Lowcountry Hurricanes

by Lynn Michelsohn

  ~

  Back in the 1954 present, we three sisters were now facing another storm at Murrells Inlet. As we sat in our living room waiting out Hazel’s rising fury, my thoughts went back to Mama’s calm, sure confidence during that last bad storm. And once more, her strength soothed my fears, just as it had sixty one years earlier. I truly believe her spirit came to us again that morning to comfort her frightened children.

  As we sat and waited, a commotion suddenly rose above the howl of the storm. Someone was banging on the porch door! Voices called out from the front steps. A motorboat! Our rescuers had arrived!

  We grabbed a few necessities, then allowed ourselves to be assisted from the top step into the wildly rocking boat, as if we were helpless little old ladies. Our rescuers took us to the schoolhouse to spend an uncomfortable but safe night.

  The next morning, water had retreated but destruction remained. Hurricane Hazel carried off homes and motels all along Myrtle Beach. The storm swept Garden City Beach across the marsh from us completely clean. Many beach houses there had simply disappeared. Others sat at crazy angles, half-buried in the marsh.

  Our own wooden pier broke into three pieces. The open sided, shingled shelter at the far end remained in place on its pilings, isolated out in the marsh. The plank walkway leading to it had broken in half. Its two sections, with their wooden supports still attached, rested upside down in our front yard.

  Our rowboat reappeared one morning several weeks later. Someone from up the coast had returned it.

  Brookgreen Gardens was lucky. The storm damaged none of the statuary. We only lost a few large branches from the oaks, and lots of Spanish moss, of course. It did blow down several smaller trees along the edges of the Gardens.

  Cleanup there took several months, but that didn’t matter. Few visitors wanted to brave the devastation to visit the Lowcountry that fall. New growth and blooms restored beauty and serenity to the Garden’s winding pathways when springtime came. Perhaps because of all the unintentional pruning, we had the most luxurious flowering of any spring in my recollection.

  So, anyhow, remember, another big storm is coming. We always need to stay vigilant here along the coast, but keep a close eye out sixty years from now. That will be in another new century. Like my father always said, “Every sixty years.”

  (Note: Hurricane Hugo was the next big storm to hit the Waccamaw Neck. It arrived in 1989, only thirty five years after Hazel.)

  Plantations that became Brookgreen Gardens

  Have you enjoyed these

  Lowcountry folktales?

  Do you have friends or relatives who might enjoy reading them?

  Purchase copies for them. It is available as a paperback and in all ebook formats.

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  Would you like to read more

  Lowcountry stories?

  Look for Lynn Michelsohn’s other books in the “Tales from Brookgreen” Series:

  Lowcountry Ghosts

  Crab Boy’s Ghost

  Gullah Ghosts

  and her longer collection that includes all these,

  Tales from Brookgreen

  Folklore, Ghost Stories, and Gullah

  Folktales in the South Carolina Lowcountry

  She has also published a second volume in this new series. “More Tales from Brookgreen”

  Lowcountry Confederates

  Do you have comments or questions for the author?

  Contact her at:

  2LynnMichelsohn@gmail.com

  About the Storytellers:

  The Hostesses of

  Brookgreen Gardens

  One of my greatest treats as a child was to spend the day with Cousin Corrie at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Here in the warm Carolina Lowcountry, Twentieth Century philanthropists Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington had created America’s first public sculpture garden among the ancient, moss-draped live oak trees of four historic rice plantations: Brookgreen, Springfield, Laurel Hill, and The Oaks.

  Back in those simpler days of the 1950s, visitors to Brookgreen Gardens turned off the narrow pavement of Highway 17—the King’s Highway—onto two parallel strips of concrete, spaced just far enough apart to support the wheels of a car. Visitors drove slowly along those concrete ribbons through the wooded deer park and past an island built up in the swamps to display a large stone sculpture called Youth Taming the Wild, to a sandy parking lot near the Diana Pool. There they left their cars in as shady a spot as possible and entered the Gardens on foot, with no admission fee or gatekeeper.

  After a leisurely stroll through the majestic Live Oak Allee, with perhaps a detour into the Palmetto Garden, a peek inside the Old Kitchen, and a dip of the fingers into the cool water of the Alligator Bender Pool, visitors arrived at the low, wide porch of a simple gray-brick building. This structure had housed the overseer and his family when Brookgreen operated as a busy rice plantation. Now it served as the Museum and the entranceway to two open-air galleries for small sculpture. Inside the Museum, steady sounds of splashing water from the Frog Baby Fountain in the first gallery created a feeling of sanctuary from the summer heat that grew oppressive by mid-morning in the Lowcountry.

  This Museum served as the Visitors’ Center of its day. Here two “sixty-ish” Southern ladies in sturdy shoes welcomed visitors. These two Hostesses represented the only staff in evidence throughout the Gardens, other than the occasional groundskeeper trimming ivy. In the cool dim interior of the Museum, Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie sold postcards, gave directions, and told stories to visitors interested enough to ask questions about the Gardens.

  Boxy glass display cases formed a counter along the front wall of the Museum. Mostly, these cases held stacks of picture postcards. Black-and-white cards sold for five cents, sepia cards for ten cents, and colored cards for twenty-five cents each. Books and pamphlets about the Gardens were also available. Intermixed with this literature stood other items, not for sale, that stimulated frequent questions and often led to Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie’s stories.

  Cousin Corrie, my first cousin one generation removed, was born Cornelia Sarvis Dusenbury in 1888 as her home state of South Carolina emerged from the chaos of Reconstruction. She spent much of her childhood at Murrells Inlet, a fishing village on the Carolina coast, and then worked for many years as a schoolteacher and librarian in the larger town of Florence. In retirement, Cousin Corrie returned to Murrells Inlet where she joined writer, artist, and local historian Genevieve Wilcox Chandler to become a Hostess at Brookgreen Gardens.

  Miss Genevieve was just a bit younger than Cousin Corrie. As a youngster, she had come to Murrells Inlet with her family from Marion, South Carolina, but stayed, married, and raised five children here. She often supported them by writing articles on local subjects after the early death of her husband. When the Huntingtons created Brookgreen Gardens, they asked Miss Genevieve to become its Hostess.

  During my visits to Brookgreen Gardens, Cousin Corrie and Miss Genevieve—as I called her, using the traditional Southern form of address for a grown-up family friend—let me help them with their hostess duties, much to my delight. I also enjoyed playing hide-and-seek among the sun-dappled sculptures and looking for painted river turtles sleeping on logs that floated in the old rice field swamps. I loved darting from the shelter of one live oak canopy to the next during summer showers. I especially thrilled at wading in out-of-the-way sculpture pools when no one was looking. But my very favorite activity was listening to Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie tell stories of Brookgreen and the Carolina Lowcountry to spellbound Garden visitors, me included.

  Each Hostess had her own distinct repertoire. One never encroached on the other’s territory. “Now you will have to ask Mrs. Chandler about that,” or “Miss Dusenbury can
tell you that story,” were common responses to visitors’ queries. If one or the other of the ladies were absent that day, then the unlucky visitor left without hearing her special tales.

  Miss Genevieve tended to cover historical figures and folktales. She had collected local stories for “Mr. Roosevelt” as a writer for the 1930s WPA government employment program. Cousin Corrie focused on hurricanes, family tales, and accounts of Confederate and Yankee conflicts on the Carolina coast. Her stories related more to her own personal experiences. Of course, each cherished her own unique collection of ghost stories.

  I heard some of these stories repeated to countless visitors. The tale of the haunted Wachesaw beads became a favorite. Other stories, I only heard once or twice and remember only in snippets, although I have often been able to fill in gaps from other sources. All these stories excited my interest in the historical figures and everyday people who came here before us to the broad rice fields and wooded uplands that became Brookgreen Gardens.

  These are stories Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie told, as best I remember them. In my mind, these tales weave themselves together with swaying Spanish moss, sparkling, splashing fountains, and winding, gray-brick, latticework walls at Brookgreen Gardens to create visions of the timeless spirit forever living in the heart of the Carolina Lowcountry.

  Acknowledgements

  The youthful delight that my elder son Moses expressed at hearing these stories reminded me of my own enthusiasm for them. My younger son Aaron, ever the editor, guided me in writing them down. Suggestions from members of the Melody Lane Writers Guild improved the manuscript. Alice Duncan typed and retyped it. My husband Larry supported this, as he does all my writing. My parents gave me their love and support always. Honey’s Horry County heritage and Daddy’s interest in “local color” shaped my love of the Carolina Lowcountry.

  Genevieve Chandler Peterkin encouraged me to recall these stories from my early visits to Brookgreen. She was also kind enough to show me her mother’s mysterious Wachesaw beads (after all these years), as well as the Old Methodist Parsonage, and to arrange a family tour of Alice’s home in its new location, all of which figure in stories of the Tales from Brookgreen series.

  The kind family hospitality of Mary Emily and Nelson Jackson II repeatedly brought me back to South Carolina. Their daughter Kaki Williamson shared her own recollections of our Cousin Corrie with me. Another cousin, Jane Bussell, graciously shared the writings of her grandmother Dell Harper.

  Helen Benso, Vice President of Marketing at Brookgreen Gardens, assisted with this project in several ways including obtaining permission to use materials, correcting factual errors, and providing encouragement.

  Most importantly, Cousin Corrie and Miss Genevieve told the tales recorded on these pages. I thank them for sharing their wonderful stories of Brookgreen with all of us who love the Carolina Lowcountry.

  About the Author

  Charles Town blacksmith William Green purchased his first land near that new Carolina settlement in 1695. His descendents have continued to live and thrive in the Carolina Lowcountry for more than three hundred years.

  Lynn Michelsohn, one of William Green’s ninth-generation granddaughters, was born not too far away in Durham, North Carolina. She grew up steeped in Lowcountry stories, as well as in the black mud of its tidal marshes. Her heart remains among the moss-draped live oaks lining the saltwater creeks of South Carolina’s Waccamaw Neck. Now, she and her husband have two sons who love the Lowcountry almost as much as she does.

  In these tales, this native Carolinian retells stories she heard from two early hostesses at Brookgreen Gardens: Mrs. Genevieve Wilcox Chandler and the author’s cousin, Miss Corrie Dusenbury. Through these stories, she conveys her sense of romance, history, and mystery hidden just beneath serenely beautiful surfaces at Brookgreen Gardens, one of South Carolina’s most popular tourist attractions.

  The author welcomes your comments and questions. If you would like to contact her, or receive notification of her new books or special sales, please email her at:

  2LynnMichelsohn@gmail.com

  The author as she was …

  and remains always

  … in her heart

  Extended Copyright

  Lowcountry Hurricanes, South Carolina History and Folklore of the Sea from Murrells Inlet and Myrtle Beach (More Tales from Brookgreen Series)

  Copyright © 2004 by Lynn Michelsohn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations included in articles or reviews.

  Ebook Edition 1.1 S (1/15)

  Also available in paperback, ISBN: 978-1492391173

  Images from photographs by Welden Bayliss are used with permission. All other illustrations are by the author.

  Published by

  Cleanan Press, Inc.

  401 West Vista Parkway

  Roswell, NM 88203 USA

  www.cleananpressBooks.com

  A Selection from Gullah Ghosts …

  Stories from Lynn Michelsohn’s first series

  Tales from Brookgreen

  Folklore, Ghost Stories, and Gullah

  Folktales in the South Carolina Lowcountry

  Cousin Corrie, one of the Hostesses at Brookgreen Gardens in the middle of the Twentieth Century, occasionally recounted stories that old “Dr. Wardie,” beloved physician of Brookgreen Plantation had told her many years previously. This was a story Dr. Wardie had heard from his aunt, “Miss Bessie.” He, Cousin Corrie, and Miss Bessie all enjoyed the story because it revealed that high and mighty rice planters of olden times didn’t always have everything their own way.

  Although the rice harvest was bountiful that year in the mid-1800s on Brookgreen Plantation, the Overseer was troubled. The yield in rice didn’t seem to be as large as he had expected. The Overseer thought and thought about this and finally became convinced that someone was stealing rice from the barn where they stored it after threshing.

  But who could be taking the rice, and how? No one could steal rice during the day with so many people about, yet how could anyone get into the rice barn at night? It was locked carefully each evening and there were no signs of breakin.

  Suddenly the Overseer realized who locked the barn each evening! Devine, the head slave on the plantation, held the keys. Old stories began to recall themselves to the Overseer, stories about Devine stealing rice and selling it to buy liquor (and of how Devine had gotten caught but I won’t go into that right now).

  “So!” mused the Overseer to himself, “Devine is sneaking into the barn at night and stealing rice again! And he is probably bringing other slaves with him because a lot of rice seemed to be missing. Now how can I catch Devine and his accomplices in their act of thievery?”

  The Overseer thought, and thought some more, and finally devised a plan. He would hide in the rice barn at night and surprise Devine when he and the others came in to steal rice. And he would put his plan into effect that very evening!

  After the day’s work was completed, the workers all went home to the Street, as the community of slave cabins was called. The Overseer also went home to his cottage near the Street but after dark, he crept back to the rice barn, which was located where the Dogwood Garden stands today at Brookgreen Gardens, just behind us here in the Museum. The Overseer looked around stealthily but all was still. He unlocked the door, slipped into the barn, and carefully relocked the door from the inside.

  The rice barn was not a very inviting place to spend the night but the Overseer made himself a pallet out of rice straw and curled up near the door to wait. He didn’t bother to stay awake because he knew that anyone entering the barn would rouse him.

  The next morning the Overseer awoke nicely rested. His sleep had not been disturbed by anyone coming into the barn. Disappoi
nted but undaunted, he slept in the barn again the next night, with the same results.

  This puzzled the Overseer greatly. Why wasn’t his plan working? He thought some more and decided that Devine must have known somehow that he was sleeping in the rice barn. Of course, Devine and the others would avoid coming in to steal rice with him there. So that evening the Overseer made a big show of moving his pallet out of the barn and giving up his attempt to catch anyone coming into the barn at night. But as soon as it was dark he sneaked out of his cottage and crept back to the rice barn. This time he hid himself in the trees along the edge of the barnyard where he could keep close watch on the barn without being seen.

  The Overseer sat for hours watching in the dark, again with no results. No moon or stars shone through the cloudy skies and night noises made him uneasy at times but he was determined to catch his thief.

  Suddenly a faint light appeared at the far edge of the barnyard. The Overseer’s initial thrill quickly turned to apprehension. This was a very strange looking light. It was not a torch but a faint, eerie glow. Gradually his apprehension turned to terror. All the stories he had ever heard about haunts and plat eyes came rushing back to him as the faint glow bobbed slowly along the far tree line. What manner of horrifying specter was coming from the miasmic swamps to threaten him? At least it wasn’t coming any closer!

  Slowly the glow moved toward one of the outbuildings in the barnyard, the one where workers stored rice straw after they threshed the rice grains out of it. Nothing was wasted on the plantation and even worthless rice straw made good animal bedding or compost for cornfields.

  In another moment, a light flared inside the outbuilding as if someone had lit a torch. Suddenly the explanation came to the shaken Overseer: the faint glow that he had watched bob along the tree line had come from a glowing ember carried hidden in a pot. Now someone had used that ember to light a torch inside the building.