Charleston

After Savannah, we had high hopes for Charleston, a city with perhaps an even stronger reputation as a tourist destination. It started well, a quiet night Wallydocking in the 'burbs, then an easy passage to the city's downtown parking garage, with ample space for visiting RVs, even big ones; then a most helpful tourist information center; and then the free shuttle circumnavigating the historic district. The thing is, although about the same age as Savannah, Charleston suffered damage in the Civil War, then more in a great fire, and then an earthquake [sic], all in the 19th century. (The plague of locusts and deaths of first-born males are yet to come.) Knowing all this, Charleston appeared rather younger to us, and thus of less interest. Of even less interest is its history as the cradle of American slavery. We are just not into slave markets and plantations and such, historic though they be. So Charleston turned out to be a short but tasty visit. Oh, it was my 75th birthday, too.

Our first stop was the Waterfront Park; note its splash fountain
for the kiddies; estimated depth: 9 inches

Extensive rules governing use

Not much more than ankle deep

Across the harbor, Fort Sumter..."Oh say can you see..." wait; no...

The aircraft carrier Yorktown, CV-10; second of the storied
Essex-class carriers; we considered visiting, but it now has an
angled flight deck and probably little of its WWII (the big one)
appearance, so we passed

Classic southern porch swing; several on the pier

The first of several buildings of interest

Tiny house

Street scene: Charleston has palms but few oaks and moss like
Savannah

Charleston's earliest settlers were slavers from Barbados, who
brought their building style with them

Interesting shutters

Among the slave market sites

Major tourist destination: the multi-colored row of houses

More slave market stuff; no apologies noted

Time out for a 75th birthday repas at the Amen St. seafood restaurant

An interesting basil/lime vodka cocktail, a sensible portion of
local oysters, an oyster shooter, a cup of she-crab soup...

And the best shrimp and grits ever

Another older building

Pretty alley

Possibly the world's only pink Gothic...Huguenot

Bigger Protestant church with leaning tower

Reminiscent of New Orleans

You mean it's haunted?

Bench for the half-assed

Tourist carriages passing in the day

In the vast old town market hall...where we found Clark Bars,
Necco Wafers, and other delicacies; impressive place

Another street scene

After a few hours of hyper-touristiness, we decided we'd gotten
the gist of it and were ready to move on; above, our last sight, a
replica of the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley; sank the
Union sloop-of-war Housatonic in 1864 off Charleston harbor,
although the explosion sank the Hunley too, with her crew of eight;
perhaps the only submarine to have sunk three times, the second
trial-run sinking also killing its inventor H. L. Hunley

Ebenezer; And A Genealogical Surprise

The Scheraus family, Johann and Maria Helene, arrived in Savannah in October of 1741, aboard the vessel London Merchant. They had embarked from Rotterdam, after stays in Augsburg and possibly elsewhere. According to lore, they had been among the Salzburgers, some scores of Protestants exiled from Salzburg, Austria, along with the Jews, Gypsies, and other other undesirables, beginning in the 1730s by the then-Archbishop. James Oglethorpe, the English founder and governor of the colony of Georgia, welcomed the Salzburgers and allowed them a plot of land, first Ebenezer, which they found untenable, and then New Ebenezer, about 30 miles up the river from Savannah. (Oglethorpe was a bit of a social scientist and do-gooder, I surmise, but that's a different story). The Salzburgers of Ebenezer were on the American side in the Revolutionary war, the town was occupied by the Brits, who subsequently razed it on their departure, all but the church. New Ebenezer is among Georgia's dozen or so ghost towns (although there is a large private conference center there now and a scattering of contemporary residences). There's a fine article on the Georgia Salzburgers in the New Georgia Encyclopedia, founded by my old friend, Jamil Zainaldin, then president of the Georgia Humanities Council.

My parents visited the place and its Salzburger Society museum in the 1970s and bought me a copy of the genealogy book that includes the Sherouses: I am a 10th-generation American. I had visited Ebenezer, too, in about 2006, during a memorable Federation of State Humanities Councils conference that occurred in Savannah. In any case, Vicki and I thought we'd drive through Ebenezer, since it was not much out of the way going to our next major destination, Charleston. The Salzburger Society museum is open, these days, only on Saturday afternoons, so, passing through on Friday, we thought we'd just stop, walk around, snap a few pix of the church and historical signage, and move on. As we were walking around, however, a car pulled up and a young woman introduced herself as chair of the Society's research committee, said she had some business in the museum, and asked if we'd like to look around: the kind of good fortune one dreams of. So of course we spent the next hour or so there, taking scores of pix, talking about the Salzburgers and the Scherauses, and stimulating the local economy via the museum's gift shop.

There's a surprising and interesting postscript to all this, however. According to our hostess, who ought to know, the Scherauses were not Salzburgers. They somehow joined up with the Salzburgers after having been expelled from Ulm, although they were from a nearby village, Merklingen, I think she said. I looked up Merklingen, and, sure enough, there are quite a few Scherrauses still there. She said there was ample documentation about the couple from the 18th century Ulm law courts. When I asked why the couple had been expelled, she paused, embarrassed, and then said: "um, fornication." I stifled a laugh as well as the observation that there might be less genealogy without a little fornication. Thus enlightened--the surname is actually of German, not Austrian descent, although some Austrian blood must have gotten into the line at Ebenezer--we continued our tour of the museum, snapping ever more pix, especially of the Scheraus things, and vowing to look further into the matter at a later date.

A little background

The church

Fingerprints in the hand-made bricks

Johann Martin Boltzius, spiritual and other leader
of the original band, from Augsburg to Ebenezer;
bit of a Utopian, as I understand it

Replica of Georgia's original orphanage; now houses the Georgia
Salzburger Society museum

Azaleas going strong here too

Tile on a memorial walkway

Now in the museum, a wall explaining who the Salzburgers were,
where they came from, why...

1730s Lutheran Bible, translation by Dr. Martin Luther

Among the earlier books

Mementos of every sort

Original town plan

Not until 1824...

The four-volume genealogy...I have volume IV, S-Z

Other genealogical works in the gift shop

Shearouse shotgun

Thus

Now in one of the large upstairs rooms

Ebenezer was an early textile center; silk, not quilts

Still, the quilts were striking

Emigration, the fortress of Salzburg clearly in the background;
alas, I did not get the name of this work

Two-pedal sewing machine

Shearouse tureen

Shearouse guns and knives...guy stuff

James Jonathan Shearouse, 5th generation

Out on the cemetery...the oldest part, where my relations might
have been, has been lost

Lunch on the cemetery grounds...very peaceful