Charleston Time Machine Nic Butler, Ph.D.

Frolicking in the ocean surf is today a familiar activity along South Carolina beaches, but recreational swimming was a novelty in centuries past. “Surf bathing” first achieved local popularity on Sullivan’s Island in the early 1800s, when the proprietors of oceanfront resorts began providing amenities like “bathing machines” to encourage shy swimmers. While the dearth of appropriate swimwear rendered skinny dipping a constant complaint, a rising tide of ocean tourism during the nineteenth century drew legions of Lowcountry residents and visitors to the island’s beautiful front beach.

Have you ever wondered how South Carolinians paid for goods and services before the advent of the U.S. dollar? The pound sterling formed the basis of their accounts until the 1790s, but the economic realities of frontier life obliged early Carolinians to embrace monetary tools and strategies that deviated from British traditions. For more than a century, inhabitants of the Palmetto State used foreign coins, paper bills, promissory notes, and sophisticated credit schemes that fueled upward mobility and set the stage for the financial systems we use today.

Phebe Fletcher was an intriguing woman of eighteenth-century Charleston whose unconventional lifestyle earned both derision and respect from her neighbors. Born to a respectable family of unknown origin, she was allegedly “seduced” from the bounds of traditional feminine “virtue” and obliged to associate with “vicious” persons, Black and White, to forge an independent career in a patriarchal society. She acquired a colorful reputation as a woman of dubious morals, but Charlestonians long remembered and praised the benevolent care she rendered to ailing soldiers during the American Revolution.

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) was a famous Irish patriot of the mid-nineteenth century whose agitation for independence from Britain led to his exile from the Emerald Isle. After settling in New York in 1852, Meagher visited Charleston several times to deliver public lectures on history and politics. South Carolina’s Irish immigrants embraced him as a national hero during the 1850s, but denounced Meagher in 1861 when he fought against the rebellious Confederate States. On the next episode of Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the context and legacy of Meagher’s brief connection to the Palmetto City.

The Shaw Community Center at 22 Mary Street in downtown Charleston embodies an important historical legacy: It arose shortly after the Civil War as a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and members of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment who died in battle at Morris Island. Their comrades pooled money to establish in 1868 a school for African-American children that continued until 1937, when it evolved into the present multipurpose youth hub. Long managed by the City of Charleston, the Shaw Center perpetuates a noble commitment to the advancement of civil rights.

The Charleston County Public Library opened its doors to the public in 1931, but welcomed visitors unequally and conditionally until the early 1960s. Like nearly every other institution existing in the American South during that era, the Charleston Free Library, as it was then known, maintained separate facilities and unequal collections for two classes of customers identified as either Black or white. This long-standing practice continued until November 1960, when the opening of a new, racially-integrated library on King Street shocked some members of the community and signaled the twilight of a prejudicial tradition.