Showing posts with label Confederacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Confederacy. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

More history plus disc-tossing in Chester County, SC

Once a jail, now a museum.
Another literal "throw you under the jail" jail is now the Chester County Historical Society Museum in Chester, SC. 

Here history goes back far beyond the arrival in 1750 of Scots-Irish settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Great Warrior Trading Path (aka Catawba Road, Warrior's path) passed over then hill on which Chester was built.

The Haigler pot on the left is one of only two known to exist with holes in the handle .
The Society's museum contains one of the finest collections of Native American projectile points, some dating back to 10,000 BCE, and superb pieces of Catawba pottery. According to our guide, Susannah Owl, a Catawba, married a chief of the Cherokee Nation and is credited with teaching them the Catawba method of firing pots.

The Revolutionary War battles and skirmished fought here were the first in which the Patriots used the Indian fighting methods and the first that were successful against the British forces.

You could spend hours pouring over the treasures here including

Stars and bars battle flags.
• A Confederate battle flag suggested by South Carolinians, the biggest star for South Carolina, of course.

the Burr bench doesn't look very comfortable for sleeping.
• The Aaron Burr bench, where traitor Burr slept when captured at the Lewis Inn.

• The enormous  (250,000 images) collection of photographs by second generation photographer Henry Nichols who documented everything Chester from 1918 to 1990, including the owner of Springs Cotton Mills who hired famed ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee as vice president of unveiling.

The building itself is worth a look. Constructed in 1914 of poured concrete a la Frank Lloyd Wright, it was the town's first building with indoor plumbing. The bold might venture down to the basement where prisoners were housed, described as "a veritable hallway of ghost people".

Might look around town, too. This is the last place the Confederate treasury's gold was ever seen.

Eager driver in search of a fire.
The Good Girls took a peek at the Transportation Museum in the old Seaboard Rail Road Depot. A work in progress, it does have the town's first fire engine - with Debi at the wheel during our visit.

Golf, anyone?
We finished the day with a quick look at Chester State Park which is known for its beautiful lake and its 18-hole and 9-hole tournament grade disc golf courses.

Judy
Naturally, we tried our hands at that tournament grade course.

Debi
No one would call us ready for prime time playing.




Monday, November 18, 2013

The Good Girls explore Biloxi

The Good Girls, Debi Lander, far left, and Judy Wells, far right, are greeted by costumed Mississipians at Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis' last home.
 Pahdun me, suh, did you know that Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, had served as Secretary of War for the United States and was responsible for the Union's military superiority in weapons?

That he had  served as a U.S. Representative and a Senator?

That at war's end he was incarcerated in prison for treason but was never tried?

That his bail was raised by influential Northerners, including Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt?

Those are just a few of the fascinating things we learned about Davis and his wife, Varina, during a visit to his home, the lovely Beauvoir, and Presidential Library, overlooking the Gulf in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Where next?

We are exploring options. Where would you like to see us go?