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    Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side of Eden
    Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side of Eden
    Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side of Eden
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side of Eden

    By Alexia Jones Helsley

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    About this ebook

    For many, Edisto is a little slice of heaven--live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, winding waterways and crashing surf. Yet the waterways were pathways for privateers, smugglers and gunboats. Marauders terrorized residents. Privateers made life uncertain during the War of 1812. John Wilson and Andrew Gillon dueled to the death on the sands of Edingsville. The Civil War brought repeated skirmishes between Union and Confederate scouting parties. Join historian Alexia Jones Helsley as she recounts lost lives, early widows, dashed dreams, unseen secrets--the dark side of Eden.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781625847102
    Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side of Eden
    Author

    Alexia Jones Helsley

    Alexia Jones Helsley is an archivist and historian with deep roots in western North Carolina. Her parents live in Hendersonville, and her father, Dr. George A. Jones, is a native of Saluda, North Carolina. She is a founding member and program vice-president of the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society and has published widely on the history of North and South Carolina. Her North Carolina titles include A Guide to Historic Henderson County, North Carolina and the Henderson County (N.C.) Revolutionary Pensioners of 1840, 1997 recipient of the Willie Parker Peace Prize (North Carolina Society of Historians). Other relevant research interests include the Battle of Kings Mountain, Mountain Page Baptist Church, Carolina migration trails and the Pace family of western North Carolina. Her Pace ancestors moved from Virginia into eastern North Carolina and eventually settled near Saluda. Helsley, an instructor in history for the University of South Carolina, Aiken, currently serves as president of the Pace Society of America. In addition, she is a member of the Old Exchange Commission, and in 2006, the South Carolina State Historic Records Advisory Board presented her with the Governor's Archives Award.

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      Wicked Edisto - Alexia Jones Helsley

      Edisto.

      Island Paradise

      Historical Overview

      Crossing the bridge, one enters a primordial world of salt marsh, waterfowl and crustaceans—as Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, water, water, everywhere. To the visitor, this is a quiet place, a calm refuge, an escape from the hurly-burly of work, commutes and deadlines. Many echo the thoughts of an 1865 visitor: It seemed like fairy land—everything so fresh and green—the air so soft. But to the long-term resident, it is a place of nuanced beauty where rip currents trawl the coastline and human emotions and misadventures mar the tranquil scene.

      Edisto Island lies roughly forty miles to the southeast of Charleston. The landscape hugs the earth; the clouds are low, and egrets daintily pick their way through the marsh. The North Edisto and Dawhoo Rivers and the Intracoastal Waterway bound the island to the north and northeast, the South Edisto lies to the southwest and the Atlantic Ocean is the island’s southeast boundary. Cut by creeks and marshes, Edisto is many islands, such as Little Edisto, Scanawah, Edisto Beach and Bailey’s.

      Modern Edisto reflects the long interface of man and nature—Native American villages and fields, the planter and his black workers wresting indigo and sea-island cotton from an alien land, dangerous work that shaped master and slave. Roads follow ancient paths. Beach walkers find pottery shards, chunks of handmade brick and slivers of fossilized mammoth ivory.

      During Edisto’s long history, invaders—Spanish, Indian, British and Union—disturbed the rhythms of daily life, tracing their letters in the sand. Temporary visitors or long-term residents—all defy nature, brave storms and dance ancient waltzes of death, destruction and decay.

      Store Creek with egret, Edisto Island, July 2013. Terry Helsley, photographer.

      Sea oats, Edisto Beach, July 2013. Terry Helsley, photographer.

      To a degree, Edisto’s written story begins in 1666, when English explorer Robert Sandford published an account of his exploration of the Carolina coast. In A Relation of a Voyage on the Coast of the Province of Carolina, Sandford described sailing up the North Edisto. The tide was at halfe Ebbe, and about four or five miles inland, Sandford anchored and met a canoe with two Native Americans. The natives boarded the ship and identified the area as the Country of Edistoh. Their chief town—the seat of the cassique (chief)—lay on the western shore of the island toward the ocean. Sandford described shoals, bluffs and breakers with hammocks of thicke shrubby trees. Sandford’s natural landmarks still define the island today. His seventeenth-century landscape resonates with modern visitors.

      Killers and Marauders

      Trouble in Paradise

      Early Edisto was a beautiful but dangerous place. Settlers faced an inhospitable environment, resentful native inhabitants, disgruntled slave workers and foreign raiders. The easy water access made Edisto an inviting target. Also, the English were not the first Europeans to visit Edisto. Based on explorations of Hernando de Soto, Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon and others, the Spanish crown claimed the Carolina Lowcountry. During the sixteenth century, the Spaniards established a fort and provincial capital on Parris Island. But in 1587, the Spanish forces withdrew from Carolina to consolidate their position at St. Augustine. Although the Spaniards destroyed their settlement, Santa Elena on Parris Island, and relocated the settlers, they still claimed the land for the Spanish king. So, well into the eighteenth century, the Spaniards and their black and Indian allies continued to raid the Carolina Lowcountry, destroying crops and livestock, burning homes, terrorizing residents and disrupting the slave workforce. Even one hundred years later, the Spaniards still considered the English settlers as interlopers who had settled illegally in Spanish territory.

      In 1686, Spanish forces launched their deadliest raid on the Carolina Lowcountry. The Spaniards seemed invincible until one of those proverbial acts of God. A major hurricane not only overwhelmed the survivors on Edisto and Port Royal Islands but also destroyed two of the three Spanish galleys and sent the survivors and the last galley back to St. Augustine. In the end, the Spanish attack was deadly for those the raiders encountered but not lethal for the survival of the young colony because, thanks to a providential storm, the capital of Charles Towne was spared.

      THE ATTACK ON STUART TOWN AND ENVIRONS

      Antagonism between English and Spanish ran deep, and peaceful coexistence was tenuous at best. In the 1680s, newcomers—European and Indian—exacerbated the situation. In 1685, a group of Highland Scots settled at Stuart Town near Beaufort. These highlanders built homes, developed farm and pasture lands, erected fences and feuded with colonial officials in Charles Towne. They challenged the status quo by inserting themselves into the lucrative Indian trade and agitating the recently arrived Yemassee, a large group of Native Americans who had fled Spanish Florida and settled in ten towns—with names such as Yemassee, Poca Sabo, Okatie and Huspah—in Old Beaufort District.

      Encouraged by their new friends and trading associates, the Yemassee raided Spanish-held La Florida, destroying the villages of Indians loyal to the Spaniards and selling their inhabitants as slaves. As a result¸ incensed by the activities of these highlanders and their Indian allies, at least one hundred Spaniards with their African and Indian allies attacked and destroyed Stuart Town, Beaufort and outlying plantations on Port Royal Island. Not only did troops destroy houses and outbuildings, but they also burned fields and killed and scattered livestock and human settlers. After several days of pillaging and destruction, the Spaniards with their human prisoners left the Beaufort area and moved on to Edisto Island. There, the raiders—according to Major William Dunlop, five hundred men (other sources suggest one hundred) on 2 or 3 great ships—ravaged the island and environs and destroyed the property of two provincial officials: Joseph Morton and Paul Grimball.

      At the time of the raid, Joseph Morton was the governor of South Carolina. He served two terms as governor, from 1682 to 1684 and from 1685 to 1686. The Spanish raiders forced their way into the Morton residence and ransacked it. They kidnapped his brother-in-law, Edward Bowell, stole all of Morton’s money and silver plate and also liberated thirteen slaves. After assessing the situation, Morton valued his material losses at £1,500 sterling.

      PAUL GRIMBALL

      Arriving on August 24, 1686, the Spaniards and their black and Indian allies spent five days at the compound and plantation of Paul Grimball wasting killing & destroying Grimball’s home, possessions, cattle and workforce. At the time, Grimball was in Charles Towne. After Grimball visited the scene of desolation, he compiled and, later, submitted a lengthy list of losses including three despoiled houses, burned fences, at least sixteen head of cattle killed and many more so frightened that cowherds could never lure them from the woods. The Spaniards also abducted thirteen slaves and Kate Oats, an English servant in the Grimball household. According to William Dunlop (soldier, chaplain and government official), the enemies left severall Markes of his Malice especially the half burnt body of one of our people.

      Edisto Island from Carte Particuliere de la Caroline, circa 1696. This early map shows the location of Paul Grimball’s property on the island. Courtesy of South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

      Paul Grimball was an English merchant who arrived in South Carolina in 1682. He acquired land on the Cooper River and, later in 1683, received a grant from the proprietors for 1,590 acres on Edisto Island. Grimball settled on Edisto Island and developed a large complex, including a main house and outbuildings. Grimball, a prominent member of the new colony, held a number of important provincial offices: proprietor’s deputy, secretary of the province, receiver general and escheator. He later ran afoul of provincial politics and was temporarily removed from office and even imprisoned in 1691.

      According to Grimball, before dawn on February 3, 1691, Constable William Chapman of Charles Towne and seven others, armed with clubs and allegedly searching for public records formerly in Grimball’s custody (in his role as secretary of the province), stormed his Edisto home. The men not only ransacked the house but also terrorized Grimball’s wife and family. Not content with disrupting the Grimball household, Chapman also led his posse to the home of Grimball’s son-in-law, John Hamilton (husband of Grimball’s daughter Mary), and similarly mistreated Hamilton’s family. Yet the resilient Grimball survived the physical and political attacks and, in time, regained his position. In recognition of the confidence the proprietors (who owned and governed the colony of South Carolina until 1719) had in Grimball, in April 1693, they also granted Grimball the authority to designate and remove colonial sheriffs and judges. When Grimball made his will in 1696, he styled himself as Paul Grimball, Esq: of Edisto Island.

      CHARLES ODINGSELL

      The Grimball family’s penchant for unusual situations resurfaced in the third generation. In 1741, Paul Grimball’s grandson Charles Odingsell died in unusual circumstances. Odingsell was the son of Ann Grimball, daughter of Mary and Paul Grimball, and her second husband, Charles Odingsell. Under Grimball, the older Charles Odingsell was deputy secretary of the province of South Carolina. Odingsell, the son of Ann and Charles, married Sarah Livingston. During a visit

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