North Island has always been the beacon from the sea leading toward Georgetown, South Carolina. It was an island of exploration for the Spanish in 1526 and the first landing place of Lafayette, France's hero of the American Revolution, in 1777. It was a summer resort for aristocratic rice planters and their slaves from Georgetown and Waccamaw Neck until 1861. North Island's lighthouse, built in 1812, led thousands of sailing ships from all over the world past massive stone jetties and through Winyah Bay to Georgetown. Today, North Island is a sanctuary and laboratory for the study of nature's effects on this unique barrier island. Join historian Robert McAlister as he recounts the island's storied past.

North Island has always been the beacon from the sea leading toward Georgetown, South Carolina. It was an island of exploration for the Spanish in 1526 and the first landing place of Lafayette, France's hero of the American Revolution, in 1777. It was a summer resort for aristocratic rice planters and their slaves from Georgetown and Waccamaw Neck until 1861. North Island's lighthouse, built in 1812, led thousands of sailing ships from all over the world past massive stone jetties and through Winyah Bay to Georgetown. Today, North Island is a sanctuary and laboratory for the study of nature's effects on this unique barrier island. Join historian Robert McAlister as he recounts the island's storied past.

The history of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, can be summed up in four words: rice, sea, golf, and hammocks. The rivers threading through coastal South Carolina created an ideal environment for cultivating rice, and by the mid-18th century, vast plantations were producing profitable crops and wealthy landowners. But those plantations also produced malaria-carrying mosquitoes, so the landowners sent their families to the seashore for the summer and built the first houses on Pawleys Island starting in 1822. The end of slavery doomed the rice culture, and the old plantations were sold to rich Northerners for hunting and fishing retreats. By the 1960s, many of the old plantations were turned into golf courses, reviving the economy. But the beating heart of Pawleys Island remains the rhythm of the sea and what one early visitor called "the only beach in the world."

When eight English noblemen known as the Lords Proprietors were granted the Charles Towne territory by King Charles II as a reward for their loyalty, the grant came with an express command to develop the area into a profit-making venture. Fortunately, the area came with a natural deep-water port, perfect for establishing trade. Soon trade in lumber, deerskins, and indigo established Charles Towne's wealth and prosperity, and the invention of the cotton gin and improvements in the rice crop cultivation helped boost the area's economy. By 1750, Charleston was the fourth largest city in colonial America--and the wealthiest, thanks in part to additional trade through Georgetown and Port Royal.

Georgetown and the Waccamaw Neck in South Carolina are steeped in historic and folkloric literature, reflective of the area's rich cultural past. This volume brings that treasury to bear in a collection of vintage postcards from the region compiled for the first time. You will see how the area's aristocratic past ties to present-day Georgetown and the nearby resorts of Pawleys Island and Murrells Inlet and the renowned Brookgreen Gardens. Also included are nostalgic views of life on plantations along the Santee Rivers, which relied upon Georgetown for economic trade, then and now. The communities depicted in this book were among America's wealthiest 150 years ago. That legacy is still seen in architectural remnants-plantations, churches, and town houses now restored to their former grandeur.

Take the Exorcist Steps to meet “the diverse array of ghosts” in DC’s historic neighborhood—from the author of Capitol Hill Haunts (The Hoya). On the banks of the Potomac River, Georgetown has had three centuries to accumulate ghoulish tales and venerable apparitions to haunt its cobbled streets and mansions. In this historic Washington, DC, neighborhood, the eerie moans of three sisters herald every death on the river, and on R Street, President Lincoln is rumored to have witnessed the paranormal at a seance. Along the towpath of the C&O Canal, a phantom police officer still walks his lonely beat, and on moonlit nights, he is joined by a razor-wielding ghoul. From the spirit of a sea captain who lingers in the Old Stone House to the strange ambiance of the Exorcist Steps, author and guide Tim Krepp takes readers on a chilling journey through the ghostly lore of Georgetown. Includes photos! “A great storyteller who, with a confident grasp of the facts and judiciously inserted asides, can bring to life both the haunters and the haunted. His way of ending his chapters with—gasp!—the literary equivalent of a horror movie organ chord lends a delightfully chilling touch.” —HillRag

Born at sea on his father's whaling ship in 1861, Captain Abram Jones Slocum learned the seafaring life in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as part of the last generation of iron men aboard commercial wooden sailing ships in the Atlantic. His voyages often took him around Cape Hatteras to Georgetown, South Carolina, to load lumber bound for northern cities. He sailed in all seasons, through storms and hurricanes, for twenty years as captain of two schooners, the Warren B. Potter and the City of Georgetown. He was respected in Georgetown, where he wooed his wife. His ship sank in a collision with an ocean liner in 1913, but he survived, only to be lost at sea a year later as captain of another schooner. Local author and wooden boat enthusiast Robert McAlister recounts Slocum's epic life through the end of the Age of Sail.