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  • Episode 290: Charleston’s Suburban Racecourse and Slave Auction Site

    Episode 290: Charleston’s Suburban Racecourse and Slave Auction Site
    2024/09/06
    Just beyond the boundaries of urban Charleston, a hundred-acre pasture straddling modern Meeting Street hosted a variety of public events during the second half of the eighteenth century. Crowds flocked to Newmarket, as the site was called, to toll their livestock, to watch racehorses traverse a one-mile oval, to witness the auction of large gangs of enslaved people, and to see Native American visitors camping beyond the pale of South Carolina’s colonial capital. In this episode of the Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the tangled history of one of the community’s earliest and least-remembered suburbs.
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    33 分
  • Episode 289: Policing Rural Charleston, from Colonial Posse to County Sheriff

    Episode 289: Policing Rural Charleston, from Colonial Posse to County Sheriff
    2024/08/16
    From the dawn of the Carolina Colony to the early twentieth century, residents of rural Charleston County enjoyed no police protection beyond their own vigilance. Ancient customs, imported from England and transformed by the institution of slavery, obliged free men to patrol their own neighborhoods on horseback, apprehend lawbreakers, and deliver them to justice. A paid rural police force gradually emerged in the early 1900s, fostered by the proliferation of automobiles, and eventually led to the creation of the modern Sheriff’s Department in 1991.
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    27 分
  • Episode 288: Charleston's Forgotten First Orphan House, 1790–94

    Episode 288: Charleston's Forgotten First Orphan House, 1790–94
    2024/08/02
    Shortly after the creation of the nation’s first municipal orphanage in 1790, the citizens of Charleston contributed generously to the construction of a large and well-documented edifice on Boundary (now Calhoun) Street that housed thousands of children between 1794 and 1951. The location of the institution’s initial home, visited by President George Washington in May 1791, is far less remembered, however. A search for clues to the location of Charleston’s first Orphan House leads to a forgotten Pinckney family property in the heart of Colleton Square.
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    28 分
  • Episode 287: Colleton Square: Prelude to Market Street

    Episode 287: Colleton Square: Prelude to Market Street
    2024/07/19
    Colleton Square is a place-name rarely heard in Charleston today, but millions of people tramp through its historic boundaries every year. Granted to an aristocratic English family in 1681, the creek-side tract was subdivided in the 1740s by investors who envisioned a residential and commercial neighborhood fronting a working canal. Their efforts flourished after the removal of intrusive fortifications, but the subsequent transformation of the canal into Market Street at the dawn of the nineteenth century obscured the character and identity of the colonial square.
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    29 分
  • Episode 286: The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 2

    Episode 286: The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 2
    2024/06/28
    During their year-long incarceration, the criminal trio accused of plotting to blow up Charleston’s powder magazine had ample time to argue among themselves and plan their escape from the insecure jail. Only two of the villains survived to face the king’s law in the spring of 1732, prompting suspicion of foul play at the prison. In the dramatic conclusion of this explosive story, we’ll learn who escaped the gallows and why the government’s efforts to close the dangerous magazine dragged on to the summer of 1746.
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    28 分
  • Episode 285: The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 1

    Episode 285: The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 1
    2024/06/21
    Every successful thief (and screenwriter) knows that a daring robbery requires a powerful and well-coordinated distraction. That criminal axiom was evident in Charleston during the spring of 1731, when a gang of house-breakers allegedly planned to blow up the town’s brick magazine used for the storage of gunpowder. Authorities foiled the plot by arresting and executing the villains, but the inherently dangerous magazine in modern Cumberland Street persisted. Although citizens campaigned to move the powder elsewhere, a suite of issues delayed the completion of a more remote magazine until 1746.
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    23 分
  • Episode 284: Drama at the Court Room in 1735: Charleston’s First Theater

    Episode 284: Drama at the Court Room in 1735: Charleston’s First Theater
    2024/06/07
    The earliest recorded performances of drama, dance, and opera in Charleston occurred during the late winter of 1735, when a group of thespians advertised a brief series of ticketed events at a familiar venue. Their stage was a multipurpose room within a tavern at the northeast corner of Broad and Church Streets, which South Carolina’s provincial government rented periodically for judicial proceedings. These “Court Room” events were not the first dramatic productions in the colony, but they formed an innovative prelude to the creation of Charleston’s first purpose-built theater.
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    28 分
  • Episode 283: A Hawaiian Band in Charleston, 1901–2

    Episode 283: A Hawaiian Band in Charleston, 1901–2
    2024/05/24
    Charlestonians got their first taste of Hawaiian culture in December 1901, when a band of Pacific Islanders represented the newly-acquired territory at the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition. Local audiences were entranced by their mellifluous songs and the rhythmic gestures of scantily-clad hula dancers swaying to curious sounds produced by strumming ukeleles and guitars played in a most unconventional manner. After performing for segregated audiences—Black and White—in the Palmetto City, the roving Hawaiians trekked inland to impart a lasting influence on the vernacular music of the American South.
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    28 分