Charleston Time Machine

Latest Episodes:

Episode 159: Hucksters’ Paradise: Mobile Food in Urban Charleston, Part 2 May 22, 2020

Show notes

The “golden age” of huckstering food in the streets of Charleston dawned after the Civil War, when formerly-enslaved people expanded this popular form of marketing. Urban hucksters became nostalgic characters in an increasingly romanticized version of local history in the twentieth century, but they never really completely disappeared and their legacy continues to the present.

Episode 158: Hucksters’ Paradise: Mobile Food in Urban Charleston, Part 1 May 15, 2020

Show notes

Mobile hucksters, predominantly of African descent, formed an important part of the local culinary market from the earliest days of Charleston by carrying food around the city in baskets and carts. To trace their enduring influence on local culture and commerce, we’ll wind our time machine back to the roots of the hucksters and chart their rise into Antebellum days.

Episode 157: Dining and Drinking in Charleston Before the Food and Beverage Industry May 07, 2020

Show notes

While most of the food and beverage industry is currently shuttered, we can look to our past in search of forgotten service models that might offer fresh inspiration for future business. The variety of food retail options in early Charleston is so diverse that we’ll begin this culinary history with a starter course of bite-sized samples of the big picture.

Episode 156: A Moderate Trot through the History of Street Speed May 01, 2020

Show notes

Pedestrians and draft animals moving at a “moderate trot” set the pace in Charleston’s streets for more than two centuries, until automobile drivers pushed local government for faster travel through the city’s narrow streets in the early 20th century. The story of street speed in Charleston forms an important part of the diverse legacy of our community’s shared roads.

Episode 155: Hemp Cultivation in Early South Carolina Apr 24, 2020

Show notes

In South Carolina’s early years, the provincial and imperial governments offered cash bounties to encourage local planters the grow hemp on a commercial scale. The crop showed promise, but its brief success was soon overshadowed. Despite its failure to take root, the rise and fall of hemp forms one of the most interesting and least-remembered chapters in this state’s agricultural heritage.

Episode 154: Charleston at 350: The Legacy of Founding Decisions Apr 17, 2020

Show notes

Charleston turns 350 this month, and the anniversary of its founding presents opportunity to contemplate our community’s long journey since 1670. To demonstrate the relevance of that distant story in the present world, we’ll consider a simple question: What decisions made at the founding of Charleston had the most profound and lasting effects on this community’s long history?

Episdoe 153: Quarantine in Charleston Harbor, 1698–1949 Apr 09, 2020

Show notes

Separating the sick from the healthy has been a part of Charleston’s public health policy since 1698, when our provincial government instituted a novel quarantine policy for incoming ships. Over the ensuing 250 years, local authorities enacted a series of evolving and occasionally contentious quarantine laws that impacted nearly every immigrant and visitor who entered Charleston harbor until 1949.

Episode 152: The Scandalous Black Dance of 1795, Part 2 Apr 03, 2020

Show notes

Charlestonians were shocked to find a local magistrate at the center of an illegal black dance raided by police in 1795. William Cunnington defended his honor by publishing a narrative of the soirée, but historians have misinterpreted this intriguing story. Forgotten for more than two centuries, Cunnington’s text provides a valuable and entertaining glimpse of life in early Charleston.

Episode 151: The Scandalous Black Dance of 1795, Part 1 Mar 27, 2020

Show notes

The sounds of an illegal nocturnal “negro dance” in an East Bay residence in November 1795 aroused the wrath of local authorities who dispersed a party of mixed-race revelers. Meanwhile, a respected white citizen at the center of this merry scene was vilified by his neighbors and a shade of scandal still looms over his reputation today.

Episode 150: Pandemic and Panic: Influenza in 1918 Charleston Mar 19, 2020

Show notes

Under the shadow of the Great War in 1918, Charleston was ill-equipped to counter a major health crisis when influenza spread throughout the community in a wave of acute sickness and death. Quarantine, isolation, and volunteer efforts soon arrested the disease, however, and the city rebounded from its first modern epidemic with a lamentable but limited death toll.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected