Old Charleston Originals by prolific local author Margaret Eastman revives stories from the Holy City's incredible past. Preserved within these pages are tales from the swashbuckling early settlers, tales of the exclusive events thrown by Jockey Club, and the rise and fall of the maritime empire of George Alfred Trenholm, considered the inspiration for the legendary blockade runner Rhett Butler. Discover what caused a near massacre in the state house, how two determined Charleston ladies stopped a bulldozer, why a plantation home to be floated down the Cooper River and many more stories from Charleston's past.

Old Charleston Originals by prolific local author Margaret Eastman revives stories from the Holy City's incredible past. Preserved within these pages are tales from the swashbuckling early settlers, tales of the exclusive events thrown by Jockey Club, and the rise and fall of the maritime empire of George Alfred Trenholm, considered the inspiration for the legendary blockade runner Rhett Butler. Discover what caused a near massacre in the state house, how two determined Charleston ladies stopped a bulldozer, why a plantation home to be floated down the Cooper River and many more stories from Charleston's past.

From the Lowcountry's first recorded duel to old-fashioned summers at the 'hottest spot in town", these pages will captivate you with stories of people, events and places that have all but vanished from memory. Find out the real history behind some of Charleston's beloved mansions and learn about the early plantations and their owners. Join the authors as they relate the riots and romance, the preservation and politics - and even a ghost story - from Charleston's hidden history.

Forgotten tales of Charleston's Civil War history have been collected into this new compendium for today's history lovers. In a city as old as Charleston, it's only natural for some stories to become less well-known over time, but the Palmetto State's history should never be forgotten entirely. Author Margaret Middleton Rivers Eastman recounts some of Charleston's amazing Civil War stories that have faded from memory, including the shady story of how an association of Charleston elites conspired to push South Carolina toward secession in 1860, and the Stone Fleet of old whaling ships that were sunk in Charleston Harbor in an attempt to choke out Confederate blockade runners, as well as a cast of real-life characters such as Amarinthia Yates Snowden, William Richard Catheart, and Tom Lockwood, just to name a few.

A series of semi-autobiographical sketches and stories detailing life in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s and ‘40s. Growing up in Charleston in the 1930s and 1940s, accomplished storyteller Louis Rubin witnessed the subtle gradations of caste and class among neighborhoods, from south of Broad Street where established families and traditional mores held sway, to the various enclaves of Uptown, in which middle-class and blue-collar families went about their own diverse lives and routines. In Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston, Rubin draws on autobiography and imagination in briskly paced renderings of his native Charleston that capture the atmosphere of the Holy City during an era when the population had not yet swelled above sixty-five thousand. Rubin’s wide-eyed narrator takes readers on excursions to Adger’s Wharf, the Battery, Union Terminal, the shops of King Street, the Majestic Theater, the College of Charleston, and other recognizable landmarks. With youthful glee he watches the barges and shrimp trawlers along the waterfront, rides streetcars down Rutledge Avenue and trains to Savannah and Richmond, paddles the Ashley River in a leaky homemade boat, pitches left-handed for the youngest team in the Twilight Baseball League, ponders the curious chanting coming from the Jewish Community Center, and catches magical glimpses of the Morris Island lighthouse from atop the Folly Beach Ferris wheel. His fascination with the gas-electric Boll Weevil train epitomizes his appreciation for the freedom of movement between the worlds of Uptown and Downtown that defines his youth in Charleston. This collection ends with a homecoming to Charleston by our narrator, then a young man in his early twenties, as his inbound train is greeted by familiar vistas of the city as well as by views he had never encountered before. This is the city Rubin called home, where there were always surprising discoveries to be found both in the burgeoning newness of Uptown and the storied legacies of Downtown. “Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston is about a city in some ways larger that the state in which it resides. The book is also about memory and boyhood and baseball and boats and trains and family—and it packs a great wallop because it’s written by one of the country’s finest writers. These nine stories are among the best nine innings of history you’ll ever read.” —Clyde Edgerton “Louis Rubin brings the city to life with his insider guide to a secret Charleston too often overlooked in the carriage tours and guidebooks of today. Rubin allows you to enter the soul of the real Charleston, revealing its essence and depth. A wonderful, necessary book.” —Pat Conroy, author of South of Broad

An intimate tour of some of the finest historic homes, gardens, churches, and plantations of the old city of Charleston and its surrounding Lowcountry

A collection of fantastical and macabre Gullah-inspired folklore that illuminates African-American life in nineteenth-century South Carolina. You ask for a story. I will tell you one, fact for fact and true for true. . . . So begins “Crook-Neck Dick,” one of twenty-three stories in this beguiling collection of Charleston lore. John Bennett’s interpretations of the legends shared with him by African-descended Charlestonians have entertained generations. Among them are tales of ghosts, conjuring, superhuman feats, and supernatural powers; accounts of ingenuity, humor, terror, mystery, and solidarity will enchant folklorists, students of Charleston history, and all those who love a good ghost story. Julia Eichelberger, the Marybelle Higgins Howe Professor of Southern Literature and an executive board member of the Center for Study of Slavery at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, provides an introduction. “A collection of folk story, myth, drolleries, macabre unreason . . . old tales of death, mystery, bizarre incredibilities, diabolic influence, demanding ghosts, buried treasure, enchantments, miracles, visitations, and the dead that are not dead.” —Kirkus Reviews