Day 21 and 22 Two travel days -- Charleston, SC to Lewes, DE

Boy am I ready to be home!  After 2 days of driving -- well Vernon driving mostly -- we are now at Anita and Karl's beach house in Lewes, DE.  It's a beautiful sunny day, about 80 degrees and we mostly did laundry and clean up and a walk on Rehoboth boardwalk.  Also Hopkin's Farm ice cream!

I'm going to post the rest of the pictures and stories about the history of Charleston before I forget them! 

St Michael's Anglican Church with Vernon in the foreground walking toward it.  It's the oldest surviving church in Charleston -- built in the 1750's "by order of the South Carolina Assembly".  It stands at a crossroad in Charleston with a Federal building on one corner, a state government building on another, a local government building on another and St Michael's church on the 4th corner which has become known as the "Four corners of the Law":  federal law, state laws, local laws, and God's law.

Charleston was built "on the backs of slaves" and one of them planned the biggest revolt in American history which failed and he was executed.  I wrote about him in yesterday's blog.  But there is one story that Diana told that I loved because it was about a daring and successful escape from slavery.  The "enslaved person's" name was Robert Smalls -- the slave that stole a ship! "He risked his life to liberate his family and became a legend in the process".

The first shots of the Civil War were in Charleston Bay.  But a year later the many ships of the Union Army fleet were blockading all the major southern ports including the Charleston port. Even so, blockade runners regularly would sneak goods into and out of Charleston. Robert Smalls was a crew member of one of the Confederate ships, The Planter.  He knew that he and his wife and 2 small children were due to be sold and separated.  So he devised a daring plan which would have resulted in severe punishment or even death if they were caught.  But he and his wife both felt it was worth the risk to be free.

 He alerted the other slave crew members on the ship of his plan and when the three white officers left the ship to spend time with their families in Charleston, Smalls commandeered the ship by impersonating the captain and handed it over to the Union fleet out in Charleston Bay.  A total of 17 black passengers (9 men, 5 women and 3 children) were freed from slavery that day.  He became an officer in the Union Army and eventually a U.S. congressman!

Charleston has been called "the birthplace of preservation and restoration. In this picture, behind the history tour group is a replica of a gas station that was built in the middle of town with nice accents like pillars and other decorative architectural details taken from several historic homes that were torn down to make way for it.  This happened in the 1920's and a group of Charleston ladies said "Never again".  From then, legislation passed that any structure 75 years old or older (from this date), you may not destroy -- only restore a building.

                                                            

This is not an alley -- it's a lane -- Longitude Lane with driveways and houses on both sides. It'ss just wide enough for a carriage to pass.

Ths is a house on Chalmers Street. The street is made of "ballast" which are the stones that were needed to weigh down the empty ships on the way over from England.  They had to toss the stones out when they reached the port to make way for the goods they were picking up to bring back to England.  So one use for these ballast stones was to make streets.

                                                                                        

Looking out into the Charleston Bay at Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

The Battery -- named for the battery of cannons that were set up all along the south wall of the city.

This has been fun keeping this record of our Florida and southeast coast travels this past month!  Now we look forward to our biannual "Sibling weekend" with Vernon's siblings (Esther -- you are a sibling of course) and their spouses in Lewes.  Then home!  

                        

 

Day 20 Historical tour of Charleston and lunch at Poogan's Porch

 Today we learned a lot of history of Charleston.  Our guide, Diana learned all 20 of our names and really knew her stuff!  Then we ate lunch at a restaurant called "Poogan's Porch" and had low country shrimp and grits and fried green tomatoes!  We played corn hole back at the campground with another couple and they're coming over in a few minutes to play a game with us.  So I'll post most of the pictures tomorrow afternoon after our day of traveling -- we'll probably make it up to Virginia.

Shrimp and grits and fried green tomatos at Poogan's Porch. Yum!

                                                                                    

The restaurant is named for a dog.  This is a mural in the parking lot showing people at a table on the upper level porch of the restaurant.  Not sure about Poogan sitting on the restaurant table. Looks like a fun time though.

Pictures of the restaurant outside (abouve) and the bar area inside:

                                                                                   

 A very early map of "Charles Towne" founded in 1670 and named for King Charles II.  This shows the Charleston Bay to the south and the city gate at the northern point in the map.  This was a walled city at the beginning and to build the wall they had to build a trench on 3 sides of the city which naturally filled with water.  So very early on Charleston was surrounded by a large wall and a moat!        

          

The amazing workmanship on the steeple of St Phillips Church  -- a slave named "Will" (the only name they have) saved an earlier version of this church when it was built of wood.  He ran toward the fire and pulled off the burning roof tiles with his bare hands.  The parishioners we so grateful that they took up a collection for him and raised $200 which was used to buy Will's freedom.  

                                                                                        

This beautiful church is the Huguenot Church.  Charleston was a wealthy city from the very beginning and had lots of money to build beautiful churches like this.  This colony made a lot of money for England -- with the early crops of rice and indigo and later cotton.  

Inside the Huguenot Church:

                                                                                        

             One of the oldest pipe organs in the U.S. was playing while we were in the church.

                                                                                                                                           

The guide told a wild but supposedly true story of a young Englishman at age 18 who joined a voyage -- a "reconnaissance" mission to "Carolina" whose duties were as doctor and butcher!  He befriended the natives in the area and learned 5 native languages.  There were apparently lots of adventure and intrigue and even a story of  being kidnapped by hostile Indians and turned over to the Spanish in Florida.  When he converted to Catholicism, that pleased the Spanish ruler and he was freed.  After surviving a shipwreck he ended up back in Carolina and was helpful in founding South Carolina and Charleston because of his helpful knowledge of Indian language and customs.  He also helped establish rice as a big cash producing crop:  "Carolina Gold".

                                                                                

These nasty looking steel"no trespassing" spikes are so sharp that our guide said she drew blood when pointing them out once.  At one point in Charleston history homeowners were afraid of slave uprisings.

Denmark Vesey was a slave who won the lottery in 1799 and purchased his and his family's freedom.  He set up a successful carpentry shop in Charleston and became a leader in the black community.  He and 34 others planned a slave revolt -- the biggest in American history but a house slave overheard the plans and alerted the homeowner who happened to be a colonel.  Vesey and the others were quickly rounded up and many were executed including Vesey.

                                                                                

This is the Mills House Hotel.  Confederate General Robert E. Lee stayed here once in 1861 and during his stay, the hotel caught fire and he is credited with saving the hotel by having people hang wet linens out the windows and under the doors.  The wind carried the fire diagonally and 540 acres and some believe over 1000 buildings were lost.

We're on the road today -- April 11 -- and will be stopping overnight at a Walmart near the Potomac River on our way to Lewes, DE.  Hope the propane holds out if it turns cold before we leave early tomorrow morning!

I'll post more of our Charleston tour tomorrow when we're on the road again.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                            

Day 19 Easter service and a walk in downtown Charleston

Happy Easter!   This morning we visited a church nearby the campground in Charleston and waited in the hall during worship because it sounded like a rock concert -- it was so loud. The message was great though.  It cleared up this afternoon enough for us to drive into downtown Charleston and walk around.  It was around 12:30 and people were leaving a couple of the churches all dressed up in their Easter finery.  Vernon got a kick our of this sideways rocker bench.  He says he wants to make one!               

    

                                                                                    

Beautiful streets, homes and gardens -- the homes were older than in Savannah.  We'll learn more about some of them when we go on a walking tour tomorrow.

How about this to greet you when you go in your front door?

                                                                                        

We walked down what we now think was someone's private driveway (oops!) with several archways like these two along the length of the wall. Vernon thinks that the slits in the middle of each one was possibly for a rifle to shoot at the enemy.  ??

At the end of the driveway was a beautiful garden:    

Thomas Rose's House

Below are 2 pictures of the Thomas Rose house

If you zoom in on the window you can see a beautiful chandelier lit up.

The second level of the porch is just above the front door of the house.  They made use of the small amount of "in-town" space so beautifully!

The Heyward-Washington House

We wanted to take a tour of this home but they were closed on Easter Sunday.  No wonder we got a parking space right in front of it!  It has Washington in the name because President George Washington "was entertained in this house" in 1791.

                                                                                    

                                                                                      

  These wedding dresses were in a shop window just across the street from where we parked.

                                                                                        

Rainbow Row (East Bay Street)

"Rainbow Row represents the longest cluster of intact Georgian row houses in the U.S."  The earliest structures along here were built by 1680!  Notice all the different pastel colors.

This house on Rainbow Row has a funny fish door knocker.  Vernon pointed out the rope molding around the door.

                                                                                        

Driveway made of slate with brick in the middle.  To the right the sign says "Beyond this point by invitation only".  Very genteel!  We have a sign that says "No Tresspassing" next to our driveway in FL.

                                                                                            

How many window boxes have you seen orchids in?

This orchid window boxes were along this alleyway.

Tomorrow:  walking tour in downtown Charleston

Day 18 Travel day -- Savannah, GA to Charleston, SC

Today, besides travel, hooking up and leveling at our campsite, and cooking dinner, this picture shows about all we did today.  Except shiver in the damp, cold, rainy weather.  Yesterday it was 93 degrees. Today's high around here in Charleston was 51 degrees!!!  We're drinking hot tea and sneezing our heads off!  The propane heater in our camper makes it warm and cozy though.

                                               Vernon won.  This time.

Esther made a comment on a Savannah post that Vernon must love the staircase we saw in the Isaiah Davenport house.  He did.  And yesterday the tour guide pointed out the exterior double staircases going up to some of the front doors in Savannah.  Like at the Isaiah Davenport house (below):

            

The tour guide said that there were often double stairways up to the front door --  one for the men and the other one for the ladies, to prevent the men from getting a glimpse of the ladies' ankles.  

Tomorrow:  Easter Sunday service at a local church and then wait out the rain till a Monday tour of Charleston.

Day 17 Savannah day 2

Wow, today was such a relaxed touring day of Savannah!  We jumped on a 90 minute open air tour and were really able to appreciate the many beautiful houses and squares with a very informative tour guide to tell us what we were seeing.  After the tour, Vernon graciously agreed to go to a tea room so I could have tea and scones at "The Gryphon" :                                  

This scone with Devonshire cream was delicious!

The tea sweets  -- the bottom tier was little tea sandwiches and then the scone tier and then the sweets on the top tier.  Vernon did enjoy those!

This young man and all the employees of the tea room are students at SCAD -- Savannah College of Art and Design.

This was such a beautiful room!  It was a pharmacy at one point, and was built in the mid 1800's. The tea room is called The Gryphon because of the dragon like creatures (shown above) that hold up all the globe lanterns all around the room are "gryphons".

     

 Here are some of the sights we saw on the open air tour bus:

                                                                                     

Across Green Square, is the Second African Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr first delivered his "I have a dream" speech.  He only made minor changes in it before he delivered it in Washington D.C.

I missed getting a picture of the First African Baptist Church, near Franklin Square.  It was built in 1733! -- the oldest continuous black church in North America.  There were different pews for the slaves from different areas of Africa who spoke different languages. It also served as an important place in the Underground Railroad.  There was a double floor in the sanctuary where slaves hid when trying to escape to freedom.

The tour guide told us of a children's book called "The Patchwork Path" which tells about how quilts had hidden clues that guided slaves along the Underground Railroad to Canada.

Across the square from this Second African Baptist Church is a statue honoring the group of 500 Haitians who joined the colonists to fight in the Revolutionary War.  

                                                                                    

At the bequest of Mary Telfair, a prominent Savannah citizen, she stipulated in her will that her home could only ever be used as an art museum.  This along with the Owens-Thomas House are examples of Regency architecture.
                                                                            

                                                                                    

The Owen-Thomas House and slave quarters on built in 1819 by William Jay, a young architect from England who designed many of the landmark buildings in Savannah.  I wish we had time to tour this one!  Maybe on another visit to Savannah!  

                                               

Another side of the Owens-Thomas House.  It is supposed to be one of the finest examples of Regency style architecture in the U.S. -- stately columns and simple facade.

We missed the azaleas blooming.  They were early this year -- in February because it was so warm.  But the Magnolias were starting to bloom.

                                                                                    

The Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Layfayette Square.                       

This home was magnificent.  You can see a little more of the detail of the windows, etc below:

A different angle on the Isaiah Davenport house that we toured yesterday.

Ballast from the ships coming over from England were used to make the street going down to the river.  It was a bumpy ride over these stones.

The tour guide said this is one of the smaller size container ships coming into this historically important port.

This is the most famous statue in Savannah -- "The Waving Girl".  She was the unofficial greeter of all ships that entered and left the Port of Savannah between 1887 and 1931. She waved a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night.  It's told that her collie would wake her during the night if a ship came so she could greet it.  She became famous and even received letters from ship's captains.

                                                                                    

                  A "double decker" restaurant -- "The Public" -- pretty cool to sit up high in the shade of a Live Oak tree!

We started the day with a devotional from Our Daily Bread  -- "Drops of Red"  meaning in the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, "His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground."  Luke 22:44.  The picture on the first page of the devotional was of one of Vincent Van Gogh's "Olive Trees" paintings in the Scottish National Gallery.  There were small red splotches of paint among the trees on the canvas.

The writer of the devotion pointed out that it's important to remember Jesus' suffering (on Good Friday) "Jesus, thank you for being willing to suffer, even to death, so that I might receive eternal life."

Tomorrow:  travel day to Charleston and a weekend of rain in the forecast!