Charleston Currents – S.C. Encyclopedia

S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: S.C. State Museum

S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina’s multidisciplinary State Museum opened on Oct. 29, 1988, in the renovated Mount Vernon Mill at 301 Gervais Street in Columbia’s Congaree Vista. The development of a museum was initiated in 1973 when the state legislature formed the South Carolina Museum Commission and charged it with “the creation and operation of a State Museum reflecting the history, fine arts and natural history and the scientific and industrial resources of the state.”

by Charleston Currents · 01/25/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: White lightning, a.k.a. “moonshine”

S.C. Encyclopedia | White lightning, a white whiskey made surreptitiously and illegally, was once produced in great quantities in South Carolina. It got its name from its color and the kick it delivers when consumed.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/18/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

Colleton County Courthouse, Walterboro, S.C.

HISTORY: Colleton County

S.C. Encyclopedia | First visited by Robert Sandford in 1666 while he was reconnoitering the southeastern seaboard of North America for Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Colleton County was one of three original counties organized in the English province of Carolina in 1682. However, Colleton was divided into three parishes by 1730 (St. Bartholomew’s, St. Paul’s, and St. John’s Colleton), which took over most county responsibilities, including oversight of elections.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/11/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Emancipation Day celebrations

S.C. Encyclopedia | The tradition of marking the end of slavery with Emancipation Day celebrations began in South Carolina on January 1, 1863—the day the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln declared three million slaves in the Confederate states to be “thenceforward, and forever free.” Since then, African Americans in South Carolina have gathered annually on New Year’s Day to commemorate the “Day of Jubilee” with food, song, dance, and prayer.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/04/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Joel Roberts Poinsett

S.C. Encyclopedia | Joel Roberts Poinsett was born on March 2, 1779, in Charleston, son of the Huguenot physician Elisha Poinsett and his English wife, Ann Roberts. As a child, Poinsett spent six years in England, where his formal education probably began. In 1794 he entered the Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, academy of Dr. Timothy Dwight but stayed only two years because of his frail health. Returning to England, Poinsett attended private school at Wandsworth, where he excelled in languages.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/28/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Spanish moss

S.C. Encyclopedia | Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a gray tree-borne epiphyte native to the coastal plain of the southeastern United States. As an epiphyte, Spanish moss gets water and food from the air and does not harm the host tree. It is not a true moss but a relative of the pineapple family in the genus Bromeliaceae.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/21/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: The New Deal (part 2)

S.C. Encyclopedia (part 2 of 2) | Aiding the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in effecting business recovery was the Public Works Administration (PWA), which stimulated purchases in construction and related industries such as steel, cement, and lumber. In South Carolina the PWA was synonymous with the construction of public housing at University Terrace, Gonzales Gardens, and Calhoun Court in Columbia and Cooper River Court, Meeting Street Manor, and Anson Borough Homes in Charleston, eighty-seven schools and ten city halls and courthouses across the state, and massive hydroelectric projects at Buzzard Roost in Greenwood County and Santee Cooper in the Lowcountry.

by Charleston Currents · 12/14/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: The New Deal

S.C. Encyclopedia, part one of two| The New Deal was a collection of federal programs enacted between 1933 and 1939 to solve the problems created by the Great Depression. In South Carolina the New Deal brought three R’s: recovery for farmers, bankers, textile mill owners, and small businessmen; relief for the unemployed and destitute; and reform in labor-management relations, banking, sale of securities, and retirement. In the process the New Deal radically increased the role of the federal government in the state’s economy by creating permanent acreage allotment programs, agricultural credit, compulsory minimum wage / maximum hours requirements, protection for laborers who sought to unionize, Social Security benefits, a public welfare system, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect depositors, the Federal Housing Administration to expand housing opportunities, and the Rural Electrification Administration to electrify the countryside.

by Andy Brack · 12/07/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Voorhees College

S.C. Encyclopedia | Located in Denmark, Voorhees College is a four-year liberal arts undergraduate institution. Founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright and Jessie Dorsey, the school was first known as the Denmark Industrial School and was based on Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. Wright was Washington’s protégée and had determined that she wanted to “be the same type of woman as Mr. Washington was of a man.” On graduation she set out for South Carolina to develop a second Tuskegee.

by Charleston Currents · 11/30/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Josephine Lyons Scott Pinckney

S.C. Encyclopedia | Josephine Pinckney was born January 25, 1895, at Charleston into a family long prominent in the state’s history. She was a direct descendant of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Governor Thomas Pinckney.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 11/23/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia