The Travelers' Charleston

Accounts of Charleston and Lowcountry, South Carolina, 1666-1861

Jennie Holton Fant

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781611175844
• eBook ISBN: 9781611175851
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The Travelers' Charleston is an innovative collection of firsthand narratives that document the history of the South Carolina lowcountry region, specifically that of Charleston, from 1666 until the start of the Civil War. Jennie Holton Fant has compiled and edited a rich and comprehensive history as seen through the eyes of writers from outside the South. She provides a selection of unique texts that include the travelogues, travel narratives, letters, and memoirs of a diverse array of travelers who described the region over time. Further, Fant has mined her material not only for validity but to identify any characters her travelers encounter or events they describe. She augments her resources with copious annotations and provides a wealth of information that enhances the significance of the texts.

The Travelers' Charleston begins with explorer Joseph Woory's account of the Carolina coast four years before the founding of Charles Town, and it concludes as Anna Brackett, a Charleston schoolteacher from Boston, witnesses the start of the Civil War. The volume includes Josiah Quincy Jr.'s original 1773 journal; the previously unpublished letters of Samuel F. B. Morse, a portrait artist in Charleston between 1818 and 1820; the original letters of Scottish aristocrat and traveler Margaret Hunter Hall (1824); and a compilation of the letters of William Makepeace Thackeray written in Charleston during his famous lecture tours in the 1850s. Using these sources, combined with excepts from carefully chosen travel accounts, Fant provides an unusual and authoritative documentary record of Charleston and the lowcountry, which allows the reader to step back in time and observe a bygone society, culture, and politics to note key characters and hear them talk and to witness firsthand the history of one of the country's most distinctive regions.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below

Abercrombie, John

abolition. See also anti-slavery; emancipation

Abrahall, Richard

Academy of Fine Arts

Acland, Thomas Dyke, Sir

Adam (Lawton slave)

Adams, John

African American, free blacks

black ball of

schools and teachers of

African American, poets and writers. See Phillis Wheatley; Ignatius Sancho

African American, slaves

children as

conversations with

experiments on

hiring out of

loyalty of

runaways

Saturday night market of

and slave auctions

uprisings of. See also slaves, punishment of; slavery; Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy (1822)

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Agassiz, Louis

agriculture

corn

cotton

Sea Island cotton

short staple cotton

indigo

rice

tobacco. See also Bennett Mill; Lucas Mill; West Point Rice Mill

Aiken, William

Allston, Washington

Alston, Caroline Thomas

Alston, John Ashe

family of

letters to SFBM

Alston, Joseph

Alston, Josephine

Alston, Sarah McPherson (Mrs. John Ashe Alston)

Alston, Sarah (Sally) McPherson (later Mrs. John Izard Middleton), and portraits of

Alston, Theodosia Burr

Alston, Thomas

Alston, Thomas Pinckney

Alston, William

Alston, William Algernon

Alush, (Indian)

amalgamation

American Civil War

Charleston events leading to

Democratic National Convention (1860) and secession

firing on the Star of the West

American Mariner; or, The Atlantic Voyage

American Revolution

Ames, Fisher

Analectic Magazine

Anderson, Robert

Andros, Sir Edmund

anti-slavery. See also abolition

aristocracy. See Charleston, white gentry of

Ashepoo

Ashepoo River

Ashley Avenue (Lynch Street)

Ashley River

Atchison, John

Audubon, John James

Awendaw

Bachelor’s Hall

Back River

Backriver Plantation. See Jericho Plantation

Bailey, Hachaliah

Balch, Nathaniel

Balfour, Nisbet

Ball, Caroline Martha Swinton (Mrs. John Ball)

letters to and from SFBM

Ball, Elias

Ball, John

Ball, John, Jr.

Ball family

Bancroft, George

Bank of South Carolina

Bank of the United States

Barbados

Barelli, Torres & Co.

Barnwell family

Bath, N.C.

Battery Dairy

Baxter, Anna Smith Strong

letters from T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Joseph Woory (1666): “Discovery”
• John Lawson (Early 1700s): “Charles Towne” and “Travel Among the Indians”
• Josiah Quincy Jr. (1773): “Society of Charleston”
• Johann David Schoepf (1784): “After the Revolution”
• John Davis (1798–99): “The Woods of South Carolina”
• John Lambert (1808): “Look to the Right and Dress!”
• Samuel F. B. Morse (1818–20): “Hospitably Entertained and Many Portraits Painted”
• Margaret Hunter Hall (1828): “The Dowdies and their Clumsy Partners”
• James Stuart, Esq. (1830): “Devil in Petticoats”
• Harriet Martineau (1835): “Many Mansions There Are in This Hell”
• John Benwell (1838): “July the 4th”
• Fredrika Bremer (1850): “The Lover of Darkness”
• William Makepeace Thackeray (1853 and 1855): “The Fast Lady of Charleston”
• William Ferguson (1855): “Such a One’s Geese Are All Swans”
• John Milton Mackie (1859): “The Last Hour of Repose”
• Anna C. Brackett (1861): “Charleston, South Carolina, 1861”
• Bibliography
• Index