I’m still in South Carolina but this week, we’re exploring a different part of the Sea Islands that edge the state’s shore.

I’ve mentioned before that every summer, my in-laws invite us to join them for a week at Folly Beach. Folly Island is located in front of James and John Islands. We drive through James Island to get to Folly Beach and located on the main road is James Island Presbyterian Church (JIPC).

It wasn’t until last summer that I explored the cemetery (or rather cemeteries) in front of JIPC. I didn’t know I’d be encountering the grave of the man who inspired one of Gershwin’s most famous musicals.

James Island Presbyterian Church was founded sometime around 1706 by the Rev. Archibald Stobo (who came to America from Darien, Scotland in 1699) with land donated by hatmaker Johnathan Drake. The first church building was erected in 1724 but it burned down during the Revolutionary War period.

The second building also burned down, supposedly due to an accidental fire during the Civil War, and was replaced by a simple wooden building. That’s when it earned the name “the Burned Church”. This third building was torn down and the current Gothic Revival structure built in 1910, with an addition put on in the 1950s.

JIPC actually has two cemeteries separated by a line of azalea bushes. The larger cemetery (in terms of space) closest to the road is the cemetery that was dedicated to black burials when slaves were members of the church. In 1853, over 200 of the church’s membership was black. In fact, James Island was predominantly black until after the turn of the century with about 150 whites and over 4,000 African-Americans in 1914.

After the Civil War, freed blacks built their own church nearby but continued to bury their loves ones at what is sometimes referred to as the “Burn Church Cemetery” at JIPC. I saw burials as recent as the 2000s so it is still an active cemetery.

On the other side of the hedge is the official JIPC cemetery, which was for white members in the church’s earlier days but is now open to all members of any race. I’ll get to that side of the azalea hedge next week.

One of the very first stones I saw in the Burn Church Cemetery was fairly new from 1986, erected for an impoverished man who died in 1924. His name was Samuel Smalls but he was better known as “Goat” or “Goat Cart Smalls” because he got around Charleston in a goat-drawn cart due to his physical disabilities. It’s said he sold peanut cakes from his cart. Smalls was known to hang out at a gambling spot on Charleston Neck called the Bull Pen, where he shot craps while his goat faithful waited outside.

Playwright DuBose Heyward read about Smalls in a News & Courier article recounting Smalls’ arrest after he’d tried to shoot a woman. The police caught Smalls after he and his goat led them on a chase down several alleys. This article is said to have inspired Heyward to base the character of Porgy on Smalls in his novel “Porgy and Bess” that was published after Smalls died in 1925.

DuBose and his wife, Dorothy, turned his novel into a play that debuted in 1928 at the Guild Theater in New York with an all African-American cast. But it was George Gershwin’s musical based on Heyward’s novel that debuted in Boston in 1935 that truly got the world’s attention. I learned that after two attempts to desegregate the Dock Street Theater, the opera would not be performed in Charleston until 1970.

Smalls, who was born on James Island, was buried in an unmarked grave at the Burn Church Cemetery. It wasn’t until 1986 that a marker was made and placed in his honor. It is close to the edge of the JIPC parking lot and easy to find.

As I’ve found in a number of African-American cemeteries, the markers at Burn Church Cemetery encompass a mix of styles. The older slave graves are not marked, the wooden crosses used decades ago long since gone. But you can see some other marker styles and epitaphs unique to this cemetery. I also discovered dates that often didn’t match death certificates.

The marker for Henry Graham is a good example of the rustic styles I saw. Born in 1884 on James Island to Ben Graham and Susan Harker Graham, he was married to Florence Brown Graham. They had at least two children according to the 1920 U.S. Census.

At the time of his death in 1926, Henry was a cook at the U.S. Quarantine Station located at Fort Johnson on James Island. Starting in 1922, the facility was used for ships entering Charleston. The buildings are now owned by the Medical University of South Carolina but a 2016 news report indicated MUSC wanted them torn down due to their poor condition.

The “K of P” written at the top of Henry’s marker indicates he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, the first fraternal organization to receive a charter under an act of Congress. It was founded by Justus H. Rathbone, who was inspired by a play by Irish poet John Banim about the legend of Damon and Pythias. This legend illustrates the ideals of loyalty, honor, and friendship that are the center of the order.

I saw a number of other markers with the same font style and the anchor entangled in a vine at the top. The anchor often indicates a strong faith in Christ. Hebrews 6:9 refers to it as “which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast”.

Henry’s marker also features a beautiful epitaph:

Another Link is Broken
In Our Household Band
But a Chain is Forming
In a Better Land

Joe Gilliard’s grave marker is almost exactly the same, including the epitaph. The death date recorded on it is May 25, 1925 but his death certificate says 1924. Both his marker and death certificate show he was born in 1826. The son of Cuffie and Alice Gilliard, Joe was probably born into slavery and spent his life on James Island.

Nancy Fludd Washington’s marker has the same font (type style) but the decoration at the top is simpler. Oddly, her death certificate has her birth year as 1884 when it is actually 1871 on her marker. She died at the age of 60 from a heart ailment.

Nancy’s son Jessie James Washington has a much more rustic stone. Born in 1911, he died of pneumonia in 1947 on New Year’s Eve.

Finally, I’d like to include the grave of Irene Chavis Gilliard. She was the daughter of Paul and Betsy Matthews Chavis and spent her life on James Island. She died of influenza in 1949. Her grand-nephew, Eugene Frazier, recalled that on the day she died the family learned that her sister, Alice Chavis McNeal, had also passed away.

Oddly, her death certificate (which misspelled her last name as “Galliard”) indicates she was born in 1905 but her crudely etched marker says 1895, as does her grand-nephew’s book “A History of James Island Slave Descendants & Plantation Owners: The Bloodline” published in 2010.

Next time, we’ll peek over the azalea hedge and explore the JIPC cemetery.

I’m back at Trinity Episcopal Church (TEC) on Edisto Island this week with Part II of my series.

Wandering around this cemetery, I truly enjoyed the sight of many very old moss-covered trees. So many of them get taken down by storms over time. It’s amazing these are still here.

Two children’s graves caught my attention. They were brothers, born about 20 years apart.

The marker for Charles Edward Wescoat (1853-1854) is a bit different. While worn down quite a bit, you can see the image of a male figure holding a child in his arms.

The carving on this marker is not as sophisticated or detailed as the one for William Stuart Hanckel. The figure of the child is especially rough in comparison to the large male figure. My guess is that the message implied here is that the child is safe in the arms of God after his short life has ended.

Charles’ father was Jabez Wescoat, a planter on Edisto Island. The family name is sometimes spelled “Westcoat, “Wescoat”, or “Wescott”. Jabez married Mary Susan Skrine in 1834. Over the course of their marriage, they had at least 11 children, many living well into adulthood. Three sons served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

To Charles’ right is his unnamed brother. He was born and died in 1834, early in the marriage of Jabez and Mary.

Jabez and Mary share a monument with three of their children, Washington, Hubert, and Sarah. Mary died in 1877 and Jabez died in 1886.

There’s only one statue I could find in the cemetery and that belongs to Jennie Stevens Wescott. She was the daughter of Daniel Augustus Stevens (a Confederate veteran) and Agnes Jessie Yates Stevens, who are also buried at TEC.

Jennie was the wife of Thomas Cecil Wescott, the son of Jabez and Mary Wescoat. Somewhere along the line, Thomas changed the spelling of his last name to Wescott.

Thomas Cecil Wescott (who went by Cecil) married Jennie in 1890. Unlike many of their peers, Thomas and Jennie only had one child that I am aware of. Mary Violet Wescott was born in 1891 and lived to the ripe old age of 90. She married Francis Wilkinson and they built a home on Edisto in 1916. Francis was Edisto Island’s first policeman. One of their daughters, Mary Wilkinson Mead, still lives on the island today.

Why Cecil changed the spelling of his last name from “Wescoat” to “Wescott” is unknown but a message of Ancestry.com noted it may have been the result of a family feud. I discovered that both Cecil and Jennie had served as postmaster/postmistress on Edisto at different times. Jennie died in 1918.

I also learned that Cecil was a painter.  I was able to find one of his works called “Edingsville”. Edingsville was a small resort town on Edisto that no longer exists. After Jennie died, he often lived with daughter Violet and her husband, Francis, in their Edisto home on what became known as Wilkinson’s Landing.

Cecil died at the age of 84 in 1942 and is supposed to be buried at TEC’s cemetery but I did not see his stone and there is no photo of it on Find a Grave.

As I’ve noted before, you can find a lot of the same surnames in the cemeteries on Edisto. Before I even visited, I imagined I would find some parts of a family at the Presbyterian Church on Edisto (PCE)’s graveyard while others might be at TEC’s cemetery. As I started looking into family backgrounds, I found this to be true.

Take for example the situation of Mary Stites Wayne Mitchell Whaley. I found her grave at TEC between two of her daughters. But as I started looking closer, I realized the girls had two different fathers.

Mary Stites Wayne was the daughter of General William Clifford Wayne and Anne Gordon Wayne, the daughter of Revolutionary War Captain Ambrose Gordon. Mary’s uncle, Dr. Richard Wayne, was mayor of Savannah. She was born in 1828 shortly after the Waynes had moved to Charleston where Gen. Wayne’s father had first come to America from England in the 1760s.

In 1844, Mary married planter William Grimball Baynard Mitchell in Charleston. In 1849, Mary gave birth to their only daughter, Llly Elizabeth Mitchell. William died about a year later and was buried in the TEC cemetery.

Mary remarried to William James Whaley, another planter on Edisto, in 1859. He was a widow as well, first wife Martha Clark Whaley having died in 1850. William and Martha had four children together. He owned Crawford Plantation (purchased in 1847) on Edisto but the family had to abandon it in 1861 during the Civil War. They returned in 1866.

Lily Mitchell, Mary’s firstborn, died the same year and was buried at TEC beside her father.

In 1868, at the age of 40, Mary gave birth to her second daughter (her only child with William J. Whaley), Mary “Nanie” Whaley. Nanie would also die at the age of 16 like her half-sister Lilly in 1884.

Mary died in 1886 at the age of 58. She was buried alongside her first husband and daughters at TEC. I wondered what had become of her second husband, William J. Whaley. Was he perhaps just down the road at PCE?

After looking through my photos of PCE, my thoughts were confirmed. I found his grave beside that of his first wife, Martha, and one of his daughters, Elizabeth Edings Whaley.

William died in 1888 and ownership of Crawford Plantation went to his son, William J. Crawford, Jr. and his family. After William Jr. died in 1922, the family moved to Charleston and left the home vacant. They sold it in 1945 to I.C. Tavell. New owners purchased it in the 90s and it still stands today.

Finally, I had mentioned in my PCE posts about the great variety of ornamental ironwork in their graveyard. As it turns out, TEC has a small remnant of iron work as well. It was produced by the Robert Wood Ornamental Ironworks in Philadelphia, Pa. The ear of corn at the top of some of the spindles is a motif I have never seen before. It’s unfortunate that it’s deteriorated so much due to time and island weather conditions.

It’s now time to say goodbye to Edisto Island, a place I won’t soon forget. Next time, I’ll be on nearby James Island with more South Carolina stories.

This week, we’re at Trinity Episcopal Church’s (TEC) cemetery, which is only about 1.5 miles down the road from the Presbyterian Church on Edisto graveyard.

TEC’s congregation was established in 1774. Like PCE, white members sat on the first floor while black members were confined to sitting upstairs in the balcony. During the Civil War, as was the case for the PCE, white residents were evacuated from the island while slaves remained during the occupation. The church building was used by Union forces as an observation post. By 1870, records showed 30 white members and 112 black members.

After the war, black members of TEC formed their own Episcopal church where they were free to sit and worship where they pleased. Around 1890, those members established Zion Reformed Episcopal Church, which still exists today.

TEC’s building burned around 1876 and a new one was completed in 1881. The church was not open when I visited the cemetery, but their web site has a picture of this stained glass window inside. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. TEC is thought to be the only example of a church built in the Victorian style on the island.

As for the cemetery, nobody knows when burials began there, but it was probably before the congregation was formally organized. Death dates start in the latter end of the 1700s. You can find many of the same surnames at TEC that are present at nearby PCE.

The first marker I saw was directly in front of the church building. It was hard to read so I’m grateful that some kind soul on Find a Grave had already transcribed it. The marker is for Rippon Sams Hamilton Hanahan, who died at the age of 11 in September 1801.

I was unable to determine who Rippon’s parents were, although the surnames of Rippon and Hanahan appear in many Edisto family trees. There are a few more Hanahans buried at TEC, but they came along many years after young Rippon. His epitaph has a rather fatalistic tone:

Life how short, eternity how long.
Permit the dead to be entomb’d in Earth from whence we all into this body came.
And when we die the Spirit goes to Air.
For we can possess life only for a time.
The Earth demands our body back again.

Over in the cemetery, I found a monument to Sarah Ann Bailey Seabrook. She died in 1850 at the age of 31. I discovered she was the first wife of the Rev. Joseph Baynard Seabrook, Jr.

A graduate of Princeton, the Rev. Seabrook studied law before turning to the ministry.  He was ordained in the Protestant Episcopal Church and pastored black churches at Bluffton and St. Paul. During the Civil War, he pastored at Grace Episcopal Church in Charleston. After the war, he was the pastor of St. Marks in Charleston until his death in 1877. He is not the first pastor I have researched that had three wives over his lifetime. In this case, only two of them were sisters.

Before I get ahead of myself, let’s go back to Sarah Ann Bailey, his first wife. I discovered that she and Joseph had four children that lived to adulthood — Martha, Ephraim, Caroline, and Perroneau. But what her monument reveals are four other children that probably did not live past infancy. I don’t know the birth/death dates for any of them. And it’s possible they’re not even buried at TEC. But clearly Theodore, Mary, William and Anna were remembered by their father.

Soon after Sarah Ann died, Joseph married her widowed younger sister, Lydia Bailey Whaley. They had at least one child together, Isabel, who married John Gervais. Lydia died in 1858 and her burial site is unknown. Joseph married a third time to Martha Beckett, who outlived him and died in 1922. Joseph, who died in 1877, is buried with Martha at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.

One of the more eye-catching markers I saw was for William Stuart Hanckel, son of the Rev. William Henry and Elizabeth Clark Hanckel. William Stuart was also the grandson of the Rev. Christian Hanckel, who served as the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Randcliffboro, S.C. for 45 years.

A graduate of General Theological Seminary in New York, the Rev. William Hanckel was as distinguished a clergyman as his father, pastoring a number of churches over his career. His brother, James, taught at Diocesan Theological Seminary in Camden, S.C, while brother Thomas was an attorney.

The Journal of the Greater Convention of the Protestant Theological Convention notes that William was rector of the TEC in 1853, the same year that little William died at the age of 5. According to the marker, William Stuart was the first child born to the Rev. William Henry and Elizabeth. They would have at least four more. But William is the only one buried at TEC.

The image of a cherub hovering over a sleeping child dominates William Stuart’s marker. It’s not one I have often seen, although the motif of an angel bearing a child away is quite common.

By looking at older photos of this grave, I saw that vandals had damaged it at some point. A 2010 Find a Grave photo shows it attached to a slab with some sort of inscription on it, along with a large lamb statue at the foot. That had changed by 2017 when I was there. The slab is now in pieces and the lamb is in a different position. There was also a box grave beside William’s grave that now appears to be gone entirely.

Elizabeth Hanckel died in 1875 at the age of 45 and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. The Rev. William Henry Hanckel remarried to Mary Lieze Macbeth Ogier in 1877. His last church position appears to have been St. Stephen’s Church in Charleston around the same time.

By 1880, he and Mary were living at Flat Rock Farm in Pendleton, S.C. I don’t know if he had retired from the ministry. He died in 1892 and is buried at Magnolia Cemetery. Mary, who died in 1911, is also buried at Magnolia but her grave appears to be unmarked.

Next week, I’ll have more stories from Trinity Episcopal Church.

It’s August! Wait…where did summer go? Have I really not posted anything since May 18?

I’ve never taken what amounts to over a two-month break from the blog before. A few weeks here and there, but never this long. As it turns out, this was the busiest summer my family’s had in quite a long time.

I offer my humblest apologies for being a cemetery-hopping slacker. Let’s get back to the Presbyterian Church on Edisto Island’s (PCE’s) graveyard. While I’ve already written three posts about on this place, there are so many markers you’ve yet to see.

One of the sadder line of graves I encountered were the children of a couple whose own graves are unmarked. Henry Fowler Bailey and Mary Hardy Mikell Bailey married in 1834. They had several children (one family tree listed a whopping 15 children) but it appears that only one (the eldest, Henry Jr.) survived to adulthood.

The five graves pictured above were the last five of the many children that Henry and Mary are reported to have had. There may be more at PCE’s graveyard that are not marked or they are buried elsewhere.

• Ephraim, born Dec. 1847, died April 1850.
• Mary E., born Dec. 1849, died Nov. 1850.
• Thomas Baynard, born May 1850, died Aug. 1851.
• Hamilton Jenkins, March 1851, died Nov. 1854.
• William Whaley, born August 1852, died Aug. 1853.

Henry Bailey died of consumption (tuberculosis) at age 46 in 1859. His obituary notes he was to be buried at PCE but no marker is there for him. Mary’s last appearance is with her only surviving son, Henry Jr., and his wife (Malvina Washington Bailey) and child in the 1860 Census. Her burial site is unknown, but she may be in an unmarked grave beside her husband. Henry Jr. died in 1864 in a Charleston hospital while serving with the Confederate Army (possibly the S.C. Third Cavalry) during the Civil War. His burial site is also unknown.

With so many similar last names, it can get tricky following exactly how folks are related. The branches of family trees can start to blur.

One of the oldest graves I found was for John Patterson, a planter who died in 1820 at the age of 35. His will indicates he knew he was ill and might die soon. His sister, Sarah Eaton Patterson Bailey, was the wife of Benjamin Bailey. John and Benjamin must have been close because he named him executor of his will. John left his entire estate to Sarah and Benjamin’s daughter (John’s niece), Ann Elizabeth Bailey Bailey. And that’s not a typo. Ann was a Bailey who married a different Benjamin Bailey. You can imagine how confusing that must have been!

Sarah died in 1819, leaving Benjamin a widower. He married Mary Washington Townsend and had six children with her. He died in 1830 at the age of 50.

One postscript on the web of Bailey ties. I was glancing down the list of Benjamin Bailey’s descendants to discover that his granddaughter was Malvina Washington Bailey Bailey, the wife of Henry Bailey Jr. (who I wrote about earlier in this post). She was yet another Bailey who married a Bailey!

My head was starting to spin a little with all the Bailey connections so I focused on the Baynards next. One of the more touching markers I’ve ever seen belongs to William Grimball Baynard, Jr. Born in 1766 to William and Elizabeth Grimball Baynard, William was a planter on Edisto. His parents are buried at PCE in unmarked graves.

In 1792, William married 19 year-old Sarah Black at St. Helena’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort, S.C. They had only one child, William Jr., before Sarah died in 1793. William then married Elizabeth Mikell and they had two children, Elizabeth and Abigail. He died in 1802 at the age of 36. Eldest son William Jr. was only 10 at that time.

William Baynard’s marker features a woman leaning against a pedestal upon which an urn is placed. This motif of a grieving widow was becoming more popular around this time, when grinning winged skeletons were giving way to softer, more subtle images on gravestones. The artist is unknown but his style appears on other markers in the graveyard as well.

William Baynard Jr., on the other hand, lived a long life and had several children. He got his degree at the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton, in 1812. Soon after that, he enlisted in Army to fight in the War of 1812 as part of Capt. William Meggett’s Company, South Carolina militia. Before being discharged in March 1815, he married Ann Ninian Jenkins. They had five children together but only one, Thomas, would survive. Ann, who died only a month after giving birth to Thomas in 1822 at the age of 30, is buried near William Jr. at PCE.

William Jr. remarried in 1827 to Mary Bailey Swinton, who was 19. Over the next several years, they would have 13 children together. Ten of them lived to adulthood. Over the years, William did well as a cotton planter and acquired a great deal of property. He was an elder of the PCE, Justice of the Peace and Justice of the Quorum.

By 1860, he was in possession of Prospect Hill Plantation on Edisto. The home was originally owned by an Ephraim Baynard. There were more than one so I’m not sure which of them it was. Built around 1800 and thought to be designed by White House architect James Hoban, the home sits on top of a high bluff. It survived the Civil War and still stands today, recently restored in 2009.

William Jr. died on September 25, 1861 on Edisto. I did not get a picture of his box grave, which is located beside his father William Sr.’s grave. Mary and William Jr.’s youngest child, Henry, was only 11 at the time of his father’s death.

Prospect Hill is thought to have left the Baynard family’s hands not long after the Civil War. Mary was living on her own on Edisto according to the 1880 Census. She died in Charleston in 1892 at the age of 82 of “old age and exhaustion.” Her death certificate lists her as being buried on Edisto but there is no stone for her in the PCE graveyard if she is there.

Finally, I’d like to include a more modern stone that I saw. It reminded me that despite advances in medicine and safety, death can still take the young when we don’t expect it.

Daniel Townsend Pope was the son of Dr. Jenkins Mikell Pope and Charlotte Nelson Pope. He grew up on Edisto and went to college at Clemson University, earning a degree in agricultural engineering in 1939. In December 1940, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a student pilot.

On June 16, 1943, Daniel was taking off in a a B-24 at Smyrna Field in Rutherford County, Tenn. when something went wrong. The plane crashed and Daniel was killed. He was only 24.

There are plenty of other stories about the families buried at PCE’s graveyard. But it’s time to travel a few miles down the road to another cemetery where there’s even more to be discovered.

I’ll meet you there next time. And I promise it won’t be another two months before that happens. 😉