Charleston Time Machine

Latest Episodes:

Episode 209: Maroons, Picnics, Parades, and Porgy Jul 23, 2021

Show notes

Summertime for many Lowcountry residents is a time to shed the constraints of modern life and enjoy the great outdoors. Long before the convenience of modern transportation, Charlestonians developed a tradition of maroons, picnics, and parades that enlivened scores of summers. Although these traditions are now extinct, the 1925 novel Porgy captures the twilight of that fading tradition.

Episode 208: South Carolina’s First Public Lending Library in 1698 Jul 17, 2021

Show notes

A plaque in Charleston states that the first lending library in the American colonies was established on the west side of St. Philip Street in 1698. The details of this misleading story are complicated, but South Carolina’s first public library was definitely part of a ground-breaking effort to create circulating libraries throughout the British colonies.

Episode 207: The Star-Spangled Spirit of Charleston Jul 02, 2021

Show notes

The words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were written in 1814, but the “Anacreontic” tune used for our national anthem was well-known in Charleston decades earlier. This blending of elements old and new was critical to the success of the patriotic anthem and reflects the cosmopolitan spirit in which Charleston audiences received it more than two centuries ago.

Episode 206: The Moving Memorials to Elizabeth Jackson Jun 26, 2021

Show notes

Elizabeth Jackson, mother of our seventh president, died near Charleston during the American Revolution, but the site of her grave is a mystery. Obscure clues to her final resting place have confounded efforts to celebrate her memory, and two monuments often mislead visitors. By reviewing the historic evidence, we can point to a forgotten site on the modern landscape.

Episode 205: The Public Life of Charleston’s Market Hall Jun 18, 2021

Show notes

Market Hall is a 180-year-old public building that has been occupied as a private museum for the past 120 years. That tenure has obscured the building’s the original purpose and the history of its earlier use. During its first sixty years, this architectural gem hosted a forgotten variety of events created and attended by diverse Charleston audiences.

Episode 204: Charleston’s Daily Bread: Regulating Retail Loaves from 1750 to 1858 Jun 11, 2021

Show notes

For nearly a century between 1750 and 1858, local government dictated the weight, price, and composition of breads prepared by Lowcountry bakers for retail sale. The operation shaped the diets of all classes of Charlestonians and provoked debate about equal access to the necessities of life.

Episode 203: Parishes, Districts, and Counties in Early South Carolina Jun 04, 2021

Show notes

The saints’ names applied to numerous landmarks, institutions, and roads around the Lowcountry are vestiges of parishes that once defined the political geography of lower South Carolina. Counties replaced the colonial-era parishes after the Civil War, but the legacy of the state’s evolving political boundaries provides a key for understanding the landscape inhabited by earlier generations. https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/parishes-districts-and-counties-early-south-carolina

Episode 202: Passenger Trains between Charleston and Summerville, from the Best Friend to BRT May 21, 2021

Show notes

Commuter trains might not seem like an old Lowcountry tradition, but antebellum investors in the Charleston-metro area once embraced emerging technology to create one of the earliest mass transit corridors in the United States. Present efforts to revive that long lost transportation legacy draw inspiration from local history to spark a new era of regional mobility.

Episode 201: The Forgotten Dead: Charleston’s Public Cemeteries, 1794–2021 May 07, 2021

Show notes

The public cemeteries for Charleston’s poorest citizens and enslaved people of African descent between 1794 and 1927 occupied nearly 35 acres beyond those used during colonial-era, but all of that real estate has been developed for other uses over the past two centuries. The paper trail of evidence suggests the existence of tens of thousands of unmarked urban graves.

Episode 200: The Forgotten Dead: Charleston's Public Cemeteries, 1672–1794 May 01, 2021

Show notes

The historic landscape of urban Charleston contains several large unmarked public cemeteries that are filled with the remains of thousands of nameless bodies interred by local government. Those buried between 1672 and 1794 are contained within a well-settled neighborhood on the city’s west side, where the forgotten graves were built over and ignored by successive generations.

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