Charleston Time Machine

Latest Episodes:

Episode 269: The Ghosts of Petit Versailles Oct 27, 2023

Show notes

Petit Versailles, a forgotten residence in suburban Charleston, links the tragic stories of two women who expired prematurely during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The modest house fronting the Cooper River was built for a child named Elizabeth Gadsden but occupied by her godfather, Francis LeBrasseur. Following their early deaths, Francis’s wife, Ann, quit the property and withdrew into a life of religious introspection that lead to suicide. Petit Versailles disappeared during the American Revolution, but the memory of its brief existence still haunts the fringes of Ansonborough.

Episode 268: Demolition by Neglect in the 1720s: Forsaking Charleston's Earthen Fortifications Oct 13, 2023

Show notes

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, South Carolina’s colonial government raised a fortified trace of earthen walls and moats around the nucleus of urban Charleston. These defensive works constrained the town’s growth for more than twenty years, but then quietly vanished before a burst of civic expansion in the mid-1730s. Questions of when and why the earthworks were dismantled have baffled generations of historians and inspired competing theories. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll unpack the forgotten story of government neglect that gradually erased the “Walled City” during the late 1720s.

Episode 267: Spanish and Cuban Consuls in Charleston, 1795–1959 Sep 29, 2023

Show notes

Maritime traffic between Charleston and various ports in the Spanish-speaking Americas was once an important part of the local economy. Prohibited by British law for most of South Carolina’s colonial century, commerce with Cadiz, Havana, Vera Cruz, and other ports blossomed after the independence of the United States. The presence of a Spanish and later a Cuban consular office in Charleston between 1795 and 1959 provides framework for tracking the rise and fall of forgotten trade routes that brought Latin flavors to the Lowcountry.

Episode 266: Inventing the French Quarter in 1973 Sep 15, 2023

Show notes

In September 1973, a group of preservation activists coined the term “French Quarter” to describe a single block of urban Charleston that was slated for demolition. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places that same month to deter redevelopment, and the new name soon became part of the local lexicon. Residents and visitors have embraced and expanded the concept of Charleston’s “French Quarter” over the past half-century, but few recall the curious circumstances of its creation. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll review the events that inspired the name and explore its historical pedigree.

Episode 265: Hog Island to Patriots Point: A Brief History Sep 01, 2023

Show notes

Patriots Point is a well-known landmark on the east bank of the Cooper River in the Town of Mount Pleasant, but its modern name obscures a much deeper history. Known as Hog Island before 1973, the site has been radically transformed by nature and humans over the past three centuries. Its evolution from a tiny but habitable island to an expansive, vacant marshland, to a thriving community atop a mountain of dredge spoil, illustrates the shifting dynamics of tidal forces and human engineering that have reshaped the local ecology.

Episode 264: John Champneys and His Controversial Row, Part 2 Aug 11, 2023

Show notes

Champneys’s Row was a conspicuous anomaly at the time of its construction in 1781, the only civilian edifice adjacent to the brick curtain wall defining the eastern edge of East Bay Street. The building’s height and novel placement violated provincial zoning laws, and the Champneys family persevered against community opposition to protect their investment. Details of the modification and eventual acceptance of Champneys’s Row in the 1780s illuminate an important moment in the history of Charleston’s built environment.

Episode 263: John Champneys and His Controversial Row, Part 1 Aug 04, 2023

Show notes

John Champneys was a Charleston factor and wharf owner whose loyalty to the British Crown deranged his life during the American Revolution. While surviving documents provide details of his imprisonment, exile, and return, the slender row of brick stores Champneys built during the war at the southeast corner of East Bay and Exchange Streets bear witness to his tumultuous experience. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll trace the dramatic rise and fall and rehabilitation of both John Champneys and his controversial, confiscated, and truncated row.

Episode 262: Bathing to Beat the Heat in Early Charleston, Part 2 Jul 21, 2023

Show notes

The cheapest and simplest form of bathing in early South Carolina was an ancient practice shared by numerous cultures around the world: one simply walked to the nearest creek, river, or beach and jumped in. Because specialized bathing garments did not exist until the early nineteenth century, most outdoor bathers swam in the nude. The rising popularity of swimming costumes in the nineteenth century did not eradicate skinny-dipping, however. Poor people and those bereft of modesty continued to swim au naturelle until agents of the law convinced them to do otherwise.

Episode 261: Bathing to Beat the Heat in Early Charleston, Part 1 Jul 14, 2023

Show notes

Before the advent of air conditioning and running water in the Charleston area, Lowcountry residents of all descriptions pursued a number of indoor and outdoor strategies to gain relief from the sultry summer heat. Some soaked in tubs within private residences and commercial bathing houses, while other paid to plunge into exclusive riverine pens. The most modest members of the genteel set drove bathing machines into the frothy surf, while bolder swimmers scandalized their neighbors by shedding their clothes in public and leaping into the nearest body of water.

Episode 260: Anson's Landing to Gadsden’s Wharf: A Brief History Jun 30, 2023

Show notes

Charleston’s new International African American Museum (IAAM) stands on ground formerly known as Gadsden’s Wharf, a man-made structure built along the Cooper River waterfront shortly before the American Revolution. During the previous century, however, the site formed part of a plantation that passed through the hands of John Coming and Isaac Mazyck before Thomas Gadsden sold it to Captain George Anson of the Royal Navy. Anson’s tenure defined the property for decades, and the tidal beachfront known as Anson’s Landing served as the staging point for Christopher Gadsden famous wharf.

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