Episodes

  • Episode 296: Charleston Common: A Brief History of A Fractured Landscape

    Episode 296: Charleston Common: A Brief History of A Fractured Landscape
    Nov 8 2024
    The place-name “Charleston Common” applies to a large swath of land reserved for public use since 1735. Conscious that the provincial capital lacked a traditional English common, South Carolina’s colonial government designated approximately eighty-five acres abutting the Ashley River for the perpetual use of all inhabitants. Municipal leaders violated that trust through a series of questionable sales, however, leaving just fifteen acres of the forgotten common at three sites now identified as Colonial Lake, Moultrie Playground, and Horse Lot Park.
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    31 mins
  • Episode 295: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 4

    Episode 295: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 4
    Oct 25 2024
    The trial of Hispanic carpenter Joseph Lortia, accused of confederating with pirates aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora, unfolded through a series of episodes within South Carolina’s executive Council Chamber in July 1734. Conflicting testimony from the survivors recounted Lortia’s odd behavior at sea and challenged Anglo-American judges to determine the measure of his guilt. After settling the carpenter’s fate in court, Governor Robert Johnson restored the vessel’s remaining treasure to the widowed Doña Petrona de Castro, who sailed from Charleston with her newborn child.
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    36 mins
  • Episode 294: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 3

    Episode 294: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 3
    Oct 18 2024
    The young Cuban widow, Doña Petrona de Castro, suffered in the shadows during the first half of this story, but moved to center stage after the bloodied vessel Nuestra Señora docked in Charleston. When her disheveled treasure came ashore in late June 1734, the pregnant lady’s plight attracted the personal attention of South Carolina’s respected royal governor. Under his personal supervision, members of the provincial government secured the señora’s private property and initiated steps designed to render solace to their distressed Hispanic guest.
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    26 mins
  • Episode 293: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 2

    Episode 293: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 2
    Oct 11 2024
    The terrified survivors of a murderous mutiny aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora sailed from the Bahamas under the command of a hired English pilot in mid-June 1734. They sought to return to Havana with no questions asked, but the crew’s curious behavior alerted the new captain to mortal danger ahead. A secret pact forged in desperation spawned a violent counter-mutiny that spilled more blood and further depleted the crew, forcing the weakened schooner to make an emergency detour to the British port of Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina.
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    25 mins
  • Episode 292: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 1

    Episode 292: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 1
    Oct 4 2024
    An affluent Cuban merchant and his young pregnant wife set sail from Havana in May 1734 on a peaceful voyage to Hispaniola aboard their private schooner, but a piratical mutiny at sea claimed many lives and set the vessel adrift. Aided by a passing Bahamian mariner, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion came to Charleston in distress and gained protection from local authorities. Interviews with the survivors sparked a formal trial that imposed British law on foreign visitors and delivered resolution to a grieving Hispanic widow and her newborn daughter.
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    28 mins
  • Episode 291: Line Street: Vestige of the War of 1812

    Episode 291: Line Street: Vestige of the War of 1812
    Sep 20 2024
    Line Street isn’t the most glamorous thoroughfare in the City of Charleston, but it recalls a significant episode in the community’s history. During the darkest days of the War of 1812 with Britain, thousands of men and women—both enslaved and free—rushed to construct a zigzag line of fortifications across the peninsula between the rivers Ashley and Cooper to protect the city against the threat of hostile invasion. The peace of 1815 rendered their work superfluous, but the erasure of the “lines” after the Demark Vesey Affair of 1822 left a permanent record of the war on the urban landscape.
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    37 mins
  • Episode 290: Charleston’s Suburban Racecourse and Slave Auction Site

    Episode 290: Charleston’s Suburban Racecourse and Slave Auction Site
    Sep 6 2024
    Just beyond the boundaries of urban Charleston, a hundred-acre pasture straddling modern Meeting Street hosted a variety of public events during the second half of the eighteenth century. Crowds flocked to Newmarket, as the site was called, to toll their livestock, to watch racehorses traverse a one-mile oval, to witness the auction of large gangs of enslaved people, and to see Native American visitors camping beyond the pale of South Carolina’s colonial capital. In this episode of the Charleston Time Machine, we’ll explore the tangled history of one of the community’s earliest and least-remembered suburbs.
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    33 mins
  • Episode 289: Policing Rural Charleston, from Colonial Posse to County Sheriff

    Episode 289: Policing Rural Charleston, from Colonial Posse to County Sheriff
    Aug 16 2024
    From the dawn of the Carolina Colony to the early twentieth century, residents of rural Charleston County enjoyed no police protection beyond their own vigilance. Ancient customs, imported from England and transformed by the institution of slavery, obliged free men to patrol their own neighborhoods on horseback, apprehend lawbreakers, and deliver them to justice. A paid rural police force gradually emerged in the early 1900s, fostered by the proliferation of automobiles, and eventually led to the creation of the modern Sheriff’s Department in 1991.
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    27 mins