The Low Country

This past week found us in the South Carolina Low Country. Low Country is a term used to describe the state's coastal counties, generally south of and including, Charleston and stretches to Savannah, Georgia. The region contains its share of culture and history. Notable is the Gullah influence (more on that in a bit) and the early European Settlements with their Southern Hospitality and charm.

Boone Hall, a southern Icon – While visiting Charleston we wanted to experience a famous southern plantation so we visited the Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens. It is an antebellum cotton plantation located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina near Charleston. The plantation includes a large post-civil war farmhouse, a number of original slave cabins (which were occupied by sharecroppers well into the 20th century), several flowering gardens, and the historic "Avenue of Oaks": a mile drive up the house with live oaks on either side. The earliest know existence of the ground is 1681. It originated from a land grant given to Major John Boone. On the grounds today, besides the house, sit nine of the original slave cabins, a smoke house dating back to 1790, the Cotton Gin house (1853) and the grand Avenue of Oaks that was created in 1843 and runs 3/4 of a mile long from the entrance to the front house gates. While they would not allow photographing or filming of the house on the tours, the house and grounds have appeared in the mini-series North and South and the movies Queen, Scarlett, and most recently, The Notebook. The Avenue of Oaks was used in the filming of Gone with the Wind.

The Gullah - De buckruh dey dey duh wait fuh we. (translation: "The white men are there waiting for us."). One of the best performances provided at the plantation was a demonstration of slave life by a Gullah woman. She told stories, showed how rice was processed and sang beautiful Gullah songs. The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Low Country region of South Carolina and Georgia. Historically, the Gullah region once extended north to the Cape Fear area on the coast of North Carolina and south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on the coast of Florida; but today the Gullah area is confined to the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country. The Gullah are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. The Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Bahamian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, foodways, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, etc. all exhibit strong influences from African cultures.

Bonaventure Cemetery - while in Savannah we visited the Bonaventure Cemetery which overlooks the Wilmington River and is filled with grand old trees covered in Spanish moss and beautiful statues and tombs dedicated to the memories of some of Savannah's most notable citizens. Kinda creepy but fun just same, fortunately it was a sunny day. It is located on the site of a plantation once owned by John Mullryne. The Plantation was converted to a cemetery in 1868. Later the cemetery was made famous after John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was published (1994). The book, and then the movie of the same title by Clint Eastwood (1997), propelled Savannah and the Bonaventure Cemetery into the spotlight and made the city a major tourist destination.

Road Revelation #20 – If you have to visit old cemeteries, do so on a sunny day. We did not read about the Bonaventure cemetery until after our visit but the rumors of murder, voodoo and haunting ghosts would have made the visit even creepier. To go there at night would be just short of heroic I think.