Sightseeing in Beaufort and Vicinity 3/6/2010

This morning we drove into Beaufort to do some sightseeing and walk through downtown as we had done most of the caches there. Our first stop was Cahpel of Ease on St Helena's Island. During the Colonial period, chapels of ease were constructed by rice and cotton planters as houses of worship because their plantations were located so far from the churches in Beaufort. This tabby walled church was constructed between 1742 and 1747 for the planters of St. Helena Island. A forest fire destroyed most of it in 1886. All that remain today are its tabby ruins and an adjacent cemetery. This ruin is significant as a relatively intact example of mid-eighteenth century tabby construction and for its association with the St. Helena Parish, both as a secondary and primary place of worship for inhabitants of the parish. It was built ca. 1740 as a chapel of ease, to serve planters in St. Helena Parish who lived at great distances from the parish church in Beaufort and could not regularly attend services there. By 1812, the population of St. Helena Island had increased to the extent that the chapel of ease was designated a parish church. The church was virtually abandoned when the planters evacuated the island in the fall of 1861. During the Federal occupation of St. Helena, the church was used frequently by several of the Northerners who had come to the island to educate and train the freedmen. It was also used as a sanctuary by Methodist freedmen as early as 1868, but was burned by a forest fire in February 1886 and was never repaired. Much of its historic fabric, including the church walls and much of its plaster, remains. A small cemetery adjacent to the church ruin contributes to the historic character of the property. This site was also supposed to be haunted and as the story goes when workers tried to seal up the crypt behind the church, they would find a surprise awaiting them the following morning. The bricks used to seal off the crypt somehow got put neatly in a little pile. All of their work seemed to be in vain for this happened numerous times. Other people have reported strange sensations when walking through the church's graveyard.

Next stop on the way back to Beaufort was at Penn Center, Incorporated as a non-profit organization designed to promote and preserve Sea Island history and Culture. Begun in 1862 as Penn School, an experimental program to educate Sea Island slaves freed at the beginning of the Civil War, it is the oldest and most persistent survivor of the Port Royal Experiment. The first principals were Northern missionaries Laura Towne and Ellen Murray. Both spent the next forty years of their lives living among and educating former Sea Island slaves, the Gullah people of the South Carolina Low Country. For a while, Charlotte Forten, the first African American teacher at Penn School, joined in this endeavor. By 1900, the name changed to Penn Normal, Industrial and Agricultural School when new principals Rossa Cooley and Grace House took over leadership. Providing teacher training, training in wheel-wrighting, carpentry, cobbling, blacksmithing, and the agricultural sciences, Penn educated students from neighboring Sea Island communities throughout South Carolina. When the school closed in 1948, it became Penn Community Services Center, an agency focusing on self-sufficiency and the advancement and development of the Sea Island community and its inhabitants.

Then it was back into Beaufort to see some of the lovely plantation homes of which there were many many more than we could see in one day. Some of the ones we did see were as follows:
John Mark Verdier House c1801.....This prominent Federal style mansion was built circa 1801 by by John Mark Verdier 1 (1759-1827), a local merchant and planter, on land which before the American Revolution belonged to another merchant, Francis Stuart. Verdier's fortunes reflected the changing economics of Beaufort's merchant class, rising to great stature and wealth before the Revolution as a merchant trading in indigo. As indigo markets disappeared with the war, Verdier's fortunes declined and his financial troubles were made worse by heavy speculation in forfeited lands. After a short stay in a Charleston debtors' prison, Verdier returned to Beaufort and caught the next wave of prosperity: sea island cotton. Verdier was able to eclipse his earlier success, reestablishing his mercantile interests and acquiring extensive plantation holdings and owning 216 slaves by 1810. Unfortunately his fortunes would be short-lived, and by the 1820s Verdier had moved to Charleston. The inventory of his estate taken after his death show few possessions and give indication of his reduced circumstances and his gradual transfer of assets to his children in the later years of his life. The property is thought to have passed to his son John Mark Verdier II an Ed his wife Caroline McKee. While no evidence of their acquisition has been located, Caroline purchased the site from the Commissioners for Direct Tax in 1866, John Mark II having died in 1857.
John Rhett House c1820....Similar to the "Secession House," this is an excellently proportioned house with two-story wrap-around piazzas and transom-lighted doorways. The fine interior is accented by an arch of carved palmetto fans over the central hall. Renovations revealed beautiful original mantels in the two principal front rooms. The builder of the house is unknown; however, Thomas Rhett, with his wife Caroline Barnwell, lived here prior to the Civil War. He was the oldest of seventeen Smith children who changed their name to Rhett in honor of their great-great grandfather, William Rhett, whose family name had died out. The Rhett House has been sensitively adapted for use as a bed and breakfast inn.
Milton Maxcy House "Secession House" c1813....An inscription on the basement wall reads: "In this house the first meeting of Secession Áwas held in South Carolina." According to local tradition, after voting, the Beaufort County Delegation went directly to the boat landing and set off for Charleston to cast their ballots for secession. The foundation of the house represents the base of an earlier 2-story house that was reportedly constructed in 1743. Around 1800 Milton Maxcy came to Beaufort from Massachusetts to open a school for boys and acquired the property. He removed the tabby second floor, and added two stories of wood siding. The next owner, Edmund Rhett, rebuilt the two upper floors completely, circa 1861, using modified Greek Revival architecture. The house was used by the Union Army for headquarters of General Rufus Saxton, billeting of officers, a hospital, and for the office of Paymaster.
The Daniel Hingston Bythewood House c1792....Daniel Hingston Bythewood, a British merchant and sea captain, is thought to have built this clapboard house for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, who had persuaded him to give up his prosperous voyaging and become a Baptist missionary. Both he and his wife are buried in the Baptist churchyard. Built upon a high tabby foundation and braced by sturdy chimneys, the house looks out over a long sweep of lawn. The outstanding paneled interior includes hand-carved mantels and over-mantels, chair rails and wainscoting. Original wide pine flooring still exists in all rooms. The single thickness of the interior walls is one of the few remaining examples of this typical early Beaufort style.
Thomas Fuller House "Tabby Manse" c1786.....Thomas Fuller House, or "Tabby Manse," is considered to be one of the finest early houses in Beaufort. It contains eight perfectly proportioned rooms, including three completely paneled in heart-pine and cypress. It has excellent Adam-style mantels, a superbly crafted stairway, a fine Palladian window in the rear elevation and a paneled second-floor drawing room. The hand hewn major structural timbers measuring twelve inches thick, even in the attic, span the entire forty five foot depth of the house, and are secured by large wooden pegs. The Fuller House is a highly significant example of the use of tabby, an early local building material composed of oyster shells and lime mortar, for a large scale residence. Constructed as the residence of Thomas Fuller, a prominent local planter, local tradition suggests the house was built in 1786 as a wedding present for his bride Elizabeth Middleton. The house was purchased at the Direct Tax sale of 1864 by Rev. Mansfield French, a Methodist minister sponsored by the American Missionary Association of New York City. In the 1870s, Almira Morill Onthank converted the house into a guest house and it was operated for more than a century by Onthank and her descendants. Francis Griswold wrote his renowned Civil War novel, A Sea Island Lady, while staying in the house. Architecturally, Tabby Manse follows the model of the Elizabeth Barnwell Gough House, 705 Washington Street, which was adapted from the design of the Miles Brewton House in Charleston.
Thomas Hepworth House c1717.....This house has long been referred to as the oldest house in Beaufort with a construction date of 1717 cited. This date is possibly far too early, with stylistic evidence suggesting a construction, or reconstruction, date of circa 1760. It is documented that Thomas Hepworth, Chief Justice of the Colony, acquired an original grant for the property in 1717 that carried a stipulation that a house be built within five years. Hepworth sold the property to Thomas Burton in 1741. Subsequent owners included the Barnwell, Deveaux, and Johnson families. Writing in 1871 of the War of Revolution as it affected Beaufort, Dr. John A. Johnson stated: "The only remaining memorials of that war within our present view are the two redoubts in the north western suburbs and the little Dutch house on the comer of Port Republic and New Streets." He continued: "At the close of the last century (eighteenth) an early cotton gin was invented and the first one was exhibited in the large front parlor of the antiquated Dutch-looking building at the south west corner of New and Port Republic Streets, to the moderns known as Republican Headquarte ñrs." In the early 1800s William Fickling conducted a private school for boys in this house. It later served as a meeting place for local Masons. During World War II, the house was converted into apartments. The house was restored to a single family residence by Mr. & Mrs. Somers Pringle in the 1950s. The house is a Colonial two-story cottage with a side porch. Its roof lines are simple gables broken by side dormer windows. A local tradition that ventilation piercings on the north side of the tabby foundation were intended as rifle slots for defense against Indian attack is without documentable basis. The floor sills are hand hewn from whole trees adzed to 16 inches. The chimney is seven feet square set on a footing but finished to give the appearance of four chimneys. The origin of the attached stair tower to the south has not been established, but it is known the house was extended one bay to the east (toward New Street) between 1884 and 1899.
William Wigg Barnwell House c1816.....As recently as January, 1973, this house was slated for demolition. Through the intervention of Historic Beaufort Foundation several stays were granted and in September, 1973, it was moved from its original location at the southwest corner of Prince and Scott Streets to its present site. The twelve room town house is said to have been built by the Gibbes brothers on behalf of their sister, Sarah Reeve Gibbes, who married William Wigg Barnwell, grandson of the Revolutionary War hero, Major William Hazzard Wigg. During the Civil War, the house served as Union Hospital #4. The house remained in t æhe Barnwell family until 1895, when the Barnwells son Bower Williamson Barnwell died. The house later served as a school and as an apartment house. For the better part of this century it sustained much abuse and neglect. Despite this, much of the original paneling and a magnificent stairhall remained fairly intact. The house was purchased and restored by antiques dealer Jim Williams of Savannah, Georgia.
James Robert Verdier House "Marshlands" c1814......"Marshlands" was built for Dr. James Robert Verdier, the second son of local merchant and planter John Mark Verdier I, a pioneer in the the successful treatment of yellow fever. Owned by William Chisholm just before the Civil War, a Direct Tax claim was made after the Civil War in the name of Sarah P. Chisholm and Saml. A. Chisholm. The graceful waterfront home provides a blend of Barbadian plantation architecture with the more formal Adam features of the Federal period. Set high off the ground and supported by arches, the exterior of the house shows the Barbadian influence in the single porch that runs across the front and around the sides of the house where it joins the back rooms. Inside, the Adam motif prevails with the lovely mantels and the beautiful stairway lit by a Palladian window.
The Elizabeth Hext House "Riverview" c1720.....Set well back from the street on a high tabby foundation, the Hext house is considered to be one of the oldest houses in Beaufort. The original house consisted of upper and lower piazzas, a narrow central hall flanked by two rooms on the main floor, and a rear hall and staircase which led to tow floor, and a rear hall and staircase which led to two bedrooms upstairs. A quality of intimacy pervades the house due to its relatively small scale when compared to the houses of the later antebellum compared to the houses of the later antebellum period. The two front rooms have wainscot paneling around three walls with floor-to-ceiling paneling on the exterior fireplace walls. Many of the windows have the original six-over-nine light panes and retain much of the old glass. the floor boards in all but the present kitchen and back hall are of ten inch wide first-growth pine planks. Interior walls are the thickness of only one plank, which indicates that the house is supported mainly by the exterior walls. Elizabeth Hext, the only child of Francis Hext, Jr. and Elizabeth Stanyarne was born in 1746. At the age of fifteen she married William Sam of Wadmalaw Island, grandson of "Tuscarora Jack" Barnwell. In 1783 he bought Datha Island, near Beaufort, and here they lived and raised a large family. When Elizabeth Hext Sam died in 1813, she was buried beside her husband on Datha Island. They Hext House remained in the Sam family until 1864 when it was sold for $640 by the U.S. Tax Commission.
DeTreville House c1785.....Believed to have been built by the Reverend James Graham who married Sarah Jane Givens of Beaufort, this frame house with tabby foundations has two fine exterior end-wall chimneys other exterior detailing. Interior details include mantels, wainscoting, a mahogany staircase, and an original ceiling medallion in the drawing room. Graham was born in Scotland and served as the third pastor of the Baptist Church of Beaufort. In the mid-nineteenth century the Misses Fanny and Julia Baker lived in this house, which became known as the Baker house. Miss Julia was the author of the poem "Mizpah-God Watch Between Me and Thee," which was very popular during her day. The 1862 Direct Tax map indicates J.T.Baker as the owner of the property before the occupation of Beaufort by Union troops. The Misses Baker fled at the beginning of the Civil War. During the Reconstruction, the house became known as "The Mission" and was occupied by Mrs. Rachel C. Mather and the Baptist missionaries who built Mather School for the furtherance of Negro education and who were active in the Freedmen's Aid Society.
Joesph Johnson House "The Castle" c1861......"The Castle" was built for Dr. Joseph Fickling Johnson by J. S. Cooper, a local builder, according to an agreement signed December 5, 1859. The contract was completed on August 8, 1861, however some elements of the house, notably its porch railings, mantelpieces, and ironwork are reported to have been caught in the Union naval blockade and never reached the s ßite. Bricks for the house are reported to have been made on Dr. Johnson's Lady's Island plantation near Brickyard Point.The house was confiscated during the Civil War and became part of Hospital #6. Dr. Johnson, unlike many of Beaufort's pre-war residents, was able to reacquire the house at the end of the war upon payment of $2,000 in taxes. The house remained in Johnson's family until 1981. The house is Italian Renaissance in feeling, and is said to be almost an exact copy of one in England, destroyed during World War II. Constructed on a crib of palmetto logs, the walls are of soft brick covered with a thin layer of plaster. The color is muted and changeable, in shades of gray, tan, and pink, subtly shifting with the light. Six massive columns support the double portico, with balusters between that enclose the upper and lower porches. The decorated parapet is five feet high, with four triple chimneys towering above it. Long French windows, some of the seventy-nine window in the house, flank the front doors, upstairs and down. The interior walls are solid brick, plastered, and the double stairway is one of the widest in the country. Some of the original mantels have been replaced by Regency ones rescued from an old Beaufort house being demolished. The house, one of the most photographed in America, occupies a full city block and is set amid lush gardens with hundreds of azaleas and camellias. It faces a great bend in the Beaufort River, and giant live oaks guard the front and back. Many of the specimen trees and shrubs in the garden were planted by Dr. Johnson, including a pair of ancient olive trees, brought from the Mount of Olives in the Holy Land. A former director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation called it "One of the great houses of the South Carolina coast." He spoke of "the extraordinary grandeur of the almost medieval house . . . its air of somber mystery, set in great oaks at the water's edge."

As I said we could have looked at homes all day as the town was loaded with historic places. Some of the other sites we saw in town were:
Tabernacle Baptist Church c1840.....The Tabernacle, a meeting house and lecture room, was built by Beaufort Baptist Church in 1840s, perhaps on site of a praise house built before 1832. On 1 September 1863, Tabernacle Baptist Church was organized by the Rev. Soloman Peck of Boston, Massachusetts, with much of its 500 member African-American congregation coming from the Beaufort Baptist Church. The new congregation acquired this building and continues to use it for worship. Damaged in the hurricane of 1893, it was rebuilt and rededicated. The cemetery contains graves of Bythewood family (the earliest dating to 1817) suggesting an early-19th century burial ground occupies site. A memorial to Robert Smalls is also located in the cemetery where Smalls and his first wife Hannah are buried. Robert Smalls (1839-1915), was born into slavery. In 1862, while working as part of the slave crew of the Confederate steamer "The Planter," Smalls managed to capture the ship and turn it over to Union forces. After the war, his distinguished career of public service included election to the South Carolina House of Representatives (1868-1870) and Senate (1870-1875), as well as four terms in the U. S. House of Representatives (1875-1879, 1882-1887). Smalls also served as a major general in the state militia and later served as Port Collector for Beaufort.
First African Baptist Church c1865..... This site was shown as property of Praise Baptist Church on the Direct Tax Commissioners map of 1862. The present church was built in 1865 by freed slaves and given to other freed slaves. A marble plaque on the church states: "Presented as a token of respect by A. D. Deas to the first and present pastor, Reverend A. Waddell, of the First Baptist Church, a native of Savannah, Georgia, who became pastor of said church First of January 1865."
John Cross Tavern, 807 and 813 Bay Street. It once occupied two buildings in the 1700s. The tavern is now in the upstairs of one building, with a gift shop on the ground floor; a bookstore occupies the other.

Once we got done driving around the town looking at all the history we parked in the downtown area and walked along the main street and Mom stopped in a few of the shops along the way. Most of the downtown area is very artsy with mostly local art and crafters shops. After we were done there we headed back to the coach and stopped along the way at the Beaufort National Cemetery. The original interments in the cemetery were men who died in nearby Union hospitals during the occupation of the area early in the Civil War, mainly in 1861, following the Battle of Port Royal. Battlefield casualties from around the area were also reburied in the cemetery, including over 100 Confederate soldiers. It became a National Cemetery with the National Cemetery Act by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The remains of 27 Union prisoners of war were reburied from Blackshear Prison following the war.
Beaufort National Cemetery now has interments from every major American conflict, including the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. On May 29, 1989, nineteen Union soldiers of the all black Massachusetts 54th Infantry, whose remains were found on Folly Island, South Carolina in 1987, were buried in the cemetery with full military honors. Members of the cast of the film Glory served as honor guard. Beaufort National Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The cemetery is best distinguished by a landscape plan in which the burial sections are arranged in the shape of a half-circle with roads arranged like the spokes of a wheel.

HISTORY OF BEAUFORT NATIONAL CEMETERY

Although local Native Americans had inhabited the region for thousands of years, it was not until 1514 that the area to become Beaufort County was the site of the second landing of Europeans on the North American continent. After an extended period of settlement, in 1587 the Spanish withdrew from the region in the wake of attacks by the English in Florida. For approximately eight decades the land was left to its original inhabitants. Eventually, King Charles II granted the territory to a group of eight proprietors who named it “Carolina” after their benefactor. The first settlers included many Barbadians, and Carolina came to more closely resemble the plantation economy of the West Indies than other mainland colonies. In 1711, a year after the territory was divided into South and North Carolina, the town of Beaufort was founded.
Prior to the Civil War, Beaufort was a center of culture and affluence in the American South. Immense fortunes were made through the cultivation of rice, indigo and, later, long-staple sea cotton. Wealthy plantation owners had summer homes in Beaufort where they could benefit from cool breezes coming off the river. The town was also a hotbed of secessionist sentiment. In 1860, the first meeting to draft the Ordinance of Secession (by which South Carolina led the withdrawal of southern states from the Union) was held in Beaufort. As a result, the city was an early target of Union forces.
South Carolina formally seceded from the Union on Dec. 20, 1860. One month later, a Union fleet circled Port Royal Sound and within less than a year after secession, Union forces occupied the city and would hold it for the balance of the war. Fort Mitchell was built on Hilton Head in 1862 and it became the headquarters for the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron; Union forces here reached 50,000 personnel. Gen. William T. Sherman's march through the state at war's end left a trail of destruction that brushed Beaufort County. The war, while not physically decimating the area, claimed one-fifth of the white male population of the state and shattered its economy.
The original interments in the national cemetery were men who died in nearby Union hospitals during the occupation and were initially buried in one of several places—among them East Florida and Hilton Head. About 2,800 remains were removed from cemeteries in Millen and Lawton, Ga., and reinterred in the national cemetery; 117 Confederate soldiers are also buried here.
In May 1987, souvenir hunters using metal detectors on Folly’s Island near Charleston discovered the remains of 19 Union soldiers. The South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology identified the remains as members of the 55th Regiment and the 1st North Carolina Infantry. Both units were composed of black troops who fought with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. The 1989 Memorial Day program at Beaufort National Cemetery featured the reinterment of the remains of these 19 Union soldiers missing in action since 1863. The honor guard for the service was composed of actors from the cast of the movie “Glory,” which was being filmed.

Then it was on back to the coach and the ice cream social they had there in the afternoon. We spent the afternoon in the coach and I caught up on our blog and pictures and Mom went GATOR hunting. She went for a walk along a nature trail they had in the campgrounds and along the trail was a sign that read PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE GATORS. Well as she was walking along she looked into the water and sure enough there he was looking up at her. He was about 9-10 feet long. She came back to get me and the camera and you can see the pictures she got of him. That was her excitement for the day. After that we had dinner and watched TV. So until next time we miss you all and love you guys very much. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick