It’s Thanksgiving season again, and for most people that means a day of rest, relaxation, and feasting with close friends and family. As a historian working in an old city, I have learned that Thanksgiving also includes at least ten people asking ...
If you pick up any book about the origins of South Carolina in the late 1600s, you’ll be sure to find references to the island of Barbados and the great influence it exerted on our early history. Nearly 350 years later, in November 2017, a number ...
Recently I had the pleasure of meeting a descendant of Captain George Anson, the former local celebrity whose name is permanently affixed to Charleston’s first suburb, Ansonborough. Charles Anson, a great nephew of the famous captain, has had quit...
Today’s program is Part 2 of a brief history of one of Charleston’s most iconic landmarks, generally called “the Battery.” In last week’s program, we discussed a series of building campaigns between the 1720s and the 1850s in which our local gover...
In Charleston parlance, “the Battery” is the common name for what is actually a pair of man-made seawalls that define the southern tip of the Charleston peninsula. The so-called “High Battery” measures just over 1,400 feet long and was built in t...
It’s time for our annual ShakeOut! No, I’m not talking about some retro-themed dance contest, I’m talking about the Great Southeast ShakeOut of 2017, which is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to promote earth...
Philadelphia Alley is not the shortest or narrowest thoroughfare in the city of Charleston, but it is sufficiently small to escape the attention of many residents and tourists. For those who have stumbled into its entrances on Queen and Cumberlan...
“Dutch Town” was a short-lived phenomenon that may have been Charleston’s first ethnic neighborhood. It emerged in the late 1750s and its growth was fueled by the arrival of large numbers of German immigrants in the years leading up to the Americ...
One of the most dramatic local effects wrought by the recent passing of Hurricane Irma was the opening of a large sinkhole on East Bay Street. According to the good folks at Charleston Water Systems (CWS), a main water pipe measuring ten inches i...
I’d like to share with you a little mystery that I’ve been trying to solve recently. Late one evening in early May 1822, a group of four men gathered on a Charleston street, under the cover of some overhanging tree branches, to discuss a secret p...
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