Shade Trees form an important part of the natural landscape here in the South Carolina Lowcountry and the focus my thoughts this Arbor Day. While some in our community would like to uproot grand oaks standing along our most scenic highways, others...
The residential area today called Harleston Village is one of the oldest neighborhoods on the Charleston peninsula, but the present definition of its boundaries differs from its original identity. Beginning as a large grant stretching across the p...
Charleston’s newest island library is situated in a quiet setting that belies the depth and drama of its long and colorful history. From Native-American stomping grounds to fertile plantation, from bloody battlefield, to civil rights success, the ...
Veterans Day is a national holiday that was created in the twentieth century, but the roots of our collective acknowledgement of soldiers’ sacrifices dates back many generations to the dawn of the United States. Today we’ll use the story of one ve...
Thomas J. Mackey did not shoot the sheriff, but he shot at him during a meeting of Charleston’s City Council in late October 1869 and endangered the city’s board of municipal aldermen. The community largely condemned the assault, which was fueled ...
Political debate within Charleston’s City Council Chamber is sometimes harsh, but never as acrimonious as the night in late October 1869 when a pair of arguing aldermen drew their respective pistols to settle an overheated dispute. Today we’ll exp...
The mayor of Charleston is a prestigious officer who commands respect throughout our community and beyond, but that hasn’t always been the case. Nearly two centuries ago, the city’s executive evolved from a nearly powerless, part-ti...
Sentenced to hang in 1747, Elizabeth McQueen cried out from the Charleston jail and asked the governor of South Carolina for mercy. She was a poor woman who was ignorant of the law and did not realize that her personal grief amounted to a capital ...
Accused of having murdered her newborn child, Elizabeth McQueen was arrested and transported to urban Charleston to stand trial in 1747. Details gleaned from contemporary documents allow us to reconstruct many of the experiences this half-Creek wo...
When an unmarried young woman of Native American ancestry lost a newborn child in 1747, her white neighbors on the frontier of South Carolina interpreted her private grief as a mask for clandestine guilt and summoned the force of English law. Toda...
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