The Browns' Mantra: More from Charleston, South Carolina

After wonderful, refreshing showers at the marina, Peter and I set off to do some more sightseeing in Charleston. But first we needed food! It was 3:30 p.m., and we had not had lunch. We picked up our take-out order from Chipotle on King Street after a pleasant half an hour walk and ate it while enjoying the balmy weather on a park bench in Marion Square. There were quite a few people there, although everyone was maintaining social distancing. We were halfway through our lunch before we noticed the sign saying the park was closed!

Peter enjoying a burrito

Charleston is an architectural treasure trove with its many tree-lined streets with beautifully restored or maintained homes and churches from the 18th and 19th centuries. We stopped to read many signs about the buildings we saw as well as a few that provided historical information on the original walled settlement as well as on significant people, structures and events from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, or, as the signs here call it, the War of Secession or the War of 1861-65. It was interesting to learn about important persons such as Robert Small, an enslaved African American who was serving as a deckhand on a Confederate supply ship, the Planter, when he took the opportunity of the captain, the white crew members and the pilot not being aboard to commandeer the ship. Before dawn on May 13, 1862, he, a crew of eight men, along with five women and three children (including his own wife and two children) slipped out of Charleston Harbor. With his prior experience on board, he was able to give the correct pass signal at five checkpoints and then reach the Union blockade. The Navy was most grateful to receive the guns and ammunitions on board in addition to documents providing information on routes, mine locations and departure and docking times. Small became the Union Navy captain of the Planter for the rest of the war.

After the war, he started a school for African American children, a newspaper and a general store. He bought his former owner's home in Beaufort and generously helped out the family, who were destitute. He was a delegate to the State of South Carolina's Constitutional Convention in 1868. He and others were successful in ensuring that the constitution gave black men the right to vote, two years before the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited federal and state governments from denying the right to vote to citizens based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Later, he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives and then for two terms as a U.S. Representative.

Tidbits of history can be found at every turn, it seems, in historic Charleston. The history and the structures are fascinating. I took a lot of photos of houses, gardens, trees, cemeteries and churches. I did not note the names of all the houses (if they had them), but I can label the churches. Giant oaks and magnolia trees can be found everywhere, and the pleasing scent of honeysuckle wafts from the vines growing on wrought iron fences, around doorways and up the trunks of palmettos. How wonderful it must be to enter your front yard or your entrance and be greeted by such a soothing smell.