The mass execution of 49 pirates in Charleston in 1718 is described in historical documents with a frustrating paucity of details. Despite the drama and trauma associated with this event, an air of mystery still hangs over the precise location of the pirates’ last stand. Today we’ll look closely at the local historical evidence and examine the larger legal framework that dictated the demise of so many pirate brethren.
Over the course of five weeks in the autumn of 1718, Charleston witnessed 13 trials of 58 men accused of piracy. Clerks made a paper record of this entire courtroom spectacle, most of which was published in 1719, but few people have seen the text of this dramatic narrative. This episode contextualize this valuable historical record and provides a summary of the confusing sequence of trials.
This month marks the 300th anniversary of one of the dramatic episodes in the history of Charleston—the trial and execution of 49 pirates captured off the Carolina coast in 1718. In this episode, we’ll explore the background preceding these extraordinary trials and focus on the efforts of South Carolina mariners to capture two of the most notorious pirates, Stede Bonnet and Richard Worley, and bring them to justice in Charleston.
Have you seen the tail of the horse in the portrait of George Washington that hangs in Charleston’s City Hall? Do you know the tale of how that painting’s origin, and why the horse’s rear-end is so prominently displayed? The popular version of this story isn’t entirely accurate rendering, so let’s use the Time Machine travel back to the early 1790s and explore the documentary evidence behind this artistic mystery.
As we conclude the 100th season of “Daylight Saving Time,” let’s pause to reflect on the concept of time keeping in Charleston’s past. Before the invention of “standard time” and “time zones, who determined the official time for our city, and when did we start synchronizing our clocks with those of other communities? Join me as we “fall back” in time and review the horological habits of our less hurried past.
In the spirit of Halloween, today’s program concerns one of the most prevalent and legitimate fears held by the people of eighteenth-century Charleston. I’m talking about taphophobia—the fear of being buried alive. Premature burial was a real concern back in that era, when the line between life and death was poorly understood. Today we’ll explore a few cases that are sure to leave a haunting impression.
The Akin Foundling Hospital was a short-lived, long-forgotten municipal institution located on the west side of Meeting Street in Charleston. Established in 1843 at the bequest of Miss Eliza Akin, the building was intended as a refuge for abandoned infants, but the structure’s poor condition hampered its mission. Today we’ll survey the City of Charleston’s management of the institution and look for its ashes after the fire of 1861.
From modest beginnings in the 1690s to great wealth in the 1750s and extinction in the 1840s, the lesser-known Akin family of South Carolina left an important legacy on Meeting Street that most of Charleston has long forgotten. Before we can appreciate the history of the Akin Foundling Hospital, we need to learn a bit about the family fortunes that inspired our community’s first and only home for motherless infants.
Between 1670 and 1808, nearly one thousand cargos of enslaved Africans entered the port of Charleston. This fact represents one of the most important chapters in the history of our community, but we the people of Charleston still struggle to wrap our collective brains around this weighty topic. How can we tell this important story to our children and to the millions of visitors who come here each year?
In 1868, the City of Charleston passed an ordinance making it illegal for a person to appear in public dressed in a manner “not becoming his or her sex.” Why would they do such a thing? The answer is wrapped in the confusing world of post-Civil War Charleston, a place filled with Union soldiers enforcing federal laws, formerly-enslaved people starting new lives, and members of the old guard trying to make sense of a topsy-turvy world.
Has this ever happened to you: There’s a knock at your front door late at night. You open the door to find a messenger with a letter and a soggy burlap bag. You open the letter—it’s news about a series of recent murders. You look inside the bag and find two human heads. What do you do? If you’re the governor of South Carolina, and its January of 1745, you breathe a sigh of relief, and say “Thank you—I’ve been expecting these.”
In the summer of 1744, two Native American men of the Notchee tribe murdered several Catawba Indians in cold blood near Four Holes Swamp. Fearing a general Indian war, the government of South Caorlina interceded and tried to maintain peace between the tribes while hunting down the murders. This dramatic story has all the elements of a prime-time detective series, but it survives only in the manuscript records of our early government.
The historical definition of “the Neck” once encompassed all the land between the rivers Ashley and Cooper, but the steady growth of development whittled it down until it was finally swallowed by annexation in the late twentieth century. In this episode, we’ll complete our chronological tour of Neck geography and consider how the identity of this once blighted area is about to be reborn as the final frontier on the Charleston peninsula.
How well do you know “the Neck,” that curious stretch of no man’s land bounded by the rivers Ashley and Cooper, and squeezed between the urban centers of Charleston and North Charleston? The geographic identity of "the Neck" evolved in multiple stages over the past three centuries, in step with the growth of the local population and with the rise of commercial development, but few know the details its transformation. It’s not just a neglected part of our local history—it’s also a big part of our...
In honor of the 235th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Charleston, I’d like to draw your attention to a little-known but incredibly important fact about the history of this city: During the early days of the Federal occupation of Charleston in the spring of 1865, nearly all of the city’s public records mysteriously disappeared. Because of this large-scale loss of records, our ability to learn, to know, and to tell the story of the city of Charleston was permanently abridged.
Sesame, or “benne” seeds represent an important vestige of the African cultures that came to South Carolina three centuries ago. Lowcountry settlers observed the value of the benne seed, adopted its African name, and once sought to produce it on an industrial scale. For a brief moment in the 1740s, it looked as if South Carolina would become a benne colony. That commercial venture never materialized, but the interest it generated here laid the foundation for the spread of benne throughout the Am...
South Carolina’s first police station was a brick “Watch House” constructed around 1701 at the intersection of Broad and East Bay Streets in Charleston. Built to shelter both the town’s nocturnal watchmen and the lawbreakers they caught on the streets at night, the Watch House was once a vital part of daily life in early Charleston.
After last week’s cliffhanger, we now return to the story of Charles Barker Nixon, a traveling magician and escape artist who came to Charleston in 1876 to be buried alive for the amusement of a crowd of spectators. This week we’ll witness his rise from the grave, learn how the feat was accomplished, and hear the pathetic conclusion to the story of Professor Nixon.
Over the course of a few weeks, this flamboyant, bohemian showman enthralled and terrified the local population by holding séances and speaking of ancient Egyptian prophecies. Nixon’s story is a tragi-comical tale set in the depths of the Reconstruction-era Charleston, about a mysterious enchanter who baffled the nation by charging admission to his funeral and inviting spectators to watch him rise from the grave.
For the first century of its existence, the urban landscape of Charleston was dominated by an evolving ring of fortifications designed to protect the city against potential invasion by Spanish, French, and later British forces. Our provincial legislature repeatedly devoted large sums of tax revenue for the construction and repair of walls, moats, bastions, and related works, resulting in what was undoubtedly the largest public works program in colonial South Carolina. Despite the impressive scal...
You’ve probably heard by now that on June 19th, 2018, Charleston’s City Council adopted a resolution “recognizing, denouncing, and apologizing on behalf of the City of Charleston for the city’s role in regulating, supporting, and fostering” the institution of slavery. In the course of the debate in Council Chambers on that date, Mayor John Tecklenberg made reference to the enslaved laborers who built our present City Hall. To demonstrate the mayor’s point about the use of enslaved builders, one ...
In the late 1860s and throughout the 1870s, when celebrating the Fourth of July was almost exclusively a black phenomenon, the city’s annual celebrations commenced with a parade down Meeting Street, featuring brightly dressed citizens, politicians, brass bands, and uniformed members of the South Carolina National Guard, which, in the post-war era, was composed almost exclusively of formerly-enslaved black men. The parade ended at White Point Garden, where thousands of people would gather for a g...
If you’ve ever wondered why there’s a palmetto tree on the South Carolina state flag, or why we’re known as the Palmetto State, then you need to hear this story.
This nocturnal force, composed of unpaid citizens who guarded the streets from sunset to sunrise, played an extremely important role in the everyday life of early Charleston, but you won’t find much written about it in the thousands of books and articles written about the history of this city.
It’s summertime in the Lowcountry, and the fish are jumping. Seafood season is definitely here, even if the shrimp are running a bit late this year. Fishing has been a big part of our community’s history since, well, long before Europeans and Africans arrived first here more than three centuries ago.
After a century of human- and horse-powered ferry boats carrying passengers across the Cooper River, the arrival of steam power signaled a sea-change in our sense of mobility. The convenience provided by fast and powerful steam ferries fueled the first suburban development boom in the rural areas east of the Cooper River.
In the past, Charleston-area commuters once had a variety of transportation options, including trains, trolleys, omnibuses, and bicycles. Today we’re going to talk about the predecessor to the modern water taxi—the ferries that once plied across the Cooper River, shuttling people, animals, and vehicles between Charleston, Daniel Island, and Mount Pleasant.
You might be surprised to learn that the roots of the Charleston police department, and of all law enforcement services in South Carolina, stretch back more than seven hundred years to thirteenth-century England.
The first bicycles appeared on the streets of Charleston in the spring of 1869, at which time the machine was general called a “velocipede,” after the Latin roots “veloci” (fast) + “pede” (feet). For about six months after the first velocipedestrian rolled through the streets of Charleston, the city experienced a case of bicycle fever.
On the afternoon of Thursday, April 20th, 1775, the members of the General Committee of the South Carolina Provincial Congress convened in Charleston. After discussing the latest news received from England, and the intelligence contained in the private mail stolen from the post office the preceding night, the president of the Provincial Congress, Colonel Charles Pinckney (1732–1782) appointed William Henry Drayton (1742–1779) to head a “Secret Committee” to execute a series of preemptive covert ...
