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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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