SC and NC backcountry to TN, KY and OH; it linked small towns, farming, and rural life, a farm-to-market road celebrating the tobacco, cotton, soybeans, and peach harvests, among other crops. Many original portions of the Indian paths survive as ruts, dips, hollows, and sunken beds near modern highways.
South Carolina’s top twenty scenic drives (google it!) extend along modern and historic portions of these ancient Indian trailways. They first connected to food and water supplies, and now connect to sites for arrowheads, burial mounds, shells, tools, animal bones, shark’s teeth, and fossils up to 15 million years old! These avenues ramp up global trade for modern products such as SC’s only production car—the series 6, convertible BMW!
Metro Charleston drives 9.5 million miles daily!
A Carolina Eden / Kiawah Island
Kiawah Island lies south of US 17, and, like Manhattan, was purchased from Native Americans (for Lord Ashley Cooper, in 1675). The Kiawah leader, the Cassique, met the British ships in Beaufort in 1670, escorted them to Charleston, and with Henry Woodward’s help, an English doctor, ex-Spanish captive, ship’s surgeon who lived with the Kiawah, the Cassique convinced the British that their best opportunity lie in settling Charleston. Resold to a suspected retired pirate, George Raynor divided the island, selling its halves.
The Revolutionary war divided the island loyalties: British regulars burned John Stanyame’s plantation, and left the other standing. Mayor of Charleston twice, Governor once, Arnold Vanderhorst II rebuilt the ruined plantation inherited through his wife. He thought Kiawah’s free range, foliage, and weather ideal for raising cattle, and planted indigo, and later cotton. (His city home stands at 28 Chapel St.) During the 1861 war, Confederate (“Secesh”) soldiers robbed his African-American caretaker of his chickens and his shoes, and vandalized and burned the rebuilt main house.
After 1865, the family divided again. Quash, the grandson of Arnoldus II (Quash’s father was Arnoldus’ son, Elias) helped managed Kiawah and a plantation at Round-O. The family referred to Quash as the Cassique, so revered were his management, decision-making and operational skills. They hoped fervently Quash, a former slave, would remain “faithful,” loyal to his family.
In letters to Elias’ wife, Adele, and his brother (Arnoldus IV), Quash faithfully writes:
I sen the Boot doon For you I ham giving [picking] the Cotton and have it Soon Today I Sen you Some potas ( jan 86, Arnoldus IV)
I send the Boait by Willom and Frages. As I can not speair Wineglass (may 83, Arnoldus)
“I Send 4 Calves and 6 Lames Butter and Creaim by Wine glass. I Hope to Com Down Next Week Hope all Well With you. Aur Stain Well Hetair” (june 83, Adele)
I Cannot Com Dun This Weeak as I Have to get 5 Palmetto raft ready To Sen of Next Weeak. the Logs is ver much scaterd so I Hav To Hall Them.. I Hord Last Weeak That you Went To George Town. So I Though Some one Wais Sick Which I Hop not . . . (june 83, Adele)
Quash describes the terrible 1893 hurricane to Adele: “We
Had Agraite stoim Heair and the Tide Caime owpe in my House and Trow Doin one of the Chimbles 9 House on the Plaise is Woish Don also Chimbles I Had To Let some in the Bigge House Haife of the Slate is Blone Off the Ruef the inter Crope is Lost by Wooter the Tide Came over From the Ochorn The Holl Island Wais Owender Wooter From 2 to 8 Feet very Tinge is Destersory Neither man or Beais Cod get Freish Wooter I Had To Cock With Solt Wooter Buith it raine Heair on Thirsday Night so it Litel Beter Now” (aug 93)
He comments on state politics: “the Tillman is Have Tinges His oneway the Hole state is in Bad Fiex and I caint see Howe the good Peapel of the state Canstan it much Longer it tis Drad Fuill No Man Life is safe Now”(aug 94, Adele)
His saluation expresses his concern for family: “I Hope This Will Fine all Well Please say Hody To all the Family For me.”
At Kiawah’s Beachwalker Park (open to the public, closed winters) pure, fine quartz crystal wraps the shore of the finest beach on the east coast. At Kiwah’s north end the restored Vanderhorst house along the river looks beyond a greensward of mature oaks to a broad marsh swale. At the island’s south end is a cove and inlet and a close view of Wadmalaw Island almost reachable by wading at low tide. Follow the cove, and the landscape changes, brush and maritime trees flourish between the natural dunes and marsh grass as the shadows of gulls and terns flutter silently over your skin. The sky is an open canopy gathering the sounds of wind and waves mingling at land’s beginning.
After his death, Elias was often seen strolling the grounds with Quash, talking over plantation affairs. After his own death, visitors could hear Quash in the evenings, animatedly talking to his father and former master.
The Ashley River Bridge—a working drawbridge—is a memorial to World War 1 soldiers and offers a view of the vast marina.
Johns Island’s Angel Oak, bent with its millennium’s age, the oldest tree in the eastern US, has limbs swirling from a central trunk, spreading high and low in a canopy that recalls a Rasta’s knot. The outsized tree grips space and time, bending them into its massive, soaring fan of life. After a visit, jazz sax master Charles Lloyd recorded “Angel Oak.”
In 1784, Paul and Jacob Walter founded a pineland summer village called Walterboro along a high, narrow ridge as a solution to the “May 10 problem.” The date traditionally marked for the city and plantations the increase of insect borne diseases, including yellow fever or “strangers” fever, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, diphtheria, malaria, and small pox.
Stono Rebellion and
Military Actions
Near where US 17 crosses the Stono River, the largest slave uprising in colonial America, took place September 1739. A slave from Angola, Cato, began the Stono Rebellion by playing a single drum and displaying a pennant. The rhythm he played in the clearing (marked by the pennant) summoned an assembly that grew to 100 men. Seizing arms, they set out for St. Augustine, burning 7 plantations.
Parker’s Ferry is the site of a key victory site for Francis Marion, whose small, mobile band frequently disrupted and defeated British regulars. After traveling 100 miles, Marion’s riders lured the British into an ambush. The British took heavy causalities and abandoned the field, ending strategic plans for gaining control of the colony south of Charleston.
In 1828, foot passengers crossing bridges or ferries paid 6 1/4 cents per trip, wagons 75 cents toll. Metered parking today in Charleston is 75 cents an hour.
“The Order to Advance”
At Honey Hill (strained honey), a fierce civil war battle clogged a stream with causalities from both sides. People living near Boyd’s Creek and Grahamville reported the bodies of soldiers jamming the opening to the Broad River had to be removed for more than six months after the battle. After the battle, soldiers “could walk on the dead for over a mile without touching the road." The Savannah Republican noted:
“We made a visit to the field the following day, and found the swamp and road literally strewn with their dead.”
Before the battle, John Jenkins of the SC 35th V Calvary sent telegrams to Gen. Hardee at Savannah and Jones at Charleston with early intelligence: Ten gunboats, with transports and barges at Boyd's landing, troops near Grahamville. Four gunboats coming up Broad River to MacKey's Point, which is the approach to Pocotaligo.”
We left Hilton Head at 2 O'clock A.M. Monday Morning - the 29th inst.- [Nov. 1864] and steamed up Broad River - but the Fog was so thick - and night so dark that the Boats got Scattered . . .
Now I will tell you what part the 34th took in the operations of the day . . . The enemy made an attack on me but was repulsed with considerable loss - He did not know that I had Artillery - . . . I was to hold a cross road near this Creek and prevent reinforcements from passing from Charleston to the Battlefield -
I at once ordered the skirmish line to advance . . . In ten seconds the Air was full of Shrapnell and Grape & Canister thrown by the enemy . . . I had none killed - 6 of the Men were badly wounded, two mortal all were brought from the field . . .
Things were in great confusion that night - . . .The Next morning - the good friend the Spade was brought into use & we now hold the position. We hear nothing from Sherman –
The New York Times report plainly erred: “Before evening, the Pocotaligo Bridge was destroyed.”
Despite the 1861 war’s enormous battles, losses, and gallantry, not one combatant stood in the way of freedom when the jubilee came “round the way” by hoof, and word and foot.
Great Day/ the Day of Jubilee St. Helena’s Island has two major America firsts: the island was the site of the first freedom or jubilee schools, organized by two women from a Quaker mission in Philadelphia. The Penn Normal School’s 1862 legacy lives in the Penn Center, a multi-program conference and early childhood education site.
St. Helena’s also held the nation’s first emancipation proclamation celebration. At mid-night January 1, 1863, troops and residents celebrated freedom with oratory, spirituals, (they captured and released the celebration’s deepest emotions), and an all-night oxen roast. Many new freedmen enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. On February 21, 1865, the South Carolina Volunteer 33rd Regiment, USCT, marched down Charleston’s Meeting Street, in view of auction sites where many of their members had once been sold, to free the the city’s enslaved!
If the lowcountry is Goshen, a land of perpetual prosperity, Cypress Gardens is a lowcountry Eden, timelessly beautiful, set in an enchanted flooded forest. Home to 1000’s of nesting egrets and song birds, this natural inland lake irrigated Dean Hall, a rice plantation confiscated during the American Revoluntion that employed 500 slaves. 200 people were employed by Benjamin Kittledge in 1927 to plant 1000’s of azaleas, camellias, and flowering plants, and to construct the bridges and walk ways to enjoy the breath-taking views. Canoes with old residents singing spirituals glide across the black onyx lagoon, splashed by blazes of color, doubled and repeated, mirrored by earth, air, and water. In the alchemy of space, land’s end touches itself and floats offshore. In this swamp, the beauty of primal elements tranfers to our souls a phantasmagoria of life and shadows, infused and alive.
Summerville—At its heart, Summerville is a Victorian village of cottages and wooden houses built under long limbs of oak and towering pine trees. Twisting shaded streets formed from riding trails and walking paths that ran between the river and the village’s seven hills weave in front of the houses and sites carved out of manicured forests, laced with gardens. Circled by subdivisions and hidden by high density commuter traffic, shielded by a small business district there are intown neighborhood streets (in a district once called uptown) which dapple the light and soften time by expanding and perserving the moment. The famous promenades between inns after high tea can be recreated alone or as a group, at any point in the day or evening. These strolls showcase the open proportions of homes whose spacing and natural settings are an unique American centerpiece.
The rector at St. Paul’s once whipped out a pistol and shot two of a group of men who tried to plunder the town during the 1861 war. Mrs. Kitty Springs sold dry goods by carrying her trunk shows on the back of a wagon into the yards of society ladies who opened their homes to neighbors to privately view the latest fashions from New York City where Ms. Kitty went to buy. Fishing was the town’s popular sport, next to high school football. Parks and homes explode with spectacular Azalea blooms in March and April.
Beginning with Brown’s, Captain Vose’s, and the Paradise hotels as summer and hunting retreats, Summerville’s hospitality tradition bursts into a Golden Age of Inns when the immense Pine Forest opens (1891).
Proclaimed in Paris as a world center for respiratory healing, more inns followed as travelers, including Teddy Roosevelt and Elizabeth Arden, discovered the village’s charms. Soon the Carolina, Halycon, Holly, Pine View, Postern, Squirrel, Travelers, White Gales, Wisteria Inns, and the Pinehurst Tea farm were favorites of visitors who often build winter homes, then stayed year round. Today, the Woodland Resort, the lowcountry’s only 5 star property (3 bell persons appear for each vehicle, one each side and rear), and a new generation of private inns recall the highest standards of service and the rich offerings when Summerville was first choice for SC visitors.
When visitors arrived in Charleston in the 1950’s, the inn at Tradd and Church Streets offered guests during the social hour a pitcher of “Oh Be Joyfuls.”
“We put History in your Hands”
Another Way to Jump the Broom
What is about Charleston that brings something special to the world, an unusual symmetry where terns and gulls perch and appear in a ring of space that dwarfs the 500 ft bridge towers and World War II air craft carriers anchored in the harbor’s moon-pulled waters? The ring of space is a personal zone, a limited place of intimacy into which Charleston intrudes with delight, pushing its wares, grabbing attention with its blooming insistence to share, and be part. Charleston never withdraws. At every turn, Charleston pivots a new contact—wind, march, sun, buildings, homes, gardens, graves, speech and food are kaleidoscope experiences that capture, frame, and breathe—a caravan that urges take note, reach in.
This perlo, this blend of old and new, its flavors are specific to Charleston. It demands that you let go of past and present and throw your heart open to new possibilities. The Grand Canyon and Mount Denali are distant and vast; wonders to be adored. Charleston outside is approached by revelation, by a jump across the broom to a shared awe awakened but uncharted, already inside.
Charleston’s historic landscapes remember, exhibit, and transmit the deepest paradoxes—that the original and new can only come from what is familiar and already known; that what startles us is recalled from the depths of the sacred, outrageous, or forgotten. The intimacy in the landscape outside of Charleston may at first seem alien, until the strange newness strikes an interior place. Then it resonates something unseen; touches an ancient independence or sings silent praise or explodes with a powerful silent joy to tell pilgrims they are entering familar dimensions.
The Carolina lowcountry is seasoned with these intimate places. They are concealed by the comfort and refrains of beauty that garland the town. It takes internal housekeeping to search these other sites and awaken to their special charms. So go beyond the usual delights. Follow Charleston’s incredible roads to where the landscape awaits and celebrates exactly what you bring to it--from within.
E-mail: walterrhett@yahoo.com.
Picture id: Charles Heyward House and present gardens; Francis Asbury; Audubon with Charleston landscapes: Wilson’s (American)Snipe, Yellow Shank; John White, Indian Village painting; Long-billed Curlew (Charleston skyline/cityscape); Palmetto Trail; Palmetto Trail; Brookgreen Gardens Sculptures; Penn School students; Pocotaligo Depot (SEP); Honey Hill state road marker; Cypress Gardens; Pine Forest Inn; Walter Rhett, Snowy Egret (rice plantation)
2007 Copyright, “Give them better” Press $15
A Rare Document from the Achieves
Henry Mouzon, a third generation Huguenot born in Carven parish (Williamsburg County, northeast of Charleston), from age eight, educated in France, studied cartography (map making) and civil engineering. Mouzon and Ephraim Mitchell (an Engraver and SC’s Surveyor general) were appointed to update previous map editions. Their landmark edition, used by American, British, and French forces in the American Revolutionary War, was the principal map of NC and SC for 50 years. George Washington folded his backed with cloth; it was carried in his saddlebag. Jefferson used it in his “American Atlas.” A pocket edition, for riders or travelers, cost a dollar. Carolina Prints (Church St., Charleston) is currently exhibiting and offering one of the original French editions for sale.
The map legend reads:
An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina With Their Indian Frontiers, Shewing in a distinct manner all the Mountains, Rivers, Swamps, Marshes, Bays, Creeks, Harbours, Sandbanks and Soundings on the Coasts; with The Roads and Indian Paths; as well as The Boundary or Provincial Lines, The Several Townships and other divisions of the Land in Both the Provinces; the whole from Actual Surveys by Henry Mouzon and Others. (copper engraving, 1777, 44 x 59 in.)
South Carolina State Parks
Deluxe destinations celebrate
the majesty of nature and commemorate history in
SC’s State Parks.
America’s oldest mountains, scenic foothills; waterfalls, blackwater rivers, swamps, and scenic inland lakes; white sand beaches and ancient barrier islands, historic sites and homes—you will find them all in South Carolina’s State Parks.
(#5)Caesars Head State Park/ Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area | |
(#10)Colleton State Park | |
(#17)Goodale State Park | |
(#35)Oconee State Park | |
(#38)Poinsett State Park | |
(#43)Santee State Park | |
Perlo recommends
5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 30, 36, 40, 41, 45.Perlo recommends 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 30, 36, 40, 41, 45.
Celebrate History’s Surprises!
Highlighting the sacred, and the Gullah View
Did you know camels and elephants once roamed Charleston’s lowcountry? That sharks as big as school buses (35-ton megalodons) plied the coastal waters? That the Battery was once a Native American oyster bed? That rice—Carolina Gold—the great cash crop of the lowcountry, had an unusual Romeo and Juliet: a pirate and princess from the east African island of Madagascar?
Charleston’s history, its surprises and new twists, also celebrates international ties, especially its Gullah heritage. Gullah, the name derived from Angola (An · gola— “gullah”), represents the speech, belief, and customs of the lowcountry’s unique Euro-African heritage developed over two centuries by melded communities from West, Central, and Southern Africa.
The Gullah believe that 4 pillars spotlight time’s passage: faith, family, work, and learning. Believing faith to be a deep inner mystic (beyond sense or reason), the Gullah make and use symbols, stories, songs, memories, and physical sites to mark and make known their faith—to enable all to see and understand their beliefs.
Faith/
For example, towering above the city and the sea since 1761, the Biblical meaning of the 187 ft. octagon steeple of St. Michael’s Church is right out of Genesis. God made the world in six days, rested, then called the world to new life on the eighth day (The same day He made sweet tea! The animals were thirsty!) Recall the eight souls saved on the ark. The eight-sided steeple extols the city to begin or renew life in Christ.
Interred at Circular Congregational Church is Rev. G. Hutson. Cherubs flank his cameo, one resting an elbow on an hourglass (life has expired); the other’s elbow propped on a human skull without a jaw, its teeth sitting on a ledge (a symbol of the silence consigned by the grave . . .).
Praise House, held most Tuesdays at 7 pm at Circular, presents a rare cultural opportunity—witness the Magnolia Singers singing spirituals spanning 200 years, in the call and response tradition of the Africans who created this deeply moving, spirit-filled music. Somehow the rhythms of this live performance touch and enter the body to access an inner mystic.
Born in the rice fields, forest groves and clearings near the slave quarters, in wooden “praise houses” and modern churches, the spirituals passionate outpouring chronicle a history that laughs, cries, and prays, but always moves forward. All the while the voices swing—healing by memory, moving forward in praise, offering thanks for the mercy of the present.
“Rhett’s deep knowledge let’s you embrace Charleston’s charm and history. You will also know where to eat, shop, and visit.”—Charleston Post and Courier
The lantern windows high in its bell tower sealed and dark, Emmanuel AME Church still illuminates the world beyond horizon and sight. A bellwether African-American congregation, Emanuel AME Church is one of the most important houses of worship in the USA.
Founded in 1791 as a prayer band, Emanuel’s discipleship (at slavery’s peak in 1817, its 5,000 members were drawn from 3 Methodist congregations) shadowed the number Moses led through the parted Red Sea (5,000, protected and guided by God), echoed the number touched on the day of Pentecost (5,000-filled with grace by His Spirit), and eerily matched the number Jesus fed with the barley loaves and fish on the mountain across from Galilee (5,000 blessed by the gift of faith: sustained, nourished, and strengthened).
In 1865, Morris Brown, Emanuel’s founder (and AME Church’s second bishop), Daniel A. Payne (the first African-American college president, Wilberforce), R. H. Cain (later a SC Congressman), and Henry McNeil Turner (the first African-American chaplain in the US Army) re-opened the congregation. At Emanuel, faith is deeply personal: Raphael’s famous 16th century cherubs (seen in the recess of the ground level entrance) have the sculpted faces of 19th century Charleston youth! The prayer circles, Sunday sermons, the private and public witnesses, altar calls, and shout rhythms adorn the church whose plain beauty is enhanced by its magnificent proportions. Ex-slaves and their children built the present church from their craft and financial resources. Opened in 1891, it retains the original gaslights, Victorian embossed ceiling, and heart pine floors.
The Baha¢i faith emphasizes the unity of all people and embraces historic, physical, gender, and ethnic diversity and world peace. Charleston’s Louis Gregory, born in 1874, a slave’s grandson, became a lawyer and a leader of the US Assembly of the Bahai. (His restored childhood home is 2 Deportes Court).
Planters’ letters and archived notes affirm greater trust, higher responsibility, and new work roles for colonial and ante-bellum Charleston’s African majority. Slaves brought "across the waters" became captains of ships sailing into oceans and waterways to pick up the rice harvests from plantations spread from Myrtle Beach to Savannah.
Called patroons, these enslaved Gullah captains commanded 20 ton schooners through shoals and creeks, river channels changing with the tides, open seas lashed by storms to stage 600 lb. Barrels of rice along Charleston's colonial and ante-bellum wharves for shipment to Asia and Europe.
The builders who erected the city's most recognized landmark and its famed bell ringers have been left out of the city's record until recently. St. Michael's church is a shrine of history—and now a silent monument to the rediscovered names of enslaved craftsmen who laid its brick, stuccoed its exterior, cut and hoisted timber for its belfry and spire. Their English, Spanish, Biblical, African, and Native American names (Simon, Sandy, King, Sancho, Cain, Cuffee, Wando, among others) speak to Africa’s global presence.
Silent, too, are St. Michael bell ringer Washington McLean Gadsden’s afternoon concerts of hymns (“It is well”) and popular tunes such as “Lay Down that Watermelon,” “Rib, Rab de Bong, Jing, Jing,” “I am not fondly thine Own,” and “Charleston Girl.” George W. Williams cites the Courier: When the 1885 hurricane “howled through the city, casting destruction on every side,” Gadsden coolly sent the “melodies of old hymns over the gale-swept town.” An admirer, Edward Nathaniel Harleston wrote a quatrain: I am longing for sweet music. / Play me your most sublime, / But it will not be as soothing / As St. Michael’s morning chimes.
Get outdoors and go behind the scenes of a lowcountry plantation at Caw Caw Interpretive Center, a county park carved from the 5,500 acre rice (later, tea) plantation of patriot Thomas Rose. Bald Eagles nest in its pine snags, more than 50 bird species fly-by, and alligators sun on the dikes and romp over the markings of ancient quarter mains overgrown by nettles.
A canal bringing water to these fields outlived its purpose: its channel became a manifold memorial of reclaimed hope. Slave hands built the canal, endured their oppressors, pitched dirt to its banks. As they worked, an enduring heart shielded and strengthened the slaves’ digging hands. The heart’s inner voice commanded the lifting hands to fling away sorrow and rage, doubts and fears—just as they did the dirt on the banks.
The water-filled canal became a work of inner liberty. It witnessed a presence born from within, standing beside the slave, calling from above, to let go—to transcend. Will faith be the servant of power? The slaves’ silent answer: no.
Under the enduring heart and digging hands the mile-long canal thrived. (As did the slaves,) for 200 years the canal bore up without collapse. Its seamless waters mark an unbroken love, praise an everflowing, timeless will greater than the human master’s. (For those) healed, purified, welcomed and received, the waters are a gateway into blessed faith.
In England, when church stones were used to build cow stables and carved religious figures burned for limestone, the colonial Rose canal dug by slaves remained a sanctuary.
It recalled the canals of the Tigris (by the rivers of Babylon), an embedded triumph of those who “sat and wept”—and a living reminder that Pharaoh’s army “got drown.” It recalled the “water from the rock” sent to alleviate sufferings.
In these re-shaped rice lands, where dirt was lifted up and burdens laid down—where the lost of external freedom called forth the rushing swoop of a powerful inner freedom, the land and the Africans share a powerful communal memory. The canal’s presence observes, in the landscape of time, how the “waters (slavery) chilled my body, but filled my soul (like burning coals).”
For the Gullah, family is a divine gift that links present and past. New books recall living memories. Joyce Coakley’s book, Sweetgrass Basket- making and the Gullah Tradition, sold out its first printing in two months. She grew up in a Mt. Pleasant sweetgrass community with a rich oral history. Elizabeth O’Neil Veneer painted her grandmother, one of the original Charleston flower ladies. When the 1911 hurricane (the Duncan storm) wiped out plantation work, the flower women walked seven miles to catch the ferry downtown. Harassed and arrested, the ladies sent their children door-to-door, telling them to “look for the pocketbook” (signs of wealth). A sympathetic judge often suspended their fines.
Gathering “slow coins” was “no flowerbed of ease.” Tuesday’s earnings paid insurance. Saturday’s coins bought groceries. December’s paid property taxes. A 1947 New York Herald article proclaimed, “Flower Ladies Bring Distinction to Charleston.” Their descendants sell sweetgrass baskets in spaces around the city.
Jack McCray's new book, Charleston Jazz, explores the powerhouse tradition of Charleston jazz, and persuasively argues through pictures, artifacts, and interviews that jazz had roots in Charleston as early as it did in New Orleans. McCray follows Charleston performers to New York, Paris, Denmark, Japan, on sojourns with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, among others. Migrating to New York City, the Gullah, at “The Jungle,” (a west side club), created America’s biggest dance craze—the Charleston! On YouTube, check out Ginger Rogers’ out take from the 1942 movie “Roxie Hart,” and “Charleston Style” for the indomitable steps and rhythms pianist James P. Johnson copied into music—the dance actually came first!
On YouTube, listen to the signature adagio swing at the heart of Charleston jazz. Review Charleston composers, Freddie Green’s grammy winning “Corner Pocket” (by Count Basie), Chris Smith’s “Balling the Jack,”(by Brenda Lee) and Julian Dash’s Tuxedo Junction (with paintings by Edward Hopper). Hear live indigo jazz at Circular’s Jazz vespers, Tristan, Fish, and at Charleston Place.
For the Gullah shared food is a family rite. Join the table, join the family. International visitors extend their
King crab legs for around $10.
Ms. Wali's (as everybody calls Wali's World Famous Fish Supreme) has superb fish sandwiches piled high with filets, topped with cheese and sliced fresh tomato. Her homebaked bean pie is supreme—as is her spice fire ginger tea!
Kennedy’s, Jack’s, and Brent’s have warm hospitality and good food!
Martin Delaney, the first African-American admitted to Harvard’s Medical School, lived in Charleston after the 1861 war. So did Francis Cardozo, who was elected South Carolina’s Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury. Cardozo graduated the University of Glasgow, Scotland with honors in Latin and Greek.
Susan King Taylor, privately educated from age six, enlisted in the army as a 16-old laundress, and quickly became an unofficial secretary and letter writer for Union officers and soldiers on Hilton Head. On the SC battlefront, she worked as a nurse beside Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman. Her book, Reminisces, (it recounts her regiment’s march into Charleston), is the war’s only account by an enslaved African-American woman.
Called “Uncle Moro or Prince Omero,” royal-born and wealthy, captured and shipped to Charleston, purchased and enslaved in Bladen County, NC, Omar Ibn Said, known for his intelligence and humility, became an active Presbyterian, converted from Islam. He often spoke and wrote Arabic for interviews.
The Gullah love poetry and proverbs. Here are a few favorites:
“Come see ein like come stay.” “Come see (dating) isn’t the same as come stay (a life-long commitment).” Advice to anyone thinking of marriage.
Yiddle so. I hear you.
“De dog hab fou’ foot, but dey all go down de same path.” “A dog has four feet, but they all follow one path.” LeRoy Robinson, Jr. of Wadmalaw Island credits this proverb to his grandmother. Meaning? Concentrate on one task at a time!
Plantation 101. Joyce Coakley’s term for introducing plantation life to those naive about its history.
Rabble ‘e mout’. The person talks too much!
“Soon ma foot strike Zion, And de lamp light up on
de sho’
Bid dis world a long fa’well, I ein comin’ back no
mo.”
A Mt. Pleasant spiritual expresses the Gullah view of death, as a transition to a new world, with treasured memories of family and friends.
Homebound soldier. A homebound soldier “whose foot strikes Zion,” journeys to the “welcome table”(heaven, the seat of grace). Also refers to a person dismissed from “seeking,” a rite of fasting and all-night prayer vigils as a vehicle for beatific vision. Breech the rules of seeking and you were a “homebound solider.”
A buck. A dollar is nicknamed for the price of a deerskin, a buckskin. 400,000 buckskins shipped from Charleston.
Interested in more? Gullah Tours, Sites and Insights, and Tourific Tours offer guided tours by knowledgeable community scholars. Go on line at the web site, Charleston's Black Heritage. Or pick up the Black Heritage Guidebook by Avery Institute for two free walking tours.
Bring two hundred to three hundred thousand African slaves to the 18 wharfs and 28 auction blocks of a single American city set on a tiny peninsula only a mile and a half wide, establish the only American colony with a black majority at the time of American independence, and there are bound to be historic footprints that lead to epic stories of achievement, triumph, and celebration.
Tour Charleston and its homes and gardens, and everywhere your heart and mind look back through time. Near the river views of Waterfront Park, still stands one dock on which slaves landed - a site later used by black churches to baptize the faithful. For over a century, the harbor itself was home to a celebrated group of "bluewater," ocean fishermen called “ the mosquito fleet” for the small size of their boats. Inside the Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of the city, their balconies once echoed with the powerful rhythms of lowcountry spirituals. Members of the 33rd South Carolina Volunteers, USCT, the first black United States soldiers, brought freedom to the city's slaves, and preserved Charleston's peace after the Civil War. The city’s best sail maker, a slave, was elected to the US Congress. On the city's oldest streets, opening the way to the city's historic homes, are the wrought iron gates of America's greatest blacksmith. And along the highways, markets, and downtown streets are sweetgrass baskets once used to hull rice and gather eggs on the low country rice plantations, now used for serving bread, holding flowers, or decorating a door or table; ”das’um dere,” still made in the traditional, centuries-old techniques of West and Central and Southern Africa.
E-mail: walterrhett@yahoo.com.
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Picture credits (in order): Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church, Bull St. Slave cabin interior, Georgetown, SC. Gates to Philip Simmons Memorial Garden, Menotti St. Garden behind St. Stephens Church, Anson St. Marlis Stalder, visiting from Germany. Walter Rhett, griot. Circular Church column, Meeting St.
Henry Laurens, a Charleston planter and merchant, one of four Peace Commissioners to settle the American Revolution, was the fourth President of the Continental Congress. One of America’s largest slave brokers, he established the port’s preference for Angola slaves. His plantation today is an abbey for Trappist monks. (wr/griot)
Henry Laurens’ first official act as the President was to preside over and vote for a Day of Thanksgiving and "to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God". In his first letter to the States as President he wrote:
"Dear Sir, The Arms of the United States of America having been blessed in the present Campaign with remarkable Success, Congress have Resolved to recommend that one day, Thursday the 18th December next be Set apart to be observed by all Inhabitants throughout these States for a General thanksgiving to Almighty God. And I have it in command to transmit to you the inclosed extract from the minutes of Congress for that purpose.
Day of Thanksgiving
Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy not only to continue to us the innumerable bounties of his common providence, but also to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure to prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success:
It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favour, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessing on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God, to secure for these United States the greatest of all human blessings, independence and peace; that it may please him to prosper the trade and manufactures of the people and the labour of the husbandman, that our land may yet yield its increase; to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth "in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
And it is further recommended, that servile labour, and such recreation as, though at other times innocent, may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment, be omitted on so solemn an occasion.
November 1, 1777 Thanksgiving Proclamation – Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
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