Above- Exterior Blacklock House, ca 1940.   In 1958 Dr. Maxcy Harrelson obtained from the city of Charleston a permit to demolish a piece of its' own past.  Clearly cited in the permit was the authority to raze the 16-18 block on Bull street- on which the William Blacklock House sat.   Losing this property would be not only be a blow to the local preservation efforts, but also cost the country a structure some architectural historians referred to as "one of the most important Adamesque houses in the nation."  

At the time of its construction (ca.1800) this house was considered one of the most elegant in the city.  Its namesake, a prominent banker and merchant, built the house in what would become the suburban area of Harleston Village.  Its' two story 18 inch thick walls were built using Carolina "grey" brick, which is actually brown.  This mansions imposing facade fairly filled the lot.  Stately piazzas once overlooked the carefully manicured gardens planted on the north side of the house.  Inside it followed a traditional double-house plan, with a central hallway and flanking rooms.  The interior also boasted woodwork matching the Adamesque style with a stair under an vaulted ceiling.     To compensate for the flooding of the nearby creeks and marshes that still dotted the neighborhood, it was given twin basements. 

The property passed out of the Blacklock family's hands.  Over time it served as the residence for diplomats, a fraternity building, a boarding house and was even an apartment complex.   Fortunately, Dr. Harrleson never exercised his authority and decided to let his permit to demolish expire.  This allowed the College of Charleston to purchase the house in 1971 and begin the massive restoration effort.  In 1973 it reopened under the COFC's banner as a gathering place for alumni and a host building for college functions.  In 1974 it was designated a National Historic Landmark and remains a valuable addition to the downtown campus. 

Above- Exterior Blacklock House, 1940.
Below- Interior Blacklock House, 1940.
Images from Library of Congress

Map of Expo grounds. 
From Archive.org

  After many weeks of hard labor the Sunken Garden was finally completed.  The crew, foreman and architects who had worked on this project had much to be proud of.  They had scooped out a bare slab of Charleston soil to create something that could truly be called a work of art.    A three foot deep lake, oblong in shape, and fed by springs of natural water, ringed the garden.  This new lake was surrounded by low wall decorated with statuary in the shapes of seashells, fish and other nautical designs. At the center of the lake was a small island covered with flora.   The architect in chief had called for the island to be "vivid with flowers of the richest splendor."

Evidently his vision had come to pass for a newspaper correspondent who visited the island wrote that "A refined taste is manifest in the plants and flowers (many rare exotics) already flourishing, and gives promise of rare beauty, diversified, yet harmonious."  Knowing it would be a popular destination, as well as a centerpiece, four bridges arced over the water to allow easy access and prevent crowds.  A dome-roofed bandstand stood a short distance from the head of the lake and gave visitors a chance to look back and reflect on the majesty of the Sunken Garden as a whole.

Yet, as beautiful as it was, this was just a small part of a larger affair. A city once stood on the banks of the Sunken Gardens in Hampton Park.   It was called the Ivory City, named for its stark white plaster facade of its' three main buildings, the Cotton Palace, the South Carolina Building, and the Palace of Commerce.   These massive structures were "Palaces" in name only; they were made not made of stone, but of wood and a mixture of plaster and cement called "staff", which was then painted white.

 To promote Charleston, and to prove to the world that the Holy City had survived the physical and economic devastation wrought by  such events as the Civil War and the  Earthquake of  1886  it was decided to host an Exposition.  The official title was the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition.   The Exposition ran from the end of 1901 to early 1902, and by most accounts, it was considered a financial failure.  Yet, this  display of industry did manage to attract some new businesses to the area.  Perhaps the most tangible benefit is one of Charleston's most beloved recreational spots - Hampton Park.  After the Expo folded, much of the area remained a public park, and although the original design for the Sunken Garden, except for the bandstand, is no longer visible, Hampton Park remains a fitting tribute to the spirit of endurance shown by Charleston in 1901.          

Hampton Park Bandstand. 
From The Library of Congress.

Image from Library of Congress.

Basket weavers near the Four Corners of Law and on the Market are some of the last practitioners of a tradition nearly as old as Charleston itself.  In the city's early days African- Americans could be seen pacing the streets or camped out along the busy city intersections hawking their wares.

Before the Civil War some of these mobile vendors were enslaved, forced to sell goods on behalf of their masters.  The more fortunate of this group were given permission to sell from their own plots and allowed to keep the profits for their own benefit.  Another minority, the freedmen, without a storefront of their own, turned to street vending as a way to make ends meet.  

After the Civil War necessity dictated this tradition continue. Entire families took up the craft.  Some members would go out in a collection of small craft dubbed "The Mosquito Fleet" to bring in fresh seafood, which was later sold in stalls or out of carts.  Other vendors, like the ones pictured on this 1879 photograph, coaxed their goods out of the earth and sold it using nothing more than baskets and their voices.  

This remarkable image captures what appears to be three generations (likely a grandmother, mother, and two siblings).  Balanced expertly atop the heads of the women are baskets woven in the West African tradition, probably made of local sweet grass. Two of the baskets are filled with what clothing.  In a 1963 newspaper feature Ms. Mary Sparkman gave her readers insight on how such heavy a heavy load, usually upwards of 70 lbs.  was managed; these baskets "rested on a protecting nest of cloth, twisted and coiled into a sort of thick, flat turban."  The young boy in the group carries a bundle of kindling cinched together atop his head.

With limited opportunities after emancipation a number of newly-freed African American families turned full-time back to the long-established profession of street vendor.  Often, the children would carry this set of valuable entrepreneurial skills with them into adulthood, imparting it onto the next generation.  Modern supermarkets and improvements in refrigeration in the early 20th century heralded the end of this class of street vendor.

Still, glimmers of the old profession can be seen in Charleston.  Besides the basket-weavers, there are family-operated stalls in the Market, children on bicycles selling sweetgrass flowers to tourists, and the occasional vegetable or fruit truck still can be spotted on the byways or roads on the surrounding islands.    

 

Joel Roberts Poinsett.
From the Library of Congress.

Taxco, Mexico-December, 1828- One tradition holds that Joel Roberts Poinsett was out on a walk when he first noticed the unusual plant.  This bright shrub grew wild, right along the road he traveled.  It had colorful red appendages that appeared to be leaves at a first glance, but closer examination revealed that they were altered enough to be identified as bracts.  Clustered in the center of these bracts, were numerous small yellow flowers, known as cyathia.   This exotic plant seemed out of place.  The mountainous area near Taxco was famous for its silver mines, not for its native flora. 

Another version of this story takes place a few years later in the church of Santa Prisca in Taxco .  His first glance of the strange plant was along the altar inside the church.  Yet another account, also in a different year and different part of Mexico notes that Poinsett had previously noticed the plant because of its use by locals in various events or celebrations. 

 
Regardless of which story is true, this much is factual.  While in Mexico in the early 19th century, Poinsett saw the plant and took some cuttings.   It is from these cuttings that the flower made its’ appearance in the states.  In 1829, the plant debuted at the Exposition of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to much acclaim.   Of course it was given a proper English botanical name Euphorbia pulcherrima.  By 1835 it was better known as Poinsettia pulcherrima in honor of the man who had exported it to the U.S.  
 

Today, Poinsettias have become synonymous with the Yuletide season.     The sales of this plant often outshine the total annual sales of any other flowering plant.  An estimated 60 to 70 million are sold annually, most of this in the weeks before Christmas.  In recognition of its’ popularity Congress has declared December 12 as National Poinsettia Day.    
 

Besides being an avid botanist, Charleston-born Poinsett was an important statesman.  He served in the House of Representatives, was the first U.S. Minister to Mexico during a tumultuous revolution, and acted as Secretary of War under Van Buren.  As an active Mason, he was involved in many Lodges and is credited with helping establish Freemasonry in Mexico .  Poinsett was also one of the founders of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts, a precursor to the Smithsonian. By the time of his death in 1851 he had a long distinguished career.  In tribute to his many accomplishments, a state park and many local landmarks bear his name. In 1989 he was further honored by being inducted in the S.C. Hall of Fame.

 
 Yet, his most public tribute seems to be his association with the plant he took back from Taxco .  What he would have thought of this irony can probably best be summed up by Poinsett himself.  He would often tell his friends traveling abroad to bring home a sampling of the indigenous flora with them; “If any one of these (plants) succeeds, then the tourist will be rewarded by a consciousness of having conferred lasting benefit to his country.”

December 25th, 1830.

It was approaching 8am Christmas morning in Charleston .  A large crowd of men, women and children, had left behind the warmth of their homes to stand out near the intersection of Line and King Streets.  They were clustered around the nearby station that housed the newest mechanical marvel of the age- a train.  It has been described as resembling an old fashioned wine bottle made not of glass, but of steel.  Its’ four and half ton body rested vertically on the rear of a four-wheel platform.   Hitched to this locomotive were two “pleasure cars,” ready to receive passengers.

  Back in November this engine had arrived in pieces transported from a foundry in New York .  After being assembled this metal behemoth had been put through the paces, its’ noisy, smoky, trial runs attracting a lot of attention from the inhabitants of the Holy City .  On Christmas Eve, the newspapers ran an announcement that the train was now ready to run, and invited the citizens their own chance to try this experimental mode of travel.
 
As it turned eight, last call was given, and about 140 brave souls stepped out of the crowd and boarded. They piled shoulder to shoulder into two passenger cars behind the locomotive, which sported a red and green paint job in keeping with the holiday.  A band of musicians assembled for the occasion played the passengers off as engineer Nick Darrell coaxed the train forward.
    
Only six miles of track had been laid.   On the inaugural run they were going to ride it one end to the next.  Jockey, a sports writer from New York , described his experience “On the wings of the wind at the speed of fifteen to twenty-five miles an hour, annihilating time and space and leaving all the world behind….”
 
In just over nine minutes they had traveled beyond the forks of the old State and Dorchester Road .  They stopped at San Souci to pick up a flatcar mounting a small cannon and staffed by a recruiting party of US troops. With their new guests the train made its’ triumphant returned to the station.   Jockey said of the return trip “(we) darted forth like a live rocket, scattering sparks and flames from either side, passed over three salt water creeks, hop, step and jump and landed us all safe at the end of the lines before any of us had time to determine whether or not to be scared.”  The train ran twice more on Christmas, carrying about 300 more passengers.  This gives it the distinction of being the first steam locomotive in the US to establish regularly scheduled passenger service. It seemed to have more than earned the name given to it by eager merchants “The Best Friend of Charleston.”

  More track was laid and more stations were built in the weeks after the Christmas run.  Unfortunately, on June 17, the Best Friend was destroyed in accident killing a rail worker and injuring several others.  This death would give the “Best Friend” claim to another first, albeit an inauspicious one, this would be the first fatality on an American railroad.  The accident was only a minor setback.  The railroad continued to grow and other locomotives were constructed all over the country.  A few years later the “ Phoenix ” was built, using pieces of the original Best Friend.

  Despite its’ brief life, The Best Friend has had museums devoted to it, and several replicas made of it over the years.  Lionel Toys even released a limited edition model of the train in 2007. A replica of the “Best Friend of Charleston” is now on in the S.C. State Museum in Columbia, another sits in the lobby of the Norfolk Southern Atlanta HQ in Atlanta .     
Image Above-Depiction of the Best Friend of Charleston.  From Archive.org

Wreck of the Celt, 1865.  This image is sometimes misidentified as  the Ruby.
-From the Library of Congress

The Celt (also called the Sylph and the Colt) was built in Charleston, and launched from her wharves in 1862-63.  This was at a time when it seemed to many that the Confederacy’s independence was still a possible outcome of the Civil War.   Even though the South won signal victories on land during that period, they continued to lose the war at sea. This was especially true when it came to breaking the blockade; a fleet of Union ships that bottled up the major Southern ports. As the blockades effectiveness grew, less and less of the desperately needed food, munitions’ and medicine managed to reach the interior.   The Confederate Navy was severely under manned and under equipped, and could do little to break the stranglehold.

  A class of entrepreneurs called Blockade Runners would try to alleviate these mounting shortages.     These Rhett Butler types, some motivated by patriotism, others by profit, would try to slip past the blockade at night in sleek specially crafted boats.  Their goal was to reach a foreign port such as Nassau, exchange their cargo of cotton for necessities and slip back through the net once more.  Dozens of these vessels ran, or attempted to run, the blockade through the Civil War, and The Celt was one of these.

The Celt’s success as a blockade runner is difficult to gauge.  Another larger British ship bore the same name, and over the years the history of the two has become intertwined.  There is no record of the Charleston-based Celt clearing or returning the port before February of 1865.  Likely the ship tried to run the blockade several times, but was turned away by weather or circumstance.  It seems the first documented run of the Celt was also its’ last.  Late on the evening of Feb 14, the Celt, loaded with 190 bales of cotton, attempted the blockade.  In the process of hugging the coast to escape detection it ground ashore near the rocks of Sullivan’s Island.  The surviving crew went their separate ways, one group would brave the water and try to go ashore in the dark, and another seven would row out to the blockading fleet in a small boat and surrender.        

 Days later, the city of Charleston and all the batteries and forts in the harbor would be abandoned as the Confederates evacuated.   The incoming Union navy scoured the coastline and examined the wrecked corpses of the numerous failed blockade runners, including the Celt, that littered the seaboard.  According to one Union officer “The Celt lies stranded on the beach at Sullivan’s Island back broken, full of water and decks ripped up.  The machinery is in irreparable condition, some few pieces might be removed and be of service.  Boilers are mostly below water, but judging from the condition of those parts visible, we are of the opinion they are not worth the expense of removing.”

 Over the years, the waves carried away much of the stranded ship, erasing it from memory.  Yet, even in the late 20th century, wreckage from the Celt could still be seen off Sullivan’s at low-tide, although this debris was so covered with marine growth that it appeared to be simply part of the rocky shore.  Few who passed by, or fished in the surrounding waters, realized that a relic from the War Between the States was in their midst.



 

Effects of earthquake clearly shown on brick house at 157 Tradd Street.
From USGS Public Office.

“ For a few moments all the inhabitants of the city stood together in the presence of death, in its most terrible form, and perhaps scarcely one doubted that all would be swallowed together and at once, in one yawning grave.... From every quarter arose the shrieks, the cries of pain and fear, the prayers and wailings ...the air was everywhere filled, to the height of houses, with a whitish cloud of dry, stifling dust arising from the lime and mortar of the shattered masonry... ”   Carl McKinley recorded in the 1886 City of Charleston Yearbook. In a letter to a friend Harriott Kinloch Smith recalled;    “You cannot imagine the horrors of that night, the crowds of half-dressed people, the sky lurid from the glare of immense fires, the noise of falling bricks, the frequent shocks...”  

     Both McKinley and Smith wrote of the same night, August 31st, 1886. At 9:51 P.M. the first of five destructive shocks struck Charleston and the surrounding area. For almost eight minutes the Low Country experienced a massive earthquake, whose tremors were felt in cities as far away as Boston and Chicago. Modern authorities have placed this 1886 quake between 6 and the upper 7's on the Richter scale.

 Its’ results were catastrophic. Thousands of homes throughout the Low Country were destroyed, thousands more injured, and over ninety people lost their lives. In total the quake caused damages of around six million dollars, a sizeable fortune by 1886 standards. In the city yearbook McKinley recounted the suddenness of the devastation.  “Millions of dollars worth of property, the accumulation of nearly two centuries, had been destroyed in the time a child would take to crush a frail toy.”

      “The slow-dawning day broke over a scene of desolation, -the great substantial brick houses broken as you or I would break a small nut in our hands; our house north and south, completely gone...those small houses opposite us cracked and broken from foundation to roof.”   Harriott Smith recalled in her letter.  “I don’t know what at all what we will do”  she worried, but even as the city was in ruins around her she expressed her wish not to leave.  “ I only hope we don’t leave Charleston, which at times seems not unlikely.”

The loss of home was so widespread that many families would be forced into the streets or parks, living out of tents or makeshift structures. Even homes that survived relatively undamaged were suspect. Many were afraid to spend the night in any dwelling for fear that another quake might topple it.  “Half the people in the town are out in the streets or squares with sheets or table clothes for tent coverings...”   Augustine Smythe wrote in September of that year. According to Smythe, the survivors continued to cope as best as they were able. “Mrs. Elliot Welch had twins out on the Battery two nights ago. There have been several births in tents.”

      The nation was quick to react to this tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of dollars poured in along with food, water, and medicine.  “The Earthquake has opened the hearts of the whole country to us,”   Daniel Huger Bacot wrote of the relief efforts. Aid would also come from several countries overseas. Despite this overwhelming support, the scope of the damage was so severe that it would take many years to completely recover. The Low Country would draw upon the same resilience that had carried it through two wars, hurricanes, tornados, epidemics, and fire to rebuild.  With this determination and support worldwide, Charleston and the Low Country would recover and prosper.

Street view that captures the catastrophic damage dealt to Charleston by the earthquake. From USGS Public Office.

One of the many tent-cities residents were forced to live in after the earthquake.
From USGS Public Office.

Exposed crater left in the wake of the tremors.From USGS Public Office.