Tales from Brookgreen Read online

  TALES FROM BROOKGREEN

  Folklore,

  Ghost Stories,

  and

  Gullah Folktales

  in the

  South Carolina Lowcountry

  by

  Lynn Michelsohn

  Published by Cleanan Press, Inc.

  Roswell, New Mexico USA

  Copyright © 2009 Lynn Michelsohn

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction: The Hostesses of Brookgreen Gardens

  Chapter 1. The Mistress of Brookgreen

  Chapter 2. Don’t Tief

  Historical Digression: The Methodist Mission to the Slaves

  Chapter 3. The White Lady of the Hermitage

  Chapter 4. Ghost Ships

  Historical Digression: Confederate Trade Routes

  Chapter 5. Brother Gator and His Friends

  Chapter 6. Crab Boy’s Ghost

  Chapter 7. The Wachesaw Ghosts

  Chapter 8. The Great Sandy Island Expedition

  Historical Digression: The Gullah Language

  Historical Digression: Phillip Washington

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Extended Copyright

  BONUS FEATURES

  Bonus Story: Cousin Allard’s Raft

  An Interview with the Author

  Book Discussion Guide

  Additional Lowcountry Books

  Other Books by Lynn Michelsohn

  Brookgreen Gardens

  Between Charleton and Myrtle Beanch on the South Carolina coast

  Introduction: The Hostesses of Brookgreen Gardens

  One of my greatest treats as a child was to spend the day with Cousin Corrie at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. It was here in the warm Carolina Lowcountry that Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington had created the first American sculpture garden among the ancient moss-draped live oak trees of four historic rice plantations: Brookgreen, Springfield, Laurel Hill, and The Oaks.

  In those simpler days, visitors to Brookgreen Gardens turned off the narrow pavement of Highway 17, the King’s Highway, onto two parallel ribbons of concrete spaced far enough apart to support the wheels of a car. Visitors drove slowly along those concrete ribbons through the wooded deer park and past the island of Youth Taming the Wild to a sandy parking lot near the Diana Pool. There they left their cars in as shady a spot as possible and entered the Gardens on foot, with no admission fee or gatekeeper.

  After a leisurely stroll through the Live Oak Allee, with perhaps a detour into the Palmetto Garden, a peek inside the Old Kitchen, and a dip of the fingers into the cool water of the Alligator Bender Pool, visitors arrived at the low wide porch of a simple gray-brick building. This structure had once housed the overseer when Brookgreen was a thriving rice plantation. Now it served as the Museum and the entranceway to two open-air galleries for small sculpture. Inside the Museum, steady sounds of splashing water from the Frog Baby Fountain in the first gallery created a feeling of sanctuary from summer heat that grew oppressive by mid-morning in the Lowcountry.

  This Museum was the Visitors’ Center of its day. Here two “sixty-ish” Southern ladies in sturdy shoes welcomed visitors. These two Hostesses were the only staff in evidence throughout the Gardens, other than the occasional groundskeeper trimming ivy. In the cool dim interior of the Museum, Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie sold postcards, gave directions, and told stories to visitors interested enough to ask questions about the Gardens.

  Boxy glass display cases formed a counter along the front wall of the Museum. Mostly, these cases held stacks of picture postcards. Black-and-white cards sold for five cents, sepia cards for ten cents, and colored cards for twenty-five cents each. Books and pamphlets about the Gardens were also available. Intermixed with this literature stood other items, not for sale, that stimulated frequent questions and often led to Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie’s stories.

  Cousin Corrie, my first cousin one generation removed, was born Cornelia Sarvis Dusenbury in 1888 as her home state of South Carolina emerged from the chaos of Reconstruction. She spent much of her childhood at Murrells Inlet on the Carolina coast and then worked for many years as a schoolteacher and librarian in Florence, South Carolina. In retirement, Cousin Corrie returned to Murrells Inlet and joined Genevieve Wilcox Chandler, a writer, artist, and local historian, to become a Hostess at Brookgreen Gardens.

  Miss Genevieve was just a bit younger than Cousin Corrie. She had come to Murrells Inlet with her family from Marion, South Carolina but stayed, married, and raised five children here. She often supported them by writing articles on local subjects after the early death of her husband. When the Huntingtons created Brookgreen Gardens, they asked Miss Genevieve to become its Hostess.

  During my visits to Brookgreen Gardens, Cousin Corrie and Miss Genevieve (as I called her, using the traditional Southern form of address for a grown-up family friend) let me help them with their hostess duties, much to my delight. I also enjoyed playing hide-and-seek among sun-dappled sculptures and looking for painted river turtles sleeping on logs that floated in the old rice field swamps. I loved darting from the shelter of one live oak canopy to the next during summer showers. I especially thrilled at wading in out-of-the-way sculpture pools when no one was looking. But my very favorite activity was listening to Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie tell stories of Brookgreen and the Carolina Lowcountry to spellbound Garden visitors, me included.

  Each Hostess had her own distinct repertoire. One never encroached on the other’s territory. “Now you will have to ask Mrs. Chandler about that,” or “Miss Dusenbury can tell you that story,” were common responses to visitors’ queries. If one or the other of the ladies were absent that day, then the unlucky visitor left without hearing her special tales.

  Miss Genevieve tended to cover historical figures and folktales. She had collected local stories for “Mr. Roosevelt” and the 1930s WPA. Cousin Corrie focused on hurricanes, family tales, and accounts of Confederate and Yankee conflicts on the Carolina coast. Her stories related more to her own personal experiences. Of course each had her own unique collection of ghost stories.

  I heard some of these stories repeated to countless visitors. The tale of the haunted Wachesaw beads was a frequent favorite. Other stories I only heard once or twice and remember only in snippets, although I have often been able to fill in gaps from other sources. All these stories excited my interest in the historical figures and everyday people who came here before us to the broad rice fields and wooded uplands that became Brookgreen Gardens.

  These are stories Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie told, as best I remember them. In my mind, these tales weave themselves together with swaying Spanish moss, sparkling splashing fountains, and winding gray-brick latticework of Brookgreen Gardens to create visions of a timeless spirit forever living in the heart of the Carolina Lowcountry.

  Chapter 1. The Mistress of Brookgreen

  (Rachel Moore Allston Flagg’s romantic and adventurous history)

  Miss Genevieve always liked to tell visitors about the famous American painter, Washington Allston, called “the American Titian” and “the first great American Romantic painter,” who was born at Brookgreen Plantation during the American Revolution. I much preferred her stories about his mother, Rachel, whose long, dramatic, and often romantic life stirred my young imagination.

  “Plantations that became Brookgreen Gardens”

  Rain and wind increased steadily throughout the afternoon and evening along the Carolina coast that fall day in the year 1778. Wealthy Waccamaw Neck rice planter Gentleman Billy Allston and his young wife Rachel had been enjoying their summer on Allston Island but when the weather began to worsen they
grew apprehensive. A storm was coming. Horrible September storms sometimes ravaged the Carolina coast. Should they flee inland or brave the gale?

  Gentleman Billy and Rachel decided to remain at their summerhouse on the beach that night and luck was with them. The next morning dawned bright and sunny, although debris carried ashore by the still crashing waves told of a shipwreck off the coast. Servants sent to search along the strand found one lone survivor among the disarray of wreckage. As they carried the exhausted man to the nearby Allston beach house, Rachel came out onto the front porch to meet the rescue party. Was the poor man badly injured? She bent over the battered figure gently, then cried out sharply and swooned to the floor! Fearful servants rushed to revive their young mistress, as she was in a delicate condition. Gradually, as she regained her composure, an amazing story emerged.

  ~

  Rachel had been born in the middle of the 1700s on a rice plantation a little north of Charleston, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Vander Horst Moore. They raised her to marry well and within her own social circle, like any other daughter of a wealthy rice planter. She learned to read, write, and understand the simple arithmetic needed to manage a plantation household. She dutifully studied the Church of England’s catechism, as well as her obligations to God, King, and family, as she attended services in the small brick church of St. Thomas and St. Denis Parish. Most importantly however, she learned to dance prettily and speak entertainingly of music and the arts as her family spent evenings entertaining other aristocratic rice planter families. Yet Rachel also developed a remarkably independent spirit, unusual for a woman living in those times when a lady was expected to make charming conversation and smile sweetly in submission to the wishes of first her father and then her husband.

  In addition to managing his plantation, Rachel’s father carried on a successful mercantile business in Charleston and kept a house there. Every year he brought his family to town for the winter social season. It was there that Rachel became engaged to a wealthy and socially prominent young man of Charleston’s French Huguenot Neufville family when she was just sixteen years old. Both families blessed the match. However, the wonderful and amazing thing about this engagement, and something that was also unusual for those times, was that these two young people were actually in love with each other! Yet both were still young, and marriage would take place only after Mr. Neufville completed his education in Europe, as was the custom for aristocratic young men of the Lowcountry.

  Rachel always enjoyed the social festivities in Charleston but her pleasure in them increased with her engagement. The whirl of parties and balls was exciting for the young couple but the shadow of Mr. Neufville’s upcoming departure clouded their happiness. Life was never certain in those times of sudden fevers and stormy seas.

  At last the day came when they had to part. Mr. Neufville sailed for Europe and Rachel returned to her family plantation. During the first months of their separation Rachel and her fiancé corresponded regularly in letters filled with promises of undying love. Then his letters ceased. Rachel was at first bewildered and then became anxious. At last came the feared reports of Mr. Neufville’s death in a duel in far-off France.

  Rachel mourned for many months. Even when new suitors began to present themselves to the charming and wealthy young lady, she could think of little but her lost love. She rejected all who courted her. At first Rachel’s family was understanding but then they became impatient and began pressing her to select one of these eligible young men as her husband. Finally, when an extremely wealthy rice planter from that strip of land in South Carolina between the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic Ocean, called the Waccamaw Neck, approached her, she bowed to family pressure and accepted his proposal of marriage. In January 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, Rachel married William Allston, a widower with two young children.

  Like most rice planters, “Gentleman Billy,” as Mr. Allston was often called, owned a house in Charleston where he spent the January and February social season. Most of the year he lived on the Waccamaw Neck as the proprietor of Brookgreen and Springfield Plantations, both of which later became part of Brookgreen Gardens. Each had hundreds of acres of rice lands and hundreds of slaves to tend crops.

  Rachel and her new husband made their home at Brookgreen Plantation, named for holdings of the Allston ancestors in England. Heading home after the wedding, the newlyweds took a coastal schooner from Charleston to Georgetown. After crossing Winyah Bay on the ferry to the Waccamaw Neck they elected the land route from there on, their carriage following the narrow King’s Highway. About halfway up the Neck they turned off the sandy trail approximately where we do today for Brookgreen Gardens. Soon they entered a lovely avenue bordered by live oaks that Gentleman Billy had created as the final portion of the carriage road leading to his plantation home. Of course, the giant oaks we see today in the Live Oak Allee of Brookgreen Gardens would have been mere saplings in that era.

  At the end of the avenue the large but simple plantation mansion built of heart pine and cypress appeared among lush shrubbery, where today the Alligator Bender Pool stands. A formal boxwood garden framed the front entrance to the mansion. A broad path behind the mansion led down brick steps to miles of rice islands among the swamps and to the boat dock on a small tidal creek that provided access to the Waccamaw River, the real highway for travel throughout the Lowcountry. Outbuildings circled the barnyard off through the trees in one direction. In the other direction, small cabins for numerous field workers and house servants lined the Street, as that area of slave quarters was called.

  Gentleman Billy spent his days at Brookgreen directing the operations of his vast rice empire. He made decisions about financing, planting, harvesting, and selling the crop, as well as handling other administrative matters, while his overseers and drivers directed day-to-day activities on the plantations.

  Rachel’s marriage had brought her a large household to manage. She took over these duties with enthusiasm, supervising preparation of food for storage as well as day-to-day preparation of meals, work that took place in the separate kitchen building still standing today at Brookgreen Gardens. She also supervised, and sometimes assisted with, making clothing for the workers from cloth spun and woven on the plantation, and making garments for her own family from finer material purchased from Charleston importers. Nursing, gardening, child rearing, and early education were also usual duties of the plantation mistress. Of course, when friends, relatives, or dignitaries occasionally visited, Rachel made a lively and charming hostess. During the first years of her marriage she developed into one of the most gracious hostesses on the Waccamaw Neck.

  Sundays were devoted to religious activities. The family, accompanied by favored servants, often attended morning worship at the official Church of England All Saints Parish Church, just a few miles south of Brookgreen Plantation. They spent the remainder of the day in rest, religious study, or other quiet activities suitable to the Sabbath.

  Rachel and Gentleman Billy were happy together, although their relationship was described as more respectful than passionate. Rachel mothered William’s young children as her own. One wonders however, how often her thoughts might have strayed to Mr. Neufville, her first love.

  Each year the Allston family spent the midwinter social season at their house in Charleston. There Rachel had the opportunity to renew her friendships, visit with relatives, and rejoin the social whirl. Gentleman Billy devoted a great deal of his time to both political discussion and horse racing activities. The Allston family still owns a silver bowl, beautifully engraved by Paul Revere, won by one of Gentleman Billy’s racehorses during the Charleston race meets.

  Each February at the close of the Charleston social season, Rachel and Gentleman Billy returned to Brookgreen Plantation. They remained here until warming weather signaled the need to leave the rice lands for a healthier location. Some planter families maintained homes in the cool mountains but Gentleman Billy built a summerhouse high in the dunes
toward the northern end of their own barrier island just across the King’s Highway from the main body of Brookgreen Plantation. This area was known then as Allston Island and later called Theaville, then Magnolia Beach. Today it is known as Huntington Beach.

  Each year in late spring Rachel would supervise the move of her household from the plantation mansion to the summerhouse, only a few miles away. Servants packed clothing, mattresses, bedding, sewing materials, and medicines from the upstairs; cooking utensils, pots, pans, and washing equipment from the kitchen; china, glassware, linens, and silverware from the dining room; food, wine, and liquors from the cellars; books, papers, pens, and inks from the library; musical instruments, toys, and games from the drawing room; and hunting and fishing gear from the storage room. They transported everything they needed for several months by wagon to the seashore.

  At the beach, life continued on as usual in the Allston household throughout the summer and early fall, although the manner was slightly less formal. The close distance allowed them easy access to the main part of the plantation. Gentleman Billy was able to ride over to the rice fields during the day to check on the progress of the crops and to attend to other business when necessary. He could still return to the beach to escape the deadly “malarias” that arose from the swamps every evening.

  Fresh fish, crabs, and shrimp were readily available on Allston Island. Fresh vegetables arrived regularly from plantation gardens. Sea breezes were wonderfully cooling, and while sea bathing was not yet in vogue, long strolls along the strand provided delightful entertainment, as did watching the never ceasing waves and the soaring diving shore birds. It was only in the fall that sea breezes turned into worrisome gales that sometimes devastated the coast.

  And this September, there on Allston Island, one of these storms had brought Rachel something unimaginable! Mr. Neufville lay at her feet. Was this a ghost? Or had her long lost fiancé returned from the dead? Mr. Neufville had certainly come back to Rachel, but too late. She was now the Mistress of William Allston’s Brookgreen Plantation, and she was expecting his child.