Charleston: A City Filled with History’s Mysteries
To walk through the streets of Charleston is to embark on a journey spanning three centuries and more. Certainly, the cars zip past and the streetlights mark your safety through the modern streets of 21st century America, but another way of life is present here too. The clatter of carriages and sellers hacking their wares could be anyone, in any time stretching from 1670 into our computer age. Dissipation into the blurred memory of time cannot be helped here; it has been said by many that it is this very idea that signifies Charleston the most. This rapture of the past is both her blessing and her curse. Even to stroll through the fashionable shopping district of upscale and modern King Street, you still cannot escape it; for at the corner of King and Market Streets lies the beautiful Riviera Theater. It is Art Deco, an architectural style prevalent in the Roaring Twenties, when dances like “The Charleston” became all the rage. Head farther south and the calendar continues to fall backward down a very peculiar rabbit hole.
But what has time forgot? History’s mysteries are leftovers of human times that were recorded mostly through personal retelling. Many written documents could be shielded, altered, or otherwise changed through generations of contradictory records and the like. Winners write history, and Charleston gravely felt the loss of the Confederacy. The city is known for having started the Civil War, with the first shots fired here in 1861; months earlier, South Carolina had become the first state to secede from the Union, with that document having been signed on Meeting Street, near Queen. (Today a plaque is on the wall of a modern building on the same site; Secession Hall burned in the Great Fire of 1861, one year short of the date the document was signed.)
And while this is true, to dig deeper shows that Charleston has far more Revolutionary history than Civil War; four signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were native Charlestonians. The famous “Don’t Tread on Me” flag is credited to Christopher Gadsden, buried in St. Philip’s Episcopal churchyard in an unmarked grave. Has time lost the stone? Was he buried unmarked by his fellow Patriots so as not to have his tomb desecrated by the British when they seized control of Charleston in 1780?
People today often comment on how Charleston reminds them of cities like Savannah and New Orleans; Charleston was founded over forty years before either of the two were conceived. In 1718, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach and “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet were rampaging through the walled city of Charles Towne. Stede Bonnet would hang in December of that year for his crimes at White Point, as a warning to other pirates in the Atlantic-Caribbean trade. The Tavern on East Bay Street, presently a liquor store, is perhaps the oldest dated building in Charleston. In 2007, a letter was discovered in European archives; the letter, dating to 1686, was written by a man visiting the new settlement of Charles Towne to his family back in Europe. On the back of the letter is a map, now the earliest known map in existence of early Charleston. It indicates the present day store at East Bay and Exchange. It is not just possible, but indeed likely, that pirates caroused in the building there today.
There are other fragments of the past that lie quietly in the hollows of Charleston’s sweet-smelling streets. Roofs of piazzas are painted a pale blue color, known locally as “haint blue.” Haint is the Gullah word for haunt. In many superstitious beliefs, ghosts or other spirits are not allowed to cross water. The color blue used outside of doors and windows, being a reflection of water, would confuse or otherwise deter spirits from entering the home. Was it always done for this reason? In many parts of Florida and the Caribbean, this color was adapted to keep bees from nesting, as it was to give the illusion of sky. Perhaps they are both correct; Charleston, when summed up as a whole, is English Caribbean, albeit accented with African and French.
Strolling along the High Battery, curiosity-seekers may find themselves going up Atlantic Street; what are the strange upright posts in the pavement? Even though it is called the “High Battery,” for the imposing waterfront homes built primarily in the 1830-1850s, you may have noticed how the ground itself went downhill from the corner at East Bay. The Battery is reclaimed land extension, the filling of which began on the peninsula in 1821. These homes are relatively newer, where only one or two blocks up the strangely angled side streets are homes built a century earlier. Are these strange upright posts boat moorings from the tidal creeks that used to make up Atlantic and Water Streets? Lord William Campbell, the last Royal Governor of South Carolina, rowed himself away in a dinghy to his vessel HMS Tamar in the harbor after being chased to present-day Water Street by an angry mob of Patriots. Are they carriage-runaway posts that were used in the 19th century to keep the pedestrians safe from wayward horse traffic? Decorum of the day stated that the street was kept clear of moving carriages, and that pedestrians were to keep themselves inside the posts.
Strange, spiky iron-work can be viewed in many locations; lower Meeting, King and Legare street homes display ironwork, some not-so-obvious, that looks like a roll of spikes on a bar. It is known as chevaux de frise. The French phrase has taken on several connotations; tradition states it means “hair standing on end.” Some say it was modeled after the spikes lain on fields to impale horses and their riders in early warfare. It is a security measure that began to appear on many homes in Charleston after the planned slave rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822.
Enjoy the captivating charm of historic Charleston while you’re here; her legends, mysteries, and more.