Charlestown, Virginia

“ Constantly new people were arriving and the outpost of civilization rapidly took on the appearance of European manners and customs, notwithstanding the incongruity of savages, red and black, and Indian traders in their bizarre garb. It was Charles Town under the Proprietors, Charlestown under the Royal Government, and Charleston since its incorporation in 1783.
This Carolina metropolis has had part in Indian, Spanish and French wars. It has had bold adventures with pirates. It was conspicuous in the Revolution and in the War for Southern Independence. ”

“ The city is attractively built on high level land, above the river; in addition to a fine customs house, court house and high school, it contains the West Virginia state capitol, erected in 1880. The libraries include the state law library, with 14,000 volumes in 1908, and the library of the state Department of Archives and History, with about 11,000 volumes. Charleston is in the midst of a region rich in bituminous coal, the shipment of which by river and rail constitutes one of its principal industries. ”

“ Charlestown is one of the best built, handsomest, and most agreeable cities that I have ever seen. The American women are very pretty, and have great simplicity of character; and the extreme neatness of their appearance is truly delightful: cleanliness is everywhere even more studiously attended to here than in England. What gives me most pleasure is to see how completely the citizens are all brethren of one family. In America there are none poor, and none even that can be called peasants. ”

“ To this city also came trade from the Shenandoah Valley, and even from the Piedmont came peltry trains and droves of cattle and hogs to the same market. [94] The increase of settlement on the upper James resulted in the establishment of the city of Richmond at the falls of the river in 1737. Already the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the lowlands were finding rivals in the grain-raising area of interior Virginia and Maryland. Charleston prospered as the up-country of the Carolinas grew. ”

“ Taxed tea from England was stored in the Exchange in 1774 and citizens prevented its sale. A second cargo, arriving November 3, 1774, was dumped by merchants of Charlestown into the Cooper River. In July, 1774, delegates to the Provincial Congress gathered in this building and set up the first independent government established in America; the congress also elected delegates to the General Congress meeting in Philadelphia. Patriotic men and women of Charlestown were incarcerated in the Exchange by the British during the Revolution ”

“ For this reason South Carolina knew less of the country hospitality which made Virginia famous; city life had the larger share in exist­ence, although in the hot weather torpor and languor took the place of gayety. In certain respects Charles­ton was more Northern in habits than any town of the North. In other warm countries, the summer evening was commonly the moment when life was best worth living; music, love-making, laughter, and talk turned night into day; but Charleston was Puritanic in dis­cipline. ”

“ Charleston is not great in population; it is not very great, as seaports go, in trade. [Pg 303] Were cities able to talk with one another as men can, and as foolishly as men often do, I have no doubt that many a hustling middle-western city would patronize Charleston, precisely as a parvenue might patronize a professor of astronomy; nevertheless, Charleston has a stronger, deeper-rooted city entity than all the cities of the Middle West rolled into one. This is no exaggeration. Where modern American cities strive to be like one another, Charleston strives to be like nothing whatsoever. ”

“ To wander along and through the residence section of the city is also a thing to surprise. Street after street of fine private dwellings, each mansion standing in its own garden, upon its own lawn. Many of them very modern, and many of them far exceeding in cost and imposing elegance any residence Charleston, West Virginia, can yet boast—equal to the most sumptuous homes of Pittsburg and St. Louis—and most of them owned and lived in by cultivated families of the Mormon cult. ”

“ Charlestown was settled in 1629, by a small company from Salem, and was organized as a town in 1634. The territory originally within its limits has from time to time been divided up to form the towns of Woburn, Malden, Stoneham, Burlington, and Somerville, and parts of Medford, Cambridge, Arlington, and Reading. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought here on June 17, 1775, when the British set fire to the town, destroying 320 buildings, valued at $525,000. ”

“ Our third photographer departed somewhat from the route which he had selected to cover, for after the separation, instead of proceeding directly east through Pennsylvania, as was his first intention, he went south to Cincinnati and east by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, through the lovely Blue Grass region of Kentucky, making his first stop at Charleston, the capital of West Virginia. The capital is a small place of something less than 7,000 inhabitants, and with nothing of particular importance to visitors except the mountain scenery which invests it. ”

“ Jamestown was the seat of government in Virginia, and was resorted to by the wealthier planters for the purposes of fashion and pleasure, Williamsburg taking its place later; but for a long time Charleston was the only settlement in the South that exhibited real town life. Another result of the independent plantation system was the paucity of schools, as well as the feeble state of the Church. The richer planters employed private tutors, and often sent their sons to English universities. The middle and lower classes got practically no education. ”

“ The wooden shutters of the domestic life are kept closed. So they miss that which is most exquisite, most appealing, in any city—personality.
Charleston is, without doubt, the most exclusive city in America. It gives nothing out to the stranger beyond its physical beauty and tempered climate. One keen observer said of it: “It has only one equal—a German principality, where almost everyone is royal and noble and all intermarried. Other places and social codes exist, of course—New York, Chicago, Denver—but not for Charleston.” ”

“ The many handsome churches and public buildings add largely to the attractions of Charleston, and are, to a certain extent, a reflex of the minds of the people. As the descendants of old families concentrate their energies and their pride on their ancestral home, so the good Charlestonians from generation to generation have devoted theirs to the glorification of their beloved city ”

“ Charleston people are city people par excellence. They have the virtues of city people, the vices of city people, and the civilization and sophistication of those who reside in the most aristocratic capitals. For that is another thing that Charleston is; it is unqualifiedly the aristocratic capital of the United States; the last stronghold of a unified American upper class; the last remaining American city in which Madeira and Port and [Pg 304] noblesse oblige are fully and widely understood, and are employed according to the best traditions. ”

“ Things always moved swiftly in Charleston. There is a tale of a saloon-keeper who buried his wife in the morning, killed a man at high noon, and took unto himself a new bride before evening. If that story is not true—and old-timers vouch for it—it is at least indicative of the trend of life in the town.
And to Charleston came those followers of John Ringo and Curly Bill who did not get on with the Earps. Several of them became men of influence down here on the San Pedro. Hither flocked those boisterous spirits who craved more freedom of action on pay-day than the mining town afforded. ”

“ The city lies on a spur or promontory between the Ashley and the Cooper rivers, and the land behind it is divided in the same manner by similar creeks, and is sandy and light, bearing, nevertheless, very fine crops, and trees of magnificent vegetation. The steeples, the domes of public buildings, the rows of massive warehouses and cotton stores on the wharfs, and the bright colours of the houses, render the appearance of Charleston, as seen from the river front, rather imposing. From the mastheads of the few large vessels in harbour floated the Confederate flag. ”

“ Above this rude fort floated a South Carolina flag with a blue field in which was one crescent and the word LIBERTY. It was this flag that Sergeant Jasper rescued, his gallant deed commemorating his name. The first government of any of the thirteen American colonies was established at Charlestown, March, 1776, with John Rutledge as president, Henry Laurens as vice-president and William Henry Drayton as chief justice. Against Colonel William Moultrie’s rude fort on that June day in 1776 was pitted a trained fleet of eleven armed vessels carrying 270 guns. Moultrie’s garrison comprised 435 men. ”

“ Charleston, W. Va., May 16, 1899 Professor Booker T. Washington, Paris, France:
Dear Sir: Many of the best citizens of West Virginia have united in liberal expressions of admiration and praise of your worth and work, and desire that on your return from Europe you should favour them with your presence and with the inspiration of your words. We most sincerely indorse this move, and on behalf of the citizens of Charleston extend to you our most cordial invitation to have you come to us, that we may honour you who have done so much your life and work to honour us. ”

“ A wooden building was erected. This being outgrown a brick church was built on Church Street, on the present site of St. Philip’s. By act of the Assembly, June, 1751, Charlestown was divided into two parishes; the lower, St. Michael’s, and the upper, St. Philip’s. February 17, 1752, the corner stone was laid with much ceremony, the South Carolina Gazette carrying an account. The reputed successor of Sir Christopher Wrenn was the architect and the edifice is declared to resemble St. Martin’s-in-the-Field, London, near Trafalgar Square. From the pavement to the ball of the steeple is 182 feet. ”

“ Charleston (56) , the largest city in S. Carolina, and the chief commercial city; also a town in Western Virginia, U.S., with a spacious land-locked harbour; is the chief outlet for the cotton and rice of the district, and has a large coasting trade.
Charlet, Nicolas Toussaint, a designer and painter, born in Paris; famous for his sketches of military subjects and country life, in which he displayed not a little humour (1792-1845) .
Charleville (17) , a manufacturing and trading town in the dep. of Ardennes, France; exports iron, coal, wines, and manufactures hardware and beer. ”

“ Organized in 1748 by seventeen young gentlemen of Charlestown, third oldest in this country, the Charleston Library Society, a private enterprise governed by a Board of Trustees, moved into a new fireproof building in recent years. In 1835 the society bought the building of the old South Carolina Bank, at the northwest corner of Broad and Church Streets, using this until the transfer to King Street. The society has more than 60,000 volumes. ”

“ Here is the real aristocratic part of the city, and here to this day, in spite of the many freaks of fortune, the descendants of the old Huguenot and Cavalier families inhabit the homes of their ancestors, whose familiar names still echo on the ears of the town. With lagging footsteps we take our way homeward through the{62} city, losing ourselves and finding ourselves more than once. Altogether we come to the conclusion that Charleston is a sober suited, gentlemanly city strongly impregnated with the savour of old days ”

“ It is in order to remind that William Allen White, in an address, said that “Charleston is the most civilized town in America,” and that William Howard Taft, then President of the United States, pronounced it, “the most convenient port to Panama.”
In Charleston survive buildings that were erected during the Proprietary Government, many buildings that were erected during the Royal Government. Survive scars of wars and storms and fires that raged in the long ago. Survive street 5 names that were bestowed when Charles Town was in its swaddling clothes. ”

“ It would not surprise us, to hear a lawyer or a physician—still less a gentleman at large—talk of the burning of Charleston as simultaneous with the battle of Sullivan's Island, because Charlestown burned while the battle of Bunker Hill was fighting—as "John Bull in America" passes in half an hour from Boston, where the folk make wooden nutmegs, roast witches, and bake pumpkin pies, into Charleston, where they gouge and stab, drink mint juleps, eat young negroes, and feed old ones upon cotton seed. ”

“ How many instances of this kind have I seen—of writers toiling with their pens and brains for the benefit and credit of ungrateful wretches without intellect, or soul, or honor, or common humanity! Charlestown is probably the meanest and most contemptible place in the whole universe—totally unfit to be the dwelling-place of any man who calls himself white. ”

“ Charleston extended before us. The city, distinguished as a seaport, lies upon a tongue of land, formed by the rivers Ashley and Cooper: we crossed the Ashley to reach the city. A causeway, constructed of fascines, passes through the swamp to the ferry. The river is three-quarters of a mile broad; we crossed it in an eight-horse team-boat. A wooden bridge, which formerly crossed the river here, was destroyed by a severe storm, and never again rebuilt. Upon the right bank, in the vicinity of Charleston, an entirely novel spectacle expanded itself to my view. ”