After we got off the Fort Sumter ferry we headed over the bridge we'd admired earlier and drove across the main part of Charleston to the original settlement across another river.
Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site sits on a marshy point, located off the Ashley River, where a group of English settlers landed in 1670 and established what would become the birthplace of the Carolina colony. Charles Towne Landing introduces visitors to the earliest colonial history of Charleston. Interact with hands-on exhibits in the Visitor Center, talk to knowledgeable staff members, and take an audio tour on the self-guided history trail.
--from
Charles Towne Landing SHS website
Once you enter the property you drive down a road flanked by beautiful old trees.
We parked in the parking lot and headed towards the visitor center.
Once inside we paid for our admission and prepared to explore.
We also received this great map of the property to help us navigate.
We started out inside exploring the exhibits about Charles Towne, "the first successful English colony in Carolina."
In this 17th-century settlement, you will meet English, African, Barbadian and Native American residents, all of whom helped shape this unique place. Each of these four groups had quite different ways of viewing the world, from their social and spiritual beliefs to the foods they ate, the houses they built and the clothes they wore. Yet each group made its own distinctive contributions to Charles Towne and to the future state of South Carolina.
--from
exhibit signage
What did people think the world looked like four hundred years ago? Certainly it was much different than our modern satellite-enhanced maps.
The exhibits were very well done and included a number of interactive elements as well as plenty of artifacts.
I certainly appreciated the number of maps. This one helps put the different settlements in different parts of North America into perspective.
The first portion of the exhibits covered the history of the royal grant to settle Carolina, how the colony was organized, and what the land was like. Here you can see many of the original Lords Proprietors.
People in Europe were often fascinated by the new plants, animals, and customs discovered in the North America.
Three ships (the
Carolina,
Albemarle, and
Port Royal) were loaded up for the voyage to the new colony. It was interesting to see the list of different items the took with them.
The ships departed England in August 1669 and arrived in Barbados in late October.
I hadn't realized that the ships spent some time in Barbados, at the time "the richest English colony in the New World" and studied its plantation system as a model for the colony they would build.
The exhibits did a good job of presenting the multiple perspectives of the early colonists from the wealthy down to the servants and the slaves.
It is interesting how many of the early colonists were looking for cash crops--they really were looking to make money rather than starting self-sustaining agricultural economies.
The trip from Barbados north to Carolina took five months and was almost a complete disaster.
In Barbados, all three Carolina-bound ships were damaged and the Albemarle was destroyed by a big storm just before the group planned to leave. (The Albemarle passengers survived to board a replacement ship, the Three Brothers.) The Port Royal wrecked two months later in the Bahamas. Many of her passengers died. Heavy storms forced the Carolina to stop at least twice, once at the island of Nevis and again at Bermuda. In Bermuda, Sir John Yeamans abandoned the expedition and returned to Barbados. Many of the indentured servants onboard were also reluctant to continue the voyage. But the English governor there threatened them with additional years of service, and they sailed on.
--from
exhibit signage
This interactive exhibit helped you see how easy it was for sailors to get off course if they made a small error in navigation.
These animal illustrations certainly are interesting and don't match what I've seen of these animals today.
At this point the exhibits opened up as they started to explore the actual conditions in the colony.
Displays like this that explained different perspectives were great to see. Imagine what it would feel like today if strangers just showed up off your coast and totally disrupted your life.
When reading about the population along the coast I am reminded about the ideas in
Charles Mann's 1491 and just wonder how much of this was different than it had been a couple centuries before.
Unfortunately part of the legacy of the Carolina colony is one of slavery. I found it interesting to know that it only took a generation for slaves to become a majority of the population.
The floor in this area of the exhibits is a reproduction of "a drawing of the remnants of the first building archaeologists found... The brown circles on the floor indicate man-made holes in the ground more than one foot deep--probably post holes." (from
exhibit signage)
There were more interactive exhibits that encouraged people to figure out how much work it would have taken to feed their family.
The kids also enjoyed costumes that they could try on.
This room display contained full-size reproductions of many artifacts that have been discovered in local excavations.
Over the years, the original Charles Towne site here at Albemarle Point was sold to numerous owners. Sometime after the colony moved across the river, a French Huguenot named James Le Sade came to own much of the land. Then, during the American Revolutionary War, British troops built fortifications here (remnants of which have been found by archaeologists).... The site's final private owners, Ferdinanda Legare Waring and Joseph Waring, sold the property to the state of South Carolina in 1969. Soon afterwards the South Carolina Tricentennial Commission transformed the Warings' farm into the state historic site we call "Charles Towne Landing."
--from
exhibit signage
After we'd finished touring the exhibits we decided to head outside.
However I think this post has been long enough, so I'll wrap this up here and continue on with the outside portion of our visit next time.
~Matt
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