Home » Today In Charleston History (Page 34)
George Washington wrote a letter of introduction for Charles Pinckney for the Marquis de Lafayette. Pinckney was planning to finally fulfill his dream to travel to Europe, delayed first by the Revolution and then his father’s death. However, he delayed the trip to return to South Carolina to campaign for the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.
The three ships of the Carolina expedition – the Carolina, the Albermarle and the Port Royal – left Ireland for the trans-Atlantic crossing. Mr. Joseph West was appointed Governor and Commander-in-chief of the Carolina expedition until its arrival at Barbados, or until another Governor was appointed.
John Rutledge, son of Dr. John and Sarah Rutledge was born. He would become the most prominent lawyer in Charles Town, the first governor of South Carolina and a signer of the U.S. Constitution.
South Carolina delegates John Rutledge, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Charles Pinckney and Pierce Butler signed the new Constitution of the United States.
Howard Christy’s “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.” The South Carolina delegation is pictured in the lower left hand corner.
A joint French and Spanish attack upon Charles Town during Queen Anne’s War was repulsed when Colonial forces capture a French vessel and it crew. Governor Nathaniel Johnson and Lieutenant Colonel William Rhett lead the successful defense of Charles Town against a combined force of Spanish, French, and Native American combatants who sailed into Charleston harbor from St. Augustine.
Capt. Joseph Vesey of Charles Town purchased 390 slaves in St. Domingue. One of the slaves he purchased was a young boy “about 14 years old” named Telemaque. Vesey also noted the boy had a “beauty, alertness and intelligence.” Instead of keeping the boy chained below decks Vesey”adopted the boy as the “ship’s pet and plaything.” Vesey gave the boy a new set of clothes and used him as his cabin boy.
When the ship arrived at Cap Francois, Haiti, Vesey decided he “had no use of the boy” and turned him over to the slave agents Lory, Plomard and Compagnie. Little did he know that young boy would become a constant feature of his life for the next 30 years, and ultimately … for the next 200 years.
Judge Trott wrote in defense of the Church Act: “The reason why we passed the Act to exclude them (Dissenters) from being chosen was because they never did any good there nor never do any.”
Col. William Rhett’s expedition left searching for Charles Vane. Information indicated that the pirates had sailed up the Edisto River. However, the search was in vain. Rhett found no trace of the pirates and sailed north to Cape Fear to continue his patrol.
The Commissioners of Fortification reported they had “viewed the fortifications on White Point and find the whole in ruinous condition and some parts broke through by the sea …”
Lord William Campbell was injured on June 28, 1776 during the battle of Sullivan’s Island on board the HMS Bristol. He later died of his wounds.
Lord William Campbell discovered that Patriot leaders learned of his coordinating with back country Loyalists. Fearing attack from Revolutionaries in Charlestown, Campbell fled his house on Meeting Street in the early morning hours to HMS Tamar. This effectively ended British rule in South Carolina.
Almost immediately, Colonel William Moultrie led a local militia unit with Captain Francis Marion, seized Fort Johnson and its twenty-one guns, with no resistance from the British. Lord William Campbell, on board the Tamar, considered this action an overt act of war. The fact that this was done in plain view of two British warships, practically under Campbell’s nose, made it particularly insulting.
Moultrie was then directed by the Council of Safety to devise a flag. He chose the blue of the 1st and 2nd Regiments and the silver crescent which adorned their hats. This flag was raised over Ft. Johnson – the first American flag to replace the Union Jack.
The Union and Nullifier Parties signed a formal agreement to prohibit late night meetings and abolish free liquor to all supporters. They set a 10:00 p.m. curfew for all meetings to end. This was an attempt to limit the number of drunken brawls and shootings that had plagued the city during the run-up to the election.
Wreck of the Central America
The S.S. Central America sank in a hurricane off the Charleston coast. It was a 278-foot steamer sailing from Panama to New York City carrying 30,000 pounds of California Gold Rush-era coins and ingots – giving rise to the name Ship of Gold. Four hundred and twenty-five passengers and crew were lost. At the time of its sinking, Central America carried gold then valued at approximately $2 million. The loss shook public confidence in the economy, and contributed to the Panic of 1857.
On September 11, 1988. The ship was located by the use a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The total value of the recovered gold was estimated at $100–150 million. A recovered gold ingot weighing 80 lb sold for a record $8 million and was recognized as the most valuable piece of currency in the world at that time. Currently only “5 per cent of the ship has been excavated.
Read an August 2014 story from Newsweek about the excavation.
The Gazette reported that, excluding Royal officials, only thirty-one inhabitants of had refused to sign the pledge and join the “Association.” The names of the thirty-one were published in the paper and they quickly discovered themselves unable to sell merchandise.
The “Association” was a group of Charles Town men who pledged to support non-importation of any products of Great Britain, and denounced anyone who did not sign within a month. Many of the aristocratic leaders were upset by the surge of the mechanics (carpenters, etc …) in politics, usurped by men they considered their inferior.
William Henry Drayton condescendingly wrote in the Gazette:
No man who could boast of having received a liberal education would consult on public affairs with men who never were in any way to study, or to advise upon any points, but rules how to cut up a beast in the market … cobble on old shoe … or to build a necessary house.
Christopher Gadsden pointed out that Drayton was exempted from labor to make a living due to his “marriage to a rich heiress rather than from any merit of his own.”
The rally cry of the “Association” became “Sign or die!” Over the next several weeks Drayton and Gadsden published dueling letters in the Gazette, with the attacks becoming more personal rather than an exchange of ideas.
Still from the movie, The Patriot, showing Tradd Street (on the right) with some Hollywood CGI magic thrown in.
A hurricane hit Charlestown, with a flood level of ten feet above the previous recorded high water mark. More than 100 died, with twice as many injuries. The South Carolina Gazette reported:
All the wharves and bridges were ruined, and every house, store, & upon them, beaten down, and carried way (with all the goods, & therein), as were also many houses in the town; and abundance of roofs, chimneys, & almost all the tiled or slated houses in the town … The town was likewise overflowed, the tide of sea having rose upwards of Ten feet above the high-water mark at spring tides …
All but one of the ships in the harbor were driven ashore and most of the smaller vessels soon became one with the debris. Sloops and schooners were thrown against the houses of Bay street and the wharves along East Bay street destroyed. A brigantine beat down several houses and wound up on the east side of Church street. Eight or ten small schooners, owned by Charlestonians, and three or four pilot boats were driven into the woods, corn fields and marshes of surrounding areas
David Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina, reported:
Colonel Pinckney, who lived in the large white house at the corner of Ellery street and French alley, abandoned it after there were several feet of water in it. He took his family from thence to… corner of Guignard and Charles streets, in a ship’s yawl. All South Bay was in ruins, many wooden houses were wrecked to pieces and washed away, and brick houses reduced to a heap of rubbish … A brick house where Mr. Bedon lived, on Church street .. Mr. Bedon and family unfortunately remained too long in the house, for the whole family, consisting of twelve souls, perished in the water, except himself and a negro wench. The bodies of Mrs. Bedon, of one of her children, and of a Dutch boy, were found in the parsonage pasture…
During a special election for the Assembly, Christopher Gadsden was elected, but discovered that the election return from St. Paul’s parish was blank. The church wardens had also not taken the oath required by the Election Act. Gov. Boone, citing the irregularities, refused to administer the oath of office to Gadsden, and called for a new Election Act to be written.
Charles Town had been thrown into terror at reports of pirate ships off the coast. Governor Johnson Colonel gave a commission to Colonel William Rhett to organize an expedition to protect Charles Town against Charles Vane, rumored to be in the area. Two sloops were pressed into service, the Sea Nymph (eight guns and seventy men) and the Henry (eight guns and sixty men.)
Dr. Alexander Garden opened a free school for “educating Negro children,” with more than sixty pupils.
Rev. Charles Woodmason returned from England, and was assigned to St. Mark’s Parish on the South Carolina frontier. It was rough country. The parish had a growing population, yet had few roads and even no amenities. Woodmason’s circuit included 26 regular, periodic stops in the parish. In two years he traveled 6,000 miles. He found very little in backcountry life to his liking. The people lived in open cabins “with hardly a Blanket to cover them, or Cloathing to cover their Nakedness.” Their diet consisted of “what in England is given to Hogs and Dogs” and he was forced to live likewise. He wrote:
They are very Poor – owing their extreme Indolence for they possess the finest Country in America, and could raise by ev’ry thing. They delight in their present low, lazy, sluttish, heathenish hellish Life and seem not desirous of changing it. Both Men and Women will do any thing to come at Liquor … rather than work for it – Hence their many Vices – their gross Licentiousness, Wantonness, Lasciviousness, Rudeness, Lewdness and Profligacy. They will commit the grossest Enormities, before my face, and laugh at all Admonition.
Dubose Heyward’s novel Porgy was published. The story of a crippled beggar on the streets of Charleston was notable because it was one of the first major novels written by a white Southerner through the viewpoint of black characters.
During a dice game, Porgy witnesses a murder committed by a rough, sadistic man named Crown, who runs away from the police. During the next weeks, Porgy gives shelter to the murderer’s woman, the haunted Bess, in the rear courtyard of Catfish Row, a rundown tenement on the Charleston waterfront. Porgy and Bess fall in love. However, when Crown arrives to take Bess away Porgy kills him. He is taken in by police for questioning for ten days. He is released because the police do not believe a crippled beggar could have killed the powerful Crown. When Porgy returns to the Row, he discovers that while he was away Bess fell under the spell of the drug dealer Sportin’ Life and his “happy dus’. She has followed Sportin’ Life to a new future in Savannah and Porgy is left alone brokenhearted.
Edmond Thornton Jenkins died in Paris at age 32 from pnemonia, due to complications from surgery. The son of Rev. Daniel Jenkins, founder of the Jenkins Orphanage, Jenks (as he was called) had graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, was living in Paris as a musician, playing in jazz clubs and working as a composer.
Jenks’ former music professor at Morehouse College Benjamin Brawley stated:
Let us remember this: he not only knew music but at all times insisted on its integrity. For him there was no short cut to excellence. He wanted the classic and he was willing to work for it. He felt, moreover … that there was little creative work in the mere transcribing of Negro melodies. For him it was the business of a composer to compose, and he did so … The music of the Negro and of the world suffered signal loss in the early death of Edmund T. Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina.
The Council elected James Moore governor of Carolina in a power coup led by the Goose Creek men, usurping the senior Landgrave, Joseph Morton, Jr.
Moore originally arrived in Carolina in 1675 from Barbados, married one of Sir John Yeaman’s daughters and became a member of the Goose Creek faction, opposed to the Fundamental Constitutions. The Dissenters contested Moore’s “unjust election,”but the Lords Proprietors saw to it that Moore remained governor, and they made it clear that the Dissenters were no longer in favor.
Col. James Moore leading a raiding party against Native Americans.
Moore became the leading Indian trader in the colony. His father was Roger Moore (Rory O’More), one of the leaders of the 1641 Irish Rebellion against the anti-Catholic Puritan forces and evidently inherited his father’s rebellious nature.
On news of the outbreak of Queen Anne’s War in 1702, he led 500 colonists, 300 native allies, and 14 small ships on an invasion of Spanish Florida along the coast devastating the lands around St. Augustine. While the town of St. Augustine was razed, its central fortress, Castillo de San Marcos, where the Spanish and numerous allied Indians had taken refuge, resisted Moore’s siege. The 1702 campaign was viewed as a disaster due to the failure to take the fortress and the expenses incurred, and Moore resigned his post.
James Petigru’s first born child, eight-year-old Albert, while playing inside the house, fell over the bannister thirty feet down the stairwell and was killed. His death devastated the family. Petigru’s wife, Amelia, deteriorated, suffering from severe headaches and became addicted to opiates.
Henry Laurens wrote about the wasteful use of live oak trees across South Carolina. The words come across as eerily prophetic in more ways than just environmental responsibility:
The day is not distant in the long tract of Time, when we shall be stripped of that essential article [live Oaks]. The Europeans will laugh at us, our Children will rue the folly of their Fathers. For every live Oak you cut down you ought to Plant ten young trees … but few of us Southern Americans have patience to look forty years forward, we are for grasping all the golden Eggs at once.
Charleston Mercury:
“A wife should be like a roasted lamb – tender and nicely dressed … And without sauce.”
Trolley cars made their first run on the new Hampton Park loop. Hampton Park had just opened to the public and was drawing huge crowds of people from downtown Charleston. At this point two Charleston trolley companies were operating 30 horse-drawn trolley cars daily.
Hampton Park was built on the site of (and out of the dismantling of) the Expo Grounds that had closed the year before.
Trolley car on Rutledge Avenue. This route ran all the north to Hampton Park.
The Carolina sailed to back to Barbados for passengers and supplies. A letter asking for a clergyman was written and signed by Florence O’Sullivan, Stephen Bull, Joseph West, William Scrivener, Ralph Marshall, Paul Smith, Samuel West, Joseph Dalton and Governor Sayle.
Florence O’Sullivan also wrote a letter to Ashley Cooper:
… the country proves good beyond expectation, abounding in all things, as good oak, ash, deer, turkeys, partridges, rabbits, turtle and fish; and the land produces anything that is put into it – corn, cotton, tobacco … with many pleasant rivers … pray send us a minister qualified according to the Church of England and an able councellor [lawyer] to end controversies amongst us and put us in the right way of the managem’t…
Joseph West wrote to Ashley Cooper, with a warning:
Our Governor … is very aged, and hath much lost himself in his government … I doubt he will not be so advantageous to a new colony as we did expect.
The largest slave revolt in the British colonies prior to the Revolution took place about 20 miles from Charleston.
Led by an Angolan named Jemmy, a band of twenty slaves organized a rebellion on the banks of the Stono River. After breaking into Hutchinson’s store the band, now armed with guns, called for their liberty. As they marched, overseers were killed and reluctant slaves were forced to join the company. The band reached the Edisto River where white colonists descended upon them, killing most of the rebels. The survivors were sold off to the West Indies. More than 40 blacks and 20 whites were killed during the insurrection.
The revolt led to stricter slave codes with the Negro Act of 1740, dictating such things as how slaves were to be treated, punished, and dressed. It forbade them from assembling with one another or being taught to read or write. The 1740 slave codes were largely unaltered until emancipation in 1865.
William Bull submitted his account of the Rebellion to the British authorities:
My Lords,
I beg leave to lay before your Lordships an account of our Affairs, first in regard to the Desertion of our Negroes. . . . On the 9th of September last at Night a great Number of Negroes Arose in Rebellion, broke open a Store where they got arms, killed twenty one White Persons, and were marching the next morning in a Daring manner out of the Province, killing all they met and burning several Houses as they passed along the Road. I was returning from Granville County with four Gentlemen and met these Rebels at eleven o’clock in the forenoon and fortunately deserned the approaching danger time enough to avoid it, and to give notice to the Militia who on the Occasion behaved with so much expedition and bravery, as by four a’Clock the same day to come up with them and killed and took so many as put a stop to any further mischief at that time, forty four of them have been killed and Executed; some few yet remain concealed in the Woods expecting the same fate, seem desperate . . .It was the Opinion of His Majesty’s Council with several other Gentlemen that one of the most effectual means that could be used at present to prevent such desertion of our Negroes is to encourage some Indians by a suitable reward to pursue and if possible to bring back the Deserters, and while the Indians are thus employed they would be in the way ready to intercept others that might attempt to follow and I have sent for the Chiefs of the Chickasaws living at New Windsor and the Catawbaw Indians for that purpose. . . .
My Lords,
Your Lordships Most Obedient and Most Humble Servant
Wm Bull
The Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use. The delegates wrote, “That in all continental commissions, and other instruments, where, heretofore, the words ‘United Colonies’ have been used, the stile be altered for the future to the “United States.”
Edmund Thornton Jenkins … Jenks.
Edmund Thornton Jenkins performed a concert at his father’s church, the Fourth Tabernacle Baptist. Jenks (as he was called) grew up performing with the Jenkins Orphanage Band. His father, Daniel Jenkins, had established the Orphan Aid Society in 1891 for the “black lambs” of Charleston. Jenks attended the Royal Academy of Music for seven years in London and became an accomplished composer, pianist, and multi-instrumentalist. After graduation, he returned to visit his family in Charleston and discovered that, after years in Europe, he could no longer live in the South comfortably as a black man.
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