More Ghosts of Georgetown

by Elizabeth Robertson Huntsinger

  The Hanging Tree still looms beside the highway in Lamberttown. It is obvious from some distance away. Wrongdoers no longer need fear a lynching when in the vicinity of the Hanging Tree, but travelers continuing several miles down U.S. 17-A toward Jamestown should beware a notorious and unforgiving speed trap immediately after crossing the bridge over the Santee River.

  Unmistakable as a gallows despite the loss of the hangman’s limb, the cypress remains outstanding and conspicuous. Its imposing presence is an eerie reminder of the many long-ago lynched criminals whose energy still lurks, shadowlike, around the lush green reaches of the legendary Hanging Tree.

  Kinloch

  _____________________The old, tree-shaded plantation road that connects U.S. 17 with South Island Road has changed little over the past two centuries, save that now it is paved. As the narrow, two-lane route winds past Annandale, Millbrook, Wicklow Hall, Woodside, and Rice Hope Plantations, there is little to reveal that these grand places exist, except for narrow openings in the dense forests of pines and live oaks. These openings, some marked by only a weathered mailbox, begin as narrow dirt lanes and open onto wide, grass-lined, manicured avenues leading to plantation houses set miles back in the trees.

  One narrow, sandy lane with spacious, grassy shoulders is lined by live oaks that are, in turn, flanked by large magnolias. This quintessential avenue cuts a straight, two-mile swath through the pine forests to the sixty-acre lake beside which the house at Kinloch Plantation resides.

  Kinloch House is separated from the lane by a thick, tall stand of bamboo called a canebrake, which serves as a natural privacy barrier on many low country plantations. Behind the canebrake, the house rises steeply, a two-story white clapboard gem of a lodge crowned by a widow’s walk and graced with four chimneys, one on each end of the main house and one each on the east and west wings.

  Built in 1923 as a gun club and hunting lodge, Kinloch House replaced the manor house of Milldam Plantation, which burned in 1879. Milldam was purchased in 1912 by the Kinloch Gun Club. It and nearly a dozen other antebellum plantations of the North Santee River and the Santee Delta now form six-thousand-acre Kinloch Plantation.

  Landscaped simply but elegantly with azaleas and camellias, the front garden of Kinloch House boasts an ancient magnolia so huge that one of its limbs—prior to breakage by Hurricane Hugo—was long, low, and wide enough for a man to walk upon it up into the lofty area of the tree. Leading to Kinloch’s veranda steps is an expanse of beautifully maintained brick inlaid in the soil.

  At various times during the year—and particularly during hunting season—Kinloch House is occupied by its Atlanta-based owners. But often, all eight bedrooms and the expansive living and dining areas are empty. It is during these times, when the house is locked up tightly, that those within earshot can hear a bedroom door in the east wing unexplainedly slamming shut. However, it is only when someone is inside the house that Janie makes her presence known in the old kitchen in the west wing.

  For years, Janie was the undisputed cook of Kinloch. She had absolute sovereignty over the huge, cast-iron Garland stove that dominated the kitchen. No one questioned her authority, whether the owners of Kinloch were in residence or not. The owners sometimes requested certain dishes but often left the menu to Janie’s discretion, trusting that her meals would be a delight to the palate. Janie’s talents were also respected by guests and employees of the plantation.

  She was noted for the precise placement of every utensil in her kitchen. From the largest skillet to the smallest measuring spoon, each item had a specific place, so that Janie could put any utensil to its proper use at a moment’s notice. No one ever dared change the arrangement of Janie’s kitchen.

  During the winter, she came to work in her favorite royal-blue coat. She often kept it on while waiting for the big, gas-fired stove to warm the kitchen.

  Janie held her cherished position until she died at a fine old age. In fact, she enjoyed her status so much that she never quite gave it up despite her death.

  Her successor in the Kinloch kitchen was Irene. Just as Janie had, Irene arranged all the utensils to suit herself and expected no one to displace them.

  One morning not long after she took over, Irene came into the kitchen and saw that several pots and saucepans had been rearranged. They were not merely out of place, they were exactly as they had been when Janie was in charge! Irene looked around in disbelief. Who could have done such a thing?

  Just then, a flash of royal blue at the kitchen door caught her eye. It was the tail of Janie’s coat rounding the corner!

  Irene quickly followed. Just ahead, she caught a glimpse of the royal-blue fabric grazing the corner that turned into the dining room. Dashing to catch up, she reached the dining room just in time to see the blue tail of Janie’s coat disappear past the doorframe leading from the main hall into one of the west-wing guest bedrooms.

  Irene knew the bedroom had only one door. Approaching cautiously, she stepped into the room. There was no one to be seen. The bedroom, with its neatly made twin beds and old-fashioned wide-slatted Venetian blinds, was as empty as it had been since the last guests left. Frustrated, she walked back to the kitchen and began arranging it once again to her specifications.

  Her experience with Janie began to be repeated regularly. Although a bit put out at not seeing anything but the tail of Janie’s coat and kitchen utensils rearranged the old way, Irene was never frightened. She came to expect Janie’s occasional visits. After each of them, she determinedly put the utensils back the way she liked them.

  Not one to keep such experiences to herself, Irene told her fellow workers at Kinloch about Janie’s activities in the kitchen and her disappearances. No one was particularly surprised. Workers at Kinloch Plantation had by then come to accept that they trod haunted territory.

  Plantation hands were used to the large, unseen dog that often sidled up to lean, in typical friendly canine fashion, against their legs in the vicinity of Kinloch’s avenue of oaks. Many a new plantation worker had felt an initial rush of terror when the weight of the ghostly dog pressed against his or her thigh, only to be informed by fellow employees that it was the unseen dog.

  And anyone who takes a break from field work to rest on the bluff under one of the several shade trees will be the object of physically thrown twigs and verbally hurled epithets from up in the branches. This is Little Boy Hill, where, for as long as anyone can remember, the ghost of a young man has sat in the tree branches and scolded anyone who chanced to laze or even rest from labor on the hill under his tree.

  Most of the old plantations that comprise Kinloch’s expansive acreage had a slave graveyard. Long unused, these cemeteries are now overgrown and nearly forgotten.

  It is on a narrow dirt road near one of Kinloch’s slave graveyards that much unrest occurs. The cemetery is virtually unmarked, as nearly all the grave markers were made of wood that deteriorated over the years. On the other side of the dirt road is a pre—Civil War white cemetery. Over the years, plantation employees have seen hair-raising sights on the old bridge and the dirt lane near these burial grounds.

  Close to the two cemeteries, the dirt lane is broken by a creek. For decades, the old bridge crossing this creek has been haunted by a coffin hovering in the air. And the ethereal figure of a man dressed in black and white and wearing a tall black hat has been seen on the lane near the bridge. So vivid are these apparitions that more than one Kinloch employee has run his vehicle off the road at the sight of them.

  The old dirt road is one of the interior lanes that traversed the antebellum plantations. Workers used these roads to go from one plantation to another.

  In the intricately woven slave societies, there were many marriages and liaisons between slave men and women who did not belong to the same plantation. Short leaves of absence were often granted to men whose wives and families lived on nearby plantations. Such was the case for one slave couple blessed with several children. The husband spent every leave of absenc
e, no matter how short, with his wife and children in their cabin on the plantation where they lived.

  It was during one of these visits that the husband became gravely ill. Believing his death was near, he insisted that he be buried on the plantation where his wife and family lived, where he felt himself to be at home. Slaves set great store by funeral rites and particularly by where they were buried. The husband insisted that, in order to rest peacefully, he must be buried where his wife would one day be laid to rest, too.

  The husband passed away soon after making his request. Preparations were made to bury him in the slave graveyard of the plantation where he had died. However, as soon as word of his death reached the plantation where he had lived and work, his master sent a wagon pulled by two mules to bring the body back for burial. Despite the fact that the husband had already been placed in a plain pine coffin and funeral plans were being made, his body was loaded on the wagon and taken down the narrow dirt lane he had trod so many times.

  When the wagon reached the bridge spanning the creek, the mules refused to cross. The driver was taken aback. He had driven the same pair of mules over the bridge many times and had never seen either of them show the slightest qualm. Indeed, he carried no whip because he had never found occasion to use it on the docile beasts.

  He finally smacked the mules smartly with the long leather reins, but they still would not budge. They merely pawed the air and whinnied piteously. Exasperated, the driver hopped down from his seat and strode to the front of the wagon. He took hold of the mules’ bridles and pulled with all his might. They would not budge. Shaking their heads to free the driver’s grip on their bridles, they backed away from him and the bridge, rolling their great, dark eyes in fear.

  The driver then ran quickly to seek his master, leaving the mules, the wagon, and the coffin on the far side of the bridge.

  The two men soon returned. Finding no more success getting the mules across the bridge than had the driver, the master sent for four strong field hands, who took the coffin off the wagon and bore it across the bridge.

  The driver then climbed back onto the wagon and drove the now-docile mule team across the bridge.

  No attempt was made to load the coffin back onto the wagon. A grave had already been dug in the slave cemetery in preparation for the body. Following their master’s directions, the field hands carried the coffin into the cemetery, lowered it into the grave, and covered it with earth.

  The dead man’s friends and family held a graveside service for him the following day, singing him on to the Promised Land with beautiful spirituals. His wife, however, feared that her late husband would not be at peace, as his body was buried where he had asked it not be.

  Soon after the burial, a curious phenomenon started occurring at the bridge. Slaves using the lane began to whisper that, before getting close to the bridge, they could see a coffin floating above it When they got closer, it disappeared. Most who saw the hovering coffin elected to turn back and go another, longer way.

  Eerier still was the lone figure of a man dressed in a high hat and formal black and white who began to appear on the lane near the bridge decades later.

  To this day, the coffin can sometimes be seen hovering above the bridge on the interior plantation lane, as the long-dead slave’s spirit balks at crossing the creek.

  His master, who had the coffin borne over the water by human hands when his mules refused, is still fated to walk the dirt lane dressed in the finery of his own burial. Unable to release his servant from bondage even in death, the spirit haunts the area near the bridge, making sure the servant stays in the cemetery of the master’s—rather than the heart’s—choosing.

  The Harvest Moon

  _____________________Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, sat in his small stateroom aboard his flagship, the sidewheel steamer USS Harvest Moon, expecting breakfast early on the morning of March 1, 1865.

  Admiral Dahlgren had a couple of reasons to feel secure as he steamed toward the Atlantic through the shipping channel in Winyah Bay, several miles south of Georgetown. His flagship carried four twenty-four-pound howitzer cannons and a crew able to man them at a moment’s notice. Ever wary of Confederate mines, then called “torpedoes,” Dahlgren had been assured by Commander J. Blakeley Creighton of the USS Mingoe that the channel had been swept clean of all explosives.

  The lone smokestack visible in Winyah Bay even to this day attests that Blakeley was wrong. And the mournful sounds that sometimes float across the water on moonlit nights are evidence of a would-be sailor unknown to even his shipmates, a soul whose peace has been disturbed.

  President Lincoln had long trusted Dahlgren as a naval adviser and felt he would excel at sea. The two friends were close in age. Lincoln was helping Dahlgren dispel the myth that “scientist sailors” did not go to sea, much less become fleet commanders.

  Dahlgren was known primarily for his work with naval ordnance. It was his uncannily on-target Dahlgren missiles that armed the USS Monitor in its epic battle against the CSS Virginia, formerly the Federal frigate Merrimac. More an administrator than a sailor, Dahlgren was appointed to command the Washington Navy Yard when all those ahead of him for the post chose the Confederate side at the beginning of the Civil War. He held this position until he received his appointment as commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron through Lincoln’s personal reference.

  In the spring of 1861, it had become evident that an important part of the Federal war strategy would be a naval blockade of the Southern coast. This entailed patrolling 3,500 miles of coastline wherein lay at least 180 harbors and navigable inlets. With only 42 vessels to perform this ongoing task, the navy realized it needed more gunboats—specifically, gunboats small enough and with a shallow-enough draft to maneuver the coastal waterways. It began seeking out merchant vessels that met the size criteria and could be refitted to perform blockade duty.

  The Harvest Moon was built as a merchant vessel in 1863 in Portland, Maine. On November 16 of that year, she was purchased for the Federal navy by Commodore J. B. Montgomery for the sum of $99,300. Following a three-month stay at the Boston Naval Shipyard while being fitted out for her new assignment, she was commissioned in February 1864, with Lieutenant J. D. Warren in command.

  With her great sidewheel and tall smokestack, the Harvest Moon was an impressive sight as she steamed out of Boston on her first naval cruise. The 546-ton vessel was 193 feet long and had a 29-foot beam and an 8-foot draft. Assigned to the First Atlantic Blockading Squadron, she was anchored off Charleston by February 24.

  Upon the steamer’s arrival, Admiral Dahlgren came on board and decided to make her his flagship. He transferred aboard the Harvest Moon the next day. On June 7, the newly appointed flagship commenced her blockading duties off Charleston. Over the next nine months, her regular duty and responsibilities as a picket and dispatch vessel took her to Tybee Island, Georgia, then back into South Carolina to the North Edisto River, then finally to Georgetown in February 1865.

  Frustration had long been growing in Georgetown as citizens began to realize that the Confederacy could actually fall. Since August 1861, Federal gunboats had been patrolling Winyah Bay and making their way up the rivers surrounding the port. Only sixty miles from Charleston, a major Federal target, Georgetown was guarded heavily.

  For over three years, Confederate vessels had managed to elude the blockade and smuggle supplies into Georgetown by blanketing their lights or using the cover of fog. In extreme instances, two-masted wooden vessels had entered less-guarded Murrells Inlet, thirty-five miles north, and, their hastily dismantled masts temporarily replaced by the tops of massive pine trees, brought goods down the Waccamaw River into Georgetown.

  In November 1864, nearly all of Georgetown County’s defenses were sent south in an effort to save Charleston. Both Charleston and Columbia fell on February 17, 1865.

  It was February 26 when the Harvest Moon steamed into Georgetown Harbor. The Star
s and Stripes was raised above the city for the first time in the war. After three and a half years of defying the blockade, having their port taken by the Union was a sad blow to the people of Georgetown.

  Upon his arrival, Admiral Dahlgren announced the end of slavery, and martial law went into effect. While great numbers of freedmen set out on their own as soon as possible, many others, never having known a life in which they were not provided food, clothing, shelter, and livelihood by their owners, were ill-prepared to face free living.

  Once-wealthy plantation owners faced a destitute future, as the surrender of Georgetown withdrew from them the thousands of hands needed to plant, flood, dam, drain, harvest, and maintain the precise environment of the rice fields.

  Since Federal agencies to help people make the transition from dependency to self-support were yet to be established, the rice planters of Georgetown County were told that they must, for the next sixty days, support the former slaves in the manner they had before the war. This requirement did not prove too difficult for those responsible for only a few freedmen but was nearly impossible for owners with legions of former slaves. The presence of the Harvest Moon in Georgetown Harbor was a sore reminder of this sixty-day decree.

  No one resented the flagship more than Confederate captain Thomas West Daggett. Born in New Bedford, Maine, in 1828, he had come south as a young man. After apprenticing as an engineer in Georgia, he had moved to Charleston, where his first two wives died. The mid-1800s found him in the Waccamaw Neck area of Georgetown County. He married a local lady, Mary Tillman, with whom he eventually had six children. Daggett managed a mill on Laurel Hill Plantation, where local rice was pounded to ready it for the Charleston market.

  In 1856, he became a captain in the South Carolina militia. Already a peacetime military veteran, he commanded the Waccamaw Light Artillery during the early part of the war.