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Reconstruction right now: conserving vernacular heritage in Beaufort, South Carolina as an act of reconstructing preservation practice

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Reconstruction right now: conserving vernacular heritage in Beaufort, South Carolina as an act of reconstructing preservation practice

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Reconstruction Right Now:
Conserving Vernacular Heritage in Beaufort, South Carolina as An act of Reconstructing
Preservation Practice

by

Emily Catherine Varley

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION

August 2023

Copyright 2023 Emily Varley

ii

Dedication
This work is dedicated to all people doing the work of Reconstruction past, present, and future.

iii

Acknowledgements
None of this would be possible without my many communities that support, encourage, and
believe in me and for which I am forever grateful. To the women in my running club, thank you.
To my fellow students at USC, thank you. To the entire USC community supporting students but
especially maintenance workers and facilities management, librarians, and student workers, and
most of all to my professors who kindly impart their knowledge, thank you. To my Heritage
Conservation cohort and especially fellow thesis writers Emi Takahara, Dani Velazco, and
Brannon Smithwick, thank you. To my wonderful co-workers, mentors, and friends at my
internship at Architectural Resources Group, thank you for teaching, supporting, and offering
flexibility to me as I worked on this project. To my undergraduate community in the Baylor
Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) that first nurtured my interest and passion in community storytelling
and advocacy, thank you for your endless support and belief in me. To my many dear friends
who have heard the story of this house many times over, thank you. Most of all, thank you to my
family for willingly taking hundreds of phone calls over the course of this project and helping me
weather writer’s block, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome, I could not have done it without you.
Together, your support creates in me a confidence to continue and for which I am so grateful.
To my committee members, Jay Platt and Lauren Elachi, who patiently waited for my chapter
drafts and kindly offered insights, critiques, and improvements, thank you. Thank you most of all
to Trudi Sandmeier for your patience, constancy, and endless support and belief in me and this
project. You cultivate community and place in our little MHC corner of the Architecture School,
and I am thankful for and encouraged by the work you do.
While working for the National Park Service, my team at Reconstruction Era National Historical
Park constantly amazed me with the work they do to support the park’s mission, the community,
and each other. Thank you to my supervisor and Park Historian, Nathan Betcher. Thank you to
the Park Superintendent, Scott Teodorski. Thank you to Administrative Assistant, Michelle
Fassler-Garcia. Thank you to Park Rangers Chris, Rich, Chanda, and Kathleen. Thank you to
Park Volunteer Gina. Thank you to fellow interns, Ash and Cam. Thank you to Billy and Paul
Keyserling as well. You all welcomed me with open arms to the Lowcountry and I am forever
grateful for my time spent in Beaufort.
This project would not exist without Annie Mae and Shirley Stokes. It would not exist without
Edith Stokes creating for herself and her family a community and a life in the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood of Beaufort. It would not exist without generations of African
Americans establishing, building, and safeguarding homes for themselves and their communities
despite extensive racism, segregation, and oppression. Thank you to Annie Mae and Shirley for
generously allowing me to listen, learn, and write about your family home at 1313 Congress
Street. I am so thankful and forever indebted.

iv

Table of Contents

Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vi
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... viii
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 : The Antebellum Era, Civil War & Reconstruction in Beaufort, South Carolina.. 13
Pre-Civil War Life in Beaufort, South Carolina ....................................................................... 13
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.................................................................................................... 13
Antebellum Slavery & the Plantation Economy .................................................................... 15
Landscapes of Slavery – The Lowcountry Plantation ........................................................... 16
Architecture of Slavery – The Big House & The Vernacular ................................................ 20
The Gullah Geechee People .................................................................................................. 23
Civil War in Beaufort, South Carolina ...................................................................................... 26
Fort Sumter & The Battle of Port Royal Sound .................................................................... 26
Union Occupation of Beaufort .............................................................................................. 29
The Port Royal Experiment ................................................................................................... 31
United States Tax Commission .............................................................................................. 33
United States Colored Troops ............................................................................................... 35
Reconstruction in Beaufort, South Carolina ............................................................................. 36
Emancipation & the End of the Civil War............................................................................. 36
A New Landscape: Socioeconomic & Physical Change in Postwar Beaufort ...................... 37
Violence and Reconstruction ................................................................................................. 38
Chapter 2 : Land Development History of 1313 Congress Street .......................................... 40
Indigenous History, Colonization, & the Establishment of Beaufort ....................................... 40
Chain of Title ............................................................................................................................ 41
William Avis Morcock ........................................................................................................... 42
United States Government ..................................................................................................... 45
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden ............................................................................................... 47
Daniel Simmons ..................................................................................................................... 49
United States Government ..................................................................................................... 53
William Avis Morcock ........................................................................................................... 56
Niels Christensen ................................................................................................................... 57
Edith Stokes ........................................................................................................................... 65
Chapter 3 : Social History of the Stokes Cottage ..................................................................... 68
The Story of the Stokes Cottage is the Story of Edith Stokes ................................................... 68
1865 to 1900 .......................................................................................................................... 69
1900 to 1950 .......................................................................................................................... 74
1950 to 1967 .......................................................................................................................... 82
Post 1967 ............................................................................................................................... 86
Chapter 4 : Reconstructing Preservation Practice .................................................................. 87

v

Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation ................................................................................ 87
Federal Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation .............................................................. 87
South Carolina Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation .................................................. 89
City of Beaufort Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation ................................................. 91
Preservation Laws and 1313 Congress Street ........................................................................... 95
Federal Preservation Efforts of 1313 Congress Street ......................................................... 96
Local Preservation Efforts of 1313 Congress Street ........................................................... 100
Strategies for Preserving Vernacular Architecture ................................................................. 114
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 128
Summary of Findings .............................................................................................................. 128
Further Research ..................................................................................................................... 130
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 133
Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 148
Appendix A: Transcript of Oral History Interview with Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes .......... 148
Appendix B: Beaufort County Historic Sites Survey, 1313 Congress Street, 1997 ............... 162
Appendix C: Deed Book 18, Page 491, Morcock to Christensen (1877) ............................... 164
Appendix D: Deed Book 19, Page 391, US Govt. to Morcock (1874) ................................... 165
Appendix E: Deed Book 21, Page 330, Christensen to Reddick (1896) ................................. 166
Appendix F: Deed Book 26, Page 59, Affy Simmons to Rina Gregory (1904) ...................... 167
Appendix G: Deed Book 31, Page 421, Christensen to Reddick (1911) ................................ 168
Appendix H: Deed Book 44, Page 195, Christensen to Meyers (1925) .................................. 169
Appendix I: Deed Book 62, Page 130, Christensen to Gant (1944) ....................................... 170
Appendix J: Deed Book 62, Page 279, Christensen to Stokes (1945) .................................... 171
Appendix K: Deed Book 65, Page 23, Christensen to Stokes (1946) ..................................... 172
Appendix L: Deed Book 579, Pages 657-660, Stokes to Heirs (1991) ................................... 173
Appendix M: Deed Book 678, Pages 1124-1128, Stokes to Heirs, to Heirs (1994) ............... 177
Appendix N: US Army Navy Certificate No. 96, US Govt. to Daniel Simmons (1864) ........ 180
Appendix O: Diagrams of Block 100 Landownership Pre-1861 to 1946 ............................... 184

vi

List of Figures

Figure I.1 Photograph of Roseida Road, Beaufort, SC ............................................................. 1
Figure I.2 Map of South Carolina Counties & Regions ........................................................... 2
Figure I.3 Map of Beaufort County, South Carolina ................................................................ 3
Figure I.4 Photograph of Craven Street, Beaufort, SC, View East ........................................... 4
Figure I.5 Undated Postcard of Beaufort Arsenal ..................................................................... 5
Figure I.6 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View Northeast............................................. 7
Figure I.7 Diagram of Site Context & House Location 1313 Congress Street ......................... 8
Figure I.8 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View Northwest ........................................... 9
Figure I.9 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View East ................................................... 10
Figure I.10 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View Southwest ......................................... 10
Figure 1.1 Advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette for Africans to be sold in Beaufort.14
Figure 1.2 Map of Jehossee Island, South Carolina................................................................. 18
Figure 1.3 Aerial Photograph of Jehossee Island ..................................................................... 19
Figure 1.4 Photograph of Rice Trunk at Ace Basin National Wildlife Refuge ....................... 20
Figure 1.5 Lewis Reeve Sams House, 601 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC ...................................... 21
Figure 1.6 Coffin Point Plantation on St. Helena Island, Beaufort, SC ................................... 22
Figure 1.7 Map of Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor .............................................. 24
Figure 1.8 The Old Plantation Folk-Art Watercolor Painting ................................................. 25
Figure 1.9 Bombardment of Port Royal originally published in Harper’s Weekly, 1861 ....... 28
Figure 1.10 Portrait of Brigadier General Thomas W. Sherman ............................................... 30
Figure 2.1 Plan of the City of Beaufort, SC as allotted by U.S. Tax Commissioners, 1863 ... 42
Figure 2.2 Confederate Property File for Wm. A. Morcock, August 1862 ............................. 44
Figure 2.3 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner Pre-1861 ....................................................... 45
Figure 2.4 The Free South, “Sale of Lands.” January 17, 1863 .............................................. 46
Figure 2.5 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner 1861-1864 ..................................................... 47
Figure 2.6 Army, Navy, or Marine Certificate No. 96, February 1, 1864 ............................... 49
Figure 2.7 Army, Navy, or Marine Certificate No. 96, February 1, 1864 ............................... 50
Figure 2.8 Civil War Service Record for Daniel Simmons ..................................................... 51

vii

Figure 2.9 1880 Census Entry for Daniel Simmons ................................................................ 52
Figure 2.10 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner 1864-1874 ..................................................... 53
Figure 2.11 Certificate of Release No. 147, June 30, 1874 ....................................................... 54
Figure 2.12 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner 1874 .............................................................. 56
Figure 2.13 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner 1874-1877 ..................................................... 57
Figure 2.14 Stereograph Image of the Entrance to U.S. National Cemetery, Beaufort, SC ...... 59
Figure 2.15 1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Beaufort, SC ............................................... 60
Figure 2.16 Christensen Family Portrait .................................................................................... 61
Figure 2.17 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owner 1877-1896 ..................................................... 63
Figure 2.18 Diagram of Block 100 Land Owners, 1896-1946 .................................................. 65
Figure 2.19 1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Beaufort, SC ............................................... 67
Figure 3.1 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View Northwest .......................................... 69
Figure 3.2 Illustration of Beaufort & Hampton Counties Pre & Post 1878 ............................. 71
Figure 3.3 1899 and 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Beaufort, SC .............................. 77
Figure 3.4 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Beaufort, SC ............................................... 78
Figure 3.5 Photograph of Emily Varley & Annie Mae Stokes ................................................ 85
Figure 4.1 Map of Beaufort National Historic Landmark District .......................................... 87
Figure 4.2 Map of Beaufort County Municipal Boundary ...................................................... 90
Figure 4.3 Map of City of Beaufort Municipal Boundary ....................................................... 90
Figure 4.4 Robert Means House, 1207 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC ............................................ 93
Figure 4.5 John Mark Verdier House, 801 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC. ..................................... 93
Figure 4.6 Photograph of exposed tabby construction at 715 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC ......... 94
Figure 4.7 Photograph of Beaufort County Open Land Trust sign along Beaufort River. ...... 94
Figure 4.8 Photograph of 1313 Congress Street, View Northeast. .......................................... 98
Figure 4.9 Map of Beaufort Local Historic District & Neighborhoods ................................. 103
Figure 4.10 Map of Beaufort Historic District Enforced and Unenforced Sectors ................. 106
Figure 4.11 Map of Beaufort Historic District Conservation & Preservation Neighborhoods 109
Figure 4.12 NW Quadrant Design Principles Photograph of 1313 Congress Street ............... 110
Figure 4.13 Map depicting relationship of 1313 Congress Street & 1401 Washington Street 124

viii

Abstract
On the edge of a large parcel sits a nondescript one-story cottage aging in place, its
windows and doors boarded up and porch slightly sagging. Paint peels off the wooden clapboard
siding and a rusted tin roof covers the original side gabled wood shingled roof. Riding my bike
past the house while working as the Cultural Resource Management Intern at Reconstruction Era
National Historical Park in summer 2022, I often missed it as I rode through the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood. Often, my eyes were being drawn to the antebellum era mansions I also
passed heading to work. Through my internship, I had the honor of collaborating with the non-
profit organization, Second Founding of America as well as with the homeowners/descendants as
one of the NPS representatives researching the house and learning that it is an extant freedman’s
cottage – virtually unchanged from its construction estimated to be in 1870. Freedman’s cottages
are residences built during and immediately after the Civil War by formerly enslaved individuals
seeking to integrate themselves and their families into full United States citizenry through the
powerful act of exercising their newfound right to purchase land and build their home.
For too long, the house at 1313 Congress Street and the neighborhood where it is located,
the Northwest Quadrant, has been overlooked, neglected, segregated, and ignored by formal
preservation practices resulting in a threat of demolition by neglect and a white-washed historical
narrative of Beaufort. This thesis covers the house and its associated social and built history, but
the main purpose is to draw attention to the importance of conserving vernacular heritage. I
argue that telling this story is a way that preservation practitioners can do the work of
reconstructing preservation practice to be more equitable, inclusive, and encompassing so that
Beaufort – and places like it – can begin to tell their whole histories.

1

Introduction
Driving from the coast of Los Angeles, California to the coast of Beaufort, South
Carolina in May 2022 left me surprisingly little time to reflect – despite spending countless hours
staring out at the landscape of the United States. I finished my final exams and began the journey
to the opposite coast to start my internship with the National Park Service at Reconstruction Era
National Historical Park in Beaufort, where I planned to spend the summer. Beaufort was unlike
anything I had ever experienced, as was the rest of South Carolina. The state is rural and
wooded, somewhat sparsely populated other than in major city centers, and seems frozen in an
imagined “past” time with a lack of large-scale development projects that might otherwise
replace historic patterns of landscape use – in short, the opposite of Los Angeles. Driving on
“major” highways, I sometimes would not pass another car for miles.

Figure I.1: Roseida Road, Beaufort, SC. Many thoroughfares through South Carolina are quiet, heavily wooded, two-lane roads.
Image Source: Realtor.com.

2

Though completely different from Los Angeles, I found it to be charming and beautiful for
exactly what it was – a built and natural landscape changing much slower than the one I was
used to in California. The true delight came when I entered the Lowcountry landscape. South
Carolina’s geography is divided into regions based on the different landscape features. There is
the Upstate which borders the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Midlands in the middle of the state, the
Pee Dee in the northeastern region of the state, and finally the Lowcountry in the southeast
corner of the state defined by its marshes, coastline, forests, and unique socio-cultural history.
1
I
spent my summer in Beaufort, on the island of Port Royal, in the heart of the Lowcountry.

Figure I.2: South Carolina Counties & Regions: Upstate, Midlands, Lowcountry, & Pee Dee.
Image Source: https://livingupstatesc.com/upstate-midlands-lowcounty-pee-dee-what-does-it-mean/.

1
Living Upstate SC, “Upstate, Midlands, Lowcountry & Pee Dee – what does it mean?,” Updated April 30, 2018.
https://livingupstatesc.com/upstate-midlands-lowcounty-pee-dee-what-does-it-mean/.

3

Beaufort County is, undoubtedly, defined by its coastline. The county is connected to the
rest of the state, by its own “inland” region that is part of the mainland of South Carolina, but the
majority of life takes place in and around the city of Beaufort itself, situated on the island of Port
Royal and surrounded by other sea islands that characterize life in coastal South Carolina.

Figure I.3 Map of Beaufort County, South Carolina. Basemap Source: ESRI, 2023. Map Source: Emily Varley.

Living on an island all summer was a much different pace than living in Los Angeles. I enjoyed
my five-minute bike commute into work every day, waiving at neighbors I passed, walking past

4

(and working in) perfectly intact 200-year-old buildings regularly, and being mesmerized by the
miles and miles of marshy waterways that are like veins through the city and county.

Figure I.4: View of Craven Street looking east in downtown Beaufort. Spanish moss hangs from the live and water oak trees that
line the city streets. Image Source: https://explorebeaufortsc.com/craven-street-beauforts-avenue-of-history/.

The city is recognized for its distinct sense of place and the entire town was placed on the
National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark District in 1973.
2
Within
the district is Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, my place of employment through the
National Council for Preservation Education internship program from May to August 2022.

2
Mrs. James W. Fant, “Historic Beaufort,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1969).
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.

5

Figure I.5: Beaufort Arsenal Postcard, no date. Erected in 1798 and rebuilt in 1852. Location of Cultural Resource Management
Offices for Reconstruction Era National Historical Park. Image Source: Lowcountry Digital Library.

While working with the team at Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, specifically with
Nathan Betcher – my supervisor and the Park Historian – I researched multiple sites throughout
Beaufort and learned many unique and compelling stories. Prior to my internship, I did not
realize how little I knew about the Reconstruction Era in United States history, but after working
with and learning from the incredible team at Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, I
came to understand it’s importance in U.S. and world history. Park Superintendent Scott
Teodorski, Park Rangers Chris Barr, Rich Condon, and Chanda Powell, Administrative Assistant
Michelle Fassler-Garcia, Park Volunteer Gina Baker, interns Cam and Ash, Gullah Geechee
Cultural Heritage Corridor Executive Director Victoria Smalls and Program Coordinator Tendaji
Bailey as well as Beaufort County Library Historical Resource Coordinator Grace Cordial

6

welcomed me into the South Carolina Lowcountry and ignited in me a passion for researching,
documenting, conserving, and spreading awareness about Reconstruction Era cultural heritage.
Through my internship, I met Billy and Paul Keyserling, life-long Beaufort residents and
founders of the non-profit The Second Founding of America, that aims to “uncover the truth and
to tell and teach missing parts of our nation’s history.”
3
Like the National Park Service, their
organization advocates for the conservation of sites and stories associated with the
Reconstruction Era though they focus on Beaufort area resources. During my summer internship
in 2022, I worked on multiple projects but collaborated the most with the Second Founding
organization to research a potential Reconstruction Era resource: the house at 1313 Congress
Street. Working with the Park Service and Second Founding, I had the incredible privilege of
researching the property, interviewing descendants of long-term residents, and advocating for the
preservation of the structure and the associated social and cultural history it embodies.

3
Second Founding of America: Reconstruction Era, “The truth told.” Accessed April 2023.

7

Figure I.6: Primary façade of 1313 Congress Street. View Northeast. Image Source: Emily Varley, August 2022.

1313 Congress Street is located on the north side of Congress Street in the city of Beaufort, in
Beaufort County, South Carolina. The house, sometimes referred to as the Stokes Cottage, sits on
a rectangular .065-acre lot in the southwest corner of Block 100 according to the United States
Direct Tax Commissioners plat. It is in the northwest corner of the northwest quadrant
neighborhood of Beaufort. Starting in the southwest corner of the lot, at the intersection of
Congress Street and Wilmington Street, the lot extends east forty feet, north one hundred feet,
west forty feet, south one hundred feet. The land is flat, and the primary façade of the house is
setback from the southern property line (Congress Street) approximately twenty-five feet. It is
unknown if the house is in its original location as there is precedent of similar style houses being
moved quite frequently, however, there is no evidence to suggest that this house was relocated.
4

4
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022, 11-
12. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

8

Figure I.7: Site Context & House Location Diagram of 1313 Congress Street. Map Source: Emily Varley

1313 Congress Street is a rectangular one-story residential building with a side-gabled
steeply pitched roof that follows the folk hall and parlor plan. It is an example of southern
vernacular architecture known as “Freedman’s Cottages” for association with formerly enslaved
people constructing homes for themselves during the Reconstruction Era of United States history
(1861-1900) during and after the Civil War. It sits on brick piers for its foundation and is of
frame construction. The primary façade faces south and contains a shed porch supported by
unelaborated square columns. The entire house is covered in wood siding, without sheathing.
The primary entrance is central and flanked by two symmetrical window openings. All three
openings are covered in plywood; It is unknown if original doors and windows are extant. The

9

west façade contains one window opening covered in plywood and a vent directly above it. The
east façade contains two window openings covered in plywood and a brick chimney extending
from the ground to the roof of the structure. The structure was originally one unit deep, but a
one-story, one-room addition was added to the north facing, rear façade to enlarge the interior
space. A tin roof covers original shingles. The architectural style is reflective of the knowledge
and familiarity that formerly enslaved people had with the “plantation slave houses” they were
forced to occupy as enslaved people prior to the Civil War.
5

Figure I.8: 1313 Congress Street. View Northwest. Photograph by Emily Varley, August 2022.

5
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022, 233.
http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

10

Figure I.9: West façade of 1313 Congress Street. View East. Photograph by Author, August 2022.

Figure I.10: East façade of 1313 Congress Street. View southwest. Photograph by Author, August 2022.

11

This thesis establishes an understanding of the socio-cultural history of Beaufort, South
Carolina and places the house at 1313 Congress Street at the center of that narrative to document
the rich multi-layered story of the house and the people whose lives make it special. It is a call to
action to raise the alarm that current preservation practices in Beaufort, South Carolina as well as
in the United States threaten this important structure with demolition by neglect or a restoration
treatment which will erase parts of the house’s history. Most of all, this thesis humbly implores
preservation practitioners to take up the burden of doing the “work of Reconstruction” and push
back against the boundaries of formal preservation practice to begin reconstructing our field so
that we might do work that is more inclusive, equitable, encompassing, and just. We cannot keep
preserving sites, structures, objects, and places as we always have as it is resulting in a narrow-
minded narrative that is essentially erasing the sites, structures, objects, and places that represent
the whole of United States history.
Chapter one outlines life in Beaufort, South Carolina in the years leading up to and
through the Civil War and establishes an understanding of the Reconstruction Era (1861-1900) in
Beaufort. Chapter two documents the land development history of 1313 Congress Street and
relies heavily on deed transactions and census records. Chapter three dives into the life of Edith
Stokes and covers the social history associated with the house at 1313 Congress Street which
came to be known as the Stokes Cottage around Beaufort due to Edith Stokes and her children
and grandchildren’s lives there from as early as 1910 to present day. This chapter is structured by
census records and illuminated by an oral history interview I conducted in July 2022 with Annie
Mae and Shirley Stokes, surviving granddaughters of Edith Stokes and who shared with me their
memories of their grandmother, the house, and life in Beaufort. Chapter four is split into two
parts: Part one explains the preservation practices available in Beaufort at the local, state, and

12

federal levels and takes a critical lens to their use history in Beaufort. Part two discusses
strategies for preserving vernacular heritage such as 1313 Congress Street and the larger
Northwest Quadrant neighborhood where it is located in Beaufort. The conclusion summarizes
findings and discusses further research opportunities which emerged out of this project. Most of
all, it implores readers again to take up the burden of doing the work of reconstructing
preservation practice so that our formal preservation practices can be used to safeguard, place-
keep, and remember the heritage of all people in our communities.
Language, perspective, and argument are certainly not exempt from bias and nor is this
thesis. My identity as a cis-gendered, heterosexual White woman from St. Louis, Missouri,
influences my opinions, my style researching, and of course – my writing. Throughout the course
of this research project, I strove to be open and tell a story about this house and the people who
made it significant based on the evidence I encountered. There is certainly evidence I did not
encounter, nor likely ever will, which might radically change the story of this place. More
research is always necessary to continue evolving and telling fuller and more complete stories.
As an outsider to South Carolina, to Beaufort, to the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood, and to
the Beaufort African American community, I did my best to respectfully and honestly tell the
story of this place despite it not being my own. Without the generosity of Annie Mae and Shirley
Stokes, who opened their home and their family history to me and the team at Reconstruction
Era National Historical Park, none of this would be possible.

13

Chapter 1 : The Antebellum Era, Civil War & Reconstruction in Beaufort, South Carolina
Pre-Civil War Life in Beaufort, South Carolina
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is perhaps the single most impactful industry in United
States and world history for its long reaching effects that continue to impact our lives.
According to the Records of the Virginia Company of London, a ship arrived “about the latter
end of August” carrying a cargo of “20. And odd Negroes” to be sold as slaves to the colonists in
1619.
6
The arrival of the White Lion at Point Comfort in present day southern Virginia marked
the beginning of the importation of abducted African people into North America as slaves and
set off an economic revolution in the colonies that created the foundation for the United States to
become a nation. In Charleston, South Carolina, the largest city in the Carolina colonies and
primary port of entry into the Lowcountry, the importation and sale of African people officially
began with the city’s founding in 1670 and continued until the abolition of the industry in 1808.
During these years, “nearly 1,000 cargoes of enslaved Africans entered the port of Charleston”
amounting to “almost one half of slaves imported to the US” entering through the Lowcountry.
7

As a result, Charleston’s economy boomed and their population exploded, setting off
unprecedented growth and creating the conditions for Beaufort to be founded approximately
seventy miles to the south in 1711. Beaufort mirrored Charleston by embracing the system of
slavery and hinging their entire economy and society on the wealth created by endorsing the
violent abduction, importation, and enslavement of African people. Between its founding in 1711

6
Kingsbury, Susan Myra, and Library of Congress, The Records of the Virginia Company of London, Vol. 3 (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1933), The Making of the Modern World (accessed January 19, 2023).
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/U0112844894/MOME?u=usocal_main&sid=primo&xid=39d4d088&pg=266.
7
Nic Butler, “Nearly 1,000 Cargos: The Legacy of Importing Africans into Charleston,” in Charleston Time Machine, produced
by Charleston County Public Library, podcast, https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/nearly-1000-cargos-legacy-
importing-africans-
charleston#:~:text=Between%201670%20and%201808%2C%20nearly,entered%20the%20port%20of%20Charleston.

14

and the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, Beaufort established itself as a center
for wealth creation for an emerging class of citizens, planters, who made their money by
violently extracting labor from enslaved Africans and the Lowcountry landscape itself.
8

Figure 1.1: Advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette Newspaper for Africans to be sold in Beaufort.
Published in Charleston, SC. August 2, 1760. Image Source: newspapers.com.

Despite the industry’s abolition following Congress’s ratification of “An Act Prohibiting
Importation of Slaves,” the Lowcountry did not suffer an economic fallout. In fact, Beaufort,
Charleston, and other Lowcountry cities founded on the economy of the slave trade evolved to
become powerful plantation economies that matured in the Antebellum period of American
history and set the stage for the Civil War, Reconstruction, and life as we know it today in the
United States.
9

8
The story of slavery in the Americas, specifically of the violent abduction and enslavement of African people, is a story that has
been told many times over because it is the foundational institution that created what we know and understand as the United
States of America today. To learn more about the transatlantic slave trade, the middle passage, and other aspects of slavery in the
colonies and early United States history please consider Louis Filler’s book, Slavery in the United States (1998), this Library of
Congress Blog Entry: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2019/08/beyond-1619/, or this National Park Service Article:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm. There are also National Parks to visit in person which document and
interpret these topics, a list of which is provided on their website: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/enslavement/visit.htm.
9
Nic Butler, “The End of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Charleston Time Machine, produced by Charleston County Public
Library, podcast, https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/end-trans-atlantic-slave-
trade#:~:text=On%20the%20first%20day%20of,slave%20trade%20into%20our%20country.

15

Antebellum Slavery & the Plantation Economy
Historians date the Antebellum period of American history to the end of the War of 1812
and the start of the Civil War in 1861 and characterize it based on the socio-cultural and
economic way of life that emerged during this period centered around slave plantations. In the
Lowcountry, the “organized social system” that emerged placed the planter class at the top of an
imagined social hierarchy and the people they enslaved at the bottom – viewed and treated only
on their ability to create wealth and power for the people that owned them and the society that
benefitted from their enslavement.
10
African people enslaved in the Antebellum period and their
African American descendants were of unimaginable value to the planter class because of their
depth of knowledge on “the growing of rice, cotton, indigo, sugar, and a host of other plants”
that enabled them to transform the Lowcountry wilderness into highly productive landscapes.
11

The raw materials and crops produced by the enslaved people were high value commodities on
the international market, however, the success and enormous wealth created for the planter class
only came from the fact that they were not paying for the intensive labor necessary to plant,
cultivate, harvest, and process the crops. Nor did they pay for the management, care, and
facilitation of the plantation household, including the house itself, livestock, and any other
services demanded of the enslaved people by plantation owners. In Beaufort, rice and indigo
were early cash crops that enslaved people successfully produced and that created a foundation
for the slave plantation economy to solidify, however, it was the crop known as Sea Island
Cotton that ultimately set Beaufort and the rest of the Lowcountry on its course toward the Civil

10
Thomas J. Durant Jr. and J. David Knottnerus, eds., Plantation Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 3.
11
Austin Allen, “Site of the Unseen: The Racial Gaming of American Landscapes,” in Black Landscapes Matter, eds. Walter
Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2020), 126.

16

War in 1861. Sea Island Cotton is a specific long-grain strain of cotton considered a luxury item
that earned its name for growing exceptionally well on the coastal sea islands. As a luxury crop,
it fetched high prices and production intensified to meet a growing global demand, resulting in
South Carolina leading the nation in cotton exports between 1800 and 1860.
12
Plantations
produced and exported more cotton, increased their profits, and expanded their social and
political power solely because they increased the amount of people they enslaved during the
Antebellum period. In 1800, the South Carolina population counted 56.8% of the population as
White and 42.3% as slave. By 1860, the numbers were more than flipped with 41.4% identified
as White and 57.2% identified as slave.
13
Between 1800 and 1860, slavery in the Lowcountry
intensified to sustain the Antebellum economy and maintain plantation owners’ hegemony over
the Lowcountry’s social and natural landscape.
14

Landscapes of Slavery – The Lowcountry Plantation
Though perhaps the Antebellum era plantation owners viewed the Lowcountry landscape
as their own, it was and is fundamentally a Black landscape as it was shaped and created by the
African and African American people enslaved throughout it and who eventually came to be the
largest population group.
15
The natural features of Beaufort include salt marshes, rivers, coastal
plains, woodlands, and barrier islands, all of which contribute to the unique geographic setting of

12
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 106-107.
13
George C. Rogers and James Taylor, A South Carolina Chronology, 1497-1992, 2nd ed (Columbia, S.C: University of South
Carolina Press, 1994), 68, 96.
14
This is not a complete history of the Antebellum period in United States, rather it is the intention of this section to acknowledge
the slave-plantation centered society present in Beaufort, South Carolina in the years prior to the outbreak of the Civil War and
the Reconstruction era. To learn more about the Antebellum period, please see John Michael Vlach’s book, Back of the Big
House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (1993), Editors Thomas J. Durant, Jr. & J. David Knottnerus’s book, Plantation
Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality (1999), or Dea Boster’s book, African American Slavery and Disability:
Bodies, Property and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800-1860 (2012).
15
Austin Allen, “Site of the Unseen: The Racial Gaming of American Landscapes,” in Black Landscapes Matter, eds. Walter
Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2020), 99-100, 103.

17

the Lowcountry. During the Antebellum period, the Beaufort economy evolved to rely entirely
on the exploitation of enslaved people on plantations to continue to grow and create wealth and
power for the planter class. The plantation itself was the organized geographic unit by which the
planter class superimposed their imagined social hierarchy onto the landscape to subjugate both
the people they enslaved and the natural environment. According to the first agricultural census
of the United States, conducted in 1850, there were 881 plantations distributed amongst the four
parishes in Beaufort County.
16
Though each plantation contained unique features based on its
natural terrain, resources, or even crop of focus, a development pattern emerged amongst them
all that constantly reinforced the violent physical and social control that the planter class had
over the people they enslaved and the land they owned.
17
As noted, plantations differed based on
their specific focus but it is worth including a detailed account of one Lowcountry plantation to
illustrate the complexity of a plantation ecosystem and demonstrate the depth of knowledge,
skill, and intensive labor performed by enslaved Africans and their descendants to create and
manage that landscape.
Jehossee Island is a sea island located off the Edisto and Dawho rivers between
Charleston and Beaufort, South Carolina that is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
as part of ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge.
18

16
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 369.
17
Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, eds., Cabin, Quarter, Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery
(New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010) 178.
18
Antoinette T. Jackson, Speaking for the Enslaved: Heritage Interpretation at Antebellum Plantation Sites (New York:
Routledge, 2016), 69.

18

Figure 1.2: Jehossee Island is located between Beaufort and Charleston, SC in Colleton, County. Basemap Source: ESRI, 2023.
Map Source: Emily Varley.

According to their website, Jehossee is “steeped in the cultural past” but known most famously
for being owned by South Carolina Governor William Aiken during the Antebellum period in
which he enslaved over 800 African American people who made Jehossee Plantation “one of the
most productive rice plantations in the area” as well as “the largest and wealthiest rice plantation
in the South.”
19
Enslaved African people, as early as the mid-1700s, first transformed the
swampy sea island into a productive one using traditional ecological knowledge subjugated by
their enslavers to create wealth for themselves.

19
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Ernest F. Hollings Ace Basin National Wildlife Refuge: Jehossee Island,” Accessed 2023.
https://www.fws.gov/refuge/ernest-f-hollings-ace-basin/jehossee-island-placeholder-time.

19

Figure 1.3: Aerial Photograph of Jehossee Island. Image Source: Holcombe, Fair & Lane Properties.

Enslaved people created irrigation systems to harness the tidewaters, effectively re-shaping
Jehossee into a series of productive rice fields or “impoundments” extant throughout the refuge
today. Built features such as rice trunks remain throughout the landscape and serve as reminders
of the knowledge and ingenuity enslaved people employed to create a successful plantation.
20

Enslaved people also created a community for themselves on Jehossee where they could develop
and practice distinct cultural arts, foodways, and lifeways, ultimately transforming the island into

20
A rice trunk is “a large wooden sluice, or trunk, which resembled a guillotine with the dimensions of a barn door. When
opened at high tide, the trunk allowed the tide to flood the field. With the trunk closed, the water stayed on the crop.” Geographer
Judith Carney argues that the rice trunks of South Carolina rice plantations are similar to devices used in West Africa to control
the flow of water in other agricultural endeavors. Antoinette T. Jackson, Speaking for the Enslaved: Heritage Interpretation at
Antebellum Plantation Sites (New York: Routledge, 2016), 74-77.

20

“their own landscape…at the margins of the plantation.”
21
Both the working landscape features
extant on Jehossee as well as the deep place-based community identity established on Jehossee
illustrate that it is fundamentally a Black landscape. Jehossee Island is just one example of an
Antebellum era plantation that retains many of its defining environmental features as well as
built features through which we can begin to understand the hidden landscapes created by
enslaved people so as to form a more complete understanding of Beaufort and all of the
Lowcountry’s landscapes of slavery.

Figure 1.4: Rice Trunk Water Control Structures at Ace Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Image Source: U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service.

Architecture of Slavery – The Big House & The Vernacular
In Beaufort, the planter class designed and constructed elaborate homes to display their
economic wealth and reinforce their position of power within Antebellum plantation society,

21
John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1993), 13.

21

many of which are preserved today as part of the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District.
The plantation architecture of Beaufort that is extant today is, primarily, the homes of enslavers
with the original 1969 National Register of Historic Places inscription going so far as to claim
that “the glory of Beaufort is the total collection of great houses set in gracious space,” where
“the plantations came to town.”
22

Figure 1.5: Lewis Reeve Sams House. 601 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC. Built ca. 1852. Image Source: Library of Congress

The 2001 update to the inscription acknowledges that the area was originally designated “almost
exclusively on the significance of the city’s antebellum history and architecture.” With such an
emphasis on the architecture associated with the plantation class, the nomination downplays the

22
Mrs. James W. Fant, “Historic Beaufort,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1969), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.

22

vernacular architecture of the Antebellum era that equally contributed to a built environment
centered on the exploitation of slave labor.
23
Coffin Point Plantation on St. Helena Island in
Beaufort County, illustrates this issue exactly as its individual inscription on the National
Register of Historic Places focuses on the architectural description of plantation owner’s home
and only alludes to the larger plantation’s purpose of enslaving African Americans with a note
that “No original outbuildings are in existence.”
24
A plantation mansion alone conveys an almost
apocryphal history in that the big house was only one feature of a larger working landscape
“ensemble” that contained, primarily, architecture associated with enslaved people working to
keep the entire operation going.
25

Figure 1.6: Coffin Point Plantation on St. Helena Island, Beaufort, SC. Image Source: Library of Congress.

23
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 8.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
24
Mary Ann Eaddy, “Coffin Point Plantation,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1975), Section 7-8. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/118997143.
25
John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1993), 183.

23

Today, much of the architecture that remains from the Antebellum period in the American South
are examples of plantation owner’s homes rather than the vernacular architecture of slave
quarters, barns, kitchens, outhouses, laundries, blacksmiths, stables, mills, smokehouses, dairies,
icehouses, and other outbuildings that equally represent how Antebellum architecture was
designed to reinforce the “complex institutionalized social system” that was plantation society.
26

Despite this preservation bias, the full history of antebellum architecture is that it was both grand
and imposing in the plantation owner’s house as well as simple and functional in the
outbuildings built, utilized, and maintained by enslaved people that truly defined a plantation.

The Gullah Geechee People
Despite biases resulting in countless studies of the planter class during the Antebellum
period, in Beaufort as well as throughout the American South, there is a rich depository of
information about the lives of enslaved and free Black people in Beaufort from that period that
exists because of the persistent memory keeping practiced by the Gullah Geechee community.
Gullah Geechee people are a descendant community of Black people living throughout the world
who have distinct cultural traditions, including their own language – Gullah – that can be traced
to the West and Central African people who were enslaved on the sea islands during the
Antebellum period. Geographically isolated on sea island plantations, the enslaved Africans
practiced indigenous African lifeways as well as developed new cultural practices and traditions
to survive and build community for themselves despite their position as enslaved people.
27

Descendant communities largely remained isolated until the 1950s when bridges were built

26
Thomas J. Durant Jr. and J. David Knottnerus, eds., Plantation Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 3.
27
National Park Service, “Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor,” Updated August 2022.
https://www.nps.gov/places/gullah-geechee-cultural-heritage-corridor.htm.

24

connecting the sea islands to the mainland, resulting in a de facto preservation of much of the
Gullah Geechee cultural traditions first established during the Antebellum period by imported
enslaved Africans relying on their skills, dietary practices, religious beliefs, and languages to
survive.
28
In 2006, Congress designated the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor a
National Heritage Area stretching from the coast of North Carolina to the coast of northern
Florida to “recognize, sustain, and celebrate the important contributions made to American
culture and by the Gullah Geechee” and to aid in the interpretation and preservation of “Gullah
Geechee folklore, arts, crafts, and music” as well as associated “sites, historical data, artifacts,
and objects.”
29
The Gullah Geechee nation continues to thrive and preserves their heritage today.

Figure 1.7: Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Map Source: National Park Service.

28
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 349-350.
29
National Park Service, “Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor,” Updated August 2022.
https://www.nps.gov/places/gullah-geechee-cultural-heritage-corridor.htm.

25

Today the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission oversees the heritage area
and conserves the traditions, knowledge, and experiences of the Antebellum era enslaved people
who are the genesis of Gullah Geechee identity. Additionally, the Gullah Geechee Cultural
Heritage Corridor Commission safeguards the places and spaces in which the Gullah community
today continues to conserve and create Gullah Geechee heritage.
30

Figure 1.8: The Old Plantation is a folk-art watercolor depicting enslaved African Americans on a South Carolina plantation in
the late eighteenth century practicing a West African dance with instruments and dress of West African origin. Image Source:
Wikipedia.

30
To learn more about the Gullah Geechee people, please visit their website: https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/. Consider
donating to and visiting the corridor to learn more about their cultural practices, foodways, and spirituality. The National Park
Service also conducted a special resource study and environmental impact statement on Gullah Culture located on their website:
https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/research/docs/ggsrs_book.pdf.

26

Civil War in Beaufort, South Carolina
Fort Sumter & The Battle of Port Royal Sound
In December 1860, South Carolina declared their secession from the United States,
arguing in their Declaration of Secession: “The constituted compact has been deliberately broken
and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina
is released from her obligation.”
31
The compact they refer to is the Constitution of the United
States, specifically its fourth article that states: “No person held to service or labor in one State,
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation
therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party
to whom such service or labor may be due.”
32
In the minds of South Carolinians and the other
states that followed with similar declarations, to secede from a country that disregarded its
democratic compact and to form a new nation in which the institution of slavery was respected
was both noble and justified because they believed that their entire way of life – the one built
upon the violent enslavement, control, and torture of African American people – was threatened.
Tensions between Northern, non-slave holding states, and Southern, slave-holding states grew
throughout the Antebellum period, but it was the election of President Abraham Lincoln on
November 6, 1860 that initiated the split of the Union and subsequent Civil War. Lincoln won
seventeen states in total, all of which were in the North other than California and Oregon. His
name did not even appear on the ballot in southern states apart from Virginia or the border states.
With the highest recorded voter turnout in United States election history, the people had spoken

31
Confederate States of America, Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina from the Federal Union (Charleston, 1860).
32
U.S. Const. art IV, § 2, cl. 3.

27

and the geographic divide between non-slave holding states and slave-holding states solidified.
33

South Carolina, the first to secede and the first to strike, may have believed they were they were
justified but in reality, their declaration of secession and bombardment of Fort Sumter in the
quiet pre-dawn hours just off the coast of Charleston harbor was an act of domestic terrorism that
launched the deadliest conflict in United States history. The Confederate victory at Fort Sumter
prompted the newly sworn-in President Lincoln and his advisors to find a location for the United
States to resist further Confederate aggression with a blockade as well as begin re-establishing
Union control in the south. As battles between Union and Confederate forces waged the rest of
the spring and into the summer and fall of 1861, Port Royal Sound – the natural harbor in
Beaufort – emerged as an ideal location from which the United States could support the Union
military.
34
As the “deepest and most accessible harbor on the southern coast of North America,”
control of Port Royal Sound was a strategic upper hand during military engagement and whoever
controlled it could control most, if not all, of the southern coastline.
35
On November 2, 1861, just
seven months after the newly formed Confederate nation bombarded Fort Sumter, the
Confederate citizens of Beaufort were warned that the “largest naval and amphibious expedition
mounted by the U.S. Navy in the nineteenth century” was in route with a potential destination of
Port Royal Sound. Much of the town’s White residents fled inland to Confederate strongholds
throughout South Carolina. The planter class who had so blatantly broken their compact as
United States citizens in defense of their own economic interests when seceding from the Union
and forming the Confederate States of America watched in horror as they realized they would

33
Larry D. Mansch, Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect: The Four Critical Months from Election to Inauguration (Jefferson, NC
& London: McFarland & Company, 2005), 61. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Abraham_Lincoln_President_elect/NMt-
yrjVE50C?hl=en&gbpv=1.
34
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 438-444.
35
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 20.

28

need to evacuate their plantations on the Sea Islands or risk capture as prisoners of war. The
people they enslaved were aware of what was happening, and November 7
th
is remembered as
the “Day of the Big Gun Shoot” as the sounds of United States Navy guns could be heard all
around the sea island plantations and in the town of Beaufort itself.

Figure 1.9: Bombardment of Port Royal originally published in Harper’s Weekly, 1861.
Image Source: U.S. Naval Historical Center.

When remaining planters began fleeing Beaufort, many attempted to force the people they
enslaved to go with them. Aware of stories of de facto freedom being granted to enslaved people
by U.S. forces re-occupying slave-holding geographies, the Gullah Geechee people on the sea
islands resisted their owners. On November 9, federal troops arrived in the city of Beaufort and
found “some 10,000 enslaved people who for the first time in their lives experienced their
freedom.”
36
occurred in Beaufort and the surrounding Union-held Sea islands, is known as the
rehearsal for reconstruction.

36
Thavolia Glymph, “Reconstruction During the Civil War,” in The Reconstruction Era (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2016), 29.

29

Union Occupation of Beaufort
With the arrival of federal troops in Beaufort, the formerly enslaved people began the
crucial work of reconstruction in Beaufort by negotiating more rights for themselves. As
previously mentioned, rumors of de facto freedom spread throughout the slave-holding southern
states during the Civil War, likely originating from Major General Benjamin Butler’s wartime
proclamation that enslaved people who escaped to Union held territory would be designated as
“contraband of war” and receive a new legal status and protection, different from that of a
slave.
37
One of the most well documented and earliest examples of a formerly enslaved refugee
camp is Fort Monroe, located off the coast of Virginia, where more than 900 self-emancipated
people lived, worked, and received an education under the legal status of “contraband” during
the Civil War.
38
In Beaufort, under the leadership of General Thomas W. Sherman, federal
troops prioritized establishing Union control, fortifying the port, and staving off potential
Confederate provocations, but the question of what to do about the former slaves loomed.

37
Thavolia Glymph. “Reconstruction during the Civil War,” in The Reconstruction Era (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National,
2016), 35.
38
Kate Masur and Gregory Downs, “Introduction,” in The Reconstruction Era (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 2016),
20-21.

30

Figure 1.10: Portrait of Brigadier General Thomas W. Sherman. Image Source: Library of Congress.

At first, Sherman adopted a policy of “leaving the slaves in Beaufort to their own devices” but
this laissez-faire attitude proved insufficient as more and more enslaved people self-emancipated
by escaping their masters and taking refuge in the Union held sea islands where they could
access de facto freedom for themselves and their families.
39
What is now known as the Port
Royal Experiment was born when Union leaders realized that Sherman’s victory in Beaufort not
only left him in control of the vast abandoned productive lands of the Lowcountry but of the
some 10,000 former slaves now residing in the area under federal jurisdiction and that Beaufort
could be, “an ideal testing ground to begin Reconstruction.”
40

39
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 29.
40
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 60-61.

31

The Port Royal Experiment
The Port Royal Experiment was the testing ground where formerly enslaved people
could, for the first time, freely construct for themselves the structure of their day to day lives
within the confines of the interests of the United States government. By the authority of the
Treasury Act of July 13, 1861, the United States government could seize and sell enemy property
to finance the war effort and in Beaufort, the most valuable enemy property was the vast
quantities of abandoned cotton plantations as well as the potential to produce and sell more
cotton in the future to fund the war effort. This gave Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase,
immense influence which he wielded to restructure the socio-economic system in Beaufort to
fund Union victory.
41
Under the recommendations of Chase’s Treasury Department agents,
General Thomas W. Sherman issued his General Field Orders Number 9 on February 6, 1862,
that stated:
The helpless condition of the blacks inhabiting the vast area in the occupation…calls for
immediate action…Adequate provision for the pressing necessities of this unfortunate
and now interesting class of people…is now forced upon us…To relieve the Government
of a burden that may hereafter become insupportable, and to enable the blacks to support
and govern themselves…a suitable system of culture and instruction must be combined
with one providing for their physical wants. Therefore, until proper legislation on the
subject or until orders from higher authority, the country in occupation…will be divided
off into districts of convenient size for proper superintendence.
42

Sherman’s orders were steeped in racist and paternalistic assumptions that the contraband
population could not govern themselves, however, they created the legal authority by which the
Port Royal Experiment could continue, and formerly enslaved people could continue to negotiate

41
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 60.
42
United States Secretary of War, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies: Series 1, Volume 6 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 222-223.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924077730178&view=1up&seq=3&q1=%22support%20and%20govern%22.

32

their status in the experimental setting.
43
Authorized by the Treasury Department, northern
abolitionists, feminists, doctors, and teachers – all branded as missionaries – began arriving in
Beaufort to aid in the creation of infrastructure that would re-shape formerly enslaved people’s
lives.
44
Of note is the establishment of Penn School, one of the earliest Port Royal Experiment
schools that provided formal education to the formerly enslaved population but most importantly
“enabled freed people to buy former plantation land at low prices” and build “their own financial
independence.”
45
In September 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation that declared that if the insurrectionary states did not return to the Union by
January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves…shall be then…forever free; and the Executive
Government of the United States…will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and
will do no act or acts or repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for
their actual freedom.”
46
With that announcement, Lincoln legalized a new status for the formerly
enslaved people considered contraband at the beginning of the war and now considered
Freedmen. In Beaufort, Freedmen negotiated and advocated for themselves and their community
to access new rights and ensure they would be protected as full citizens of the United States, all
of which played out as part of the Port Royal Experiment.

43
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 72.
44
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 74.
45
Penn Center 1862, “Timeline of Penn Center History,” Accessed January 2023. https://www.penncenter.com/history-
timeline#timeline-penn-center.
46
The National Archives, “Emancipation Proclamation (1863),” Reviewed May 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-
documents/emancipation-proclamation.

33

United States Tax Commission
In addition to the Treasury Act of July 13, 1861, Congress passed the first federal income
tax on August 5, 1861, titled: “An Act to provide increased revenue from imports, to pay interest
on the public debt, and for other purposes” that authorized the federal government to collect
twenty million dollars, divided amongst all the states, to further finance the war effort and
facilitated by the United States Tax Commission. This act included the states that claimed to
secede, resulting in South Carolina owing approximately $363,000 in taxes.
47
Moreover, the
federal government’s inclusion of these states made it clear that they not only rejected their
claims of secession but found their allegiance to the Confederate States of America to be
illegitimate. To further enumerate how the U.S. government would collect taxes in these states,
Congress approved, “An act for the collection of direct taxes in insurrectionary districts within
the United States and for other purposes” on June 7, 1862. By this act’s authority, U.S. tax
commissioners set about collecting the twenty million dollars due the federal government, even
in insurrectionary states, by placing value on all lands and property and assigning their
apportioned taxes due.
48
Three tax commissioners were assigned to Beaufort: Dr. William Henry
Brisbane, Judge Abram D. Smith, and Judge William E. Wording.
49
The act required that the
commissioners place notices in local newspapers advertising the description of lands and their
amount of taxes due as well as the time and location of a public auction where any property that

47
United States, An Act to Provide Increased Revenue from Imports, to Pay Interest on the Public Debt, and for other Purposes
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1861), 294-295. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/1117.
48
George Sewell Boutwell, A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1863), 27-32.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Manual_of_the_Direct_and_Excise_Tax_Sy/jCZAAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false.
49
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 157.

34

still owed taxes could be purchased by the “highest bidder.”
50
In the event that taxes were not
paid nor the land sold at auction, the property was foreclosed upon and the title transferred and
held by the United States government. In Beaufort, advertisements were placed in The Free
South, a Union military operated newspaper published in 1863 and 1864.
51

Perhaps what is most revolutionary about this piece of legislation and how it singularly
reconstructed the course of history in Beaufort in particular, is who it specified could purchase
property and therefore, become a landowner. Just three months before President Lincoln issued
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which declared all enslaved people to be free and
entitled to protection as Freedmen, the direct tax act for insurrectionary districts specified:
Any loyal citizen of the United States, or any person, who shall have declared on oath his
intention to become such, or any person who shall have faithfully served as an officer,
musician, or private solder or sailor in the army or navy or marine service of the United
States, as a regular or volunteer, for the term of three months, may become the
purchaser.
52

By specifically using the term “person,” the act liberally included the formerly enslaved
population who were no longer slaves but who had not yet been legally defined as Freedmen. In
Beaufort, where the formerly enslaved community was spearheading the creation of new rights
for themselves and all formerly enslaved or free Black persons as part of the Port Royal
Experiment, the act was transformative in that it empowered them to not only purchase property
but to gain access to the rights associated with landownership in the United States. Furthermore,
the specification of any “person” serving in the military seemingly anticipated the recruitment

50
George Sewell Boutwell, A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1863), 29.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Manual_of_the_Direct_and_Excise_Tax_Sy/jCZAAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false.
51
Library of Congress, “About The Free South. [volume] (Beaufort, S.C.) 1863-1864,” Accessed January 2023.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/.
52
George Sewell Boutwell, A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and
Company, 1863), 31.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Manual_of_the_Direct_and_Excise_Tax_Sy/jCZAAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false.

35

and formation of troops composed of formerly enslaved and free Black people, extending
purchasing power and associated rights to anyone who fought for the Union. In Beaufort, where
the Port Royal Experiment enabled formerly enslaved people to access education programs,
work for wages, and sustain themselves by growing their own food, the act for the collection of
taxes in insurrectionary districts was a major success in that it codified a new right they could
access and that would be protected by law: the ability to purchase and own land.

United States Colored Troops
On August 25, 1862, just two months after the tax act on insurrectionary districts passed,
the War Department authorized military leaders in Beaufort to form the 1
st
South Carolina
Volunteer Infantry, composed of “persons of African descent” who would be armed, uniformed,
and equipped to serve in the United States military.
53
It was a pivotal moment for the formerly
enslaved people, who rightfully subscribed to famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ statement:
“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his
button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can
deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”
54
In all of the progress made in the Port Royal
Experiment in securing access to education, wages, and even the ability to purchase land as part
of the provisions of the insurrectionary tax act, the decision to arm Black soldiers to protect and
defend the Union of the United States was the most radical in that it, as Douglass is quoted, earns
the right to citizenship. Though the unit was first known as the 1
st
Contraband Regiment,
reflecting the ambiguous legal status of the formerly enslaved population, it was eventually re-

53
United States Secretary of War, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies: Series 1, Volume 14 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885), 377.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000007608995&view=1up&seq=389&q1=arm,%20uniform,%20equip.
54
The National Archives, “Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War,” Updated September 2017.
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war.

36

designated the 1
st
South Carolina Volunteer Infantry and then finally, the 33
rd
United States
Colored Troops.
55
Their courage was unmatched, with their Colonel, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, remarking in his journal: “There were more than a hundred men in the ranks who had
voluntarily met more dangers in their escape from slavery than any of my young captains had
incurred in all their lives.”
56
By their bravery, the 1
st
South Carolina Volunteers not only proved
their loyalty to the United States but established that formerly enslaved people were willing to
fight for the freedom to purchase property, access education, receive payment for their work, and
most of all, be protected as citizens of the United States, effectively ushering in reconstruction
and all subsequent civil rights movements by the sword.

Reconstruction in Beaufort, South Carolina
Emancipation & the End of the Civil War
Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation issued in September 1862 went into
effect on January 1, 1863 in which “all persons held as slaves” were declared “forever free” and
though it did not officially abolish slavery in the United States, it affirmed that the Civil War was
fundamentally about obtaining freedom for enslaved people.
57
The Civil War ended in April
1865 and the last people still enslaved were notified that they were free in June 1865 in
Galveston, Texas.
58
That same spring, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established to “protect and educate

55
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 112, 243.
56
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co, 1870), 246.
https://books.google.com/books?id=dk8IAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
57
The National Archives, “Emancipation Proclamation (1863),” Reviewed May 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-
documents/emancipation-proclamation.
58
Galveston History, “Juneteenth and General Orders, No. 3,” June 2021. https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-
and-general-order-no-3.

37

slaves freed by the military.”
59
The government agency operated under the War Department from
1865 to 1872 with functions ranging from supervising “abandoned and confiscated property” to
“issuing rations and clothing, operating hospitals and refugee camps, and supervising labor
contracts between planters and freedpeople” with an overall mission to “help formerly enslaved
people become self-sufficient.”
60
By the end of the year, on December 6, 1865, Congress passed
the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which officially outlawed the practice of
slavery and involuntary servitude.
61
With the abolition of slavery, the work of reconstructing the
nation officially began in which the United States re-negotiated, reconsidered, and reconstructed
notions of citizenship, freedom, representation, and equality in the period now known as the
Reconstruction era, lasting from 1861 to 1900.
62

A New Landscape: Socioeconomic & Physical Change in Postwar Beaufort
Beaufort’s population shifted from soldiers, missionaries, and Freedmen to a mix of
soldiers who decided to stay in the area postwar, northerners looking to start businesses or found
more schools and churches for Freedmen, the existing Gullah Geechee community and many
Black refugees who travelled to Beaufort to access the resources established in the area for

59
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 429.
60
The National Archives, “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” Updated October 2021. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-
americans/freedmens-bureau.
61
The National Archives, “13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865),” Updated May 2022.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#transcript.
62
It is necessary to note that the Thirteenth Amendment did not absolutely abolish the practice of slavery or involuntary servitude
in that it allowed both to be legally practiced and protected as a punishment for crime. White former enslavers used this loophole
to “funnel Black people into the convict leasing system“ to replace “the labor force lost as a result of emancipation.“ Following
the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, laws were passed at the local level throughout the American South which created strict
rules and regulations for Black people so that they could be arrested, incarcerated, and sent to prison where they were forced to
perform labor in similar or worse conditions than during enslavement (if they were formerly enslaved). Clint Smith, How the
Word is Passed (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021). See Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), or Thomas Aiello’s book, Jim Crow’s Last Stand: Nonunanimous Criminal
Jury Verdicts in Louisiana (2015) to learn more about government-protected policies which mimic the institution of slavery to
continue attempts to control Black bodies in the U.S.

38

formerly enslaved people under the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
63

Some rebellious Beaufortonians who fled the city upon Union occupation returned as well to a
completely different landscape. Not only was the city overrun with northerners, but the people
they had once enslaved now freely attended schools and churches, were marrying, and reuniting
with family members, and were purchasing land and building their own homes and agricultural
enterprises, thus completely upending the Antebellum socio-economic system. Furthermore, the
physical landscape was changed, too. Under the proceedings of the Direct Tax Commission,
rebels lost claim to their land, homes, and plantations because they did not pay their taxes and
most of that property was completely divided up and sold during and immediately after the war,
altering Beaufort’s landscape from one of vast plantations to generally smaller landholdings
distributed amongst mostly northern speculators but some Freedmen.
64

Violence and Reconstruction
Though the Reconstruction era did lay the foundation for all Civil Rights protections for
all people in the United States, it was not readily accepted; in fact, Black people were subject to
all forms of violence as they did the work of reconstructing the nation after the Civil War.
Throughout the Reconstruction era in Beaufort, violence against Black people was never far
away and it manifested in various forms despite Civil Rights legislation such as the Fourteenth
Amendment passing, which established terms of U.S. citizenship and specifically promised to

63
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 428-429.
64
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 253-259.

39

provide equal protection to all persons.
65
Physical violence in the form of lynchings, assault, and
other terrorist tactics led by individuals and organizations were common but not the only
violence Black people faced during Reconstruction.
66
Legislation passed by the former
Confederate states, now known as “Black Codes,” completely restricted and controlled the
freedom of Black people.
67
In addition to White Beaufort rebels inciting physical violence
against Black people as well as passing violent legislation, many did all in their power to regain
the land they lost during the Civil War. In some cases, returned rebels hired lawyers to
undermine the validity of the direct tax commission’s sale of their land to formerly enslaved
people to regain their old property.
68
If land had not been sold at auction, rebels could even pay
the minimum amount of taxes due and receive of certificate of redemption in which they
regained title to their Antebellum landholding.
69
Finally, in the form of economic violence, the
United States passed legislation which “compensated the descendants of antebellum owners of
sea island plantations for their losses as a consequence of the U.S. Direct Tax Act foreclosures”
in 1892.
70

65
The National Archives, “14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” Reviewed February 2022.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment.
66
The physical violence faced by Black people during the Reconstruction era is an immense topic which deserves further
attention. It is a necessary part of this story; however, it cannot be fully explored in this paper. To learn more, please visit the
Equal Justice Initiative’s report, “Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876,” that can be found
on their website: https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/.
67
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 450.
68
United States Supreme Court, Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States, Volume 12 (New York:
The Banks Law Publishing Co, 1909), 391-400.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cases_Argued_and_Adjudged_in_the_Supreme/IgMGAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.
69
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 273-274.
70
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption,
1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 2015), 466.

40

Chapter 2 : Land Development History of 1313 Congress Street
Indigenous History, Colonization, & the Establishment of Beaufort
Archaeological excavations date indigenous habitation along the South Carolina coast as
early as 10,000 B.C. and at the time the first European explorers arrived in the sixteenth century,
complex civilizations existed amongst the following tribes that called present-day Beaufort
home: the Hoya, Witcheough, Escamacu, Wimbee, Toupa, Mayon, Stalame, Combahee, Kussoh,
Ashepoo, and Edisto.
71
Pedro de Salazar first explored Beaufort in 1514 and Lucas de Vázquez
de Ayllón, another Spanish explorer, first attempted to establish a South Carolina settlement in
1526. The colony failed, as did many other attempts by Spanish, French, and Scottish colonists,
but once Charleston was settled by the British in 1670, Beaufort got its start not long after in
1711.
72
Between first contact and Beaufort’s official establishment, the relationship between
indigenous people and Europeans was primarily characterized by violent and extractive
interactions that came to a head in April 1715 when the Yamassee Indian War erupted.
73

The Yamassee War resulted in the expulsion of all indigenous people from Beaufort and
the colonial era ramped up as settlers and the people they enslaved were brought in droves to
transform the coastal landscape into one of large, profitable plantations. The colonial period
ended when the American Revolution began in 1776.
74
Though Beaufort was devasted by British
forces during the Revolutionary War, the city slowly continued to recover and re-establish the
large plantations that had originally made South Carolina one of the wealthiest British colonies.
75

71
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 7-10.
72
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 10, 16-19, 88.
73
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 95-108.
74
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 111, 199-200.
75
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 195, 254.

41

By 1790, the population was approximately 18,000 people, a number which more than doubled
during the Antebellum period, peaking in 1860 at approximately 40,000 people on the eve of the
Civil War.
76
It is unknown who owned the land upon which the house at 1313 Congress sits or
what they did with it between Beaufort’s founding in 1711 and the Antebellum period when
records relating to it first appear. The town boundary did not even include the land until the early
nineteenth century when the city’s northern boundary expanded to its current configuration.
77

Despite the lack of specific evidence for this period, the land upon which the house at 1313
Congress sits today is part of the story of Beaufort’s landscape history and includes indigenous
habitation, early colonial settlement, the Revolutionary period, and the establishment of the
plantation economy that gave rise to the Antebellum period and culminated in the Civil War.

Chain of Title
When Federal Troops occupied Beaufort following the Battle of Port Royal Sound in
November 1861 and established the Direct Tax Commission to facilitate tax collection in
insurrectionary districts, the commissioners mapped and assessed all of Beaufort County,
labelling the land where 1313 Congress is now located as Block 100 after imposing a rectilinear
grid over the town’s geography. Block 100, like most city blocks in the town of Beaufort, is a
square that is approximately two acres in size. It is in the northwest quadrant of the city.
78

76
Census Bulletin No. 46: Population of South Carolina by Counties and Minor Civil Divisions, Prepared by Mr. William C.
Hunt (Washington, D.C., 1901). https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1900/bulletins/demographic/46-
population-sc.pdf.
77
Historic Beaufort Foundation, “If These Streets Could Talk,” Updated 2021, https://historicbeaufort.org/if-these-streets-could-
talk/.
78
Plan of the City of Beaufort, S.C., as allotted by U.S. Tax Commissioners for the District of South Carolina, February 1863.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305619.

42

Figure 2.1: Plan of the City of Beaufort, SC as allotted by the U.S. Tax Commissioners. Image Source: National Archives.

William Avis Morcock
Prior to the Civil War, before Block 100 was Block 100, the land was owned by William
Avis Morcock, a prominent Beaufort resident who endorsed the institution of slavery and thrived
because of it during the Antebellum period. Morcock was born in Georgia in 1804 and is
recorded as living in Beaufort as early as 1810 up until at least 1870.
79
By 1880, he lived in
Morgan County, Georgia where he died two years later in October 1882 and is buried.
80
During
his life in Beaufort, Morcock benefitted greatly from the institution of slavery. He himself grew
up in a household that enslaved people but after his marriage to Susan Maria Aggnew in 1827,

79
“William Avis Morcock in the U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s-Current,” AncestryLibrary, Accessed 2022.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/; U.S. Census Bureau, 1810, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/; U.S. Census
Bureau, 1870 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
80
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org; “William Avis Morcock in the U.S., Find a Grave
Index, 1600s-Current,” AncestryLibrary, Accessed 2022. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

43

his prospects and prominence increased.
81
The 1830 Census listed twelve enslaved people in
their newly formed household.
82
By 1850, Morcock is recorded as a forty-six-year-old planter
who enslaved thirty-one people.
83
The 1860 Census records that he owned 460 acres of land that
primarily produced sweet potatoes and corn and that he enslaved thirty-four people.
84
In addition
to agricultural production, Morcock owned a large mercantile business on Bay Street, the main
downtown business corridor in Beaufort, that “included a dry goods stores, a steam-powered
grist mill, and three cotton gins.”
85
And through marriage to his wife, Susan Maria Aggnew,
Morcock received title to land and a house situated on the Beaufort River from which he oversaw
the White Hall Ferry service, the only publicly accessible transportation from Beaufort to the Sea
Islands, and which brought considerable wealth and power to his family.
86

When the Civil War broke out in April 1861 at Fort Sumter, Morcock’s family aligned
themselves with the Confederate cause to protect the institution of slavery. Morcock’s wife,
Susan Aggnew, presided over the Beaufort Soldiers’ Relief Association formed to support
Confederate soldiers and two of their sons enlisted and actively fought for the Confederacy.
87

Morcock himself worked for the Confederate War Tax Office in the fifth collection district as an
assessor.
88
The family fled Beaufort in 1861 and resided in Allendale, an inland region of South
Carolina that remained a Confederate stronghold throughout the Civil War. Susan Aggnew

81
U.S. Census Bureau, 1830, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
82
U.S. Census Bureau, 1830, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
83
U.S. Census Bureau, 1850, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
84
U.S. Census Bureau, 1860, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
85
Lawrence S. Rowland, Alexander Moore, George C. Rogers, The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 1,
1514-1861 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 383.
86
William A. Morcock, “Petition Asking to Renew in Morcock’s Name, The Charter to the Beaufort Ferry,” (Beaufort, SC,
August 1844). https://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/; Ann Aggnew, “Petition, Requesting a Renewal of the Charter of the Ferry
from Ladies Island to Beaufort,” (Beaufort, SC, 1826). https://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/.
87
Mrs. Thomas Taylor, ed., South Carolina Women in the Confederacy. (Columbia, SC: The State Company, 1903), 176.
https://archive.org/details/southcarolinawom00unit/page/n10/mode/1up?ref=ol&view=theater.; “Beaufort Soldiers’ Relief
Association,” The Charleston Mercury, December 14, 1861. https://www.newspapers.com/.; National Park Service, “Search for
Soldiers,” Accessed February 2023. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers.htm#sort=score+desc&q=morcock.
88
“War Tax Office,” The Charleston Mercury, June 27, 1863. https://www.newspapers.com/.

44

Morcock’s death in 1862, covered by her obituary, reveals the family’s location during the Civil
War as well as their feelings toward it: “Driven from her home by this invasion, her strong faith
never wavered.”
89
Though the family left Beaufort in 1861, Morcock was aware that his
landholdings were at risk and in 1862, he filed a claim with the Confederate War and Treasury
Departments to receive payment for the “losses” he “suffered” due to the “invasion of the state
by the public enemy.”
90
The losses he refers to include all property he held as of 1861 when the
federal government took over Beaufort and Morcock and his family abandoned their holdings. It
includes a description of “Lots in Beaufort” Morcock owned that likely refers to the lot of land
that would be re-named Block 100 by assessors.
91

Figure 2.2: Confederate Property File for Wm. A. Morcock, August 1862. Image Source: National Archives.

The document is part of Morcock’s “Citizens File,” a record that is part of a collection of
documents originally “created or received by the Confederate War and Treasury departments”
which were taken into custody by the United States War Department after the Civil War and re-
labelled “Rebel Archives.”
92
Morcock’s Confederate Citizens File sheds light on how the land
was likely used during the Antebellum period. Morcock specified in his claim that he owned
numerous animals associated with livestock and agricultural production, one lot of land devoted

89
“Obituary,” The Charleston Mercury, March 5, 1862. https://www.newspapers.com/.
90
The National Archives, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65. Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.
91
The National Archives, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65. Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.
92
“Confederate Citizens File: Overview,” Fold3, Accessed February 2023. https://www.fold3.com/publication/60/confederate-
citizens-file.

45

to agricultural production tools, one lot devoted to poultry, a “nearly new 6 horse power steam
engine,” one lot full of carpenter tools, one lot of household and kitchen furniture, one “tract land
about 450 acres & 3 miles from Beaufort,” as well as foodstuffs such as corn, peas, and sweet
potatoes.
93
Additionally, Morcock described eighteen people as part of his property lost due to
the “invasion of the State by the public enemy.”
94
His personal property listings indicate he
likely utilized the land upon which 1313 Congress sits today for livestock grazing, agricultural
production, or storage of associated tools – all managed by the people he enslaved.

Figure 2.3: Diagram of Block 100 Owner Pre-1861, William Avis Morcock. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

United States Government
As previously noted, when the federal government re-gained control of Beaufort after the
Battle of Port Royal, they were empowered by tax laws passed in 1861 and 1862 to claim

93
The National Archives, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65. Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.
94
The National Archives, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65. Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.

46

ownership of all lands in Beaufort due to unpaid taxes.
95
Under the Direct Tax Commission, they
managed said lands by mapping, assessing, and eventually putting them up for sale to raise funds
for the federal government and Union victory in the Civil War. In January 1863, a local Union-
operated newspaper, The Free South, published a notice summarizing the situation and indicating
the date, time, and location where the sale of the lands would occur, as well as descriptions of
and amount due for the land being auctioned. It states:
Notice is hereby given that the several Tracts or Lots of Land situated in the State of
South Carolina, hereinafter described, have become forfeited to the United States by
reason of the non-payment of the direct taxes charged thereon…and that same will be
sold at public auction on the 11
th
day of February, A.D., 1863, at 10 o’clock A.M. of said
day, at the office of the Direct Tax Commissioners under the said Acts for the State of
South Carolina, in the Town of Beaufort…and that the sale of the same will be continued
from day to day until all of said Lots and Tracts of Land are finally disposed of.
96

Figure 2.4: The Free South, “Sale of Lands.” January 17, 1863. Image Source: Library of Congress.

95
United States, An Act to Provide Increased Revenue from Imports, to Pay Interest on the Public Debt, and for other Purposes
(Washington, D.C.: Govt. Printing Office, 1861), 294-295. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/1117.; George Sewell Boutwell, A
Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1863), 27-32.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Manual_of_the_Direct_and_Excise_Tax_Sy/jCZAAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false.
96
“Sale of Lands for Unpaid Direct Taxes in Insurrectionary Districts. States of South Carolina,” The Free South, January 17,
1863. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-01-17/ed-1/seq-4/.

47

It is in this newspaper article that Block 100 is first recorded and described with its total amount
due being one dollar and twenty cents.
97
On February 11, 1863, Block 100 was put up for sale at
public auction at the office of the Direct Tax Commission.
98

Figure 2.5: Diagram of Block 100 Owner 1861-1864, United States Government. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
In January 1864, The Free South reported Dr. F.A. Hayden as the purchaser of Block
100.
99
Dr. Ferdinand Hayden was a Union Army surgeon who presided over Beaufort hospital
number three from 1863 to 1864.
100
He was born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1829 and, after
attending Oberlin College, graduated from Albany Medical College in 1853.
101
When the Civil
War broke out in 1861, he was working as a naturalist and surgeon on the Raynolds’ expedition

97
“Sale of Lands for Unpaid Direct Taxes in Insurrectionary Districts. States of South Carolina,” The Free South, January 17,
1863. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-01-17/ed-1/seq-4/.
98
“Sale of Lands for Unpaid Direct Taxes in Insurrectionary Districts. State of South Carolina,” The Free South, January 17,
1863. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-01-17/ed-1/seq-4/.
99
“Sale of Lots and Blocks in Beaufort, South Carolina,” The Free South, January 30, 1864.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1864-01-30/ed-1/seq-3/.
100
“Our Hospitals – The Wounded,” The Free South, July 25, 1863. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-
07-25/ed-1/seq-3/.; Copy of the plot of the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, 1860. https://www.loc.gov/item/79690340/.; J.P.
Lesley, “Obituary Notice of Ferdinand Vandevere Hayden, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D.,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 25, no. 127 (January 1888): 59-60, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/983281.pdf.
101
“Obituary,” The Buffalo Commercial, December 23, 1887. https://www.newspapers.com/.

48

of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers.
102
Hayden returned from the west, enlisted, and first
worked as the Assistant Surgeon of Volunteers in a Philadelphia hospital, followed by his
promotion to full Surgeon of Volunteers in Beaufort in February 1863. When the newspaper
reported Hayden as the purchaser of Block 100, he was still stationed in Beaufort; However, he
was re-appointed shortly thereafter to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where he served as
chief medical officer until the end of the Civil War in 1865.
103
After the war, Hayden resumed
his studies of the western territories of the United States and is credited with helping found
Yellowstone National Park. He died on December 22, 1887.
104

Though Hayden was the reported purchaser in the local newspaper, there is no other
evidence indicating that he finalized the purchase. No deed transaction has been located which
proves Hayden purchased Block 100 and it is unclear why the newspaper reported him as the
purchaser. There is evidence to suggest that he may have been connected to the land purchase,
though, but likely in the capacity as a facilitator or friend. Two days after the newspaper reported
Hayden as the purchaser, a deed transfer of Block 100 was finalized on February 1, 1864, to a
Union army soldier named Daniel Simmons.
105
Simmons, hospitalized in Beaufort for two
months in 1863, may have met or known Hayden and asked the surgeon to help him purchase
property at the auction held by the tax commissioners.
106

102
Kenneth H. Baldwin, Enhanced Enclosure: The Army Engineers and Yellowstone National Park (Washington D.C.: Office of
the Chief of Engineers, 1976), Chapter II.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111111055004/http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/baldwin/index.htm.
103
J.P. Lesley, “Obituary Notice of Ferdinand Vandevere Hayden, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D.,” Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 25, no. 127 (January 1888): 59-60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/983281.pdf.
104
Smithsonian Institution Archives, “The Megatherium Club: Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden,” Accessed March 2023.
https://siarchives.si.edu/featured-topics/megatherium/ferdinand-vandeveer-hayden.
105
Army, Navy, or Marine Land Certificate No. 96 (Beaufort, SC, February 1864), microfilm, National Archives Record Group
58, Tax Sale Certificates 1-64, Army/Navy/Marine Certificates 1-132. Accessed at Heritage Library, Hilton Head, South Carolina
2022; Index to Army, Navy, and Marine Land Certificates District of Beaufort, Compiled by Heritage Library Volunteers,
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5802c4d9414fb5e45ce4dc44/t/5db5f7b78cf08675afbec293/1572206520133/armynavy++A
LPHA++LAND+CERTIFICATES.xls+-2011.pdf
106
The National Archives, Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served with the United States
Colored Troops: Infantry Organizations, 31st through 35th, Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.

49

Daniel Simmons
Army, Navy, or Marine Land Certificate No. 96 certified the sale of Block 100 to Daniel
Simmons “for the sum of one hundred and sixty dollars,” of which one-fourth was paid with the
remainder due over a period of three years.
107
Per the regulations of the Direct Tax Act, the land
certificate was “to be received…as prima facie evidence of the…validity of said sale, and of the
title of said purchaser.”
108
Simmons, formerly enslaved, was now a landowner.

Figure 2.6: Microfilm Image of Army, Navy, or Marine Certificate No. 96 Certifying the Sale of Block 100 to Daniel Simmons
for the sum of $160 on February 1, 1864. Image Source: National Archives.

107
Army, Navy, or Marine Land Certificate No. 96 (Beaufort, SC, February 1864), microfilm, National Archives Record Group
58, Tax Sale Certificates 1-64, Army/Navy/Marine Certificates 1-132. Accessed at Heritage Library, Hilton Head, South Carolina
2022; Index to Army, Navy, and Marine Land Certificates District of Beaufort, Compiled by Heritage Library Volunteers,
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5802c4d9414fb5e45ce4dc44/t/5db5f7b78cf08675afbec293/1572206520133/armynavy++A
LPHA++LAND+CERTIFICATES.xls+-2011.pdf.; George Sewell Boutwell, A Manual of the Direct and Excise Tax System of
the United States (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1863), 31.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Manual_of_the_Direct_and_Excise_Tax_Sy/jCZAAAAAYAAJ?q=&gbpv=1#f=false.
108
The United States, Laws and Resolutions Relating to the Direct and Excise Taxes (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1863), 29-31. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Laws_and_Resolutions_Relating_to_the_Dir/-
2xAAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.

50

Figure 2.7: Microfilm Image of Army, Navy, or Marine Certificate No. 96 Certifying the Sale of Block 100 to Daniel Simmons
for the sum of $160 on February 1, 1864. Image Source: National Archives.

Daniel Simmons enlisted the year before he purchased Block 100, in April 1863, helping
form the second all Black regiment in South Carolina known as the Second South Carolina
Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Colored) and later known as the thirty-fourth United States
Colored Infantry.
109
His company’s descriptive book recorded Simmons as a private in company
F who was twenty-seven years old, five feet six inches tall, with a “mulato” complexion and
having black eyes and black hair. It lists his birthplace as Orangeburg, South Carolina, and his
occupation as “Coach Maker.”
110

109
U.S. Census Bureau, 1890, Eleventh Census of the United States: Special Schedule: Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines,
and Widows, etc., FamilySearch, http://FamilySearch.org; Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence
Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina:
Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 243.
110
The National Archives, Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served with the United States
Colored Troops: Infantry Organizations, 31st through 35th, Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.

51

Figure 2.8: Microfilm Image of Civil War Service Record for Daniel Simmons. Image Source: National Archives.

In February 1864, when the land certificate was finalized and Block 100 sold to Simmons, his
company’s muster roll described him as “absent” with the note that he was “sick in Hospital
Beaufort.”
111
Simmons served in the army the remainder of the Civil War and mustered out in
February 1866.
112
It is unclear what Simmons did after the service, however, the next record in
which he appears suggests that he chose to live on the land that he purchased in 1864. The 1880
Census recorded Daniel Simmons residing on Congress Street and was described as “Mu” for
mulatto and his occupation as “Coach Painter,” aligning with earlier descriptions of Simmons

111
The National Archives, Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served with the United States
Colored Troops: Infantry Organizations, 31st through 35th, Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.
112
U.S. Census Bureau, 1890, Eleventh Census of the United States: Special Schedule: Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines,
and Widows, etc., FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.

52

and indicating that the soldier who purchased the land in 1864 built and lived in a house on
Congress Street sometime between the purchase date and the census record in 1880.
113

Figure 2.9: 1880 Census Entry for Daniel Simmons on Congress Street, Beaufort, SC. Image Source: AncestryLibrary.

According to the Beaufort County Assessor, the house at 1313 Congress Street was built in the
year 1870, making it possible that Simmons constructed the house and lived in it, however, the
1880 Census does not indicate where exactly on Congress Street he lived, somewhat weakening
his connection to the house at 1313 Congress Street specifically.
114
It lists his dwelling number
as “17” but it is unknown where on Congress Street dwelling seventeen was located as of the
1880 Census.
115
Daniel Simmons was recorded as living in Beaufort in the 1890 Census.
116
He
died in August 1900 and is interred in the National Cemetery in Beaufort.
117

113
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.
114
Beaufort County, South Carolina, “Public Mapping Site,” https://gis.beaufortcountysc.gov/publicmapping/.; U.S. Census
Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.
115
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
116
U.S. Census Bureau, 1890, Eleventh Census of the United States: Special Schedule: Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines,
and Widows, etc., FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.
117
National Archives, U.S. National Cemetery Interment Control Forms, 1928-1962. AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

53

Figure 2.10: Diagram of Block 100 Owner 1864-1874, Daniel Simmons. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

United States Government
The next set of records associated with Block 100 indicate that at some point after Daniel
Simmons purchased the land, he lost the title to it and ownership reverted to the United States
Government. On June 30, 1874, a deed transaction was completed in which the United States
released the title to Block 100 to W.A. Morcock, Trustee “for the sum of two dollars and eighty-
five cents” under certificate of release number 147.
118

118
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 19, Page 391, June 30, 1874 & October 31, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20019.pdf.

54

Figure 2.11: Certificate of Release No. 147 releasing Block 100 from the United States to W.A. Morcock on June 30, 1874.
Image Source: Beaufort County Deed Book 19, Page 391.

Certificate of release documents were specifically created by an 1872 tax law to release lands
“owned or held by the United States…under an act entitled ‘An act for the collection of direct
taxes in insurrectionary districts’” back to original owners following the end of the Civil War.
119

As the United States government released Block 100 to Morcock in 1874, it means that they held
the title, indicating that at some point they reclaimed the title from Simmons. No records have
been found indicating when this occurred, but it was likely in 1867, three years after Simmons’
initial purchase date and when the full amount was due for full ownership of the land.
120

Though the United States Government repossessed the title to Block 100 sometime
between Simmons’ initial purchase date (1864) and when they released the title to Morcock
(1874), this does not mean that Simmons did not reside on the land nor build the house at 1313
Congress Street. The 1872 tax law specifically included a stipulation describing scenarios where

119
United States, A Compilation of the Direct Tax Laws of the United States from August 5, 1861: with Regulations and
Instructions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 71.
https://books.google.com/books?id=eyBAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&
q&f=false.
120
Army, Navy, or Marine Land Certificate No. 96 (Beaufort, SC, February 1864), microfilm, National Archives Record Group
58, Tax Sale Certificates 1-64, Army/Navy/Marine Certificates 1-132. Accessed at Heritage Library, Hilton Head, SC, 2022.

55

people who improved lands whose titles were held by the government were due compensation
from the pre-war owner filing for the certificate of release: “If any person other than the
applicant shall…have made valuable and permanent improvements on the lands…after
acquisition of the title by the United States, and before June 8, 1872, it will be the duty of the
applicant for redemption to pay such person or persons the reasonable value of such permanent
improvement.”
121
If Simmons lost title to Block 100 in 1867 but still improved the land in 1870
by building the house at 1313 Congress Street, he would have been entitled to a settlement from
Morcock at the time of redemption in 1874.
122
No evidence has been found indicating that this
settlement occurred, however, Simmons’ presence on Congress Street in the 1880 Census is still
the strongest evidence that he remained living on Congress Street throughout this period,
regardless of holding title to the land.
123
Moreover, the fact that the 1872 tax law included
direction for situations where a person improved land that they did not hold title to is evidence
that this was a common enough occurrence that they needed to account for it in the tax law.
124

Whether Simmons resided on Block 100 or not, the title was held by the United States
Government by at least 1874.

121
United States, A Compilation of the Direct Tax Laws of the United States from August 5, 1861: with Regulations and
Instructions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 72.
https://books.google.com/books?id=eyBAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&
q&f=false.
122
Beaufort County, South Carolina, “Public Mapping Site,” https://gis.beaufortcountysc.gov/publicmapping/.
123
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.
124
United States, A Compilation of the Direct Tax Laws of the United States from August 5, 1861: with Regulations and
Instructions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 72.
https://books.google.com/books?id=eyBAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&
q&f=false.

56

Figure 2.12: Diagram of Block 100 Owner 1874, United States Government. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

William Avis Morcock
The 1874 Certificate of Release released the title to Block 100 from the United States
Government to William Morcock, the owner of the land prior to the Civil War.
125
The 1872 tax
law which allowed for lands to be redeemed by previous owners included the stipulation that
applicants must provide “satisfactory evidence” of their ownership to restore title to
themselves.
126
It is unclear exactly what evidence Morcock used to prove that he held title to
Block 100 prior to the Civil War, however, the United States release to him indicates that it was
sufficient to prove his ownership. He likely used personal documents such as the claim he filed
with the Confederate War and Treasury Departments that did include a description of “4
Dwellings Houses & Lots in Beaufort” as part of his pre-Civil War property holdings.
127

125
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 19, Page 391, June 30, 1874 & October 31, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20019.pdf.
126
United States, A Compilation of the Direct Tax Laws of the United States from August 5, 1861: with Regulations and
Instructions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 71.
127
The National Archives, Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, 1861-65. Fold3. https://www.fold3.com/.

57

It is unknown when exactly Morcock returned to Beaufort, however, in January 1867, the
White Hall Ferry was rechartered “for the term of seven years…[to] William A. Morcock,”
placing him back in Beaufort by 1867, following the end of the Civil War.
128
He remained in
Beaufort until at least 1874 to operate the ferry but by 1880 resided in Georgia where he died
two years later.
129
Morcock held title to Block 100 prior to the Civil War as well as briefly from
1874 to 1877 under the certificate of release. In 1877, he sold the land to Niels Christensen.
130

Figure 2.13: Diagram of Block 100 Owner 1874-1877, William Avis Morcock. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

Niels Christensen
Niels Christensen was born January 31, 1840, in Denmark and immigrated to the United
States in 1862 to enlist and serve in the 145
th
Regiment of the New York Infantry to fight for the

128
“Acts of Legislature,” The Charleston Mercury, January 22, 1867. https://www.newspapers.com/.
129
“Acts of Legislature,” The Charleston Mercury, January 22, 1867. https://www.newspapers.com/.; Find a Grave, “William
Avis Morcock,” Accessed February 2023. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70994629/william-avis-morcock.
130
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 19, Page 391, June 30, 1874 & October 31, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20019.pdf.

58

Union Army during the Civil War.
131
In a biography about his wife, historian Monica Maria
Tetzlaff speculates that Christensen’s decision to immigrate and join the Union Army was partly
due to it being his “best opportunity for advancement in the United States” as well as his “open
attitude toward African Americans.”
132
Tetzlaff's claim is informed by Christensen's time spent
as Captain to the 44th U.S. Colored Infantry stationed in Alabama and Tennessee from 1865 to
1866 and which he achieved by passing an examination as opposed to being promoted based on
local connections or social clout.
133
He continued his service to the United States after the Civil
War ended by working as the keeper of the National Cemetery in Beaufort from 1870 to 1876.
134

131
Find a Grave, “CPT Niels Christensen,” Accessed February 2023. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/83548468/niels-
christensen?_gl=1*jdu8cj*_ga*MTE3NDk1MDc5Ny4xNjc1OTk0MTQ1*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY3NzE4NTMwOC4yMy4xL
jE2NzcxODcyNTguMTEuMC4w.; National Park Service, “Search for Soldiers,” Accessed February 2023.
https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers-detail.htm?soldierId=41A4168D-DC7A-DF11-BF36-B8AC6F5D926A.
132
Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race and Gender (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 71.
133
Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race and Gender (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 72.
134
U.S. Census Bureau, 1870, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard
Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County,
South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 495.

59

Figure 2.14: Stereograph Image of the Entrance to U.S. National Cemetery, Beaufort, SC. Photograph by James A. Palmer, 1870-
1889. Image Source: University of South Carolina Digital Collections.

In 1874 he met Abbie Holmes, a missionary from Massachusetts in Beaufort to teach Freedmen,
and in 1875 they married.
135
A year later, in 1876, Christensen opened both “a lumber and
hardware business” that sold “‘doors, sashes, blinds, flooring, nails, bricks, palmetto logs and
cypress shingles’” and the “Christensen Real Estate agency” in downtown Beaufort.
136

135
Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race and Gender (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 73, 77.
136
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 495.

60

Figure 2.15: 1905 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing Niels Christensen’s Company at the corner of Port Republic and East
Street in downtown Beaufort. Source: Library of Congress.

By 1900, Christensen was “the largest taxpayer in Beaufort County.”
137
He died in 1909 in
Beaufort.
138
A family biography explains Christensen’s success: After purchasing inexpensive
land throughout Beaufort in the 1870s, Christensen began “building houses on credit” which he
resold “mostly to African American families,” in which he “asked for no money down with only
interest payments required.”
139
The “small frame cottages” were financed and built by
Christensen’s lumber company and title held by his real estate company until they could be paid

137
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 495.
138
Find a Grave, “CPT Niels Christensen,” Accessed February 2023. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/83548468/niels-
christensen?_gl=1*jdu8cj*_ga*MTE3NDk1MDc5Ny4xNjc1OTk0MTQ1*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY3NzE4NTMwOC4yMy4xL
jE2NzcxODcyNTguMTEuMC4w.
139
Unpublished papers related to Christensen Family, in the Christensen Family BDC Vertical File, undated, Beaufort District
Collection, Beaufort County Library, Beaufort, South Carolina. Page 52, 81.

61

off.
140
In some cases, the land and houses took “decades to pay off” with payments being made
to Niels the 3
rd
, Christensen’s grandson, in the 1940s, as part of the family business.
141

Figure 2.16: Christensen Family Portrait. Niels Sr. is second from left. Abbie Holmes Christensen is second from right.
Image Source: South Carolina Public Radio.

The deed transaction which transferred the title to Block 100 from Morcock to
Christensen is dated January 9, 1877, though it also has a second associated date, November 1,
1893.
142
The certificate of release from the United States government to Morcock also had a
second associated date, October 31, 1893 – one day prior to Morcock selling Block 100 to
Christensen.
143
It is likely that the documents were re-filed at the same time in 1893 at the

140
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 575.
141
Unpublished papers related to Christensen Family, in the Christensen Family BDC Vertical File, undated, Beaufort District
Collection, Beaufort County Library, Beaufort, South Carolina. Page 52.
142
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 18, Page 491, January 9, 1877 & November 1, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20018.pdf.
143
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 19, Page 391, June 30, 1874 & October 31, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20019.pdf.

62

request of Christensen as his name appears on both documents.
144
Portions of the title to Block
100 remained in possession of the Christensen family until the 1940s when the family deeded
their last held parcel of the block.
145

Before continuing the chain of title, it is necessary to note that though there is evidence
suggesting Simmons constructed a house on Congress Street in Block 100 sometime between
purchasing it in 1864 and his record of living on Congress Street in 1880, in combination with
the Assessor construction date of 1870, there is also a possibility that the house was not built
until Christensen purchased the land. If Christensen did with Block 100 as his family biography
suggests was his pattern – purchasing land and constructing cottages for Black families to be
paid off over several years – then it is possible that the house at 1313 Congress Street was not
built until 1877.
146
An 1877 construction date still accounts for Daniel Simmons residing on
Congress Street in the 1880 Census.
147
There is also conflicting evidence which suggests that
another family resided in the house at 1313 Congress Street according to the 1880 Census. At
dwelling house number 422 on “Con” [Congress] Street, a man by the name of Isaac Williams
lived with his wife, “Rebec” and their five children.
148
As later records refer to the house at 1313
Congress Street with an address listing of “422 Congress Street,” it is possible that Isaac
Williams resided in the house as of the 1880 Census recording.
149
Isaac Williams’ neighbors on
the Census Page include Moses and Affie Simmons, known landholders in Block 100 according

144
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 18, Page 491, January 9, 1877 & November 1, 1893.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20018.pdf.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 19, Page 391,
June 30, 1874 & October 31, 1893. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20019.pdf.
145
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, page 279, January 12, 1945.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.
146
Unpublished papers related to Christensen Family, in the Christensen Family BDC Vertical File, undated, Beaufort District
Collection, Beaufort County Library, Beaufort, South Carolina. Page 52, 81.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 18,
Page 491, January 9, 1877 & November 1, 1893. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20018.pdf.
147
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880. AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
148
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880. AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
149
University of South Carolina University Libraries, “Beaufort, 1924, 1952, 1958: Sheet 11,” Accessed January 2023.
https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/SFMAPS/id/3798.

63

to a later deed transaction, further indicating that the Williams family resided in the house at
1313 Congress Street at least in 1880.
150
Little is known about Isaac Williams or how long he
and his family may have resided in Block 100 at 422 Congress Street.

Figure 2.17: Diagram of Block 100 Owner 1877-1896. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

After purchasing Block 100 from Morcock in 1877, the Christensen family subdivided
the land into separate parcels. The earliest known deed transaction which subdivided Block 100
occurred on June 30, 1896, when Christensen transferred the northwest corner of Block 100 to
Cecelia Reddick.
151
His son released the adjacent parcel to “Celia Riddick” on December 14,
1911.
152
They continued subdividing Block 100 and selling portions of it up through the 1940s,
including a 1925 release from Christensen to Ben Myers, a 1944 release from Christensen to
Theresa Simmons Gantt, as well as two transactions releasing two separate parcels in the

150
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880. AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book
26, page 59, November 19, 1904. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20026.pdf.
151
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 21, Page 330, June 30, 1896.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20021.pdf.
152
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 31, Page 421, December 14, 1911.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20031.pdf.; I am assuming that Cecelia Reddick and Celia Reddick are
the same person.

64

southwest corner of Block 100 to Edith Stokes in 1945 and 1946.
153
In addition to those
landowners, another portion of Block 100 was held by Affie Simmons, and though it is unclear
when the Christensen family released that parcel to her, it is known that Simmons released it to
her daughter, Rina Gregory, on April 7, 1904.
154
The subdivision of Block 100 reveals the
development history of the land, offers insight on Christensen’s business enterprises, and sheds
light on who came to be the neighbors to the house at 1313 Congress Street over the years. Most
of all, the deed transactions lead to the longest known owner of the house at 1313 Congress
Street, Edith Stokes. It cannot be stated with certainty that Daniel Simmons constructed the
house at 1313 Congress Street, nor can it be known exactly what year the house was constructed.
It is known that Edith Stokes resided at 1313 Congress the longest and that the Christensen
family played a significant role in the development of Block 100.

153
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 44, Page 195, February 2, 1925.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20044.pdf.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, Page 130,
July 15, 1944. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.; Beaufort County, South Carolina,
Deed Book 62, Page 279, January 12, 1945. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.;
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 65, Page 23, December 30, 1946.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20065.pdf.
154
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 26, Page 59, November 19, 1904.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20026.pdf.

65

Figure 2.18: Known Subdivisions of Block 100 sold by Niels Christensen from 1896 to 1946. *Earliest known deed transfers,
unknown if/when Christensen held these parcels. Data Source: Beaufort County Deed Books. Illustration Source: Emily Varley.

Edith Stokes
On January 12, 1945, N. Christensen Sons Company transferred the title to a portion of
Block 100 to Edith Stokes.
155
The heirs of Edith Stokes retain the title to the portion of Block
100 where the house at 1313 Congress sits today and she is the longest known resident of the
house. Edith Stokes was born in Hampton County, South Carolina to Simon and Hagar Myers in
1862.
156
The 1880 Census lists Edith as “Eady Myers” residing with her parents and siblings in
Peeples, South Carolina, her occupation as “Field Hand” and unable to read or write.
157
It

155
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, Page 279, January 12, 1945.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.
156
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.; Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily
Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
157
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.

66

estimates her father’s birthdate to be around 1837 and her mother’s birthdate to be around 1835,
both born in South Carolina and married in 1853.
158
Edith married her husband Gadson Stokes in
1890 and they remained living in Peeples, Hampton County, South Carolina until at least 1900.
By that point, the couple had four children: James (b.1890), Rosalie (b.1892), Eliza (b.1894)
Bertha (b.1895), and Sam (b.1898).
159
Between 1900 and 1910, the family moved to Beaufort
and listed three more children as part of their family: Lilly (b.1903), Zettie [Sadie] (b.1906), and
Jessie (b.1908).
160
The 1920 Census records the family as living on Congress Street as follows:
Gadson Stokes (Head), Edy Stokes (Wife), Sam Stokes (Son), Lillie Stokes (Daughter), Sadie
Stokes (Daughter), Booker T Stokes (Son) and indicates that the family rented their house.
161
By
1930, Edith Stokes is recorded as the head of her household on Congress Street and living with
her sons, Sam and Booker T, as well as with her daughter in law, Mamie Stokes.
162
The 1940
Census again describes Edith Stokes as living on Congress Street and owning her home.
163
The
other members of her household listed are James, her son, and Rosalie, her granddaughter. In
1950, Edith Stokes still resided on Congress Street, though officially her complete address was
listed as 1313 Congress in the Census.
164
Her house was not always numbered 1313, records as
late as 1940 describe Edith Stokes living at 422 Congress Street.
165
1952 and 1958 edits to a
1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map include both addresses.
166
By 1950, Edith Stokes owned the

158
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org.; U.S. Census Bureau, 1900 Census,
AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
159
U.S. Census Bureau, 1900 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
160
U.S. Census Bureau, 1910 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
161
U.S. Census Bureau, 1920 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
162
U.S. Census Bureau, 1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
163
U.S. Census Bureau, 1940 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
164
U.S. Census Bureau, 1950 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
165
U.S. World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947, AncestryLibrary, Draft Card for Booker Thomas Stokes, Accessed
March 2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
166
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina, Sanborn Map Company, 1924, 1952, 1958.
Map. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/SFMAPS/id/3800/.

67

lot in the southwest corner of Block 100 where the house at 1313 Congress is located as well as
the lot adjacent to it.
167
She remained living in the house until her death in February 1967.
168

Figure 2.19: 1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map with 1952 & 1958 Edits showing Block 100.
Image Source: University of South Carolina Digital Collections.

167
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, Page 279, January 12, 1945.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 65,
Page 23, December 30, 1946. https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20065.pdf.
168
South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821-1971, AncestryLibrary, Death Certificate for Edith Myers Stokes, Accessed March
2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

68

Chapter 3 : Social History of the Stokes Cottage
The Story of the Stokes Cottage is the Story of Edith Stokes
The earliest known records which specifically reference the house at 1313 Congress
Street appear in the 1950 Census when Edith Stokes is listed as the head of her household and
living alone. Stokes lived in the house at 1313 Congress Street much earlier than 1950 and is the
longest known resident of the house, therefore, the story of the house is incomplete without the
story of Edith Stokes. On February 26, 1967, Edith Myers Stokes died at her home at 1313
Congress Street. She is buried at Pilgrim Cemetery in Burton, South Carolina and the funeral
was managed by Wright-Donaldson. On the death certificate, her husband is listed as Gadson
Stokes, her father is listed as Simon Myers, her mother as Hagar “?”, and her birthplace as
Hampton County, South Carolina. The date of birth is “? -? – 1896.” The informant is Sam
Stokes, of Beaufort.
169
Edith Myers Stokes’ death certificate hints at her overall life story and is
the scaffolding by which I came to understand her, her family, and the community they formed
surrounding the house at 1313 Congress Street. The house itself is remarkable for its long
history, architectural significance, and place in Beaufort’s National Historic Landmark District;
However, the social world held by the house and the people who were born, lived, and died in it
are central to understanding the larger significance of the house at 1313 Congress Street.

169
South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821-1971, AncestryLibrary, Death Certificate for Edith Myers Stokes, Accessed March
2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

69

Figure 3.1: 1313 Congress Street, Beaufort, SC. View Northwest. Image Source: Emily Varley, August 2022.

1865 to 1900
Edith Myers Stokes’ death certificate estimates her birth to be in the year 1896, though
evidence indicates she was born much earlier, likely in the 1860s. The 1880 Census records an
“Eady Myers” living in the township of Peeples, in Hampton County, South Carolina with
parents, Simon and Hagar Myers, and siblings, Tamah, Sawney, Benjamin, Patsey, Simon, and
Hagar. She is described as “B” for Black and “F” for female and is recorded as being fifteen
years old, indicative of an 1865 birth year.
170
It is hard to imagine what life was like for a fifteen-
year-old Black girl in rural South Carolina in 1880 nor will it ever really be possible to know

170
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

70

exactly what Edith Myers Stokes’ early life was like, but it is possible to describe the history of
the socio-cultural landscape in which she lived and narrate how she came to be part of the story
of the house at 1313 Congress Street.
When Edith Myers Stokes was born, Hampton County – her place of birth – did not even
exist. In 1865, it was part of the mainland area of Beaufort County – the inland region connected
to the rest of South Carolina rather than the coast and sea islands immediately surrounding the
town of Beaufort itself. During the Civil War, the antebellum families who owned the vast
agricultural plantations that characterized mainland Beaufort County did not lose their land and
many returned home following the Civil War with hopes of recreating their old way of life
through tenant farming and oppressive and strict Black Codes to control the people they formerly
enslaved.
171
In the 1870s, the population of this region was nearly 50% White and continued to
adamantly vote Democrat standing in stark contrast to the population of the town of Beaufort and
surrounding sea islands, with its 90% Black population that almost entirely voted Republican.
172

In the inland region, Democratic voters supported oppressive and discriminatory policies that
would control and disenfranchise Black people and on the coast and sea islands surrounding the
town of Beaufort itself, Republican voters (the majority of which were Black) primarily
supported radical reformations to support formerly enslaved people. This created a division
between the inland and coastal regions of the counties and throughout the rest of the 1860s and
1870s, White leaders of the inland region of Beaufort County gathered support for a split of
Beaufort County into two separate municipalities: Beaufort and Hampton Counties. The

171
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 571.
172
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 570.

71

campaign was a success and on February 28, 1878, South Carolina Governor Wade Hampton
signed a bill into law that officially split Beaufort County in two – an arbitrary geographic divide
reflective of political differences.
173
The “secession” of Hampton County was seen by many as a
not-so-veiled attempt to recreate the power dynamics of the pre-Civil War Antebellum south
resulting in “difficult and even dangerous” conditions for local Black families now considered
residents of Hampton County.
174

Figure 3.2: Beaufort County pre 1878 (Left) & Beaufort and Hampton County post 1878 (Right).
Source: South Carolina Department of Archives & History.

According to the 1880 Census, Edith Myers was a fifteen-year-old “field hand” who
could neither read nor write. Her mother and four of her six siblings were also described as “field
hand[s],” with her eight-year-old sister, Patsey, being the youngest farm worker. Her father’s
occupation was “farmer.”
175
The Census entry does not indicate whether Simon Myers owned his
farm or if he, his wife, and children worked on a farm that they rented for either shares of the

173
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 574.
174
Stephen R. Wise, Alexander Moore, Gerhard Spieler, Lawrence Sanders Rowland, Rebellion, Reconstruction, and
Redemption, 1861–1893 The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: Volume 2, 1861-1893 (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2015), 574.
175
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

72

products (sharecropping) or for a fixed amount of money (tenant farming) or if they owned and
operated their own farm. According to an analysis of 1880 Census data of the “Cotton South”
states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina, 54.6% of Black-operated
farms were sharecropped, 25.8% were fixed-rented, and 19.6% were owned, making it likely that
the Myers family either sharecropped or paid rent to operate their farm.
176
How crops were
controlled in the years following the Civil War was a divisive Reconstruction era issue. For
formerly enslaved people, like Edith’s parents, they were intimately familiar with farming and
experts of the local landscape and often felt entitled to own both the land and crops that their
labor (and their ancestors’ labor) had created. On the other hand, former plantation owners
wanted to continue to reap the most profit they could from the large swaths of land they owned.
Sharecropping and tenant farming became common ways the plantation farming system was
reconstructed to include formerly enslaved people, though the former is recognized as much
more exploitative and therefore, favored by former plantation owners and disdained by formerly
enslaved people. This trend is visible in the 1880 Census differences between Beaufort County,
with its 91% Black population, and Hampton County, with its 66% Black population.
177
In
Beaufort County, 51% of farms were rented with only 1% sharecropped and in Hampton County,
17% of farms were rented and 19% were sharecropped.
178
Regardless of ownership structure and
the larger historical narrative reflected in that status, it must also be noted that Edith Myers’
upbringing on a farm gave her a remarkable knowledge of how to provide for herself and her
family in the form of crop production.

176
James R. Irwin, “Farmers and Laborers: A Note on Black Occupations in the Postbellum South,” Agricultural History 64, no.
1 (Winter 1990): 55.
177
Total Population, White, Colored, 1880, Social Explorer, (based on date from U.S. Census Bureau; accessed March 2023),
https://www.socialexplorer.com/ae7cc341d6/view.
178
Total Number of Farms, Owner Operated Farms, Farms Rented for Shares of Products, 1880. Social Explorer, (based on data
from U.S. Census Bureau; accessed March 2023), https://www.socialexplorer.com/ad1002be4e/view.

73

According to the 1900 Census, Simon Myers still lived and worked as a farmer in
Hampton County with his wife and children described as “farm laborers,” though Edith Myers
was now listed in the Census as Edith Stokes, as she had married her husband, Gadson Stokes, in
1890.
179
The 1900 Census records Gadson and Edith Stokes living in Hampton County with their
five children: James (born: 1890), Rosa Lee [“Rosalie”] (born: 1892), Eliza (born: 1894), Bertha
(born: 1895), and Sam (born: 1898). Gadson was described as a “farmer” who rented his home,
Edith had no occupation listed, and the Census indicated that both could read, write, and speak
English – a notable change from the 1880 Census that had listed Edith as unable to read or
write.
180
Like the early part of her life, it is impossible to know exactly what life was like for
Edith as a young woman, newlywed, and mother of five young children in the years between her
appearance in the 1880 and 1900 Censuses. Historically, Edith Myers Stokes would have been
experiencing these stages of her life as the Reconstruction Era (1863 – 1877) ended and White
southern Democrats regained power and used it to oppress and disenfranchise Black people.
From the moment the Civil War ended, White southern Democrats had been steadily regaining
political power throughout South Carolina with Beaufort being one of the last counties to
continue to elect Black and Republican leaders that defended and protected equal rights for
Black people up through the 1890s.
181
Growing up herself in Hampton County as well as raising
her young children there, Stokes would have been painfully aware of the legally oppressive
Black Codes as well as the violence of illegal terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

179
1900 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
180
1900 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
181
Alexia J. Helsley, Beaufort: A History (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2005), 144.

74

1900 to 1950
In the years following the split of Beaufort and Hampton County, many Black families
migrated to Beaufort County to access land ownership and formal education so they might
continue the work of Reconstruction in their own lives for themselves and their families. Both
the Myers and the Stokes family remained in Hampton County until at least 1900 though they
too followed the trend and eventually migrated to Beaufort County sometime between 1900 and
1910.
182
The 1910 Census does not indicate where in Beaufort the family lived, but it is believed
that they resided in the house at 1313 Congress Street.
183
The 1910 Census records Edith living
in the city of Beaufort with her husband, Gadson, and their children: James (age: eighteen), Rosa
Lee (age: sixteen), Eliza (age: fourteen), Bertha (age: twelve), Samuel (age: ten), Lilly (age:
seven), Sadie [“Zettie”] (age: four), and Jessie (age: two). Gadson’s occupation was described as
“Farmer,” his industry as “Home Farm,” and his home as “R” for rented. Edith Stokes was
described as “F” for female, “Mu” for mulatto, age thirty-five, with “none” written for
occupation. In addition to asking if persons could read and write, the Census asked if a person
had attended school. Edith and Gadson were described as able to read and write but their school
attendance column was blank. All their children, apart from the youngest – four-year-old Sadie
and two-year-old Jessie – were also able to read and write in addition to receiving a “yes” in their
school attendance columns.
184
Gadson’s title of “Farmer” and industry description of “Home
Farm” indicates a measure of self-supporting independence the family achieved once in
Beaufort. According to the 1910 Census instructions for enumerators, a farmer is “a person in

182
1900 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; 1910 Census, AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
183
This theory that the Stokes family lived at the house on Congress Street by the 1910 Census records comes from an oral
history interview with two of Edith Stokes’ descendants, granddaughters Annie Mae and Shirley Stokes.
184
1910 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

75

charge of a farm…whether he owns it or operates it as a tenant, renter, or cropper,” and a home
farm is defined under the “Women doing farm work” section as “a woman working regularly at
outdoor farm work…on the home farm for her husband, son, or other relative.”
185
This indicates
that Edith’s family likely lived independently by providing for themselves with their home farm,
even if they did rent the land itself or share the crop yield with an owner. Moreover, Edith’s
children were described as attending school rather than as “field hands,” as she and her siblings
had been when they were children.
186
Life would have still been difficult but these small changes
in their circumstances indicate that their family actively reconstructed their lives and life
outcomes through their home farm that brought independence and self-sufficiency and their
commitment to educating their children.
It is unknown where Edith’s children attended school while living in Beaufort though
their options would have been limited to the segregated public schools managed by the school
district or one of the schools originally founded during the Port Royal Experiment for the
education of formerly enslaved people. Of the schools founded during the Civil War and the
Reconstruction Era, there was Penn School, Mather School, Port Royal Agricultural School,
Harbison Institute, and likely others. Penn School began in June 1862 when northern activists
Laura Towne and Ellen Murray first instructed formerly enslaved pupils at Oaks Plantation on
St. Helena Island, then, outgrowing that site, they moved operations to nearby Brick Church, and
finally they established their own campus, now known as Penn Center, on land they purchased

185
The 1910 Census Enumerator Instructions indicates that a “home farm” regardless of whether it is rented, sharecropped, or
occupied by tenants is a farm operated by a head of household where the family lives indicating that the Stokes family lived on
their own private home farm they were in charge of, even if they rented it from a landowner. U.S. Census Bureau, “1910 Census
Instructions to Enumerators,” 1910, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/technical-
documentation/questionnaires/1910/1910-instructions.html.
186
U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; 1910 Census, AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

76

from freedman, Hastings Gantt.
187
Penn educated Black students until 1948 when the school
transitioned to a community center and Civil Rights Movement advocacy outpost.
188
Mather
School was founded by Rachel Crane Mather of Boston in 1868 to provide an education for
formerly enslaved women and their daughters on Port Royal Island. The school educated
students until 1968 when it became a trade school managed by the state and now the site of the
Technical College of the Lowcountry.
189
Port Royal Agricultural School, later known as
Shanklin School, was founded in 1901 on Port Royal Island by Abbie Holmes Christensen, a
Massachusetts native who had come to Beaufort at a young age to participate in the Port Royal
Experiment with her parents.
190
Shanklin School, though officially titled “Beaufort County
Training School” after a 1920 name and ownership change, was run by Tuskegee graduates
Joseph Shanklin and India Gordon Shanklin from 1903 to 1946 (Joseph) and 1905 to 1939
(India).
191
The school closed in 1955.
192
Little is known about Harbison Institute other than its
location in the town of Beaufort itself according to fire insurance maps that mark its presence at
the southwest corner of Prince and Scott Street in 1899 and 1905, as well as in 1912 with a name

187
Orville Burton & Wilbur Cross, Penn Center: A History Preserved (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014) 26-28, 39.
188
Penn Center 1862, “Timeline of Penn Center History,” Accessed March 2023. https://www.penncenter.com/history-timeline.;
Orville Burton & Wilbur Cross, Penn Center: A History Preserved (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014), 64.
189
Technical College of the Lowcountry, “The Mather School,” Accessed March 2023. https://www.tcl.edu/about-tcl/alumni/the-
mather-school/.; Mather School Alumni, “The History of Mather School,” Accessed March 2023.
https://sites.google.com/clarkmoorellc.com/matherschool/history-of-mather-school.
190
Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race and Gender (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 4, 47, 144, 149.; William Newton Hartshorn, An Era of Progress and Promise, 1863-
1910 (Boston: Priscilla Publishing Co, 1910), 367.
https://archive.org/details/eraofprogresspro00hart_0/page/366/mode/2up?q=beaufort.
191
University of South Carolina, “Shanklin Family Papers,” Accessed March 2023.
https://archives.library.sc.edu/repositories/3/resources/58.
192
S.C. Department of Archives & History, “South Carolina State Historical Markers,” Winter 2019, 77-78.
https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/bitstream/handle/10827/32610/DAH_South_Carolina_Historical_Markers_Guidebook_2019.pdf?se
quence=1&isAllowed=y.

77

change to “Beaufort Academy (Negro).”
193
The school presumably closed when the building
became apartments sometime between the 1924 and 1958 fire insurance survey of the town.
194

Figure 3.3: 1899 and 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps depicting Harbison Institute Colored & Beaufort Academy (Negro).

Though it would have been possible for Edith Stokes’ children to attend school at any of those
locations, Mather School, Shanklin School, and Harbison Institute were geographically much
closer to their home on Congress Street being on the same island (Port Royal) that the city of
Beaufort itself is located on, as opposed to Penn School which is located on St. Helena Island,
across the Beaufort River. In addition to those options for schooling, Beaufort also had
segregated public schools for Black students with one, “Public School Colored,” being only a
few blocks from their home on Congress Street and occupying the city block north of
Washington Street between Carteret Street and New Street.
195

193
I have chosen to include the term “Negro” in this thesis as it part of the historical record and, though it is harmful and was
used historically to discriminate against Black people, I do not wish to exclude it or ignore the racist history of Beaufort, South
Carolina nor ignore the discrimination that the family at the center of this thesis would have dealt with living in Beaufort. It is not
intended to be harmful in any way.
194
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Sanborn Map Company, November 1899.
Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn08117_004/.; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South
Carolina. Sanborn Map Company, June 1905. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn08117_005/.; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map
from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina, Sanborn Map Company, March 1912. Map.
https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn08117_006/.; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina,
Sanborn Map Company, 1924, 1952, 1958. Map. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/SFMAPS/id/3800/.
195
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina, Sanborn Map Company, June 1905. Map.
https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn08117_005/.; I have chosen to include the term “Colored” in this thesis as it part of the

78

Figure 3.4: 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing segregated school facilities in Beaufort.

It likely opened following the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court Case decision of 1896 that
allowed for “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races,” though it does
not appear on local surveys of the city until 1905.
196
By 1920, Beaufort public schools were
spending $31.48 per White student and only $3.69 per Black student, illustrating the blatant
racism and discrimination prevalent in Beaufort and the larger education system.
197
Despite the
discrimination they would have faced, whether attending one of the schools founded during the

historical record and, though it is harmful and was used historically to discriminate against Black people, I do not wish to exclude
it or ignore the racist history of Beaufort, South Carolina nor ignore the discrimination that the family at the center of this thesis
would have dealt with living in Beaufort. It is not intended to be harmful in any way.
196
The National Archives, “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),” Updated February 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-
documents/plessy-v-ferguson.; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Beaufort, Beaufort County, South Carolina. Sanborn Map
Company, June 1905. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn08117_005/.
197
South Carolina State Department of Education, Fifty-Second Annual Report of the State Superintendent of Education of the
State of South Carolina, (Columbia, SC: Gonzales and Bryan States Printers, 1920), 232.
https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/hasimondle/10827/37975.

79

Civil War and Reconstruction Era or the local public school, Edith Stokes’ children attended
school, effectively reconstructing their lives by doing what their parents had been unable to and
what their grandparents, enslaved people, would have been barred from doing.
The 1920 Census records Edith and Gadson Stokes living in Beaufort with some of their
older children, including their youngest, Booker T. (age: eleven). It also indicates that the family
lived at 422 Congress Street.
198
This address no longer exists but it is believed that it is referring
to the house at 1313 Congress Street.
199
By this point, Edith Stokes’ family network in Beaufort
also expanded. Her father, Simon Myers, is recorded as living in Beaufort on Boundary Street,
making his home just one street north of the Stokes family home on Congress Street and possibly
in the same block. Her brother, Ben Myers, also relocated from Hampton to Beaufort County and
is recorded as living on Boundary Street as well.
200
Ben Myers’ home location is known to be in
Block 100, just northeast of the house at 1313 Congress Street, because he purchased the land it
sits upon in 1925.
201
Additionally, an oral history interview with Edith Stokes’ granddaughters’
Annie Mae and Shirley fondly recalled what it was like growing up and going to visit “Uncle
Ben” at his home just behind their grandmother’s house at 1313 Congress Street.
202
While
Edith’s family drew together in Beaufort, their migration into Beaufort stands in stark contrast to
the larger historical migration which occurred during this period out of Beaufort and out of all
southern states. From the 1910s through the 1970s, “some six million Black southerners left the

198
1920 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
199
This theory that the Stokes family lived at the house on Congress Street by the 1910 Census and especially by the 1920
Census comes from an oral history interview with two of Edith Stokes’ descendants, granddaughters Annie Mae and Shirley
Stokes. Additionally, the 1920 Census page for Gadson and Edith includes two neighbors that can be linked to Block 100 (the
location of the house at 1313 Congress Street) via deed transfer documents: Ben Myers is recorded on Boundary Street and
purchased land in Block 100 in 1925 and Affie Simmons is recorded on Congress Street and transferred her title to land in Block
100 to her daughter in 1904.
200
1920 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
201
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 44, Page 195, February 2, 1925.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20044.pdf.
202
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.

80

land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly
every other corner of America,” now known as the Great Migration. Beaufort was no different
with the total Black population dropping nearly 50% from 32,137 persons in 1900 to 17,454 in
1920.
203
Despite Edith likely watching her friends, some of her family, and community members
leave Beaufort in search of new opportunities elsewhere, she chose to stay and continue building
a life there for herself and her family. In addition to growing her community by investing in her
children’s education by sending them to school and having relatives move to Beaufort to be
nearby, Edith was a long-time congregant of Central Baptist Church in Beaufort.
204

The 1930 Census records Edith Stokes living at 422 Congress Street in Beaufort with her
sons, Sam, and Booker T., as well as with her daughter-in-law, Mamie – Sam’s wife.
205
Ben
Myers, her brother, is recorded on the same page as Edith as he still lived on Boundary Street, on
one of the lots behind her house on Congress Street.
206
Edith’s father no longer lived nearby as
he died in June 1922 at age eighty. Edith supplied the information for the death certificate.
207
The
1930 Census reveals that Edith suffered another loss between 1920 and 1930 as it records her as
a widow, indicating that her husband Gadson Stokes passed away sometime in the 1920s.
208
In
other ways, Edith’s life seemed to improve. She is described as owning her home, valued at
$250, as well as being described as the owner of her own farm. Her occupation is “Farmer.”
209
It
is unclear why Edith Stokes reported that she owned her home and farm in the 1930 Census as

203
Black Population, 1900, Social Explorer, (based on data from Digitally transcribed by Inter-university Consortium for
Political and Social Research; accessed May 2023), https://www.socialexplorer.com/a9676d974c/explore.; Black Population,
1920, Social Explorer, (based on data from Digitally transcribed by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social
Research; accessed May 2023), https://www.socialexplorer.com/a9676d974c/explore.
204
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
205
1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for Funerals,
“Geraldine V Wilds,” Accessed March 2023. https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituaries/print?o_id=3718275.
206
1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
207
South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821-1971, AncestryLibrary, Death Certificate for Simon Meyers, Accessed March
2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
208
1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
209
1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

81

titles to land ownership were not officially transferred to her until 1945 and 1946; Nevertheless,
it is possible that she had paid off the majority of what was due and simply did not finalize the
legal documents until later. With her youngest son, Booker T., recorded as eighteen years old in
1930 and soon to be married and starting his own family, Edith’s life transitioned into that of a
family matriarch and grandmother.
210

The 1940 Census records Edith Stokes living on Congress Street, surrounded by her
family. Her occupation was still described as farmer, despite being recorded as sixty-nine years
old, and likely being closer to her mid-seventies.
211
Her brother, Ben Myers, and his wife,
Minnie, still lived in the house behind hers on the same block.
212
Her son, Sam, and his wife,
Mamie, lived on Congress Street as did her youngest son, Booker T. [“Bookatie”] with his wife,
Annie Mae, and their children. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Edith’s family grew to include
many grandchildren. Sam and Mamie had one daughter, Geraldine (born: 1940).
213
Booker T.
and Annie Mae had multiple children: Booker T. Jr. (born: 1932), Sammie (born: 1934), Leroy
(born: 1936), Annie Mae (born: 1938), Jackson (born: 1941), Carolyn (born: 1943), Bernard
(born: 1945), Ralph (born: 1947), Shirley (born: 1949), and Cynthia (born: 1956).
214
Though

210
1930 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; 1940 Census, AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
211
1940 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; The 1880 Census listed Edith’s age as 15 in 1880, placing
her birth year in 1865, which would make her 75 years old in 1940.
212
1940 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
213
Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for Funerals, “Geraldine V Wilds,” Accessed March 2023.
https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituaries/print?o_id=3718275.
214
Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for Funerals, “Carolyn Stokes Alston,” Accessed March 2023.
https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituaries/print?o_id=4165801.; Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for Funerals,
“Ralph J. Stokes,” Accessed March 2023. https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituary/4416719.; Marshel’s Wright-
Donaldson Home for Funerals, “Sammie L. Stokes,” Accessed March 2023.
https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituary/sammie-stokes?fh_id=13339.; Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for
Funerals, “Jackson Stokes,” Accessed March 2023. https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituaries/print?o_id=1466169.;
Marshel’s Wright-Donaldson Home for Funerals, “Leroy Stokes,” Accessed March 2023.
https://www.marshelswrightdonaldson.com/obituary/3369550.; Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley,
Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.; South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821-1971, AncestryLibrary, Death Certificate
for Bernard Roland Stokes, Accessed March 2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.;1950 Census, AncestryLibrary.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; 1940 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; Edith’s other children,
James, Rosalie, Eliza, Bertha, Lillian, Sadie, and Jessie likely and did have other children, however, since Sam and Booker T.’s
children remained tied to the house at 1313 Congress Street throughout their lives, they are centered in this story.

82

Edith’s other children also gave her grandchildren, Sam and Booker T. raised their children in
Beaufort, and, in the case of Booker T.’s first four children, they were born in the house at 1313
Congress Street.
215
They moved into their own home down the street, at 1401 Washington Street,
in the 1940s. In addition to her family growing, Edith Stokes’ assets grew in the 1940s. On
January 12, 1945, Edith Stokes received title to the land where the house at 1313 Congress sits
from N. Christensen Sons Company, officially making her the owner of the house and the lot
where it is situated.
216
A year later, on December 30, 1946, Edith Stokes received title to the
adjacent parcel from N. Christensen Sons Company, likely the land considered part of her “farm”
reported in earlier census records and recalled by her granddaughter, Annie Mae, in an
interview.
217
By the 1950 Census, Edith Stokes is recorded as living alone at 1313 Congress
Street. Though her census form was largely left blank, her life story from 1950 onward to her
death in 1967 is illuminated by the memories of her granddaughters, Annie Mae, and Shirley
Stokes.
218

1950 to 1967
On July 27, 2022, Annie Mae Stokes recalled what her life was like growing up in
Beaufort and shared memories of her grandmother, Edith Stokes, from the time she was born in
1938 until her grandmother’s passing in 1967. One of the first things she mentioned is that she
was born in her grandmother’s house at 1313 Congress Street, according to her own mother,

215
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
216
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, Page 279, January 12, 1945.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.
217
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 65, Page 23, December 30, 1946.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20065.pdf.; Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley,
Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
218
1950 Census, AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

83

Annie Mae Green Stokes.
219
She described how her grandmother, mother, father, and siblings
made growing up very pleasant for her and that her grandmother would give her gifts such as
making her pancakes or buying her a baby doll. She described how she would run down to her
grandmother’s house when her mother sent her outside to do chores growing up. Annie Mae
considers both 1313 Congress Street (her grandmother’s home) and 1401 Washington (her
parent’s home) her home as she spent considerable time in both and both homes remain within
her family. And when running down to her grandmother’s house, Annie Mae recalled that she
would stop along the way and wait under the shade of the trees to cool her feet since she often
did not wear shoes and the streets were not yet paved and it was hot – despite her home at 1401
Washington Street only being two blocks away from her grandmother’s house. Occasionally,
Annie Mae recalled, that her brother would even take their father’s horse (which he kept at their
home on Washington Street and that the family grew up with until local zoning laws changed to
prohibit livestock in residential areas) and ride it to their grandmother’s house.
220
One of her
brothers would be in the front, Annie Mae in the middle, and another brother behind her and the
three would ride to their grandmother’s house. Annie Mae recalled her grandmother saying to
them, “Children, why are you riding your father’s horse down here in all this heat?” and they
would reply, “Well, Grandma its very hot out!”. And so, Edith Stokes told them to go and tie the
horse around the back of her house and pump some water from the pump to give it a drink and

219
Annie Mae’s mother is also named Annie Mae. Her maiden name “Green” is known from their family’s 1950 Census record
which includes “Sarah Green” in their household and is described as “Mother-in-law” to the head of household, Booker T.
Stokes, Annie Mae’s husband and the informant’s father. Annie Mae’s mother filled out Sarah Green’s death certificate in 1955.
220
The record of a zoning law change has not been confirmed but Annie Mae recalled that the laws changed, and they had to take
the horse out to their country property because it was no longer permitted to be at their house in town. Additionally, the law
change resulted in the removal of an outhouse in the backyard of Edith Stokes’ house on Congress Street as well as an addition
being constructed at the rear of the house to create an indoor bathroom and more substantial kitchen space.

84

cool it off. She remembered it was her brothers’ way of having a “little fun” with grandmother
because “she was very, very funny.”
221

Annie Mae also described what she remembers about her grandmother’s house and yard.
In addition to the water pump in the front of the house, there was a fence at the front of the yard
to keep her animals and crops protected. Annie Mae remembers when she would go to the front
gate at her grandmother’s house and the rooster would be there “like a dog” and would not let
her into the yard. Edith Stokes would get a broom and tell the rooster, “Go to the back, go to the
back!” and it would listen to her. But Annie Mae recalls, the rooster was pretending, and he
would go “through the kitchen door to the back and come to the front.” He didn’t want them in
the yard so her grandmother would have to lock him up in the chicken coop in the backyard. She
also kept a cow and Annie Mae recalled that her grandmother would milk the cow “just about
every day” so they would have fresh milk. She also grew crops in the fields adjacent to the
house: peanuts, corn, and beans. Annie Mae remembers following behind her grandmother and
learning how to pull up the peanuts, shake off the dirt, and then bring them home to pull the
peanuts off the branches. Her grandmother’s garden was very nice and “People would come by,
and she would even give peanuts and sometimes the beans…to people.”
222

In the later years of her life, Edith Stokes lost her eyesight and came to rely on her family
and her community, though she continued to live independently in her home on Congress Street.
Annie Mae recalls the neighbors coming to her aid to help her with harvests and especially one
neighbor, a woman schoolteacher who helped her with reading.
223
The “next-door
lady…schoolteacher” recalled is likely Theresa Simmons-Gantt, who lived on nearby Harrington

221
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
222
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
223
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.

85

Street with her parents in 1940 when she was first recorded as a “teacher,” and who purchased
the lot adjacent to Edith’s in 1944.
224
Simmons-Gantt and her husband constructed their home at
1307 Congress Street the following year, 1945, where they lived as neighbors to Stokes for the
remainder of their lives.
225
Despite going blind, Shirley Stokes recalled, her grandmother was
“very sharp.” When Edith went blind, it was often Shirley’s job to bring her grandmother
breakfast, “always oatmeal,” that she would pick up at her uncle’s house, Sam, as her aunt,
Mamie, made breakfast for Edith daily. When Shirley returned home from school each day, her
mother, Annie Mae, had her deliver the dinner she made for her mother-in-law. Their family also
helped Edith by taking her on Sundays to Central Baptist Church, where she was a long-time
congregant.
226
Edith Stokes died at her home on Congress Street on February 26, 1967.
227

Figure 3.5: Photograph from Oral History Interview. Interviewer Emily Varley (L) & Informant Annie Mae Stokes (R).
Videography of Oral History Interview conducted by Paul Keyserling.

224
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.; 1940 Census,
AncestryLibrary. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.; Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 62, Page130. July 15, 1944.
https://deedbooks.s3.amazonaws.com/Deed%20Book%20062%20(MMV).pdf.
225
Beaufort County, South Carolina. “Public Mapping Site.” https://gis.beaufortcountysc.gov/publicmapping/.; Legacy.com,
“Theresa Katherine ‘Momma Tee’ Gantt,” Accessed March 2023.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/statesboroherald/name/theresa-gantt-obituary?id=25981150.
226
Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes, interview by Emily Varley, Beaufort, South Carolina, July 27, 2022.
227
South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821-1971, AncestryLibrary, Death Certificate for Edith Myers Stokes, Accessed March
2023. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.

86

Post 1967
It is unclear who lived in the house at 1313 Congress Street in the years immediately
following Edith Stokes’ death, but it is known that the house stayed within the Stokes family.
Records indicate that legal proceedings to officially transfer the title to the land and house at
1313 Congress Street were not initiated until the 1990s.
228
At that time, it is known that one of
Edith’s grandson’s, Jackson, “Juggie,” Stokes lived in the house on Congress Street, but it is
unclear for how long or if he lived with anyone else.
229
The most recent deed transactions
associated with the land and house at 1313 Congress Street were completed in 1994, following
the death of Annie Mae Stokes Sr. in 1992. A deed of distribution divided ownership of 1313
Congress Street into eight parts, to each of Edith Stokes’ remaining grandchildren: Sammie,
Leroy, Jackson, Ralph, Annie Mae, Carolyn, Cynthia, and Shirley.
230
At present, in 2023, only
Annie Mae, Cynthia, and Shirley are alive and hold title to the land and house at 1313 Congress
Street.
231

228
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 579, Pages 657-660, July 15, 1991.
https://rod.beaufortcountysc.gov/BrowserViewDMP/.
229
U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993, AncestryLibrary, Voter Registration List for Jackson Stokes, Accessed March 2023.
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
230
Beaufort County, South Carolina, Deed Book 678, Pages 1124-1127, January 13, 1994.
https://rod.beaufortcountysc.gov/BrowserViewDMP/.
231
This information is known by viewing the obituaries of Sammie Stokes, Leroy Stokes, Jackson Stokes, Ralph Stokes, and
Carolyn Stokes. I met and interviewed Annie Mae and Shirley Stokes in July 2022.

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Chapter 4 : Reconstructing Preservation Practice
Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation
Federal Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation
The entirety of the original boundaries of the city of Beaufort (approximately 304 acres)
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and then designated a National
Historic Landmark District in 1973.
232

Figure 4.1: Beaufort National Historic Landmark District Map. Map Source: Emily Varley.

The National Historic Landmark Program is authorized under the Historic Sites Act of 1935 to
“preserve for public use historic sites, buildings and objects of national significance for the

232
City of Beaufort, “Historic District,” Accessed April 2023. https://www.cityofbeaufort.org/178/Historic-District.

88

inspiration and benefit of the people of the United States.”
233
The National Register of Historic
Places is authorized under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 to create “a system of
procedural protections” that “encourage both the identification and protection of historic
resources.”
234
Though Beaufort’s status first as a historic district in the National Register of
Historic Places and then as a National Historic Landmark district means that the city is highly
regarded and of national significance, these designations are nominal only.
235
Neither the
Historic Sites Act of 1935 nor the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created a police
power for the federal government to administer the treatments recommended by the National
Park Service for conserving cultural heritage sites, structures, landscapes, objects, and places.
The official treatments are preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction, however,
cultural heritage is often altered, demolished, relocated, memorialized, interpreted, erased, or
forgotten.
236
Preservation practice in the United States is defined and mandated by the Historic
Sites Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, policies which, for better or worse, limit the
scope of preservation to official treatments and authorized interventions. Nonetheless, the
establishment of the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Landmarks
Program are both of vital importance as they draw attention to resources and can, as a result,
inspire respect for, continued investment in, and awareness of cultural heritage in the United
States.

233
National Park Service, “Historic Sites Act of 1935,” Updated January 2023.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/archeology/historic-sites-
act.htm#:~:text=The%20Historic%20Sites%20Act%20established,people%20of%20the%20United%20States.%E2%80%9D.
234
National Park Service, “Archaeology: National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,” Updated January 2023.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/archeology/national-historic-preservation-act.htm.
235
National Park Service, “National Historic Landmarks: Frequently Asked Questions,” Updated November 2022.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/faqs.htm.
236
National Park Service, “Technical Preservation Services: The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of
Historic Properties,” Updated October 2022. https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1739/secretary-standards-treatment-historic-
properties.htm#:~:text=The%20Standards%20for%20the%20Treatment,rehabilitation%2C%20restoration%2C%20and%20recon
struction.

89

South Carolina Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation
The establishment of the National Register of Historic Places, though without the legal
“teeth” necessary to enforce the conservation of cultural heritage, created a framework by which
state, tribal, and local governing bodies could similarly create registers to acknowledge cultural
heritage and use their more extensive governing power to enforce and incentivize conservation
efforts via land use laws. In the United States, land use is typically regulated at the local level,
and it is no different in South Carolina, where the site at the center of this investigation – 1313
Congress Street – is located. In South Carolina, the State Legislature or South Carolina General
Assembly, has been granting counties and other local governing bodies the “authority to
undertake planning activity” and “regulate the development of land” since at least the 1920s.
237

In 1994, the South Carolina General Assembly or Legislature modernized this granted power by
enacting the “Local Government Comprehensive Planning Enabling Act” to spell out exactly
what power local governing bodies have over land use within their politically defined geographic
boundaries.
238
In South Carolina, the state does not keep a list of state-level historic resources,
nor does it designate resources as historic at the state-level. Instead, the state delegates legal
authority to local governing entities such as Beaufort County or the City of Beaufort to develop
regulations pertaining to land use within their political jurisdictions, including the identification,
designation, and regulation of historic resources.

237
“Guide to Land Use Planning for South Carolina,” Published by South Carolina Association of Counties, 2017, 6.
https://www.sccounties.org/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/guide-to-land-use-planning.pdf.
238
“Guide to Land Use Planning for South Carolina,” Published by South Carolina Association of Counties, 2017, 6.
https://www.sccounties.org/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/guide-to-land-use-planning.pdf.

90

Figure 4.2: Beaufort County, South Carolina County Boundary Map. Map Source: Emily Varley.

Figure 4.3: City of Beaufort, South Carolina Municipal Boundary Map. Map Source: Emily Varley.

91

Prior to the National Historic Sites Act in 1935 and the National Historic Preservation Act of
1966, local jurisdictions used their power over land use to create rules, regulations, and
protections specific to buildings and sites within their boundaries that they thought reflected their
locality’s history, were threatened by demolition and economic development, or were being
heavily altered and thus, no longer conveyed their history. By the authority of the City’s
Planning and Zoning Commission, the city of Charleston, South Carolina passed the first zoning
ordinance of its kind in October 1931 which regulated the exterior appearances of historic
buildings within a designated historic district in Charleston.
239
It set a precedent for community
control and regulation of land use if a site or entire district is considered a resource to a
community for its historic value.

City of Beaufort Preservation Law & Land Use Regulation
In Beaufort, under the city code chapter written to “establish an orderly process to
develop land within the jurisdiction of the city of Beaufort,” is their “Historic Designation”
section which outlines how and why sites, structures, or entire districts of the city might be
designated as historic and how designation might affect the regulation of said sites, structures, or
districts.
240
The code further elaborates by establishing and explaining the development review
governing body responsible for reviewing and taking action on projects within Beaufort’s
Historic District – the Historic Review Board or HRB.
241
When Beaufort was placed on the

239
The New York Preservation Archive Project, “The Old and Historic Charleston District,” Accessed April 2023.
https://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/the-old-and-historic-charleston-district/#:~:text=Description-
,The%20Old%20and%20Historic%20Charleston%20District%20was%20the%20first%20historic,named%20after%20King%20
Charles%20II.
240
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 9 § 1, 11. (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
241
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 10 § 7, (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.

92

National Register of Historic Places in 1968 and then became a National Historic Landmark
District in 1973, it was – as previously mentioned – a nominal designation. Technically, the
United States government has no authority beyond naming the city as historically significant to
control how it develops or changes over time – that power is only held by the states. In this case,
the state of South Carolina through the city of Beaufort’s zoning code chose to act upon the
national designation and create local controls over the area by establishing a local Historic
District which aligns with the National Historic Landmark District boundaries. As a result, the
Historic Review Board exercises considerable power over the development of Beaufort as they
are effectively in control of 300 acres of the city. The city code includes the documents,
guidelines, and standards adopted for use by the HRB which informs their decision-making.
242

When visiting the city of Beaufort, one quickly realizes the benefits of strict local historic
district guidelines as they have resulted in a picturesque, walkable, and an all-around
mesmerizing built landscape that feels a bit like travelling to a different time in American
history. The main commercial corridor, Bay Street, features attractive and meticulously
preserved architecture such as the Robert Means House (circa 1800) or the John Mark Verdier
House (circa 1801) as well as Beaufort specific historical elements like the exposed tabby wall at
715 Bay Street dated to 1760.
243

242
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 9 § 10, (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
243
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.; Tabby is a “building material compound of
oyster shells, lime, and sand mixed with water” specific to the southeast coast of North America.; The Beaufort Preservation
Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022, 323.
http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022. Tabby construction in Beaufort
is of particular significance for its ability to convey both ecological and technological ingenuity on the part of Indigenous
Americans, colonists, plantation owners, and enslaved people. In the Sea Islands, where Beaufort is located, building materials
were scarce, nonexistent, or too expensive to import according to the perspective of European colonizers familiar with different
masonry building materials. Indigenous Americans of this area likely would not have described a dearth of available building
material. The area resource most abundant and most visible to European colonizers were the large shell rings, similar to middens,

93

Figure 4.4: Robert Means House, 1207 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC. Circa 1800. Image Source: Library of Congress.

Figure 4.5: John Mark Verdier House, 801 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC. Circa 1801. Image Source: Library of Congress.

scattered throughout the Sea Islands that consisted of large mounds of dried oyster shells acting as an architectural ruin of sorts
that attested to Indigenous American settlement of the islands. The shells were used to create a highly localized building material
and therefore, architectural tradition that Beaufort continues to this day by preserving extant tabby ruins, sites, and structures.
Colin Brooker and Lawrence S. Roland, The Shell Builders: Tabby Architecture of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Sea Islands
(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2020), x, 1-2.

94

Figure 4.6: Exterior of 715 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC showing exposed tabby construction. Image Source: Cheryl Warren.

In addition to strict local regulations guiding the changes in Beaufort’s built environment, the
city’s natural environment is conserved by the Beaufort Open Land Trust, a nonprofit that works
to protect “many types of land,” including “iconic vistas…parks and greenspace…[and] working
farms.”
244
Together, these local entities successfully conserve and create a distinct sense of time
and place in Beaufort that both visitors and long-time residents enjoy.

Figure 4.7: Beaufort County Open Land Trust sign in front of the Bay Street Bluff marsh along the Beaufort River in downtown.
Image Source: Beaufort County Open Land Trust.

244
Open Land Trust, “Overview & Mission,” Accessed April 2023. https://openlandtrust.org/overview-mission/.

95

Preservation Laws and 1313 Congress Street
The house at 1313 Congress Street in Beaufort is part of the original 1969 National
Register of Historic Places designation and the 1973 National Historic Landmark District
designation. It is also included in the local Beaufort Historic District. Despite the geographic
inclusion of the house at 1313 Congress Street and its surrounding context in these designations,
I found little evidence of sustained, long-term preservation effort into it or houses similar to it in
Beaufort. In fact, the disparity of information available related to Freedmen’s Cottages versus the
antebellum mansions scattered throughout the rest of Beaufort resulted in my research and
findings being some of the first in-depth preservation related documentation of the house at 1313
Congress Street. The city has successfully preserved a distinct sense of place and time by
preserving and promoting its built and natural heritage, but what narratives are dominantly
displayed by those efforts? In other words – how has Beaufort focused its preservation efforts
since the 1960s and what stories have been highlighted? And what stories have been buried?
Through my investigation into the house at 1313 Congress Street, I learned that both the
federal and local governing authorities have favored the conservation of sites, structures, and
districts associated with Beaufort’s White, wealthy, and powerful population and outright
ignored or greatly downplayed the importance of structures, sites, and districts associated with
Beaufort’s less powerful populations – namely the lower-income Black community established
in the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood following the Civil War. These authorities, as well as
the larger preservation community, have made strides to evolve preservation practice to be more
encompassing and inclusive of non-dominant groups’ histories in recent years, however, there
remains work to be done.

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This debate has been ongoing in the field since at least January and February of 1975
when Herbert J. Gans and Ada Louise Huxtable debated about it in the New York Times.
Huxtable favored the conservation of “superb examples of the art of architecture,” whereas Gans
advocated for what he called “popular architecture.”
245
For the most part, the field of
preservation is evolving to be more inclusive of preserving both the “superb” architecture
associated with the rich and powerful and the vernacular “popular” architecture of the rest of
society, however, more needs to be done. As Gans argued: “Private citizens are of course entitled
to save their own past, but when preservation becomes a public act, supported with public funds,
it must attend to everyone’s past.”
246
In Beaufort, it is not only local funds being used for
preservation but state and federal as well, greatly increasing the urgent importance of
reconstructing preservation practices to reflect the whole of Beaufort’s heritage. My research
into the house at 1313 Congress Street is an attempt at reconstructing preservation practice by
shifting focus and attention to a rich cultural resource that until recently has not been recognized
by the larger preservation community for its invaluable cultural meaning. It is an examination of
Beaufort preservation practice, a critique, and hopefully a model for future practice.

Federal Preservation Efforts of 1313 Congress Street
At the federal level, 1313 Congress has been recognized by the National Register of
Historic Places since the 1969 designation of the entire city of Beaufort, however, it is a de facto
preservation as the original nomination focuses entirely on the architecture of the “wealthy and
enterprising” inhabitants who were “obviously people of taste and cultivation” dating their
contributions to the early eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century and including the location of

245
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 3.
246
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 3.

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1313 Congress Street only because it was within the town boundaries at the time.
247
The Civil
War is listed as an area of significance but the Reconstruction Era is omitted entirely, as is any
associated architecture despite the Period of Significance being described as the eighteenth to
twentieth centuries.
248
In 1986, an addendum was added to the 1969 Nomination Form “to
include the history of the town between ca. 1860 and ca. 1935.”
249
The addendum is more
inclusive, describing Beaufort’s changing population following the Civil War and how the built
environment reflects those changes, including that “Little new durable construction occurred in
Beaufort during the 1860s except for churches built to house newly formed black congregations
and perhaps some cottages north of Prince Street.”
250
In 1994, two maps were added to the
nomination. In 2001, another addendum was approved and added to the nomination. The 2001
update is much more exhaustive and includes a description and 1997 survey photograph of 1313
Congress Street as a single 1-story frame dwelling dated to 1870 that contributes to the Beaufort
Historic District.
251

247
Mrs. James W. Fant, “Historic Beaufort,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1969), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
248
Mrs. James W. Fant, “Historic Beaufort,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1969), Section 7-8.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
249
“Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service, 1986). http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
250
“Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S. Department of the
Interior, National Park Service, 1986). http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
251
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.

98

Figure 4.8: 1313 Congress Street, View Northeast. Photography by Colin Brooks, August 1997.
Image Source: South Carolina Department of Archives & History.

This addendum expands the period of significance to 1950, includes a description of the distinct
neighborhoods of Beaufort, and describes the “folk building patterns” evident almost entirely in
the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood, including categorizing 1313 Congress Street as a hall and
parlor house “similar to the ‘Freedman’s Cottages’ documented in the rural areas of South
Carolina’s costal region.”
252
Additionally, the 2001 addendum reflects on past preservation
practices in Beaufort noting, “Despite the city’s longstanding commitment to historic
preservation, a great deal of change has occurred within the past twenty years.” They emphasize
that the “most notable among the losses have been the relatively large number of modest post-
Civil War dwellings within the Old Common and Northwest quadrant neighborhoods” with the

252
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 7-8.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.

99

Northwest Quadrant neighborhood losing 50% of its contributing resources between the 1968
survey of the town for the original 1969 designation and the 1998 survey for the 2001
addendum.
253
Furthermore, the 2001 addendum greatly expands the statement of significance by
highlighting Beaufort’s role in African-American history “both during and after the war” as well
as praising “the high-style architecture produced by its pre-war planters and for the folk
architectural patterns of its post-war African-American community.”
254
The principal author of
the 2001 addendum, David Schneider, was the Executive Director of Historic Beaufort
Foundation from 1995 to 1999, illustrating that the local preservation community was evolving
preservation practice in Beaufort by expanding the statement of significance for the district to
include and highlight Beaufort’s African-American history.
255
Historic Beaufort Foundation is a
local non-profit with a mission to “preserve, protect and present sites and artifacts of historic,
architectural and cultural interest throughout Beaufort County, South Carolina.”
256
Though the
original 1969 National Register Nomination for the Beaufort Historic District has been updated,
technically the National Historic Landmark nomination document has not been updated since
1973. In November 2021, the National Park Service initiated an integrity and condition study of
the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District “to document the district’s current integrity
and condition and examine projects and trends that may impact ongoing preservation efforts.”
257

In 2022, LG2 Environmental Solutions conducted the study and published their findings in a

253
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
254
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 8.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.
255
Schneider Historic Preservation, LLC, “David B. Schneider,” Accessed May 2023. https://urbantrusthistoricadvisors.com/wp-
content/uploads/2021/04/David-Schneider-Resume.pdf.
256
Historic Beaufort Foundation, “About,” Accessed May 2023. https://historicbeaufort.org/about-us/.
257
National Park Service, “National Park Service announces Beaufort National Historic Landmark District Study,” November 17,
2021. https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/beaufort-nhl-district-study-2021.htm.

100

document open for public review and comment from January 2023 to March 2023.
258
The study
is currently in step six of eight, “Analysis of Public Comment” as of April 2023 with “Prepare
Final Summary” and “Release Final Study to the Public” being the last two steps of the study.
259

Their findings encompass the entirety of the Beaufort Historic District but their analysis of the
conditions and integrity of the Northwest Quadrant are alarming. They write:
At the time the BNHLD was first listed, little was known, researched, or recorded regarding
Beaufort’s African American histories and architecture, despite the unique role the city
played in the Reconstruction Era as a majority African American city after the Civil War.
Except for some churches, a few frame residences, and the Grand Army of the Republic
Lodge, very few African American resources were identified…The 2001 National Register
update identified 151 resources in this same area contributing…[but] in the twenty years
since…it is likely that many of these resources have since been demolished… After the
Civil War, the Northwest Quadrant of the BNHLD was home to the city’s largest African
American freedmen community, with West Street developing into the “Black Wall Street''
of business in Beaufort. This built heritage and corresponding stories have largely been
lost, however, as West Street’s historical associations are not publicly recognized within
the larger community or interpreted through signage… assessment findings revealed that
the area of the District that has experienced the largest loss of historic buildings is the
Northwest Quadrant…More equity work is necessary to readjust the stated significance.
260

Indeed, more equity work is necessary to address the preservation injustices perpetuated by the
federal government’s past preservation practices in Beaufort, however, they have made great
strides and continue to do so which can serve as a model for equitable preservation in the future.

Local Preservation Efforts of 1313 Congress Street
At the local level, preservation efforts in Beaufort are equally if not more storied than the
federal preservation efforts of Beaufort’s heritage. Following the creation of the Beaufort

258
National Park Service, “For Public Review: Beaufort NHL Integrity and Condition Study,” Accessed April 2023.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.
259
National Park Service, “Plan Process,” Accessed April 2023.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/PlanProcess.cfm?projectID=105336.
260
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 85-89.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.

101

Historic District and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, the City of
Beaufort published a preservation plan in 1971 and passed a historic preservation zoning
ordinance in 1972.
261
The city used their legal powers codified in the historic preservation
ordinance to create a locally controlled historic district that follows the same boundaries as the
1969 National Register listing as well as the 1973 National Historic Landmark District
designation.
262
As previously mentioned, the governing body responsible for reviewing and
taking action on projects within Beaufort’s local Historic District is the Historic Review Board,
or HRB.
263
The HRB is the local authority essentially responsible for controlling change in the
300+ acres of the city of Beaufort within the local district boundaries. They are guided by the
“Beaufort Preservation Manual” (1979), the “Beaufort Preservation Manual, Supplement”
(1990), the “Northwest Quadrant Design Principles” (1999), the Secretary of Interior’s
“Standards for Rehabilitation,” and from the city code: the Building Design Standards & Historic
District Infill Design Guidelines.
264
Additionally, the HRB adopted an update to the Beaufort
Preservation Manual in November 2022 that is not yet in the city code which guides their
decision-making process regarding managing change in the local Beaufort Historic District.
265

261
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 19.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.
262
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 2 § 7.1. (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
263
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 10 § 7, (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
264
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 9 § 10, (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
265
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022.
http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

102

The Beaufort Preservation Manual (1979)
In 1979, John Milner Associates created the Beaufort Preservation Manual, a document
to inventory local historic assets and act as guide for change, coming together to “provide a
comprehensive catalog of building recordation, specific building repair problems, and
appropriate stabilization and preservation techniques” in the local Beaufort Historic District.
266

The 1979 Beaufort Preservation Manual, the foundational document for the Historic Review
Board (HRB) to regulate change in the locally controlled Beaufort Historic District, focuses
almost entirely on the history and preservation principles for the architecture associated with the
wealthy and powerful elite of Beaufort history, especially in the antebellum era, going so far as
to claim that “the mansions are the catalyst which has underscored renewal and a distinctive
pride of community” in Beaufort.
267

266
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, VII.
https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
267
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 12. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.

103

Figure 4.9: Beaufort Local Historic District Map with Neighborhood Names Labeled. Map Source: Emily Varley.

The 1979 manual does not outright exclude the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood,
acknowledging that the “town took on new dimensions during Reconstruction,” elaborating: “in
the northwest section of town, on small lots owned previously by the antebellum planters, some
local blacks built or renovated cottages for their own use, setting up a distinctive small-scale
community separate from some of their fellow Freedmen who lived in the eastern section of
town.”
268
Despite this truncated attempt at including the story of the Reconstruction Era and
especially the large number of vernacular architectural resources in the northwest section of the
town associated with Beaufort’s Black population (the northwest quadrant neighborhood), the
1979 manual offers an encompassing concluding sentiment: “Overall…the District represents an

268
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 9. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.

104

unparalleled architectural continuum which represents more than two and half centuries of large
and small, ‘polite’ and vernacular in the history of architecture.”
269
They defend themselves in
their notes by explaining: “This report must not be interpreted as an in-depth architectural history
of Beaufort…It is hoped that some of the points suggested will spark new research.”
270
Finally,
in an offhand note, the 1979 manual refers to the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood as the
“unenforced Historic District.”
271
They never define or elaborate what they mean by “unenforced
Historic District” though it seems to imply that this area is outside of the purview of their
manual’s guidance and the HRB’s enforcement of the principles and practices outlined in the
1979 manual. In the story of preservation practice in Beaufort, the 1979 preservation manual
created by John Milner Associates is foundational and significant, especially since it “still guides
the district today,” however, it is a harmful document in that it largely overlooks and ignores the
vernacular architecture of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood, effectively attempting to erase
Black stories from the authorized and official preservation narrative of Beaufort endorsed and
put forward by the city.
272

Beaufort Preservation Manual, Supplement (1990)
In 1990, John Milner Associates created a supplementary document to their 1979
Beaufort Preservation Manual to update their initial recommendations and create more
comprehensive instructions for both the HRB and homeowners within the local Historic District.

269
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 12. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
270
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 14. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
271
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 9, 16.
https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
272
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 22.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.

105

They acknowledge that their recommendations were largely informed by the findings of a 1988
study of the Beaufort Historic District conducted by Thomason Associates which was tasked
with discussing the “strengths and weaknesses” of the 1979 Beaufort Preservation Manual.
273

Though this document was unable to be located, the resulting Beaufort Preservation Manual
Supplement (1990) indicates that there were preservation practitioners and advocates in Beaufort
who felt the original document needed review and supplementation to better preserve Beaufort
history. It is unknown who or what organization formed behind the scenes to hire Thomason
Associates and initiate a review and recommendations report, however, that entity was actively
evolving preservation practice in Beaufort and taking a step toward a more encompassing,
inclusive, and just preservation practice. Most notably, that report and the subsequent 1990
supplement defines the enforced and unenforced sectors of the local Beaufort Historic District:
In the ‘non-enforced’ sector, which occupies roughly the northwestern quadrant of the
Historic Beaufort District, it was until recently the City’s practice to have no BOAR
[Board of Architectural Review] review, with the occasional exception of certain projects
involving either demolition or alterations to pre-1900 buildings. Conversely, in the
‘enforced sector,’ the BOAR has reviewed projects in accordance with its jurisdiction,
procedures, and responsibilities as defined in the Zoning Ordinance. This practice
subdividing the Historic Beaufort District is not incorporated into existing City
ordinances.
274

273
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
vii. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.
274
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990, x.
https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.; The Board of
Architectural Review is the precursor local authority to the Historic Review Board first responsible for the review of
development projects within the locally controlled Beaufort Historic District.

106

Figure 4.10: Beaufort Local Historic District with Enforced and Unenforced Sectors Labeled. Map Source: Emily Varley.

The 1990 supplement is essentially admitting that the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood – the
area where Beaufort’s African American population established and built a thriving community
for themselves – has been being ignored or “unenforced” by the city of Beaufort since the
creation of the district and ordinances. The 1990 supplement elaborates:
Although this distinction has clearly become regulatory practice in Beaufort, it is one
which is nowhere articulated in the Ordinance itself…In other words, it has been the
City’s practice to have the BOAR review no projects in the non-enforced sector…despite
the Zoning Ordinance’s requirements for the BOAR to review all new construction,
demolition, and exterior alteration projects within the entire Historic Beaufort District.
The source of this practice is difficult to determine but appears to be related to certain
recommendations contained in the Preservation Plan prepared for the City of Beaufort in
1972 by Russell Wright.
275

275
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
66. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.

107

The Russell Wright Preservation Plan to which they refer is a 1972 document that recommended
reducing the local Beaufort Historic District boundaries to eliminate the “high proportion of
buildings of no architectural or historic significance…[which] could conceivably weaken the
legality of architectural control for the Historic District as a whole.”
276
If the City had adopted
this recommendation, it would have eliminated the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood from the
locally controlled Historic District on the basis that the neighborhood has a “high proportion of
buildings of no architectural or historic significance.”
277
Though the City did not officially
remove the Northwest Quadrant from the local district boundaries, it was accepted practice to
remove the neighborhood from oversight. The 1990 supplement attempts to solve this legal issue
by suggesting the creation of an overlay district, the Conservation District, which would cover
the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood and require oversight by the BOAR (at the time) and the
HRB (currently). Unlike the rest of the local Beaufort Historic District, which requires strict
oversight per the original historic preservation zoning ordinance, the proposed Conservation
District overlay zone in the Northwest Quadrant would require oversight on “demolition, new
construction, and additions to the main façade of buildings fifty years old or older.”
278
The 1990
supplement attempts to re-incorporate the Northwest Quadrant into preservation practice,
reflecting shifting attitudes and understanding of the larger story of Beaufort and the significance
of its whole history:
These proposed modifications to the Ordinance reflect the growing awareness of the
contribution that the northwestern quadrant of the District makes to the architectural and
historical character of the entire Historic Beaufort District. The proposed Conservation
District predominantly contains modest vernacular structures, which nevertheless

276
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
66. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.
277
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
66. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.
278
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
67-68. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.

108

exemplify the Historic District’s remarkable combination of architectural continuity and
diversity. The preservation of the essential character and characteristics of these
structures is necessary to maintain the entire District’s significance.
279

Though the suggestion to create and codify an overlay zone in the Northwest Quadrant was a
step in the direction of acknowledging the importance of preserving the architectural history of
Beaufort’s Black neighborhood, the decision still reflects Beaufort’s preservation practice legacy
of treating this area differently either by ignoring it or now, as a Conservation District, reviewing
it less extensively and differently than the rest of the Beaufort Historic District. It is important to
note that though in this particular case the creation of a Conservation District is resulting in
inequitable preservation outcomes in the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood specifically it is not
always the case. In fact, conservation districts often are an extremely beneficial preservation tool
that encourages a “high level of neighborhood participation and support” to create rules and
regulations that preserve an area’s “distinctive character” when it otherwise might not be eligible
for designation as a historic district.
280

Northwest Quadrant Design Principles (1999)
Following the 1988 Thomason Associates study of the 1979 Beaufort Preservation
Manual and the subsequent publication of the 1990 Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement,
the City of Beaufort accepted the suggestion to create the Conservation District to govern the
preservation of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood. To do so, the Beaufort Code explicitly
defined the boundaries of the local Historic District as a whole and then created an internal

279
The Beaufort Preservation Manual Supplement, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1990,
68. https://sc-beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/1005/Preservation-Manual-Supplement-?bidId=.
280
Julia Miller, “Protecting Older Neighborhoods Through Conservation District Programs,” Updated December 2015.
https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/protecting-older-neighborhoods-thro.

109

boundary line dividing the district into two subdistricts: the Beaufort Conservation
Neighborhood (BCN) and the Beaufort Preservation Neighborhood (BPN).
281

Figure 4.11: Beaufort Local Historic District with Conservation & Preservation Neighborhoods Labeled.
Map Source: Emily Varley.

As awareness of the “important architectural and historical resources” present in the northwest
quadrant neighborhood grew, the city commissioned and adopted the Northwest Quadrant
Design Principles to guide changes in the Beaufort Conservation Neighborhood specifically.
282

This document focuses entirely on the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood and describes the
development of the area following the Civil War: “In the latter 1800s, Beaufort’s economy
recovered…[and] allowed many African-Americans to leave the former plantations to settle in

281
Beaufort, South Carolina, the Beaufort Development Code, ch. 2 § 7, (2023).
https://library.municode.com/sc/beaufort/codes/the_beaufort_development_code.
282
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
225. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

110

town. As a result, new houses were built throughout the city, and especially within the Northwest
Quadrant, to accommodate this population.”
283
Their history of the development of the
neighborhood continues with a note that “Although still predominantly an African American
neighborhood, a small number of immigrant residents from Europe and Asia are indicated in
census records by 1900.”
284
And, for the first time in Beaufort preservation practice, the 1999
Northwest Quadrant Design Principles document provides examples of the “typical building
types” found throughout the neighborhood with brief descriptions, timelines, and histories
written about the types accompanied by photographs. 1313 Congress Street is featured as an
example of a Freedmen’s Cottage.
285

Figure 4.12: Featured Photograph of 1313 Congress Street as an example of a Freedmen’s Cottage in Northwest Quadrant Design
Principles. Image Source: The Beaufort Preservation Manual (2022).

283
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
232. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
284
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
232. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
285
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
233. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

111

Additionally, the Northwest Quadrant Design Principles include chapters titled, “Character-
Defining Features” and “Design Principles” which guide the HRB as well as homeowners in the
Northwest Quadrant neighborhood. The Design Principles conclude:
The key to the character of the Northwest Quadrant is that it is a collection of relatively
modest buildings which have been combined with the surrounding landscape. The basic
way in which simple house forms were used, the manner in which they were set back
from the street with small front yards and the limited range of building materials were
important characteristics. These, and the consistent use of a front porch are the elements
that must be preserved in order to maintain the traditional character of the area. These are
the elements that the BOAR will focus on when determining the appropriateness of
proposed work.
286

While their acknowledgement of the character of the area and their call to preserve such features
is foundational, they include a note which somewhat reneges the entire purpose of the Northwest
Quadrant Design Principles: “It is important to note that many of the building details are
secondary to the historic context and therefore greater flexibility in their treatment is
appropriate.”
287
Though perhaps “greater flexibility” in preservation practice can create positive
outcomes in many ways, in this case it is another example of the Northwest Quadrant
neighborhood receiving unequal treatment in comparison with the rest of the Historic District.
Conservation Districts are defined by the National Trust as “areas located in residential
neighborhoods with a distinct physical character…contributing to the community at large,”
which is certainly true for the Northwest Quadrant, however, they argue that “these
neighborhoods tend not to merit designation as a historic district.”
288
Clearly the Northwest
Quadrant does merit designation as it was included in in the 1969 National Register of Historic
Places designation, the 1972 locally established Historic District, and the 1973 National Historic

286
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
239. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
287
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
239. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
288
Julia Miller, “Protecting Older Neighborhoods Through Conservation District Programs,” Updated December 2015.
https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/protecting-older-neighborhoods-thro.

112

Landmark District designation. The 1999 Northwest Quadrant Design Principles greatly
increased the visibility of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood and greatly increased the
resources available for preserving the history of Beaufort’s Black and immigrant communities
present in the built landscape there, however, it falls short in a lot of ways by ultimately
continuing the legacy of treating this area differently than the rest of Beaufort’s Historic District.
To tell the whole story of Beaufort, design guidelines and preservation practices which preserve
the whole of Beaufort must be devised.

Beaufort Preservation Manual (2022)
In November 2022, the firm John Milner Associates prepared and released a new edition
of the Beaufort Preservation Manual intended to update the 1979 Manual and bolster the 1990
supplement.
289
Much of the same language and examples are used, including the note that the
cottages in the Northwest Quadrant are “a subject in need of in-depth research.”
290
The new
edition of the Beaufort Preservation Manual, though not updating the history of the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood, does now include examples of architectural features from the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood in the chapters discussing interventions, repairs, alterations, and other
changes such as the house at 809 Bladen Street and the house at 1301 Washington Street.
291

Additionally, the 2022 update includes an appendix titled, “Northwest Quadrant Design
Principles,” which briefly explains why the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood is treated

289
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
VII-VIII. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
290
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022, 20.
http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
291
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
114, 123. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.

113

separately from the rest of the Beaufort Historic District.
292
Finally, the 2022 Manual includes
the Northwest Quadrant Design Principles as an appendix.
293
Though the 2022 Manual
acknowledges this historical pattern of focusing preservation efforts on the architecture
associated with Beaufort’s elite past, it continues the tradition of segregating preservation
resources by only appending the 1999 Northwest Quadrant Guidelines instead of offering an
update like the rest of Beaufort’s Historic District. In short, local preservation resources and
policies in Beaufort have historically favored conserving Beaufort’s wealthy and elite past and,
unfortunately, continue to do so today. Despite the leaps and bounds that the local
preservation laws and practices in Beaufort have made to address the importance of the
Northwest Quadrant neighborhood, there are still changes to be made. As previously mentioned,
the 2001 addendum to the Beaufort Historic District National Register of Historic Places listing
describes the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood as losing 50% of its contributing resources
between the initial 1969 listing and the 2001 addendum, noting that “the Northwest Quadrant has
suffered a much greater rate of demolition and inappropriate alteration than have other
neighborhoods.”
294
The 2022 National Park Service Conditions and Integrity Study of the
Beaufort National Historic Landmark District does not assign a number to the losses between
2001 and 2022 in the Northwest Quadrant but notes that it is the neighborhood “of particular
concern to participants” who attended community meetings and voiced opinions about the
“multiple vacancies and demolitions within the Northwest Quadrant” many of which were

292
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
225. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
293
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022,
226. http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.
294
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 7.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/beaufort/S10817707001/S10817707001.pdf.;

114

“freedmen’s cottages.”
295
As the “only African American area included as part of the original
nomination,” it is of the upmost significance that preservation practices evolve to make up for
the years of disinvestment and unequal preservation treatment of the Northwest Quadrant in
order for the City of Beaufort to show their commitment to telling the entire history of their
town.
296

Strategies for Preserving Vernacular Architecture
It must be noted that the Northwest Quadrant Neighborhood, as a space founded and
created by and for formerly enslaved Black Beaufort citizens, is a thriving homeplace still to this
day in that descendant communities recognize it as such and sustain attachment to it as a place of
social and cultural significance. The preservation methods which I have thus far discussed in
relationship to 1313 Congress Street and the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood are examples of
the “authorized heritage discourse” or AHD in which “grand narratives of nation and aesthetics”
are put forth and administered by “expert and professional judgements” who act as stewards over
the past in order to create as well as reproduce “a particular set of cultural and social practices”
that favor and reinforce a “dominant discourse.”
297
Evidenced by the earlier preservation related
documents put forth regarding Beaufort’s history, the AHD favored the elimination of or
significant downplaying of the stories of Beaufort’s Black past by ignoring the built environment
of the Northwest Quadrant. It was not until the 1999 Northwest Quadrant Design Principles
Document and the 2001 update to the National Register of Historic Places listing that the AHD

295
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 73.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.
296
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 73.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727
297
LauraJane Smith, Uses of Heritage (New York: Routledge, 2006), 42.

115

attempted to address and acknowledge Beaufort’s Black history present in the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood. Outside of the AHD, however, are the descendants of the formerly
enslaved freedpeople who dared negotiate their right to purchase property, build homes, and
create a thriving community for themselves in the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood. Though
descendants in Beaufort are perhaps outside of the authorized heritage discourse in that the
“official” preservation of the Northwest Quadrant has been neglected and continues to be
neglected, descendants are preserving the Northwest Quadrant in an “unofficial” capacity by
stewarding the neighborhood and retaining place-based identity there. Their “unofficial”
preservation practices are not recognized by the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the
Treatment of Historic Properties, but they are just as or even more important for the survival of
generational community heritage of a group usually excluded by the dominant authorized
heritage discourse.
The neighborhood has certainly changed over the years and will continue to do so;
however, it remains a fundamentally identifiable Black landscape in Beaufort, speaking to the
community’s ability to preserve as well as create a legible Black “homeplace” in Beaufort that
can be traced back to the settlement of the Northwest Quadrant by formerly enslaved
freedpeople. The term “homeplace” as defined by noted cultural theorist bell hooks, “is a
vehicle for identity production and for sustaining place attachment” and which has the power to
create “spaces that foster black women’s renewal, aspiration, cultural continuity, and survival in
the face of white surveillance.”
298
African American studies scholar Earl Lewis’s definition of a
“homesphere” also applies to the house at 1313 Congress Street and the Northwest Quadrant

298
Andrea R. Roberts, “‘Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow It Away’: The Aesthetics of
Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular
Architecture Forum 26, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 74.

116

neighborhood: “The homesphere is ‘a setting where home meant both the household and the
community and includes a multilevel environment and set of circulation patterns encompassing
the household, the neighborhood, the black community, the city, the state, and so forth.’”
299

Andrea Roberts, the director of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, argues that “African-
Americans’ homesteads, post-emancipation, became freedom-seeking landscapes and at times
subverted local conventions and aesthetics.”
300
And though after the Civil War, “Southern white
landowners endeavored to make the homeplace a space of social indoctrination among
Reconstruction-era freedmen,” Beaufort’s formerly enslaved population created and cultivated
“homeplace” and “homesphere” in the Northwest Quadrant that was subversive and therefore,
another negotiation of their rights to determine and define spaces for themselves as
freedpeople.
301
The 1979 and 2022 Beaufort Preservation Manuals, both of which are AHD,
refer to these subversive architectural forms as “small” and “vernacular” as opposed to the
“large” and “polite” architecture throughout the rest of the district.
302
The 2001 addendum to the
National Register of Historic Places listing for the Beaufort Historic District describes the
character of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood as being “defined by low scale predominantly
residential folk architecture” which is “clearly distinguishable from the high style architecture
found elsewhere in the historic district.”
303
Though perhaps the authors of these documents and

299
Andrea R. Roberts, “‘Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow It Away’: The Aesthetics of
Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular
Architecture Forum 26, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 74-75.
300
Andrea R. Roberts, “‘Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow It Away’: The Aesthetics of
Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular
Architecture Forum 26, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 75.
301
Andrea R. Roberts, “‘Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow It Away’: The Aesthetics of
Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular
Architecture Forum 26, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 75.
302
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Architects, Inc. November 15, 2022, 16.
http://www.cityofbeaufort.org/DocumentCenter/View/7836/Beaufort-Preservation-Manual_2022.; The Beaufort Preservation
Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 12. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
303
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 8.

117

practitioners of the AHD did not intend to create an architectural narrative which sets in
opposition the Northwest Quadrant with the rest of the Beaufort Historic District, they did. Dr.
Roberts rightly acknowledges the real power dynamic by articulating that Reconstruction Era
freedpeople intentionally subverted the norms being prescribed by Southern White landowners,
resulting in the Northwest Quadrant being labelled “a distinctive small-scale community
separate” from the rest of Beaufort.
304
Perhaps the Northwest Quadrant is especially distinct
because it formed in Beaufort, a place where Reconstruction Era freedpeople greatly
outnumbered the White population and, as a result, exercised considerable “black political
strength” unlike any other place in South Carolina.
305
This only serves as further evidence of the
significance of the Northwest Quadrant and of houses like 1313 Congress Street which are the
material witnesses to the generational heritage creation and conservation of African-American
homeplaces and homespheres in Beaufort starting with Reconstruction Era freedpeople and
continuing to this day to descendants who live in the neighborhood and keep that culture alive.
As Beaufort continues to change, the Northwest Quadrant and the house at 1313
Congress Street are more threatened than ever before. The 2022 Conditions and Integrity Study
of the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District identified the following threats:
As of 2018, the Northwest Quadrant had 37 vacant properties. This problem is mostly
due to the issue of heirs’ property, wherein multiple heirs own a single
property…[leading] to multiple vacancies and demolitions…Infrastructure projects by the
South Carolina DOT and Dominion Energy have disproportionately impacted this area as
well. The South Carolina DOT has acquired large easements and rights of way impacting
properties. In the early 2000s Dominion acquired easements along Wilmington Street and
installed massive metal utility poles…DOT and Dominion Energy easements and SOWs
limit owner options on multiple properties. Finally, between the rising cost of property

304
The Beaufort Preservation Manual, prepared for the City of Beaufort by John Milner Associates, August 1979, 9. https://sc-
beaufort.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/999/Preservation-Manual-?bidId=.
305
David B. Schneider, “Beaufort Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (Beaufort, SC: U.S.
Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2001), Section 8.

118

and the heirs’ property issue, the Northwest Quadrant is being gentrified, with many of
the original residents unable to afford living in the area.
306

And though the descendant community in Beaufort has shouldered the work of reconstructing
preservation practice by preserving the Northwest Quadrant despite the AHD putting out
documents which ignore and downplay its significance, allowing issues like heirs’ rights and
infrastructure projects to negatively impact the neighborhood, it is time that preservation
practitioners take up the burden of reconstructing preservation practice to be more inclusive,
encompassing, and representative of all stories. I am both demanding that AHD preservation
practitioners in Beaufort formally acknowledge their past injustices and attempt to create just
outcomes in the future by fully investing their current resources and formal practices in the
Northwest Quadrant and in houses like 1313 Congress Street as well as demanding that the AHD
preservation practice field itself undergo a reconstruction that results in standards, principles, and
practices that are more inclusive, encompassing, representative, and equitable. As Brent Leggs,
the Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Senior Vice
President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, writes, “We preserve landscapes,
buildings and neighborhoods that show the richness of African American life, history and
architecture…We tell overlooked stories embodied in these places: ones of African American
resilience, activism and achievement that are fundamental to the nation itself.”
307
And if we are
able to do this successfully, the preservation of these places “can foster validation of the Black
experience,” a fundamental necessity if we are to tell the whole story of American history.
308

306
Condition and Integrity Study for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District, prepared for the National Park Service by
LG2 Environmental Solutions, 2022, 73.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=423&projectID=105336&documentID=125727.
307
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 3. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
308
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 3. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.

119

It is a challenge to create accurate and encompassing documentation procedures which
fully honor and deepen understanding of community histories which have largely been ignored
by the AHD, however, practices and methodologies are emerging which attempt to do just that.
First, it is critical to establish a baseline preservation practice in which “decisions about the
future of African American communities are made by and in collaboration with neighborhood
residents, organizations, and political leaders.”
309
This kind of reconstructed preservation
practice ensures that the voices of community members are empowered “to lead, engage, and
organize for their future.”
310
The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s foundational report,
Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for Equity, cites
Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative as an example of a long-running and “comprehensive
model” that practitioners can learn from in their attempts to mitigate “persistent forms of
institutional racism” present in preservation practice currently.
311
They also cite the City of
Oakland’s programs, “Cultural Strategists-in-Government” and “Neighborhood Voices,” which
have resulted in “14 community meetings, a digital cultural asset map, and a survey of Oakland
residents.”
312
Both the examples out of Seattle and Oakland demonstrate preservation
practitioners attempt to reconstruct preservation practice to prioritize the voices of African
American community members as they determine the future of their community places. These
examples can serve as models for reconstructing preservation practice in Beaufort.

309
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 57. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
310
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 57. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
311
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 58. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
312
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 60. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.

120

Preservation practice in Beaufort can also learn from the National Trust’s call for
preservation practitioners to build and support coalitions that “amplify Black agency, discourse,
and thought in heritage conservation.”
313
They cite the nonprofit, BlackSpace, as an example of
“a collective of Black professionals in urban planning, architecture, real estate development,
urban design, arts, and activism” that work to “protect, preserve, and support a thriving future for
communities of color.”
314
The collective published a guidebook, “Co-Designing Black
Neighborhood Heritage Conservation,” which shares the “inspirations, experiences, and lessons
learned from an exploratory process of co-designing heritage conservation efforts alongside
members of Brownsville, one of Brooklyn’s Black enclaves” that can inform the reconstruction
of preservation practice in Beaufort.
315
In South Carolina, the WeGOJA Foundation is leading
the way and modelling this kind of work as an organization working “to document and promote
African American heritage sites in South Carolina.”
316
With the mission of “telling the full story
of African American Heritage in South Carolina,” the WeGOJA Foundation is a coalition
actively reconstructing preservation practice and heritage conservation.
317
The preservation
community in Beaufort is robust in both the public and private sector and these entities can and
should begin the work of reconstructing preservation practice by building capacity and
supporting coalitions that “Assert and protect ideals, dialects, genders, spiritualities, and cultural
notions that are impacted by decisions about spatial use, design, and allocation” and “Respond to
and atone for the urban planning sector’s primary contributions to the legacy of slavery and

313
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 65. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
314
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 65. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
315
BlackSpace, “Co-Designing Black Neighborhood Heritage Conservation,” 2019. https://docplayer.net/191415782-Co-
designing-black-neighborhood-heritage-conservation.html.
316
WeGOJA Foundation, “Home,” Accessed May 2023. https://www.wegoja.org/.
317
WeGOJA Foundation, “Home,” Accessed May 2023. https://www.wegoja.org/.

121

racism in the United States.”
318
These are values articulated by Thrivance Group, a “for-profit,
socially-responsible planning firm working, in the interest of racialized people, to bring
transformative justice into public policy, urban planning and community development,” founded
and led by Dr. Destiny Thomas, an anthropologist-planner from Oakland, California.
319
For
Beaufort to meaningfully transform their preservation practices, they must meaningfully embrace
and support the Beaufort African American community and respectfully amplify their voices as
they determine the future of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood community.
In addition to amplifying African American community voices and supporting African
American coalitions that advocate for protecting and preserving communities of color, the
National Trust calls for practitioners to leverage the preservation strategies currently available. In
New Orleans, the Preservation Resource Center, is advocating for “alleviating financial burdens
of African American homeowners” in the Treme local historic district.
320
The area is one of New
Orleans’ “most historic and culturally rich neighborhoods,” but residents struggle to afford
expensive maintenance resulting in delays or unapproved inappropriate repairs.
321
The
Preservation Resource Center has been providing “financial assistance to low-to-moderate
income homeowners who live in the district” to aid in preservation efforts.
322
In Beaufort, this
preservation model could be used to help alleviate some of the threats identified by the Beaufort
National Historic Landmark District Conditions and Integrity Study. In November 2022, The
Freedman Arts District was formed in the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood in Beaufort with

318
Thrivance Group, “Thrivance Values,” Accessed April 2023. https://thrivancegroup.com/ourvalues.
319
Thrivance Group, “About,” Accessed April 2023, https://thrivancegroup.com/vision.
320
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 73. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
321
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 73. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.
322
National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Preserving African American Places: Growing Preservation’s Potential as a Path for
Equity,” October 2020, 73. https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/preserving-african-american-places.

122

the intention of promoting and encouraging “arts, artists, artistic endeavors and art lovers in the
District.”
323
Additionally, the organization partners with “families that own property in the
district, to assist in keeping ownership within the family while restoring the property as a
functioning asset for the family. Heirs property is a particular focus.”
324
It remains to be seen
how this brand-new organization will affect just and equitable outcomes in the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood for Black Beaufortonians, however, it is a step toward reconstructing
preservation practice in Beaufort by leveraging preservation practices currently available and
forming an organization that advocates for families in the district.
All strategies so far mentioned are necessary and important for equitably doing the work
of reconstructing preservation practice and can and should be models for Beaufort’s preservation
community if they wish to tell the whole of Beaufort’s history truly and equitably through their
preservation efforts. Two specific projects must additionally be cited as other models for
Beaufort’s reconstruction of their preservation practice: The Texas Freedom Colonies Project
and the University of Oregon’s Albina Research Initiative. Both projects are concerned with
conservation of historic Black homeplaces and homespheres to recognize and preserve the rich
and empowering history of Black space creation and conservation, specifically of places like the
Northwest Quadrant. And like the Northwest Quadrant, the Freedom Colonies communities and
the Albina neighborhood primarily draw their significance not from monumental architecture or
grandiose development patterns, but from the “everyday and mundane” objects of their
landscape which the community transforms to “embrace and validate the everyday patterns and
rituals of neighborhoods.”
325
In the case of the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood and the house

323
Freedman Arts District: Beaufort, SC, “About Us,” Accessed April 2023, https://www.freedmanartsdistrict.org/.
324
Freedman Arts District: Beaufort, SC, “About Us,” Accessed April 2023, https://www.freedmanartsdistrict.org/.
325
Jasper O'Leary, Sara Zewde, Jennifer Mankoff, and Daniela K. Rosner, “Who Gets to Future? Race, Representation, and
Design Methods in Africatown,” In Proceedings of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19), May 4–

123

at 1313 Congress Street specifically, I learned in an oral history interview with Annie Mae and
Shirley Stokes about how their father, Booker T. Stokes, would nightly stand on the front porch
of their family home down the street from his mother’s house, 1313 Congress Street, and wait for
her lights to turn off as a way to make sure she was fine each evening. This nightly ritual is an
example of an everyday practice that is, inherently mundane in that it involves very simple
actions and very simple objects (front porch and lights), however, it is of the utmost significance
in that it signaled visibility, safety, security, and connection in the landscape between their
houses (approximately 1 block away or about 600 feet). It is an intangible heritage.

9, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300791.; Walter J. Hood, “Developing a Cultural Practice,” Fall 2013,
https://frameworks.ced.berkeley.edu/2013/developing-a-cultural-practice/.

124

Figure 4.13: Map depicting relationship between 1313 Congress Street & 1401 Washington Street. Map Source: Emily Varley.

It is unclear if the larger Northwest Quadrant community was aware of this practice of everyday
life or how it impacted their relationship to the larger Northwest Quadrant landscape physically
or emotionally, but it is known that it was significant enough for Annie Mae and Shirley to recall
it fifty plus years later as a practice that daily connected them to their grandmother, her home,
and the landscape between them. It is difficult to imagine a preservation practice which can
somehow encompass, include, and preserve that kind of simple but profoundly significant
practice, however, both the Texas Freedom Colonies Project and the Albina Research Initiative

125

(in combination with all previously mentioned strategies) can offer ideas and visions for
reconstructing preservation practice in Beaufort.
The Texas Freedom Colonies Project was founded in 2014 by Dr. Andrea Roberts,
Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and Co-Director of the University of
Virginia’s Center for Cultural Landscapes who is a 6
th
-generation Texan and freedom colony
descendant.
326
The project’s purpose is education and social justice initiatives “dedicated to
supporting the preservation of Black settlement landscapes, heritage, and grassroots preservation
practices through research.”
327
With a goal of preventing the “erasure, destruction, and decay of
cultural properties within Black settlements in partnership with descendant communities,”
Beaufort preservation practice can and should learn from this model and at least adopt a set of
similar guidelines that will formally commit the City to acknowledging the importance of
preserving Black heritage in the Northwest Quadrant. The Texas Freedom Colonies successes
comes from the following strategies they employ:
Recording and safeguarding stories and materials associated with freedom colonies’
origins & decline. Hosting and maintaining an interactive, publicly accessible Atlas &
Database of freedom colony locations including GIS layers indicating development and
ecological threats. Identifying resources for and co-developing community resilience
strategies and policies with freedom colony descendants using the contents of the Atlas
and Database.
328

In addition to adopting guidelines similar to the goals of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project,
Beaufort preservation practices could similarly learn from their preservation strategies and
consider creating and maintaining a Northwest Quadrant community archive, host and maintain
an interactive geographic information systems (GIS) web-based map to document and raise

326
Texas Freedom Colonies Project, “Dr. Andrea Roberts,” Accessed April 2023.
https://www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com/about-the-founder.
327
Texas Freedom Colonies Project, “Texas Freedom Colonies Project,” Accessed April 2023.
https://www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com/.
328
Texas Freedom Colonies Project, “Texas Freedom Colonies Project,” Accessed April 2023.
https://www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com/.

126

awareness of sights of significance to Black Beaufortonians in the Northwest Quadrant, and of
course, co-develop these programs in partnership with the descendant community in the
neighborhood to ensure that the community itself is at the forefront of visioning its future while
preserving its past.
The Albina Research Initiative demonstrates another vital model that Beaufort
preservation practice can and should learn from in their pursuit of reconstructing preservation
practice to be more encompassing, inclusive, representative, and equitable. At the University of
Oregon, a group of preservations, planners, and architects “initiated a community-oriented
research project to explore Albina, Portland’s primary historically Black neighborhood,” in an
attempt to “document the presence of a vibrant African American community” as well as
“consider how the fieldwork tools of vernacular architecture studies” can “deepen our
understanding of this historically important minority community and potentially serve as a
catalyst for preserving and strengthening it.”
329
Led by James Buckley, Venerable Chair in
Historic Preservation, the project embraces and celebrates the vernacular. Buckley argues that “a
vernacular approach…refers to a way of investigating all types of buildings in terms of their
broad relationship with the physical, social, and economic environment” and allows practitioners
to track “the physical traces of people who left little written record of their existence, including
immigrants, illiterate workers, and enslaved people.”
330
Their fieldwork methods, investigating
building fabric, utilizing historical data, and relying on human subjects, are doing the work of
reconstructing preservation practice by pushing the boundaries of AHD preservation practices to
become more encompassing and inclusive. Though theirs is an ongoing process as are most

329
James Michael Buckley, “Just Fieldwork: Exploring the Vernacular in the African American Community in Portland
Oregon’s Albina District,” Future Anterior XVII, no. 2 (Winter 2020): 1-2.
330
James Michael Buckley, “Just Fieldwork: Exploring the Vernacular in the African American Community in Portland
Oregon’s Albina District,” Future Anterior XVII, no. 2 (Winter 2020): 2.

127

projects of this kind, the project helps to create a more “complete picture of this cultural
landscape” that aids in telling the full story of Portland’s history.
331
Beaufort preservation
practitioners can and should embrace a fieldwork in the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood
which recovers “the lived experience of neighborhood inhabitants – including their ordinary
routines as well as their noteworthy moments” to help “foster retention and rebuilding” of the
Northwest Quadrant community.
332

As I researched the house at 1313 Congress Street and came to understand the Northwest
Quadrant neighborhood, it became clear that Beaufort’s past and current preservation practices
fall short in their ability to accurately document and preserve the complex and rich heritage
present in these places. For many years, the neighborhood was quite literally ignored by
preservation practitioners despite formal inclusion of both the house at 1313 Congress Street and
the entire Northwest Quadrant neighborhood in federal and local historic district designations.
Despite Beaufort’s AHD preservation practices best efforts to ignore, erase, forget, alter,
demolish, and let decay the built landscape of its city’s African American community, residents
of the Northwest Quadrant resiliently continued the work of their freedpeople ancestors by
continuously negotiating their right to take up space, own property, build homes, and build
community. Generations of Black Beaufortonians contributed to the creation of a legible Black
landscape, homeplace, and homesphere in the Northwest Quadrant. Only in “making visible”
these “forgotten” histories hiding in Beaufort’s landscape can preservation practitioners truly say
they are committed to telling the whole story of Beaufort.
333

331
James Michael Buckley, “Just Fieldwork: Exploring the Vernacular in the African American Community in Portland
Oregon’s Albina District,” Future Anterior XVII, no. 2 (Winter 2020): 5-6.
332
James Michael Buckley, “Just Fieldwork: Exploring the Vernacular in the African American Community in Portland
Oregon’s Albina District,” Future Anterior XVII, no. 2 (Winter 2020): 4.

333
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), xii.

128

Conclusion
The story of the house at 1313 Congress Street, the story of the Stokes family, of Daniel
Simmons, and the Reconstruction Era are all stories of perseverance, resilience, and bravery. I
never imagined that my journey to South Carolina in May of 2022 would lead me on a path
where I encountered such astounding stories and the incredible built environment that humbly
holds those legacies. Working for the National Park Service at Reconstruction Era National
Historical Park changed my life in more ways than one and I grew to love the rural South
Carolina landscape and especially Beaufort’s coastal island lifestyle. It is a mesmerizing place,
and its National Historic Landmark District designation attests to that. Now, a year later, after
many lectures, discussions, research rabbit-holes, interviews, archive-visits, books, articles, and
much more, I have a story to tell about the house at 1313 Congress Street, how it came to be,
who the people are who brought it to life, why their stories matter, and together – why it is
significant. Moreover, I have an urgent call to action for all preservation practitioners to take up
the work of reconstructing preservation practice to make it more inclusive, equitable,
encompassing, and just so that the stories of all people can be part of the narrative and preserved.

Summary of Findings
The first chapter covers the history of Beaufort, South Carolina prior to the Civil War and
argues that our nation, and especially places like Beaufort, are fundamentally Black landscapes
in that they were created by the work that enslaved African people and their enslaved African
American descendants did in the years leading up to the Civil War. Life in Beaufort during the
Civil War is also discussed though this section overlaps with the Reconstruction Era (1861-1900)

129

in which formerly enslaved Freedpeople negotiated new rights for themselves and their
communities, fundamentally changing the socioeconomic and physical landscapes of Beaufort.
The second chapter summarizes the land development history of the site where the house
at 1313 Congress Street is located. It is a much more focused chapter though it begins by
acknowledging the longer history of land use in the greater Beaufort coastal region starting with
Indigenous presence in the area, the colonial period, and the founding of the town. The chain of
title history associated with Block 100 and the parcel where 1313 Congress Street is located is
summarized using deed transactions as well as other legal documents and newspaper reports.
The third chapter is different from the other chapters in that it is structured around the life
of one person, Edith Stokes. Stokes lived in the house at 1313 Congress Street for at least 57
years and built her life and her community from there. I relied on the oral history interview I
conducted in July 2022 with her granddaughters, Annie Mae and Shirley Stokes, to guide my
understanding of Edith Stokes’ life and used records such as the census, deed transactions, death
certificates, obituaries, draft registration cards, and fire insurance maps to fill in details. The
house at 1313 Congress Street and the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood where it is situated are,
in addition to her surviving heirs, some of the best insights we have into the life of Edith Stokes
and understanding the incredible life she built despite being born the year the Civil War ended
and growing up and then raising her family during the Jim Crow era in the American south.
The fourth and final chapter is split into two parts: Part one explains the authorized
heritage discourse preservation practices available to and being utilized by practitioners to
preserve Beaufort history and critically examines the inequitable outcomes and one-sided
narratives created by these practices. Part two offers strategies for preserving vernacular
architecture, sites, structures, and areas using methods and models that have been developed by

130

and for places associated with African American history specifically. Though the entire thesis is
a call to action for preservation practitioners to push the boundaries of our field to be more
equitable, inclusive, encompassing, and just, this chapter most of all presents the case that our
field as it is currently practiced marginalizes architecture, sites, structures, objects, places,
stories, and people and that it is of the utmost importance that we take up the burden of doing the
work of reconstructing preservation practices so that we can preserve the whole story of our
history. 1313 Congress Street is one house in which these larger issues are made visible.

Further Research
As the consulting company, LG2 Environmental Solutions, wrote in their Conditions and
Integrity Assessment for the Beaufort National Historic Landmark District report, made public in
January 2023: “More equity work is necessary to readjust the stated significance of the District.
Nationally significant for its Reconstruction Era African American history, additional
documentation for addressing Reconstruction Era associations…should be adopted.” More
equity work is indeed necessary and some of the starting points I have after researching the story
of 1313 Congress Street and the story of the Stokes family are as follows:
• Build capacity for African American community members in Beaufort to share their
stories about their family homes, their descendants, and their places – both still in
existence and physically lost. The information I learned from one interview with Annie
Mae and Shirley Stokes about their grandmother, the house at 1313 Congress Street, and
their lives and personal histories of Beaufort was paramount to this entire project. Black
Beaufort residents, both past and present, have been place-keeping as long as any other
resident of the sea islands and our preservation practitioners should begin their work of

131

reconstructing the field by listening. It was beyond the scope of this project to conduct
and collect multiple oral history interviews with long-time residents of the Northwest
Quadrant, but I believe that those stories would be an excellent beginning to
reconstructing preservation practices in Beaufort.
• Create and curate formal archival collections specific to the African American history of
Beaufort which will create a repository where residents, researchers, preservationists, and
community members can come together to learn from primary sources about the lived
experience of Black Beaufort residents going back as early as captured Africans being
sold into slavery in Beaufort through to their role in building Beaufort and building the
nation, to the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights Era and
beyond. There are different repositories throughout South Carolina and the United States
which safeguard the scattered ephemera associated with the incredible history of African
Americans in Beaufort, however, there is a need for these powerful records to return to
Beaufort and be brought to the forefront of the historical narratives being told in the city.
One set of records which comes to mind are the Records of the South Carolina Direct Tax
Commission, housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. which generally
detail life in Beaufort from 1862 to 1899 with some earlier and later maps included.
Though some of these records are digitized, most remain only in their physical form in
D.C. and generally inaccessible whether digital or not. Part of the work of reconstructing
preservation practice should be making available records and resources associated with
African American history in Beaufort in order to preserve the whole history of the city.
• In the Northwest Quadrant Neighborhood specifically, there is much work to be done to
document, research, and preserve the sites, structures, and spaces associated with the

132

African American community history there as well as the immigrant communities
established there in the years after Reconstruction. In researching just one house, 1313
Congress Street and trying to understand the developmental history of Block 100, I was
constantly running into leads and hints about other people, sites, places, and histories in
the neighborhood which need further research. It is not just 1313 Congress Street which
is under threat of demolition by decay but there are many other early resources associated
with the Reconstruction Era and beyond whose stories need to be told. It was outside the
scope of this project to research and document all Reconstruction Era sites associated
with Beaufort’s Black community in the Northwest Quadrant, but it is a necessary project
if preservation practices are to be meaningfully reconstructed in Beaufort.
It is my hope that this project illustrates the incredibly rich and complex history of the house at
1313 Congress Street and stands as an example of how to begin the work of reconstructing
preservation practice.

133

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Appendices
Appendix A: Transcript of Oral History Interview with Annie Mae & Shirley Stokes

Oral History Interview with Annie Mae Stokes
Transcription

Interviewer: Emily Varley, Nathan Betcher
Videographer: Paul Keyserling
Narrator: Annie Mae Stokes, Shirley Stokes
Date: July 27, 2022

Emily Varley: Hi, my name is Emily Varley. I am conducting this interview today and I am a
NCPE intern at Reconstruction Era National Historical Park and I attend school at the University
of Southern California, and I am interviewing Annie Mae Stokes and they – she, is our narrator
today. And today’s date is July 27, 2022. And we are doing this interview at your home on
Washington Street and today we will be talking about the Stokes cottage and memories of
Beaufort. Um, would you like to introduce yourself and say whatever you’d like.
Annie Mae Stokes: Hello. I’m Annie Mae Stokes, and I was born July the ninth 1938. This is my
home. And really, if you don't think so, but I was born in my grandmother's house as my mother
said. But I'm very happy to have you. And I will talk with you as much as I can. Thank you.
Okay.

Emily Varley: Thank you. Okay, my first question has to be what comes to mind when you think
of your childhood in Beaufort.

Annie Mae Stokes: My childhood in Beaufort was very nice to me. My grandmother, first of all,
my mother, and my father, and my siblings made it very nice and pleasant for me. And my
grandmother made it that much more pleasant for me, because she would give me things that I
like, maybe like cupcakes when they call it pancakes or whatever, but she would make those
things. And I liked those things me being the oldest of the girls, I sat down there, and I was so
happy and spoiled. And she would just give me just different things that I like. And so she would
tell me about different things that I didn't know, she would take me to church, she would even
just take me and buy me a baby doll. And once she bought me a baby doll. And my brother
thought the doll can sit down which was a stand up doll and he tried to make the doll a sit down
and he broke the legs off the doll. But my childhood life was very sweet. Yes, my parents and
my grandmother was very lovely and I love them to this day.

149

Emily Varley: So you mentioned your brother breaking the legs off of your baby doll. So talk to
me a little more about your brothers and your family. Were you over at your grandmother's
house a lot? Or were you over at this home a lot? Like what was that like?

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay. I was home, I'll say both places. When my mother told me to go out
maybe and help wash the clothes or something like that. And being the child I didn’t want to
work all the time. So I’d take off and run down to my grandmother's house and she would say,
“Wow, it's very hot out there. Why are you out there in all this heat?” And I would say, “Well
grandma, I said my mom, you know want me to come down here,” which was a little bit
exaggeration, but I said, “Grandma my mama want me to come down here a little bit.” But when
I went down there were trees along from my house, which is 1401 Washington street to my
grandma house, about three trees. And the sun was so hot. I would stop under the first tree and
cool my feet off because at that particular time, we didn't wear shoes very much, especially
when it was hot. Then I’d cool my feet off, run to the next tree and cool my feet off at that tree
then run to the next tree. And when we didn't have the tree. This is where, you know most
people would like…my dad have a horse and my brother knew how to ride the horse. So he
would be first and I'd be in the middle and I have another brother at the end and we'd ride the
horse to Grandma house out the sun and she’d say, “Children, why are you riding your grand-
your father's horse down here in all this heat?” That's her voice when it went up. “Well, ma, you
know it's hot out there”. “Grandma its very hot out.” “Well, go and tie that horse around to the
back, and pump some water from the pump.” She had a pump. And we’d go and pump the
water from the pump and give the horse water to cool off. But that's when I wanted to see her.
And my brothers and the horse wanted to have a little talk and a little fun with grandmother
because she was very, very funny. Yes.

Emily Varley: Okay, she's very funny. What other kind of things was she doing? Was she just
having to keep control of you guys, her grandkids? What other kinds of things was she doing?

Annie Mae Stokes: She had a rooster. And a rooster is the man chicken. And when we went to
the gate, sometimes if we went to the front gate, the rooster was there like a dog. He wouldn't
let us come in. And she would get the broom, “Go to the back, Go to the back.” And that rooster
listened to her. But the rooster didn't want us in the yard. You know, we were taking all the fun
and all this time away from grandmother. But he listened. He went around to the back, like he
pretended. And he went through the kitchen door to the back and came to the front. And she
would get the broom and she’d run him out to, you know, the front. He didn’t want us there. And
so she put him in the chicken coop in the yard where they kept the chickens and locked him up.
So we can have fun with her. And she also have a cow. She had a cow. And she would milk that
cow just about every day. And at that time when she would milk the cow, she would take the
milk and do what she needed to do with the milk. Shake it up to get the cream off the top and let
it mix up in the milk and we would have fresh milk. Yes.

Emily Varley: Oh my gosh. Was she – so she had a cow, she had a rooster, that was mean, did
she have any other animals or?

150

Annie Mae Stokes: She had the chickens with the rooster and uh, and the cow. She didn’t have
any other animals.

Emily Varley: Did she have a garden?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, she did. She had a field, which she had, across the street from her,
and she plant peanuts, corn, and beans. And then the mornings, when the weather’s nice and
cool, she would go and pull up her peanuts. Yea. And we would be in there, following behind
her, but we didn’t know how to do it until she showed us how to do it. And we would go and pull
up the peanuts and shake off the dirt. Cuz, you know, the bottom they have dirt, sand, and the
sand goes back on the ground or whatever and she’d put all the peanuts, you know, over on the
side. And then she’d bring them home. And then she’d pull the peanuts off the branches. She
did have a nice garden. People would come by, and she would even give peanuts and
sometimes the beans, yes, to people. Cuz she did have several fields but that was one I worked
in with her.

Emily Varley: Wow. So was it you and your siblings. You would be working out there with her in
the field. Okay.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, yes, yes. Yea, my brother after me, went back, after me, and before
me. They were big enough to help her, you know, fix with the garden. Yes, fix with the garden.
And my oldest brother, he would go down and help maybe with heavier things maybe if she
wanted to sorta move something, a bench, or if the latch came off the swing or something like
that. They would help. But the smaller children helped grandmother with the field, yes. Yes. Yes.

Emily Varley: Wow. Oh my gosh. So, how much do you know about, like, how long she had her
garden or how long she was in the house or what – I mean – anything?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, okay. Um. By me being 84 years old as I speak to you now. My
grandmother was there, uh, to my mother and my father. And my mother and my father, when
they had me, was like, as I am calculating, about 18, 16 to 18. And she was there before my
mother had me because I was born in my grandmother’s house. And speaking now, 84 years
old, and she died at 104 to 105, that house should have been there, I’m calculating about, say
100 and some years or maybe more, from what I am calculating, from my age, and she died at
104 years old and mom and those having me at their age, 18, I’m saying, to me that house
should be about, I’m saying, about 200 years old.

Emily Varley: Okay. So, she was there, we think she was born in 1862, your grandmother, if
she died when she’s 104, which was in 1967, so did your parent’s, did your father ever talk
about her, what his mother’s life had been like, prior to her having her kids and having your
dad?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yea, my father would say that my grandmother was a very strict woman but
a loving woman. And she worked hard for her living and she worked her to bring up her children.

151

She’s had, as what I know, about five and all of them progressed in life and became very
successful in life. And she would teach you things that she know would value you in life. Like, if
you couldn’t cook, say, very good, she would say, you know, go to the store and make grandma
a little pancake and she would help me make that pancake and she would make, what they
called clabber. Now this is something that a lot of people, you know, sorta don’t know or don’t
like. But this when, she had the cow and she wait till the milk is a little bit, say, I wouldn’t say old
but, it’s more than just milk you can pour, it got a little bit thick. And she had a bowl, or a jar and
they do this [holding both hands up and rocking side to side] for the day and it turned a little bit,
I’m a say, differently. It turned different. And they called it clabber. Because it wasn’t milk that
you can just pour out. They ate it with grits and um, my daddy would say, you know, that’s what
he ate. Apparently a lot. Cuz my grandmother – I didn’t really like it. Cuz when children come
and they see different things. No, I don’t want it, thank you. But anyway, she, I saw that, and
she made that. So, she taught us how to do it. And she had the fig tree there and a lot of times,
showed us how, if you didn’t want to eat all your figs off the tree, you could jar them. You can,
you know, cook your figs, and you can jar figs and you had the figs for the wintertime, and it was
like jelly. So, you know, you can save it in the pantry. Save it, in wintertime and come over there
and put it on some bread. But that’s jarred food. They jarred their food. We call it canned food
now cuz they use the can that they would jar. She would jar. Mother would jar food. Put it in the
mason jars and we ate it. But it was good food. It was very good, yes.

Emily Varley: So, does your father then, he grew up in the house then?

Annie Mae Stokes: My dad told us that he was raised there and so he more than likely grew
up. Cuz he is the baby of the family, so he more than likely got more growing up with her than
the others in that house. So, that house probably was during his time a little bit more than the
older one’s time, they probably had another house or something like that. But dad was the baby
and then he had a younger sister, she might’ve been a few years old then, but she was grow up.
But more than likely, the grandchildren, you know, grew up with her in the house. Her children’s
children.

Emily Varley: Okay, but she was the main person living there?

Annie Mae Stokes: The only one in that time frame. Yes.

Emily Varley: So, do you remember, I guess, anything about her neighbors or was it mostly
family members that were living near to your grandmother?

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay. The neighbors were very sweet to her. And when she got a little
older then when I came, she grew older, and she became, before she became blind. She did go
blind. But before she did, she became blind, the neighbors were very sweet to her. They would
help her bring the peanuts or something from the field when she had the plants there. If she
needed the house, anything that went wrong with the house. She would have the neighbors
help her fix it. the next-door lady was a schoolteacher. So, she helped her with the reading a
little bit. And across, in the front of her, was a pond. Which they filled in. But it wasn’t a pond

152

that held a lot of water. We called it a pond because it was deeper than level ground and they
filled that in, and grass grew there. Before she had a shed there where she kept her tools and
whatever she needed. And she would go across the street and get a shovel, whatever she
needed over there, but she sold that to one of the schoolteachers. But it was filled in. You know,
they filled it, you know, nicely, to build a house there. A nice house is there now. But that was
hers. So, she, would, you know. The neighbors were sweet to her, cuz she was older in the
neighborhood, and they respected her, too.

Emily Varley: Was she one of the oldest women who had been in the neighborhood the
longest?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, yes, yes. She was the oldest there. And most of the times they would
go to her and wanted some corn or whatever she grew and she would help the children by
giving help the people by giving corn or whatever she grew. And they loved her because she not
only said hello and this, she helped them. She helped them feed those children. By which she
grew. And that was food. Food was one thing we needed to survive. Yes.

Emily Varley: Wow, so, I guess. Do you remember anything, I guess, would she hang out on
the porch? And you said, I think, earlier, a fence. What do you remember about being at the
house?

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay. When I went to the house. She had a swing on the front porch. And
quiet natural, a swing, everyone wants to sit on the swing, you know, and she also had two
rockers and they were not big and glamorous but they were rocking chairs. And, I wanted to sit
in the swing. You know, cuz I wanted to swing in and out. The swing went sideways to the
house, not like, you now, back and forth. Cuz if this is house, you know the swing go back, but
the house wasn’t that large. You’ve seen the house. The swing she had sideways, and the
swing went out like its going out, but it didn’t go, you know, real far out, but it went this way. But
I liked to swing back and forth cuz she was sitting there in the rocking chair. And we’d have, you
know, whatever she had, peanuts or a little ice cream or a drink, a pop. Yes, but it was nice and
pleasant because it seemed as it didn’t get as hot as the weather is now. Back then look like we
had cooler days. But as this changing world, we can, you know, expect hotter days because the
world is. Temperature is changing around the world.

Emily Varley: Right. So, was she the kind of person who always had her front door open and all
of you kids were running in and out all the time?

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay. No, she didn’t have – she was strict, like I said. And when you went
to the house. She would say, okay, you can go and get some water. Of course, she had an
icebox, wasn’t a refrigerator. The iceman would come, or they would go out to the ice house, get
their ice, 25 pound, of ice, big block, comes in block, 10 pound, the icebox could hold. It was at
the top where they would put the ice and the ice would cool the fridgerator. Okay, then she had
something they called, we call it a fireplace now, but they didn’t call it a fireplace, they called it a
hearth. That’s what they called it. And, as our fireplaces now, got ashes, when you put wood in

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it, wood burn and turn to ash. Well, hers did too. But she would use those ashes then to bake
her sweet potatoes. You turn the ashes, open up the ashes, put the sweet potatoes in and cover
them up with ashes. And that would cook her sweet potatoes. As me, I didn’t like the sweet
potato cooked all the way because that was too, whatever, I didn’t like, you know. She liked
hers cooked all the way. So, I liked it sort of firm, you know, half, you know, I can slice it and bite
it. But they liked sweet potato mashed up, you know, like mashed potatoes. Well anyway, I’d
put, you know, two in there. One for me and one for her cuz she would say, go in the house and
put it in there and you little children, little kids they want bread or something, they didn’t like that
cuz they. So I would eat with her cuz she liked hers mashed and I liked mine firm. So we would
eat but she was strict she kept a nice, neat house. And we helped her clean. We’d go over there
and take the pillow and pat the pillow and put the pillow back in the chair. Yes, wash the dishes,
keep the kitchen clean. But no children were allowed to run and tear up things in the home. And
we’ve learned that from her. To keep your home neat. Cuz she would say, company comes, and
company looks, and company see so keep my house clean. And we did. And today, today, we
keep a very neat, clean house. And Shirley’s verify cuz she keeps a clean, neat home. And my
other sister did, and my sister. We’re very neat people.

Emily Varley: Wow. Wow. Oh my gosh. She sounds incredible. And sounds like you learned a
lot of cooking from her.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, I learned cleaning. Cleaning yes, cooking. Cleaning. Taking care of
the children, which we always took care of the smaller kids. They were, you know, they had to
play when they had to learn. Cuz children gonna be children. But, don’t hurt the little fellow, you
know, sit him in the chair, pick him up and sit him down, you know, easily. So we were very
careful with our siblings. They taught us not to be rough with them. Yes, yes, yes.

Emily Varley: Wow, I guess, did she ever talk about what her life was like before she was, I
guess before all you guys were all around, running around?

Annie Mae Stokes: She didn’t talk so very much. But she talked on, on her life that is. She was
married. And her husband, as she said, her husband was a traveling man. So, I assume that he
was a person that, sort of had, sales, salesman. Some sort of salesperson. My grandfather I
didn’t know very well, and you know, I can’t talk on him too much cuz I didn’t know him that well.
And never even seen him. But what grandmother would say, he would sort of come and go, cuz
she had plenty children. She had lots of children, right, just as many kids as my mother and
father, and there’s ten of us, so he had to come home sometimes.

Emily Varley: Wow, so I guess he would come to the house on Congress?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, to the house. And then he would go back. So, probably in mind like a
truck driver. You know, the truck driver goes and stay for a couple of weeks and return home.
So, he was a salesperson cuz he would come, and you know, be with her, and love her, you
know her, and the children. But I didn’t grow to know him.

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Emily Varley: Wow. Oh my gosh. Well, you knew your grandmother.

Annie Mae Stokes: I knew her.

Emily Varley: Man, yea, I mean I guess, she raised all of you all. And basically, raised all the
generations of your family it sounds like.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, it was like, as I was telling, asking Shirley last night. I said, you know,
its four generations of from her and then, she was, you know, telling, yea. Well, in fact I said it
was three. And she said, no sis, its four. And my dad, and then his children, and then his
children’s children, and then the grand, the great great grand. We were figuring. We were trying
to figure it out last night cuz I went to three generations, but we end up with four generations, so
there’s four generations of us. Yes.

Emily Varley: Well, I guess, if there’s any other things you want to talk about specifically, I
mean, either about your parents or about your grandmother, about your neighbors or about
Beaufort, but anything else you would like to talk about?

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay, well, we all loved church as I said. All loved Church. And we went to
Central Baptist Church on Sundays. We would be ready when she come down from her house,
to the side here and but she would give us a call when she gets to that highway, what’s – Green
Street – that’s Green Street. To let us know she’s almost at the house. Children, I’m here. And
she would be over there to that corner there. We’re ready. We’re ready. And she would stop and
we’d walk down to the church with her. And when we get to the church. Some most of the time,
a lot of the time, more than one or two times, she’s a little bit behind time, you know, late. The
devotion part is finished. And I was a child, you know we’d go, catch a little bit of devotion, but
the preacher always come at the end, you know, when they did devotion. And I was a child, and
I didn’t like to go up to the front of the church. I didn’t like to go all the way up. So I would stop
with my friends half way when we’d go in the church and we’d get in and she would look back,
“What is wrong with you, come on child”. And it was a little bit, so I’d just, you know, look down
and I’d say, “Okay, grandmom, I’m behind you”. And we’d go up and she would, you know, go
into her seat, and, you know, and we would be on the seat with her, right. And the children, you
know, you know how children are. They [covers mouth while laughing]. They want to stay back
and talk a little bit and sneak a little conversation in with. But she was on the money. she didn’t
like that. She wanted all the children are on the seat with her. So we had to go up. And I was
one that, didn’t, but I had to go up. And so I had to be church-y. Very church-y. But anyway,
that’s what I liked about her. She was good.

Emily Varley: How long was she going to that church, do you know?

Annie Mae Stokes: Oh, the church. Ever since I knew my grandmother and was going to
church. She was going to church until she got sick. Until. And she got down in about her
nineties. Because she went blind but they used to take her anyway. So about ninety years. And

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after she went blind, we slacked off on taking her because she wasn’t feeling to well at that time.
But she lived, you know, a good while after she went blind.

Emily Varley: Did she ever talk about what her parents were like? Did they live a really long
time too?

Annie Mae Stokes: Her…she had a brother. And we called him Uncle Ben and he lived a long
time too, Uncle Ben, I believe, died about in his hundreds. I can’t, I don’t know the plus to his
hundreds. I know he lived a good while because he, bought one of my brothers a car, yes, so he
knew what cars were cuz he wanted to ride where he went but he couldn't, you know, drive.
They weren’t going to give him a license at, you know, ninety-five, and so he bought my brother
the car and my brother wanted to go places, you know, before he came down the street so he
would come and ask, “Where’s that boy?” you know, and no one knew cuz he didn’t tell anyone
where Juggie was. As we called him Juggie, his name was [Jackson]. And he would, you know,
“I’m a take my car back cuz he’s never here when I come”. But my brother knew when you took
him some place, he stayed a long time. And he wanted to get, to do whatever he wanted to do
before Uncle Ben came but that was my grandmother’s brother. But she did have him, and he
was married. He had his wife, and they had a beautiful place over there, Jarvista, is what they
called it then and he had two or three or four nice pieces of land and he sold it and gave it to,
you know, his family, his children, his heirs. But um, yes, I knew him, cuz he would come to his
sister’s house, so we grew up with him also. His name was Uncle Ben Meyers. Yes.

Emily Varley: What was his house like, do you remember?

Annie Mae Stokes: Uncle Ben had this big house, and they were, I don’t know, some people, I
think they think the children and stuff like that would get hurt or either cuz he had a lot of stuff in
there. I went in there a couple of times, and we didn’t go in that house too much. We weren’t
scary but a lot of times we didn’t want to get hurt and he saw us, “Don’t y’all go in there now,
you know, stay out and play”. We went to certain parts of the house, but it was a huge house,
very large, and um, we respected him, you know, and if he said, don’t do it, we didn’t do it. But
Jarvy still bought some of that land, there was a big ole building there. I don’t know what he
sold, was it a restaurant or something. Jarvista, you remember Jarvista. But anyway, he sold
that. Yes, but that was my grandmother’s brother. And like I said, he was loving, he helped the
family and some of the land, that he had, we took care of it for the family, and he took care of it
also for some of his family. Gave it to them. Yes.

Emily Varley: Wow. But I just want to say if there’s anything else you’d like to talk about or
mention.

Annie Mae Stokes: Like I said, I have our, my sister here. And maybe there was something that
I left out as she was listening. Give her the honor to say anything that she would like, to, you
know say, or ask me or remind me of anything that I left out.

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Shirley Stokes: The only thing, if I can, is that it was Jarvista, the restaurant cuz Ben, as far as
I can relate, cuz my mother had, other family members. She had a sister who is living in
Georgia, another sister, and by having family reunions. That’s how we learn a lot of things. And
this sister had children, and that’s how we got together and met a few of the family members
that we didn’t know.

Emily Varley: So, did you go to family reunions in town? In Beaufort?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, we did. And we had it a few years ago. Yes, right here in Beaufort.
And there were some family members that I’d never seen. One lady was from Florida. Miami,
Florida, and I didn’t know her. But we met and we enjoyed one another. We had a good time.
but we did get to meet some families that we’d never known were our family.

Shirley Stokes: Yes. And she’s covering mostly family that I can relate to. But I’m saying that
she know that I don’t know. I can pick up just going back and forth from my grandmother’s
house. She was an older woman. She was blind, but she really wasn’t blind, cuz she knew
everything. How much is this? How much is this? If she had money, don’t tell her, it was twenty.
Alright, how much is this? Twenty? You know, she was asking to see if you, you know, be
truthful. You know. But then, she knew what she had. She knew her money. And she was
always like that. Oh yes, she was very sharp. And I remember as a child, at my place, I was to
go to my uncle, mister Sam, I was to go and pick up the breakfast, because my aunt was
cooking the breakfast and my mother did the dinner. And said that I was coming up. And her
breakfast was always oatmeal, that’s all she wanted. A bowl of oatmeal. And she would eat
oatmeal and tell her I want for lunch, oatmeal. I said maybe that’s why she lived to 104 because
she was a oatmeal lover. And my mother would make the dinner for her, and I would take the
dinner when I came from school. She’d wait for her dinner. And that’s what she had us doing,
you know. And that’s how I grew up. But at 104 she was sharp. I came out of school in ’68 and I
remember she died in ’67, that’s what you said, cuz I remember it was a year before I
graduated. Yes.

Emily Varley: So, you all would go over to the house all the time then?

Shirley Stokes: Oh yes, that was a part of us. You know, we grew up doing that.

Annie Mae Stokes: I spent many nights down there with grandmother. I slept down there. And
you called Geraldine. And then, Geraldine was closer to me then, you know, the others, they
were younger. And we would, you know, laugh and giggle. Do paper dolls and different little
things. and we would spend the night down there with my grandmother, yes. Geraldine.

Paul Keyserling: Did she talk about her childhood at all? Did your grandmother talk about her
childhood at all? What she did when she was a young girl?

Annie Mae Stokes: Not very much. My grandmother was, I don’t know, she wasn’t a shy
person, but she didn’t talk very much of her childhood. She may have talked to Sammie or my

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oldest brother, cuz they were, you know, before me. But not to me, no. I just learned of her,
everything of her when I got to know her real good. And I got to know her real good.

Shirley Stokes: She mostly spoke about her siblings. You know her sisters and brothers but I
can’t relate to nothing else.

Annie Mae Stokes: But her sister…you know, the children. But she didn’t talk very much of her
childhood to me.

Emily Varley: Okay. I have to ask. When you would sleep over at her house, do you remember
how she had it decorated and what it was like in there?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, like I said my grandmother was very, very clean. And she didn’t have
very many rooms to that house. But in that front bedroom, there was a big bed here and a big
bed here [motions arms to the left and then to the right]. Two beds. And she, my cousin and I,
Geraldine, we had the bed to the right and grandmother had the bed to the left. And, you know,
we giggled, whatever, and she turn over and say, “Stop that playing now” you know, “go to
sleep.” And we did. But we slept in that big front bedroom, all of us, but we had our bed and
grandma had her bed. Yes.

Emily Varley: I remember when we visited--

Annie Mae Stokes: One bed.

Emily Varley: Well, there was one bed. But there was a lot of light blue paint.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes.

Emily Varley: Do you, was that there when you were there?

Annie Mae Stokes: I don’t think so, no. Because after grandmother died, the house was fixed
up pretty nice then, you know, it wasn’t – definitely not like it is now. My brother he lived in there,
yea, I have a brother.

Shirley Stokes: It was, you know, it was livable after she died. And he could’ve done the paint.
The paint blue.

Annie Mae Stokes: The one big bedroom, you know, my cousin, Geraldine and I, slept with my
grandma cuz she was getting old, and daddy wanted, you know the children, the girls, sleep and
watch. She’s getting lonely. Keep her from getting lonely. Yes.

Emily Varley: And I didn’t see it, but where is the fireplace, or, the hearth, in the house?

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Annie Mae Stokes: Okay, if you could remember, you remember where someone had gotten a
book. Remember I said, there’s a book or something. Okay. Where you went to get that book, in
the living room, that was the living room, the fireplace was in the living room. You know, it was
to the front. This is the living room, the fireplace was [motions up and down to the right] and the
wall, this is the living room, and the fireplace was to the front of the living room. Not where the
door is.

Shirley Stokes: Where you walk to the right of the house. Over there. That old coat you see,
focus right over to the right. That was the fireplace.

Annie Mae Stokes: If you could remember. Yea, I’m trying to just picture. Give you a picture of
it. And that’s where I used to bake our potatoes. Yes, and she had a kitchen, and we do the
cooking but that was our snack bar.

Nathan Betcher: Was there a room of the house that was your favorite? It sounded like front
porch where you spent a lot of time, was a favorite of yours? Was that your favorite spot?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, yes. It was one of the favorite spots. That she had a rocking chair in
the living room. And she would, after she had a snack for the night – you know, her little potato,
and – so, she would sorta rock herself to sleep. You know, a little bit take back nod, you know.
And we would be giggling or playing and, “Children, y’all better get ready to go to bed.” But she
would stay up till a little later time and she would go. But that was her second spot on the front
porch. But her first spot was right there in that living room in that rocking chair in the front of that
fire, especially in the wintertime. She – the winter is cold – but that fireplace gave off a lot of
heat. Maybe we were used to it I guess. But she was in the living room most of the time. And on
the porch is where she shell her beans and her peas or. When they come by, entertain a lot of
the ladies cuz they sat with her. Yes. And the pump was right over there by the fence. Pump.
We pumped water. And we got a cool drink of water right out the pump cuz that water was cool.
I guess cuz it had the well or something, you know, water under the – the well, or something but
that how the pump is made. But we’d pump, you know, water and we drank nice glass of cool
water. We didn’t need too much ice. We didn’t get much ice. Because she had to preserve that
ice to keep the refrigerator cool, you know. And then you had a go a little distance to get that
ice. Had to go up Burton Hill. I don’t know if you travel Beaufort and Burton? And the big ole
icehouse was, as you go up the hill, the big icehouse was – I’m trying to – the big icehouse is to
the left. It might be still there. I think, is it there.

Emily Varley: Isn’t the road called icehouse road or something?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes.

Emily Varley: I’ve been on the road.

Annie Mae Stokes: You go up the hill and that’s where we used to go to get the ice.

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Shirley Stokes: You know, clothesline. We would do clothesline in the back of the house. I
heard them talk about the clothesline.

Annie Mae Stokes: Uh huh. The clotheslines. Yes, she hung our clothes back, she hung our
clothes on the line. You know, we have dryer now. She didn’t even know about a dryer.
Washing machine and dryer. She wash our clothes in the tub. Wash them and then rinse in
another tub. And then from there. Rinse to the line.

Emily Varley: Do you know – we think that the house has an addition on it, the back of the
house, do you remember when that happened? Or hearing about it? Or was it always how it is
now?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yes, yes. Okay, no, it wasn’t always like it is now. It was, lets see, smaller. I
think it was smaller. It had to be smaller. Cuz that’s addition. But she had a kitchen. It had a
kitchen. But maybe, they could’ve taken or add onto that little piece. I think they added onto that
little piece.

Shirley Stokes: That’s all it was. The addition was just – I think the little extension within, cuz it
needed bathroom and things that were changing. The bathroom and back bedroom. That’s what
it was. But as far – she had a kitchen, like she said, and I think it was –

Annie Mae Stokes: Very little. A little piece. A little kitchen and a little bathroom.

Shirley Stokes: City of Beaufort, you know, they allowed that. You know. They had that.

Annie Mae Stokes: And then, you know, they added a little piece more. And extended it a little
bit. But she had, ours had a kitchen cuz I had –

Shirley Stokes: Yea, cuz we can’t have two bedrooms. It was one bedroom. Is what she’s
saying. Then became two.

Emily Varley: Do you remember when that might’ve happened?

Annie Mae Stokes: Let’s see. Well, I probably then was about, maybe, 12, 13, years old. Cuz it
wasn’t there when I was smaller or younger than 12. But at 12, she and I, or whoever, would go
and try to cook different things back there on the little stove. She had a stove; she had a wood
stove. And she cooked on, by wood, you know. So, you put your wood in.

Emily Varley: Did you have to chop the wood? Who chopped the wood?

Annie Mae Stokes: Well, daddy. Daddy took her the wood. Yea. And sometimes, splinters like
the tree limbs and things. She didn’t throw it away, she used it, you know, put it the stove and
the fireplace. You know, so, they didn’t throw away those kind of things cuz it was useful to

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them. So she used the little splinter wood to put in there so she wouldn’t have to cut em, you
know, with the axe or anything until daddy brought her.

Shirley Stokes: And that was also my father’s business, you know, he was into the wood
business so. That was his job. That’s what he did.

Paul Keyserling: Did she have electricity in the house when you were really young? Or did she
use kerosene?

Annie Mae Stokes: How did she do what now?

Paul Keyserling: How did she light the house?

Shirley Stokes: Wood. The heat.

Annie Mae Stokes: Okay, wood.

Paul Keyserling: What about light?

Shirley Stokes: Oh she –

Annie Mae Stokes: She light –

Shirley Stokes: How was it? They had lamps, didn’t they have lamps?

Annie Mae Stokes: Oh, yes.

Shirley Stokes: Lamps. They had lamps.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yea, grandma didn’t have no light. I’m sorry I was trying to figure out what
he said – I’m sorry. But no, she had lamps. Yea she had lamps. She had a lamp she didn’t. You
know. She would bring the kerosene, I don’t know if you hear of kerosene. Kerosene was used
at that time and they would put it in the lamp and put the shade on lamp and turn the [turns
fingers like twisting a knob] wick up or down. Later the wick turn it down and it dims the light and
then if you turn it up, the light would become bright. Yea, she used lamps. She didn’t have any
lights. My grandmother didn’t even have air conditioner. The windows. You got air. But when
electricity came through, she got it wired. She might’ve gotten a little fan, you know, to get a little
air. Just to be maybe modern a little. I couldn’t even remember having a fan in there cuz they
used to up the window and let the air come in. So we got lots of fresh air. Yes. We didn’t have.

Paul Keyserling: What about plumbing? Do you remember that? Water? You had the pump
outside. Do you remember when she got indoor plumbing?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yea. When she got the pump. No, I grew into the pump.

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Paul Keyserling: No, inside the house.

Annie Mae Stokes: The pump was outside.

Paul Keyserling: Right. Do you remember when she had it brought into the house?

Shirley Stokes: The electricity. The plumbing.

Emily Varley: The plumbing.

Annie Mae Stokes: Yea, I was trying to think.

Paul Keyserling: Do you remember where the outhouse was?

Annie Mae Stokes: That was in the back. I was trying to think. I gotta go back a little bit. The
outhouse was in the back. But I was trying to think when she put that toilet in, in the bathroom. I
believe I was about 13 or 14 years old at that particular time. But the outhouse was there before
I was about 12. It was there but I can’t quite remember, you know, the exact time that was.

Shirley Stokes: But he said, where was the outhouse?

Annie Mae Stokes: Yea.

Shirley Stokes: Where was it?

Annie Mae Stokes: It was in the back, I told him it was out back. In the backyard.

Paul Keyserling: What was behind the house? Do you remember? Was it just a field? Or was
there some building back there?

Annie Mae Stokes: No, it was a wood house. A little ole wood house in the back. And she had
it. I was trying to bring to my attention where that outer house. You know where the back door,
sorta back door. Go out grandma back door to the left, to the left, to the left of the house, was
the outhouse. To the right was her chicken coop, chicken house, that’s where she kept, over
that side. As I can remember. And a little further, after that outhouse, were some trees that was
the fig trees. Like going toward the street. She had a big fig tree there. And I can’t remember the
plum tree. Shirley said she had a plum tree but I do remember the fig tree cuz that’s where she
canned, got the figs and canned but I don’t remember plum tree. But the outhouse was to the
left when you go out the back door. It was to the left. And the chicken coop was to the right.
Yea. She had a nice size backyard. She had a good backyard.

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Appendix B: Beaufort County Historic Sites Survey, 1313 Congress Street, 1997

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Appendix C: Deed Book 18, Page 491, Morcock to Christensen (1877)

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Appendix D: Deed Book 19, Page 391, US Govt. to Morcock (1874)

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Appendix E: Deed Book 21, Page 330, Christensen to Reddick (1896)

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Appendix F: Deed Book 26, Page 59, Affy Simmons to Rina Gregory (1904)

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Appendix G: Deed Book 31, Page 421, Christensen to Reddick (1911)

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Appendix H: Deed Book 44, Page 195, Christensen to Meyers (1925)

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Appendix I: Deed Book 62, Page 130, Christensen to Gant (1944)

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Appendix J: Deed Book 62, Page 279, Christensen to Stokes (1945)

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Appendix K: Deed Book 65, Page 23, Christensen to Stokes (1946)

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Appendix L: Deed Book 579, Pages 657-660, Stokes to Heirs (1991)

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Appendix M: Deed Book 678, Pages 1124-1128, Stokes to Heirs, to Heirs (1994)

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Appendix N: US Army Navy Certificate No. 96, US Govt. to Daniel Simmons (1864)

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Appendix O: Diagrams of Block 100 Landownership Pre-1861 to 1946

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract On the edge of a large parcel sits a nondescript one-story cottage aging in place, its windows and doors boarded up and porch slightly sagging. Paint peels off the wooden clapboard siding and a rusted tin roof covers the original side gabled wood shingled roof. Riding my bike past the house while working as the Cultural Resource Management Intern at Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in summer 2022, I often missed it as I rode through the Northwest Quadrant neighborhood. Often, my eyes were being drawn to the antebellum era mansions I also passed heading to work. Through my internship, I had the honor of collaborating with the non-profit organization, Second Founding of America as well as with the homeowners/descendants as one of the NPS representatives researching the house and learning that it is an extant freedman’s cottage – virtually unchanged from its construction estimated to be in 1870. Freedman’s cottages are residences built during and immediately after the Civil War by formerly enslaved individuals seeking to integrate themselves and their families into full United States citizenry through the powerful act of exercising their newfound right to purchase land and build their home.

For too long, the house at 1313 Congress Street and the neighborhood where it is located, the Northwest Quadrant, has been overlooked, neglected, segregated, and ignored by formal preservation practices resulting in a threat of demolition by neglect and a white-washed historical narrative of Beaufort. This thesis covers the house and its associated social and built history, but the main purpose is to draw attention to the importance of conserving vernacular heritage. I argue that telling this story is a way that preservation practitioners can do the work of reconstructing preservation practice to be more equitable, inclusive, and encompassing so that Beaufort – and places like it – can begin to tell their whole histories.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Varley, Emily Catherine (author)

Core Title Reconstruction right now: conserving vernacular heritage in Beaufort, South Carolina as an act of reconstructing preservation practice

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Heritage Conservation

Degree Program Heritage Conservation

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 01/16/2024

Defense Date 07/16/2023

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Anthropology,architecture,Black history,Civil War,conservation,cultural heritage,Freedmen,heritage,National Park Service,OAI-PMH Harvest,oral history,preservation,reconstruction,Social history,South Carolina,Vernacular architecture

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi (committee chair), Elachi, Lauren (committee member), Platt, Jay (committee member)

Creator Email ecvarley@usc.edu,evarley@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113281251

Unique identifier UC113281251

Identifier etd-VarleyEmil-12097.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-VarleyEmil-12097

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Varley, Emily Catherine

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230719-usctheses-batch-1069 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu