Charleston Time Machine

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.