Continuing from the last post on The News and Courier story from 1953 telling how Alderman Halsey uncovered the graveyard hidden for years that was slated to become more parking for the city. This map I stumbled across shows it exactly. In fact, the city parking lot covered the entire area that would become Canterbury East and West…I hadn’t realized that before…

Now, when looking at the newspaper photo as shown again below, there is still a bit of a mystery. Alderman Halsey said that there was a new low wall built that “83” of the gravestones had been moved behind at the back of the lot…perhaps the back wall had been taken down when the tenement came down that allowed clearing of the garbage piled on the graveyard…but the 8-foot wall is still shown on the 1955 Sanborn Map…you have to love unsolved mysteries to study history!!!! Always more questions than answers. (Only the 8-foot wall along West Street still stand today.)

Now, back to Alderman Halsey’s account…

“…Mr. Halsey’s statements will doubtless be welcomed by numerous citizens of Charleston, some of whom objected vehemently when it became known that the ancient cemetery would become an addition to the parking lot.

“Actually, few of the tombstones had to be moved behind the new low brick wall. Mr. Halsey said that where possible buried remains were moved also, but that diggers found very little after more than a century of burial in the damp soil. Caskets had disappeared; even their metal trimmings were gone.                

“At present 83 graves and headstones are behind the new wall. Still untouched is a monument to Dr. Joseph W. Simonds, who died in 1841, and the Simonds family plans to move it to the family’s present plot in Magnolia Cemetery.   

“Also, untouched is a tall granite obelisk, beneath which Mr. Halsey says no one is buried. It is in the front section of the lot, encircled by its own wrought-iron fence. It is a monument to the 80 persons who perished in October 1837, when the steamship Homes, enroute from New York to Charleston, was destroyed in a storm.”

The 1837 Wreck of the Steamboat Home – Village Craftsmen of Ocracoke Island

Of course, I had to stop right there and look up the story of the Steamboat Home before looking for buried individuals…and it is quite a story…very detailed with eyewitness accounts…in case you are curious…a ship not making it to Charleston was, unfortunately, not unheard of…though I did not know that steamboats tried to make it down the coast in the Atlantic…it does seem risky.

Two names from the church cemetery

I have only found two persons…so far…who were buried in the Third Presbyterian church’s graveyard…my back yard. If I run across more, I will share. Just looking for the church itself got me these two personal entries plus some explanation from the Find a Grave website:

Old Third Central Presbyterian in Charleston, South Carolina – Find a Grave Cemetery

“Cemetery is now defunct. The location where the church and cemetery once were has been paved over, and any headstones or monuments that remained were moved to Riverview Cemetery in North Charleston, South Carolina. When you enter the front gate of Riverview Memorial the cemetery is as far to the left in the back of the cemetery. Just keep heading to the left towards the bank of trees and that’s where the headstones are.”

The two persons I found are because they were moved from their original burial on Archdale and moved to Riverview: One of the gravestones was for Dr. Simonds mentioned in the article above…and one is a woman I found on Find a Grave. All I got on either person was name rank and serial number…. gravestone information…a brief online search only turned up the Find A Grave site for him, though there were Joseph W. Simonds in the next two generations. Perhaps someone know more….

Dr Joseph W. Simonds (1781-1841) – Find a Grave Memorial

Dr. Joseph W. Simonds, Born 7 Apr 1781, Death 7 Mar 1841, aged 59 (yes, I went back to check that he was born and died on the 7th), Burial Riverview Memorial Parks, North Charleston SC.

Commentary for this entry says that: “This person was buried in the Old Third Presbyterian Church graveyard also known as the Central Presbyterian Church Graveyard at the corner of Archdale and West Street in the city of Charleston. The graves and markers were move to Riverview Memorial Park probably in the 1980s.” (Remember that Dr. Sally said that Canterbury had agreed to pay to “maintain the grounds and face of the cemetery” at the “new location.” And did so from 1969 to 1999, thirty years. She did not say that they moved the graves then or any other time. If the graves were moved in the 1980s, they would have been in place directly in-between the building of West in 1970 and the building of East in 1999…so perhaps another mystery.)

The woman found on Find A Grave was awarded an additional bit of information:

Jane Moorhead (1770-1849) – Find a Grave Memorial

Jane Moorhead, Birth 1770 Ireland, Death 25 June 1849

This paragraph went with her entry: “In the event a photo of a headstone is not included, it generally means that the memorial information was taken from a cemetery transcription or death record. One of those who did the transcription was Elizabeth C. Curtis. Without her efforts cemeteries such as Trinity United Methodist and Old Third Central Presbyterian Cemetery records would not be included or available since neither of the above churches exists today, including the cemetery and headstones. I found out on January 21, 2010 that internment’s of Old Third Central Presbyterian Church Cemetery have been moved to Riverview Memorial cemetery in Charleston.

This is one of my pet crusades…to honor all the nameless…mostly women…who in the past generation volunteered their time to transcribe birth, death, church and civic records….and index them….so we could walk right in and find them to research…and to be available to input into our wonderful computers. I was privileged to work with many of these women and men at the St. Charles County Historical Society Archives in Missouri.

P.S. I googled Elizabeth “C.” Curtis and could not find a likely candidate but under the name Elizabeth “Gibbon” Curtis, a great one turned up…maybe someone out there knows…but this Elizabeth wrote Gateways and doorways of Charleston…South Carolina in 1926. There is only one copy still around per the site I looked at but it makes her at least interested in the history of Charleston and willing to research and write about it.

Gateways and doorways of Charleston, South Carolina, in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries by Elizabeth (Gibbon) Curtis | Open Library