The Sieges of Savannah and Charleston, or How the British Left the Colonies

The Siege of Charleston, 1780

In 1779, the British turned their attention from New England and the northeast colonies to what is now termed the Southern Campaign—and they started with Savannah, Georgia. Having taken that in December, they moved north to Charles Towne—Charleston of today—and laid siege to it for six weeks before that mighty port city buckled.

After the surrender at Yorktown, the British forces hunkered down in Charleston and Savannah, but made no further move to withdraw. As Patrick O’Kelley says, “Though the war was near the end, the fighting continued. Old scores needed to be settled, and this had to be done while there was still a war going on. The British in Savannah and Charlestown had to find food for the soldiers and for the refugees huddled near the walls of the cities. The Patriots knew that the sooner they could get the British to leave the two cities, the sooner the war would end, so they opposed any foraging parties coming out of the cities. This led to some intense fighting in the last days of the war.”

The siege of Charleston lasted from 1781 until December 1782. The retaking of Savannah had begun in January 1782 when Major General Anthony Wayne made a bold push against the British in Georgia. The British, thinking they were outnumbered (though they weren’t, by far), fell back to Savannah, and though Wayne did his best to play up the fears of the British, they held onto that city until July.

Last page of the Treaty of Paris, 1783

In the meantime, Greene had his own troubles with troops becoming mutinous in the face of nakedness and hunger. William Moultrie describes how every scrap of cloth was needed to hang about men’s waists, and this in an age where a man was considered “undressed” if he didn’t wear a waistcoat over shirt and breeches. Another officer asked if soldiers could be expected to do their duty, clothed in rags and fed on rice. Even partisan leader Francis Marion, the famed “Swamp Fox,” grew so weary of the constant fight that after one incident in September, he refused to put any more of his men’s lives on the line, so close to the expected departure of the enemy. In one case he and his men even stood guard on behalf of a British foraging party, presumably as much out of compassion as anything.

On July 11, the British officially evacuated from Savannah. Troops headed for Charleston and New York. Many loyalist refugees eventually went south to Florida. The British would drag their feet getting out of Charleston until December 14. British regulars and loyalists dispersed not only back to Britain, but to the Caribbean and Nova Scotia. (Many of Tarleton’s Green Dragoons were given holdings in Nova Scotia, but it was a rather austere location.)

Map of US and territories after the Treaty of Paris

The day after the British fleet sailed from Charleston, the Maryland Line of the Continentals decided their enlistment was over, but Greene told them firmly that the war was not yet finished. That would not happen until the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783, but the fighting in the Carolinas had ended at last.

At least where the British were concerned. Tensions and conflict would continue with the native tribes for years to come. And having cut their losses in the American colonies, the British had already focused their meager energies elsewhere in the world. This marked the end, however, of the colonial era in United States history.

(My thanks as usual to O'Kelley for his excellent work, Nothing But Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.)

Colonial churches of coastal South Carolina

St. James Santee Church

In 1706, the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly voted to establish the Church of England as their official church and divided the colony into ten parishes. Each parish had one central church with smaller affiliated churches, designated as chapels of ease. These outlying meeting places provided local church attendance to the more remote areas of the parish.

I've written previously about Strawberry Chapel, a chapel of ease for St. John's Parish in Berkeley County, and St. George Anglican Church at Colonial Dorchester, but I've had the pleasure of visiting others during my years of living and touring around the South Carolina lowcountry.

There's a very small person in that pulpit--and beside!

Our visit to St. James Santee Church was almost accidental, a side trip on the day we'd driven up to McClellanville to see Hampton Plantation. The elegant brick chapel is located way down a sandy road which traces the route of the old King's Highway between Charleston and Georgetown.

 The building is noteworthy as an example of Georgian architecture, completed in 1768, and a list of all its features is found at South Carolina's National Register site: http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710012/index.htm. Our family found it interesting for the original enclosed box pews and the raised pulpit. Its history is noteworthy as a place where English settlers worshiped together with French Huguenots:  http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~scroots/sc13846.htm and http://www.stjamesec.org/brickchurch.html.

Pompion Hill Chapel, from the Cooper River

Very similar in archectural style is Pompion Hill Chapel, a chapel of ease for St. Thomas's parish, built 1763-65 on the banks of the Cooper River in rural Berkeley County. (On the east branch of the Cooper, incidentally--across the river and some from Strawberry, which is on the west branch.) Reportedly Pompion is the French word for "pumpkin," and so the name permuted to "punkin" and in one contemporary spelling is cited as "Ponkin Hill."

Pompion Hill Chapel

Inside Pompion Hill Chapel

We visited here during a family boat trip up the east branch of the Cooper River. When we stopped at the churchyard for exploration, the church was locked, but we took a peek through the windows. A raised pulpit is located far right of the window where this shot was taken, but it appears that most of the original box pews are gone.

Historic photo of St. James Goose Creek

The historic church closest to where we lived was one I sadly never took the opportunity to go see: St. James Goose Creek, chapel of ease for St. James's Parish. This one, built 1713-19, has quite a history. Legend has it the church was spared during the British occupation of Charleston, during the American Revolution, because of the royal seal displayed behind the pulpit.

Inside St. James Goose Creek

Just from its photos, the church building reminds me of Strawberry Chapel with its white stucco exterior. I find it interesting that all four historic church buildings (including Strawberry) share the Georgian building style and jerkinhead roof type. Some sustained more damage than others over the years (the Goose Creek church suffered a partial collapse in the 1886 Charleston earthquake) but all have been restored and/or kept up as examples of colonial-era architecture.

(Photos of St. James Santee and Pompion Hill Chapel are my own.)

The Southern Campaign of the Revolution: Myth and the Mists of Time

Before I continue my mini-series on colonial myths, I’d like to offer an overview of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution. How many know what that refers to? Unless you’re a serious American Revolution buff, chances are you don’t.

Kershaw-Cornwallis house, Camden, SC, British headquarters 1780-81

The history taught in schools is sketchy at best, and sometimes  riddled with myth. Where the Revolution is concerned, we’re familiar with the Boston Massacre, Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. What happened in between is fuzzy at best, or missing completely.

We also know individual legends like George Washington and the cherry tree, Betsy Ross, and Molly Pitcher. We’ve also heard of Benedict Arnold’s treachery, and we know the difference between Whig and Tory.

The average person is willing to let their knowledge of history be informed solely by grade-school textbooks, or films like The Patriot. Those of us who have an interest in blogs like this one, on the other hand, thirst to know more ... to get the facts right. :-)

I shared already how a common reenactor myth sparked a story idea, then sent me in search of solid provenance for said story.  As I got deeper into the research, it took my breath away at how little I knew of the Revolution as a whole.

Like the fact that the whole second half of the war took place in the southern colonies.

Siege of Charleston display at the Charleston Museum

The war had gone as far as it could in the northern colonies—the British held New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, the major cities. The British cast their eye to the South—for the second time, since an attempt at taking Charleston had failed in 1776. (Much is made of that in Charleston colonial history, in fact, with barely a mention of later events.) This time the effort began with Savannah, Georgia, a lesser port than Charleston, but also an easier target. Savannah fell to the British in late 1779, and the British then turned their sights on Charleston, arguably the most important port and the richest city in the colonies. With a combined offensive on land and sea, the British caught Charleston in a pinch and held it under siege for nearly two long months, March-May 1780.

When the city fell, May 12, 1780, Lord Earl Cornwallis was left to implement the next stage of the "Southern strategy": push into the backcountry while holding Savannah and Charleston. A good part of the populace was believed to be loyalist, but not as many as the British counted on. Their initial plan to establish a network of outposts went smoothly enough at first, but then trouble flared in the backcountry of South Carolina in particular, around Camden, with what became known as the Presbyterian Rebellion. (The trouble was chiefly among the Scotch-Irish Protestant population.)

General Washington sent a force southward, headed by Horatio Gates, and in August 1780 the two armies met just north of Camden, in the wee hours of a moonlit night. Fighting broke out at dawn, and a hot battle turned into a complete rout of the Continental forces, many of them unseasoned militia. Gates was summarily fired after having fled ahead of his troops, and Continental commissary officer Nathanael Greene, a former Quaker, was assigned the task of regrouping the Continental forces and finding ways of making the militia function under fire.

Greene, it turned out, had a genius for logistics—literally, wearing out the British army. Rather than win the war by military might, or number of battles won, he employed a strategy of cutting off supply lines and making it untenable for the British to hold their various outposts.

The force that turned the tide of a war ...

The patriot militia and Continentals won a few of their battles, notably Kings Mountain in October 1780 (a huge surprise, for being mostly Overmountain men untrained in battle) and Cowpens in January 1781 (where Greene found a way to persuade the militia to stand in the face of fire). Others weren’t a dead loss but also not a clear-cut victory on either side, such as Hobkirk Hill in May 1780 (the second battle at Camden) and Eutaw Springs in September 1781. Some were a nightmarish, bloody ordeal on both sides, like Guilford Courthouse in March 1781. Cornwallis reached too far and subjected himself and his troops to an awful, bloody race through North Carolina in the spring of 1781, which after Guilford Courthouse led to the British army limping off to Wilmington, North Carolina, until a fresh press northward to Yorktown, Virginia. By the time October 1781 rolled around, all British troops had withdrawn from South Carolina outposts and were holed up in Charleston. The British cause in the colonies was pretty well finished, and Cornwallis had little choice at Yorktown but to surrender.

These two years comprised possibly the bloodiest and most brutal of the war. Greene is quoted as saying, “Nothing but blood and slaughter has prevailed among the Whigs and Tories, and their inveteracy against each other must, if it continues, depopulate this part of the country.” The Southern Campaign is, I believe, what earned the Revolution the nickname of America’s first civil war. Not much calm and reason here, but passion and fury and vengeance, neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother.

Links of interest:

North Carolina Digital History's War in the South
Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution

All photos mine.

Archaeology at Colonial Dorchester, South Carolina

Hard at work, hoping for some cool finds

So, I wrote last time about Colonial Dorchester State Park, the site of a star fort built during the French & Indian War and of a trading town located upriver from Charleston, on the Ashley River. This time I'll share some highlights from a homeschoolers' field trip our family attended quite a few years ago.

Sifting the dirt pulled from the digging site

Musket ball and belt buckle

The town surrounding Fort Dorchester was abandoned soon after the British's fiery withdrawal to Charles Towne back in 1781, and the name Dorchester was later co-opted for a town further north. Oddly enough, unlike most of the Charleston area, the site was never built over. In recent years, ownership of the lands changed from industrial to state parks, and the relatively pristine nature of the site makes for prime archaeological finds.

The staff working the site were friendly and enthusiastic about the kids helping with the dig. The process is fairly simple but methodical:  the choice of a plot, careful digging with small tools so as not to damage artifacts, sifting the buckets of dirt lifted from the individual plots through fine screens, then laying their finds out on trays for inspection.

I see ... artifacts!

Digging with the bell tower in the background

Our dig site was the town's former market square. The finds might include fragments of brick, fragments of iron from tools or gear, musket or rifle balls, clay pipe fragments, and pieces from pottery or porcelain dishes. Previous finds included shoe and belt buckles, weapons, and larger dishes and drinking vessels, such as the mostly intact tankard I mentioned in my previous post. (It was creamware pottery with GR--Georgius Rex, denoting the reign of King George--imprinted in clay on the side, only missing its handle.)

Moss-covered brick, all that remains of the town

Click on the various photos here to see our actual finds more closely. The blue tray displays items found by my oldest daughter and second-oldest son, while the ball and buckle on the left were found by one of the other children on our field trip. That beautiful fragment of porcelain is my favorite! There's also a piece of iron (not sure what that was from, maybe the bit from a horse's bridle or a tool?), broken glass, a section of clay pipe stem, and the ubiquitous fragments of brick.

Late April in Charleston is already bright and hot, as you can see by the scrunching of the kids' faces. Still, they were very into it, which was a good thing, since I was doing this vicariously through them. :-) (I still had littles to watch while the older ones played, er, dug in the dirt.)

I'm not sure whether the park still does this or not, but they used to have Saturday digs open to the public, with participation welcomed by any and all who care to come check it out. We'd always intended to go back for the digs but never made it on those days. Still, it remained a favorite place for quick family outings.

My daughter managed a few shots on one such trip, back in 2012, of the exposed house foundations open for viewing at the site. I'm always astonished at how small the rooms were in colonial homes. Of course, even the wealthy of that time owned far less "stuff" than we moderns.

Outlines of the house foundation, pictured above

I'm also struck by the contrast this beautiful, tranquil place must be to the bustling town that once was. I've itched to go back and participate in a dig for myself, to experience the thrill of unearthing those fragments of tangible history.

Photo credits: Breanna McNear

Carolina Rice Plantations - Part 1 by Elva Cobb Martin

Before the Revolutionary War, rice made the Low Country of South Carolina, and particularly, Charleston, the richest colonial town and area in America with twice the wealth of Philadelphia and New York. This was why the grain became known as Carolina Gold.

The above two statements piqued my interest and research, so last month, March, 2014, I reserved my place for the Annual Rice Plantation Tour sponsored by the Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church in Georgetown, South Carolina. This wonderful old church itself was established in 1721.

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I hope to share several blogs about this tour and the thirteen rice plantations and town houses we toured over two days. All of them have their own exciting stories to tell.

For background, Georgetown is the third oldest city in South Carolina, following Charleston and Beaufort, and is located at the mouth of five rivers which flow into the Atlantic. This made the area most conducive to rice growing and shipping. From Cape Fear, North Carolina, to St. Mary’s River, Georgia, several rivers had ocean tides of at least four feet needed for rice production. But for nearly 200 years this 300 mile coast land and rice production centered in the South Carolina Low Country, a land where waters mingle with the sea in a confused tangle of marshes, streams, and swamps.

My tour embodied a lot of the same, as it rained both days. But I decided the historical expedition must go on while the plantations were opened by their owners. Here are a couple of photos. Most of  my 212 photos were taken with my left hand holding an umbrella and my right hand snapping the camera. Ha!

More on these exciting plantations in future blogs!

Have you ever visited a rice plantation? Would love to read your comments.

Elva Cobb Martin is president of the South Carolina Chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers. She is a former school teacher and a graduate of Anderson University and Erskine College. Decision, Charisma, and Home Life have published her articles. She has completed two inspirational romances. In a Pirate’s Debt is being considered for representation. Summer of Deception is being considered by a publisher. A mother finally promoted to grandmother, Elva lives with her husband Dwayne and a mini-dachshund writing helper (Lucy) in Anderson, South Carolina. She and her husband are retired ministers. Connect with her on her web site www.elvamartin.com, her blog http://carolinaromancewithelvamartin.blogspot.com on Twitter @Elvacobbmartin and on Face book.

 

Colonial Dorchester, South Carolina

Colonial Dorchester—formerly known as Old Fort Dorchester—is a researcher’s dream. A practically untouched historic site, never built over in spite of burgeoning suburbs. A visitor can stand inside a church tower built in the 1750’s, read gravestones of folks whose descendents still live in the area (one of my daughter’s fellow ballet classmates), walk the perimeter of a fort held in turns by the British and American forces in the Revolution. View the exposed foundations of houses that haven’t been occupied in more than 200 years.

A cool, shady spot on the upper Ashley River, where it’s more a creek than a river. Once, however, it was a bustling town on the road from the backcountry to Charleston.

The Bell Tower of St. George's, Colonial Dorchester

Dorchester was founded in 1697 by Congregationalists as a sister town to Dorchester, Massachusetts. Unlike Childsbury, which had its primary purpose as a trading town, this one was specifically a missionary endeavor--a colonial church plant. The town’s own church was located up the road somewhat (the White Meeting House, named for the minister who supported their move), but in 1706 the Anglican church decided to flex her muscles and  build St. George’s right in the middle of town. In 1751 the bell tower was added, the only structure besides the fort still standing after the earthquakes the area has endured.

According to sources (page 1 of the same document is linked above), many of the town's inhabitants moved inland to Georgia in 1752-56, citing a growing population and the area’s unhealthiness. In addition to the intense heat, the town was located on a river between two creeks, so malaria was prevalent. At this point, say the sources, the history of this town ceases to be that of the original Congregationalist community, and becomes that of the trading town, the fort, and St. George Parish.

The tabby walls of Old Fort Dorchester, up close and personal

The fort is one of the best-preserved examples of something called “tabby”—walls made of mortar mixed with oyster shells. Built near the beginning of the French and Indian War, the four-cornered star-shaped fort has ties to Fort Loudon in Tennessee. This connection is what you’ll learn about if you visit during one of their Garrison Days, or the reenactment held in February or March.

F&I War event at Colonial Dorchester, Feb 2010

My family had the pleasure of attending their first such event a few years back. This shot, caught at just the right moment as the muskets were fired, has been one of my favorites—and then last week I ran across its mirror photo on this site: http://fortdorchester.org/ That’s my family, friends, and me in the audience at right. If you look closely at my photo, you can see the other photographer, kneeling on the other side of the reenactors.

Yes, this is the upper Ashley!

Before that, however, we became interested in the history of the site by attending an archaeology field trip. We learned that a wealth of artifacts can be found just a few inches down, because the site was never built over, as so many places are in the Lowcountry. The archaeologists working the site allowed our kids to dig and sift beside them, instructing them in the proper techniques.

Remains of old wharf on the Ashley River at Colonial Dorchester

Down the hill from the green (originally the market square in the original town plans) and the fort lies the spot where a bridge once spanned the river, connecting the road that runs past the plantations downriver (Middleton Place, Magnolia Plantation, Drayton Hall etc.). The fort changed hands a couple of times between the British and the Americans, and was occupied for a while by Francis Marion. General Nathanael Greene took it back for the last time in December 1781. At this point, the British burned the bridge and much of the town, and the site was soon abandoned.

These days, the site offers a beautiful—and inexpensive!—place to let one's family run. Recent archaeological work has led to the placement of several information plackards and a kiosk where some of the artifacts can be viewed, as well as a diorama of the original town as they know it.

More photos—not mine—can be viewed here at the Quarterman family website. All photos in this post are mine or my daughter Breanna's.

It's been a long time since this fort was guarded by a redcoat!

(Fun fact: during the time period portrayed by this event, the redcoats were the good guys!)

Charleston's Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon by Elva Cobb Martin

Today I want to share one of my favorite historic places to visit and photos I took while there. This was part of my research for a pirate novel I am polishing.

In 1718 Stede Bonnet “The Gentleman Pirate” and his crew were imprisoned in the Court of Guard prison which once stood on the site of the current Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a great place to visit located at 122 East Bay Street at Broad Street.

A brass plaque on the back wall of the current building attests to the fact the site was once the place of arms or guard-post of the early colonists of South Carolina and where pirates were detained.

Inside the museum area you can see a great 1711 plan and map of the Charles Town harbor as illustrated by Edward Crisp.

Between the 1690’s to the 1730’s ten to thirteen foot walls protected Charles Town, with the harbor being the most heavily fortified. Here, a brick seawall was defended with cannons to oversee the safety of the harbor. The half-moon battery, as semi-circular protrusion located at the center of this seawall provided the formal entrance to the town from the sea. A segment of this brick wall is visible to visitors to the lower level of the Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon today.

As Charles Town continued to grow and prosper the north, west and southern walls of the city were gradually demolished to allow for expansion of the city. The construction materials were eventually dumped into the Cooper River harbor to expand the land mass which now includes at least a block which used to be under water. The current Exchange Building marks a spot where the waters once came to.

Walls in the museum area depict information about Major Stede Bonnet (1717-1718) and list his crew members who also stood trial with him. Bonnet, once a planter in Barbados, became a pirate, it is said, to escape a nagging wife. With his ship Revenge he joined Blackbeard, and preyed upon coast wise shipping off the Carolinas. He was captured, tried and hanged in Charleston in 1718.

The museum area also boasts a number of paintings and photos of the American Revolution and the Civil War related to Charleston.

The Provost Dungeon, on the lower level of the Exchange building, is a sight you don't want to miss. One can well imagine the days of pirate prisoners and later patriots, during the American Revolution, who were kept in this cold, dark place.

Visitors step down into a real dungeon! With barred window slits which opened onto the street above, one can well imagine escape was impossible for pirates or patriots.

       

I love to visit places like this, but heavens to Betsy, I'm glad I was born in the current century. How about you? Thanks for stopping by.

Elva Cobb Martin is a freelance writer, Bible teacher and grandmother. She is president of the American Christian Fiction Writers new South Carolina Chapter. She has been published in Decision, Charisma, and Home Life and is currently polishing an inspirational romance novel. Elva lives in Anderson, South Carolina, with her husband and high school sweetheart, Dwayne. You can connect with her through her web site at www.elvamartin.com , her blog at   http://carolinaromancewithelvamartin.blogspot.com, on Face Book and Twitter @Elvacobbmartin.  

Strawberry Chapel and the Vanished Town of Childsbury

Front gates, Strawberry Chapel

It all started with a ghost story.

Of course, as a Christian, I don’t officially approve of ghost stories, and this was more the explanation behind a local legend than promulgating tall tales about the supernatural. The melodramatic story of a young girl tied to a gravestone by her vexed schoolmaster and left there overnight is still told around the Lowcountry. It's part of what awakened my curiosity about the Charleston area, and later, my love for the more obscure bits of local history.

Strawberry Chapel, side and rear

 The terrible event took place in the churchyard of Strawberry Chapel, located in rural Berkeley County, South Carolina, miles upriver from Charleston. Built in 1725, the church served as a “chapel of ease,” providing an accessible place of worship to planters and tradesmen downriver from St. John’s Biggin Church, where they were still required to attend services on high holy days. With the trees cleared, Strawberry Chapel would have overlooked the west branch of the Cooper River, but now stands nestled among oaks, screened from the river by thick brush. The adjoining grassy field was once the site of a flourishing trade town, named Childsbury for the English settler James Child, who granted the land and laid out the plans for the town in 1707. A plackard states that among other things, an open-air market and horse races were held here, back in the day. The town served as an important point of contact between native peoples and European settlers. A ferry docked at Strawberry Landing on the Cooper River and connected Childsbury with Charleston.

A school was also located here, attended by Catherine Chicken, the great-granddaughter of James Child, the seven-year-old heroine of the local legend. The most trustworthy accounts tell us that, yes, at the tender age of seven she was tied to one of the tombstones in the Strawberry Chapel churchyard by her schoolmaster for some infraction and left until after nightfall. One of the family’s servants discovered and rescued her, and the offending schoolmaster was run out of town, but the story gave rise to all sorts of embellishments and legends—one of which was that the girl died of fright and her ghost haunts the churchyard, still.

Strawberry Chapel, front

Not so, but the place has suffered under the constant stream of ghost hunters and thrill-seeking teens. During our first visit to Strawberry Chapel in 2006 during a family photography outing, I was shocked to see so many signs of vandalism. Box tombs open or cracked (nothing to see inside; the actual grave is below ground, but this is apparently a popular form of monument in historic Southern cemeteries), broken glass littering the place, especially around the curiously open, arched brick construction a few yards away from the church. But as my first study in original church buildings in the Charleston area, the place enthralled me.

The church itself is a small, white building, covered in weathered plaster, with a shingled jerkin-head roof. (See the photos for exactly what that means—the flattened corners at the “head” of the roof.) Like other historic places, it just smells old, and the churchyard is graced by crape myrtle, camellias, and several sprawling live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Walking through and reading headstones is always a lesson in local history, to me, and in this case just made me hungry to go search out the stories behind the names. No ghosts here, even in the obscure corner where a miniature version of the stars-and-bars decorated the grave of a Confederate veteran.

I later learned that the brick “cave,” pictured above, was not a crypt as we’d originally guessed, but a place to temporarily shelter a coffin in inclement weather. And on one visit, I discovered a peephole in the front door of the chapel, offering a view inside. Plain, dark wood pews and slate floors—and the sunlight slanting in through a window, bathing the sanctuary in a pool of light. The next time, however, the peephole was boarded over.

Over the years, I've noticed the addition of floodlights and surveillance cameras to the churchyard. Because of the worsening vandalism, the caretakers have felt the need to exclude casual visitors. Stories have surfaced of people being asked to leave by caretakers, and a friend’s brother was actually arrested for trespassing. Another friend and I visited one day but weren’t challenged—I hope because we were careful to treat the property with respect.

Despite its long standing as a historic site open to the public, most informational sites online now state that the chapel and churchyard are private property and trespassing will not be tolerated. I'm presuming that permission could be obtained to explore the site for research.

Sunset on the Cooper River

The Childsbury site, however, still welcomes visitors, offering the information kiosk next to a small parking lot and a mowed path down to the old dock. The view there is not to be missed—a particularly lovely section of the Cooper and its old adjoining rice fields. Off to the right, especially at low tide, the planks marking the old Strawberry Ferry landing can still be seen embedded in the mud.

Except for the chapel building, everything else is only a memory.

Playing in the field that was Childsbury

~~~~~~~~



My thanks to the photography talents of Kimberli Buffaloe, and my daughter Breanna McNear.

Interview with Shannon McNear by Carrie Fancett Pagels

Shannon McNear

What got you interested in the colonial time period?

Well, if a decade or two of breathing the air of Charleston, South Carolina, won’t do it ... :-) Seriously, what really fired my imagination was attending my first Revolutionary War reenactment in 2006, the 230^th anniversary of the Siege of Charleston. From that day, I was seriously hooked—and this in an area probably best known for Civil War history.

What inspired your latest colonial work?

Story after story of the conflict between Americans who fought for independence and those who chose loyalty to the king.

Do you have a favorite colonial place you like to visit and why?

Old Fort Dorchester State Park, now known as Colonial Dorchester. It’s one of the few local sites that hasn’t been built over, which means there’s a wealth of archaeological finds just twelve inches or so down. Also, since it’s one of the lesser-known area attractions, it tends to be quiet and peaceful—a great place I can let my family run and play. And I love the fort and church ruins, and the cemetery.

If you care to say, you can tell readers where you live and what colonial places you have in your state or your home state if different.

We live on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, and there are too many places to list! Seriously, Charleston was the busiest seaport on the southern coast during colonial times, possibly the richest. We have plantations, town homes, forts, churches (some ruined and some not), buildings of commerce, and old jails. Inland and upstate are battlefield sites in various states of upkeep (one is half under water now). Kings Mountain, which I wrote about in Defending Truth, is right up on the state line.

Do you have a favorite colonial recipe you enjoy and would like to share with readers?

Just one?? I suppose johnnycakes would be the obvious choice since they figure so prominently in Defending Truth.

Johnnycakes—or journeycakes—are essentially cornmeal pancakes. I can’t find serious provenance for the use of baking soda or powder before the early 1800’s, so the main leavening agent would have been eggs. Here’s the basic recipe as I recently tested it:

 Johnnycakes

2 cups cornmeal (stoneground is best, I grind my own with a Nutrimill, which makes the meal more “thirsty” than commercial, aged cornmeal)

½ tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ c. milk, more or less

Stir dry ingredients together, beat in eggs, then add milk to make a pourable batter. Fry like pancakes—best on a hot, oiled cast iron griddle—and drench in butter. :-) Or butter and syrup, or butter and jam.

This is a very flexible recipe. You can substitute flour for half the cornmeal, or change up the sugar for honey or molasses. Definitely don’t hesitate to adjust the amount of milk to make your batter the desired consistency—a thicker batter makes for a thicker cake. Also, make them a little smaller than you think you should, since they tend to be very filling.

Story overview/blurb

On the frontier of western North Carolina, which will someday become east Tennessee, Truth Bledsoe keeps her family fed while her father is away fighting the British. When she discovers a half-starved, fugitive Tory, she’s not above feeding him, but to go past simple Christian charity to forgiveness seems impossible. To love would be unthinkable.

Micah Elliot has fled capture after the massacre at King’s Mountain, heartsick, battle weary, and ashamed of the cowardice that sent him westward over the mountains instead of eastward to home. Groping his way through a crisis of faith, he must discover and embrace what might finally be worth laying down his life for.

Author bio

Shannon McNear has been writing one thing or another since third grade and finished her first novel at age fifteen—but it would be more than thirty years before she’d receive her first book contract. In the meantime, she graduated from high school, attended college, met and married her husband, birthed nine children, lost one, taught five to drive, revised that first story innumerable times, and completed six others.

Her writing experience includes former interview coordinator and review editor for Christian Fandom, founding contributor of Speculative Faith, and founding member of the Christian Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog Tour. She has also served as area coordinator, southeast zone director, and local chapter founder and president for American Christian Fiction Writers. She's an active member of ACFW, RWA, and My Book Therapy.

At the 2012 ACFW conference, to her shock and delight, she was awarded a first-time author contract from Barbour Publishing for her historical romance novella Defending Truth. It released September 2013 as part of A Pioneer Christmas Collection.

A Midwestern farm girl transplanted more than 20 years ago to Charleston, South Carolina, she loves losing herself in local history, especially the colonial era. When not homeschooling, sewing, researching, or leaking story from her fingertips, she finds joy in worship, women’s ministry, and encouraging whoever God brings across her path.