Charleston Time Machine

Latest Episodes:

Episode 89: Keeping Time in Charleston’s Past - Charleston Time Machine Nov 01, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 88: Buried Alive in Early Charleston - Charleston Time Machine Oct 26, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 87: The Akin Foundling Hospital Building - Charleston Time Machine Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 86: The Forgotten Akin Family of Charleston - Charleston Time Machine Oct 11, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 85: Nearly 1,000 Cargos: Legacy of Importing Africans to Charleston Oct 04, 2018

Show notes

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?

Episode 84: Under False Colors: Politics of Gender Expression in Post-Civil War Charleston Sep 27, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 83: The Heads of the Two Toms in 1745 - Charleston Time Machine Sep 21, 2018

Show notes

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.”

Episode 82: Murder at Four Holes Swamp in 1744 - Charleston Time Machine Sep 07, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 81: Squeezing Charleston Neck, from 1783 to the Present - Charleston Time Machine Aug 29, 2018

Show notes

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.

Episode 80: Grasping the Neck: Origins of Charleston’s Northern Neighbor - Charleston Time Machine Aug 23, 2018

Show notes

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 community’s future.

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