59 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com PRE-REVOLUTION/CIVIL WAR Additional examples of formal burial sites for the enslaved, as well as freedmen, include Cook’s Old Field Cemetery, a pre-Revolutionary plot located off of Rifle Range Road, where generations of both Black and white families are buried. There is also a large graveyard near the exit of Hampton Plantation near McClellanville. Further, there is the cemetery at the Olive Branch AME Church, one of the oldest churches in Mount Pleasant, which was, according to Tulla, “Established immediately after the Civil War by newly-freed Black citizens, most of whom were previously enslaved on Mount Pleasant-area plantations.” Around that same time, in 1884, when the foundation was being laid for the Old Village’s Darby Building, which was then designated to become the county courthouse for Berkeley County, hundreds of skeletons were found in a mass unmarked grave. According to USGW Archives, this burial site was likely the final resting place for unidentifiable Confederate soldiers who had been patients at Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church, which served as the town’s hospital during the war. While east of the Cooper, most lost burial sites interring local Indigenous and enslaved populations, as well as Confederate and even Union soldiers, have yet to be researched, surveyed or mapped, some tombstones in surrounding cemeteries immortalize legendary characters of the upper classes, such as Alice Belin Flagg. According to author and tour guide Elizabeth Huntsinger, Flagg was the only daughter of the family who owned Wachesaw Plantation and was groomed from birth to marry into wealth. At the young age of 15, however, Flagg fell in love with a handsome young lumberman, resulting in her family sending her off to boarding school in Charleston. Weakened by a broken heart from missing her fiancé, Flagg fell into a feverish coma that ultimately led to her death. The stone marking Flagg’s grave at Waccamaw Episcopal Church near Pawleys Island simply reads “ALICE.” Local lore suggests standing at the bottom right of the marker and walking around the site six times counterclockwise, then six times clockwise before stopping at the letter “A.” Then place an item of reverence on the grave, make a wish and it will be granted. In summation, whether marked or unmarked, legendary or well-documented, the hallowed grounds surrounding us are a constant reminder of the souls who haunt our collective Lowcountry history. all things fall WAREHOUSING BUILT FOR DESIGNERS RECEIVING • STORAGE • DELIVERY • INSTALL 843-284-3122 $299/mo Pricing as low as:
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