Welcome to Charleston

Mount Pleasant, SC

Today, both the trailer and I entered South Carolina from Georgia along Interstate 95. The traffic was surprisingly light (maybe because it was Monday morning) and I was checked into a really nice KOA in Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston by noon or so. The KOA is on a little lake so I feel like I’m out in the country, however Highway 17 with every shop and restaurant known to man is just a km away at the end of the drive.

Starting to feel a little nostalgic with the start of the “last times” I’ll be doing things on my No Fixed Address North American Tour. Setting up camp today was the last time I’ll set up since from here north I’ll be staying in motels rather than camping, because of longer driving days and cooler temps and because the campgrounds don’t open for a while in many cases.

But right after setting up, I was off to Boone Hall Plantation. It was on my list of “must dos” and it’s only minutes away so I figured there was no time like the present. It’s a great place to visit to get a sense of what plantation life would be like, more from the slaves perspective than the land owner. The house is not the nicest or the oldest I’ve seen on this tour because it wasn’t built and completed until 1936, by a Canadian, no less. It’s real distinguishing characteristics are that it is still a working plantation and the almost one mile “Avenue of the Oaks” planted in 1843 . But I’ll back up a bit.

Owners over the years are as follows (from the South Carolina Plantations Website):

• Chronological list – Theophilus Patey; John Boone; Elizabeth Patey Boone; Thomas Boone; John Boone (Thomas Boone’s son); John Boone (nephew of previous John Boone); Sarah Gibbes, Thomas, Susan, and Maria Boone; Thomas A. Vardell; John Johnson, Jr., Hugh Patterson, and George K. White; Henry and John Horlbeck; John Horlbeck; Henry, Daniel, Edward, and John Horlbeck; Frederick Henry and John S. Horlbeck; Thomas Archibald and Alexandra Stone; Dimitri and Audrey Djordjadze; P.O. Mead, Jr.; Harris and Nancy McRae; William Harris McRae

I won’t go through all of them (thankfully you say), but Major James Boone was the visionary who started the plantation in 1681 after receiving a good chunk of the land from his new wife’s dowery. The plantation grew primarily rice, but also added indigo to the crops as it was a popular commodity to the British and then cotton was added after the Revolutionary War when Britain wasn’t so interested in buying anything from South Carolina. Today they grow U-pick strawberries, peaches, grapes, melons and some other things I’m forgetting.

There are various activities happening on the plantation and I first signed up for the house tour and managed to sneak in on one starting right away as I was a single. There have been 3 other houses on this spot but the current one was built in the Colonial Revival style of house that would have been typical of the antebellum period by Thomas Stone. Stone was a Canadian Ambassador to the US who in addition to a home in Washington wanted to retire to a plantation home. It is made from bricks taken from the Horlbeck brickyard, one of the businesses started by another previous owner. The bricks were all made by hand, and many of the historical sites throughout the Charleston area were made of bricks made at this brickyard. The only part of the original land that has been sold has been developed into a residential area call the Brickyard Plantation neighbourhood.

After touring the house I headed to the row of 9 slave’s living quarters out in front of the house. They now house displays about the life of the slaves and the land owners. They are not sure how many cabins there would have been but some say there were 3 rows of 9 and these were for the skilled slaves only, and the crops workers would live in wooden structures in the fields. The brick buildings were made of imperfect bricks that couldn’t be sold, and the buildings were put out front as a sign of prestige to show how many slaves they had and show off the bricks from the brickyard.

I wandered through the displays wondering once again how we, as humans, could have been so inhuman to others. It was a rather sad place, but as I’ve said before, it’s part of our past and I want to learn about it.

Then I went to a live presentation by someone who calls herself the “Gullah Gal” and who is a descendent of the slaves at Boone Hall. The presentation was fabulous, certainly the highlight of any of my visits to plantations. Gullah Gal has a stirring voice which she used to tell stories, to illustrate praying in their traditional language, and to sing, glorious singing. Very moving, informative and in some ways uplifting. It focused on the information about Boone Hall but also talked about the development of the Gullah culture in this part of the world, they refer to as the “Low Country”. It includes areas all the way from Jacksonville Florida to Wilmington North Carolina, and is referred to as the Gullah Geechee Corridor. The Gullah Geechee are the descendants of the West African people that were brought to this area so many generations ago and they are working hard to keep the history of their culture alive. They have a website at: http://gullahgeecheecorridor.org Michelle Obama is apparently a descendent of the Gullah Geechee.

She told us about the broom jumping ceremony. Slaves couldn’t get married, of course, but they did sometimes decide to cohabitate and when they did they sometimes made a commitment to each other by jumping over a broom together. Legend has it that whoever landed on the other side first was the boss in the relationship. Of course spouses could be sold 5 days or 5 months later by their masters and any offspring would often be sold off as infants. She also explained that one thing the slaves were not restricted from doing, was singing because their masters believed they worked more productively when they sang. Many of the songs they sang ring familiar. Kumbya, the familiar campfire song, is said to originate from the Kullah, and means “come by here” in their language. Sometimes the slaves secretly put messages in their songs such as in Swing Low Sweet Chariot. This apparently was sung to let anyone wanting to try to escape know when the “underground railway” was going to be organizing a group leaving that night.

After watching this great performance I headed over for a Coach Tour of the plantation to see the fields and what was growing in them. The driver/guide was funny and interesting and seemed obsessed about the influence the Free Masons had on the area. He also showed us the stables, where the Russian Prince, Dimitri and Audrey Djordiaze, raised racing horses and 3 previous triple crown winners are descendants of those horses, including Secretariat. Now they breed and raise horses for polo.

Some more modern folklore about Boone Hall Plantation is that it was the site of shooting of three popular movies/series – North and South with Patrick Swayze, the movie Queen, and the movie The Notebook (the rowing scene where Ryan Gosling took off his shirt) was filmed in the Wampacheone River .