Day 66 - Charleston: Nathaniel Russell House Museum, Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Folly Beach in Folly Island

Our tour guide recommended seeing this mansion in Charleston, the Nathaniel Russell House. This house was built by Nathaniel Russell in 1808. 

All the current furniture is from the period, and the restorers did a good job figuring out what wall paints to use, carpet, furniture, etc... The molding and wood work is all original. The thing that stands out is the free-standing circular staircase, all put together with pegs. Part of the staircase underneath has been exposed to see how it was built. All this fine work was performed by Charleston enslaved Africans.

This house has internal shutters instead of external ones. They have cool latches that hold back all 4 sections with a single lever.

I asked why in these old portraits the people sometimes have their hand in their vest - the docent said that they think the reason is often because the hand is difficult to draw and so the painter prefers to skip this part :)

Real gold leaf in the ceiling molding.

We also saw the the slave sleeping room and kitchen. They are currently trying to uncover clues of how these areas looked before renovating them as well. We hear here the same very sad stories of how slave life took place in these houses and in town, and how the wealth and lavish lifestyle of these rich people came primarily from the trade, labor, and exploitation of the enslaved people.

For lunch we went to the only purely vegan restaurant in Charleston, the Gnome. It was a fantastic meal!!!

Next we visited the Exchange and Provost. This building was constructed on the original walls of the city on some landfill in 1767 - it was a center for town business since it was a very prominent structure along the river, attracting boats that would doc near it on the shore, and allowed transport of merchandise/people from river to town and vice versa. The bottom floor, called the dungeon, was used as a prison during the revolutionary war when England retook the city in 1780 for a couple of years. Also the English stored tea in the dungeon that the townspeople refused to buy due to the taxes (like Boston). Once the English were gone the townspeople used sales of the tea to finance the revolutionary war effort. Upstairs there are exhibits for the revolutionary war and civil war. The building was also used for slave auctions.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

Fixer-upper

In the late afternoon we explored a beach area, Folly beach. Saw a couple surfer catching some small waves!

Folly Beach warf

Day 64 - Charleston: oldest tavern in town, Sullivan's island beach

Rainbow Row

Pineapple fountain

Handsome Dude

Between 3 and 7 pm in the afternoon, this tavern does free testing of whiskey and moonshine. We could not say no to free.

After the liquor, the day was shot. There was no will left to be a tourist. We forced ourselves to check out the remnants of the Fort Moultrie, but we couldn't take it. We visited the surrounding. Good enough! 

The rest of the day we wonder around Sullivan's island beach. Unimpressed... the sand is mixed with black tar, it's wet and packed. Ok it's winter, but Manresa beach in California does not look like this now. We touched the water. Was the first time for Bill in the Atlantic Ocean?

Day 63 - Charleston: Dock Street Theater

Today at 1 pm, we had a walking tour, but at the last minute a large group cancelled, so our guide said that there were not enough people. He was nice to take us around to a couple of famous sites anyways. He told us about the Dock Street Theater, started in 1809 as an hotel and turn into a theater in 1935 after extensive restoration. Tonight the play is "Steel Magnolia", the perfect subject for the location. We bought tickets and they were the best. We later found out from our theater neighbors that a couple had cancelled.

Our seats front row on the balcony. So lucky!

Before going home to change for the evening, we went to visit the Old Slave Mart Museum.
This was suggested by our guide Scott. The building is the last standing slave market existing today.
In 1808 with the abolition of the international slave trade by the US colonies, the inter-state slave trade became a substitute to supply free labor. Between the rectification of the Constitution and the start of the Civil War, more than a million American-born enslaved people were sold to plantations owners in the South. Charleston contributed to 40% of this trade. Behind the Old Exchange Building was the main location. Now there is a commemorative plaque.

Old Exchange Building

This was the city main building, where they would have balls a la Jane Austen...

Square behind the Old Exchange Building

As you read from the plaque, in 1859 the city banned public auctions The slave traders had to move indoor. So several indoor 'market' of human beings came to exist in the bad part of town, Queen, State, and Chalmers street, where only people interested in acquiring would come around.
One of the main one was owned by slave trader, Thomas Ryan, an alderman and former sheriff.
In the museum, we read many stories and facts about the trade of enslaved people, and it was quite disheartening. Upstairs, we attended to a lecture given by a local historian to a group of girls from Greenville. He told us more about a four floor building that had demolished through the years, that contained the jail rooms, a kitchen and a morgue.

We came back in the evening for the play...

Patricia Colbert Robinson, aunt of Steven Colbert!
She was married to Emmett Robinson, long time director of the theater.
She was an author, poet, playwright and actress.

The play was great. The director and actresses did an amazing job, adapting the movie to this play. But somehow we were not completely up to it. I wished we were in a different mood. Maybe I was still missing Savannah, maybe the mart... I could not buy into the story. 

Day 62 - Savannah to Charleston

Today we left our very basic campground and headed to Charleston. The ride was nice - lots of forested areas along the highway. Not a long drive, just a couple of hours. We arrived in a better-than-expected campground about 12 miles from the historical downtown. We wanted to be closer but everything had already been booked by the time we looked at places a few days ago.

After arriving in the campground we had a nice lunch and then looked up free walking tours of the historical town. We like to take these walking tours as soon as we get into a new city and have done this in European cities as well. This way get an orientation to the area and can better decide what to see again more in depth. The "free" tours require an online reservation, sometimes free, sometimes a few dollars for the local tour tax. Then the tour guide takes you around town and you tip at the end the amount you want. We have found these tours to be really good. Today's tours are already over so we found one free for $2, a self-guided audio tour, Atlantis Audio Tour, available from the Play Store. So we download the app, head downtown and start the tour!

The tour starts at the site of the oldest church in town, St Philips. This church has been rebuilt over the years but was started by an Anglican congregation in 1680. There are colonial governors and revolutionary war people buried there.

The Dock street theater building is thought to be the first theater in the US built in 1730.

The french Huguenots have had a church in this location since 1687. This latest rebuild happened in 1844.

The "pink house" is the second longest continually occupied residence (without having been rebuilt) in town, dating from 1712. Note the real gas lamps in use in this neighborhood!

It is interesting to see so much more simple architecture we guess dating from the 1700's rather than the more common Victorian style that seemed more prevalent in downtown Savannah.

The "confederate house" was built after the civil war to house spouses of soldiers who died in battle. According to the internet, it is still used to house some otherwise homeless women.

Old tree root systems really growing!

Nice cobble stone streets here and there.

Historic old indoor slave market, now a museum.

By the 1770's the population was 12000, with half being enslaved people. This was a real center of slave commerce, in one year over 7000 enslaved people passed though this port to other parts of the colonies. This building was the center of all commerce with the river behind.

A little away from the commerce center is a series of colonial houses near the shore called the rainbow row.

Looking out into the bay.

More interesting small streets between old houses.