With the immense wealth of history surrounding the Lowcountry, it is not impossible to conceive that every single day we could be looking at, walking on or driving over the sacred land of unmarked burial grounds. That’s because, according to architectural historian Brittany Lavelle Tulla, over the ages, countless gravesites along the coast of South Carolina have been destroyed or vanished due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes and fires. Moreover, man-made rice fields and tributaries that controlled the tides, wars, vandalism, neglect, disintegration and erosion created by overdevelopment and climate change have contributed to their further devastation.
Tulla added that during the mid-20th century when major highways were being developed, laws protecting buried human remains had not yet been implemented. Thus, roadwork, especially in more rural areas out towards the plantations, sometimes plowed right over forgotten sites of the interred.
Ancient Remains
Yet, some ancient burial grounds of Indigenous people have managed to survive over 4,000 years of disasters such as these. In his essay “Shell Midden Archaeology: Current Trends and Future Directions” for the “Journal of Archaeological Research,” Torben C. Rick defines these sites, called shell middens, as “a special type of coastal settlement in which shell refuse is a dominant part but which is mixed with cultural debris such as flint, bone, antler, charcoal, ceramics, ash, fire-cracked stones and features such as hearths, pits, stake-holes and graves, etc.”
One of the oldest middens in the United States, according to the U.S. Forest Service, is located in the Francis Marion National Forest in Awendaw, and another two are located on the backside of Hobcaw Barony off of Highway 17 just north of Georgetown.
Plantation Era
Much later, during the plantation era (1676-1865), each estate ran according to its own rule book and as a result, customs of how to bury enslaved workers varied from property to property. For example, one source that anonymously shared stories passed down from generations of her enslaved ancestors told of rolling their deceased into the river. Another said that some years ago when a landowner of an old plantation was walking in the woods of his property, he happened to look down and saw human bones scattered all around the vicinity. The more he explored the forest, the more remains he found, leading to a sickening conclusion that the area had been dug as a shallow mass grave.
Countless other accounts related that due to illiteracy, along with a lack of resources for carving tombstones, when the enslaved buried their loved ones, they left a marker such as a stone, a branch or a shell. According to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, these items purposefully placed on graves were often “turned upside down and broken. This practice also reflects practices in Africa. The upside-down position of the object symbolizes the inverted nature of the spirit world. The breaks allow the object to release its spirit so it can journey to the next world.” However, with a high tide or the gust of a strong wind, these symbols could easily be swept away, forever swallowing the memory of a gravesite’s location.
Other records, according to Tulla, indicate that religious planters often dictated Christian-based ceremonies and processes for interring the enslaved, and that proper burials may have been more common than we know. Take, for example, the Parker’s Island Cemetery, now part of the Rivertowne development, where only four graves are evident on this historic property, according to the African American Settlement Historic Commission. Here, as Lavelle Tulla shared, archaeologists, using ground penetrating radar, have discovered clues that the site could in fact be a formal burial ground. Discovery can only go so far, however, as Tulla said the cemetery is located on what is now the edge of a marsh, which has eroded over time.
Pre-Revolution/Civil War
Additional examples of formal burial sites for the enslaved, as well as freedmen, include Cook’s Old Field Cemetery, a pre-Revolutionary plot located off of Rifle Range Road, where generations of both Black and white families are buried. There is also a large graveyard near the exit of Hampton Plantation near McClellanville. Further, there is the cemetery at the Olive Branch AME Church, one of the oldest churches in Mount Pleasant, which was, according to Tulla, “Established immediately after the Civil War by newly-freed Black citizens, most of whom were previously enslaved on Mount Pleasant-area plantations.”
Around that same time, in 1884, when the foundation was being laid for the Old Village’s Darby Building, which was then designated to become the county courthouse for Berkeley County, hundreds of skeletons were found in a mass unmarked grave. According to USGW Archives, this burial site was likely the final resting place for unidentifiable Confederate soldiers who had been patients at Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church, which served as the town’s hospital during the war.
While east of the Cooper, most lost burial sites interring local Indigenous and enslaved populations, as well as Confederate and even Union soldiers, have yet to be researched, surveyed or mapped, some tombstones in surrounding cemeteries immortalize legendary characters of the upper classes, such as Alice Belin Flagg. According to author and tour guide Elizabeth Huntsinger, Flagg was the only daughter of the family who owned Wachesaw Plantation and was groomed from birth to marry into wealth.
At the young age of 15, however, Flagg fell in love with a handsome young lumberman, resulting in her family sending her off to boarding school in Charleston. Weakened by a broken heart from missing her fiancé, Flagg fell into a feverish coma that ultimately led to her death. The stone marking Flagg’s grave at Waccamaw Episcopal Church near Pawleys Island simply reads “ALICE.” Local lore suggests standing at the bottom right of the marker and walking around the site six times counterclockwise, then six times clockwise before stopping at the letter “A.” Then place an item of reverence on the grave, make a wish and it will be granted.
In summation, whether marked or unmarked, legendary or well-documented, the hallowed grounds surrounding us are a constant reminder of the souls who haunt our collective Lowcountry history.
By Sarah Rose
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