Finding "My" Charleston…Digging down on the block I live on…to see what I can find.

Category: Discovering the history of Charleston SC

  • The Who, When, and Why there was a Church and Graveyard under my Parking Lot

    I wrote two posts on this blog back in July on the graveyard under the parking lot of Canterbury House at the corner of Market and Archdale in old town Charleston, SC where I now live. I wrote several posts after that…trying to stay within my stated framework…digging down on the history of this one…

  • Across the Street 1939 to 1965…Robert Mills Manor

    Actually, I am going to introduce the block across the street from my block because it explains my neighborhood better than I could…both physically, politically, and socially…locally and nationally. This Sanborn Fire Insurance map below shows what the block looked like before 1938. Note: Mazyck Street will be renamed Logan Street. The map is dated…

  • Catching up with other things…Hurricane Hugo 1989

    Late on the night of September 21, 1989, Hurricane Hugo ripped through Charleston, unleashing 138-mile-per-hour winds and 20-foot tidal surges. Just as the violent swirl of wind, rain, and devastation threatened to completely overwhelm, the eye of the storm passed over and an eerie quiet settled on the coast. In his path of destruction, Hugo…

  • Back to 1952 and how everything changed…

    Here we get into the problem with chronology, again…for my little dig on my small block in Charleston, SC. But we will soldier on… Then I will swing back and do a social dig on the block and neighborhood and life. Because as we went from 2000 when Canterbury East was built…back to 1970 when…

  • The Fourth Corner of my Block

    I have been concentrating on the major portion of my block…Market, Archdale, West, and Logan…which is now Canterbury House one and two and parking for both and the city. But that leaves one corner unaccounted for…at Logan and West Streets. Most Charlestonians know and most Canterbury people know, the house on the corner of their…

  • “Centuries old” gravestones

    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…

  • The Cemetery in the Parking Lot…

    First, Dr. Sally Lorbach, Executive Director of Canterbury House, ended her brief history of the building of Canterbury in our monthly newsletter in 2022, with a surprise…for me, anyway…I will quote her: “A couple of interesting facts about Canterbury House property prior to its construction… The last post was about the building of Canterbury’s new…

  • The Context for building “East”, 1991-2000

    The 1994 plan to build Saks Fifth Avenue at Market and King became a catalyst to upgrade the neighborhood, as we saw in the last post. I had learned of the plan while browsing through the local newspaper, The Post and Courier’s on-line archives. Continuing to browse, I found articles for 1996-2000…It was only in…

  • The Time Between “West” and “East”

    The problem with the archaeological chronological approach to history is that many different years/artifacts demand our attention at once. One often has to sort out what era two things laying side by side in the dirt are from. So, as mentioned, I am doing the two Canterbury buildings more or less together. The building we…

  • Some interesting sites….

    From time to time, I plan to post the links to sites that have popped up on my newsfeed, Facebook page, or sent to me by friends who know my interests…mostly St. Charles Historical Society fellow researchers…one who also has family in early Charleston…small world. A Grad Student Found the Largest Known Slave Auction in…