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.