Mount Pleasant Magazine Nov/Dec 2018

64 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestofMP.com MAGGIE SANDERS JEFFERSON Born October 1897 Maggie Jefferson was born at home in Christ Church Parish – now part of Mount Pleasant – and attended a one-room school at Four Mile Road. She quit school in the third grade to care for her younger siblings and handle the cooking, washing and ironing, which was done with water she hauled and boiled over an open fire. She picked up bundles of fresh-cut asparagus from a neighbor’s field for 50 cents a day, but the money went a long way. “You could buy sugar for three cents, salt for 2 cents and a quart of rice for 3 cents. Lard was four trays for 25 cents, so we got along good on a little money,” she said. She began “courting” at 15 years old and courted her future husband, Walter, for about a year before they married. In those days, she explained, a boy would ride a horse to a girl’s house while the sun was high and sit in the living room with the family around because girls weren’t supposed to go out alone with a boy. On holidays, they attended dances from noon to sundown at a “big white hall,” which was located where the now-demolished former Wando High School once stood. After marriage, she took care of their four children and the housework, but, following Walter’s passing in 1942, she worked on a farm with her three youngest children, helping pick vegetables after school. “As I got older, the children took care of me. I can say I had a good life. I had a very good man; I guess that’s why I never remarried,” she said. DR. BOONE BOWEN Born Aug. 5, 1899 Dr. Boone Bowen has fond memories growing up in Mount Pleasant when its population was about 1,400 people. A lot of his social life as a boy centered around Hibben Methodist Church and its events like ice cream sales, oyster roasts, oyster-stew sales and his favorite: the annual Sunday school picnic at the pavilion in Isle of Palms. The church chartered a trolley, and families would pack a basket of food, rent facilities in the bathhouses and enjoy the beach, Ferris wheel and merry-go-round in addition to competing in foot races and sack races. One of his earliest memories was the automobile. Cars were so rare, he said, that children would run out on their porches to watch one go by. His father bought a car in 1912 but wasn’t sure it would suit his needs, so he kept his horses and buggy for several months. All of the roads were made of oyster shells or sand at the time, and Bowen recalled the ruts being so deep on what is now Highway 17 that once the car was in the ruts, there was no need to steer. “Mount Pleasant was a delightful place in which to live when I was a boy. Everyone knew everyone else. In the summer, we fished and swam at the foot of Venning Street. We had a nice beach in those days,” he added. feature