Charleston Time Machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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