African-American contributions
highlight Black History Month program

Historians, artisans, Civil War re-enactors and a storyteller will present a spectrum of African-American history from colonial times to the present during a Black History Month program Feb. 11 at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

The day-long event – "From Slavery to Freedom" – will feature speakers in the Carriage House and outdoor demonstrations along "the street" at Magnolia's award-winning slave cabin project.

The program also coincides with the American Heritage Merit Badge Program for local Boy Scout troops. Magnolia is the only local organization that teaches the American Heritage Merit Badge as it pertains to African-American history.

Magnolia's history consultant, Joseph McGill, said Magnolia's "From Slavery to Freedom" program takes the bold steps daily to interpret the contributions of enslaved and free people on a Southern plantation.

The Black History Month program, he said, offers an opportunity to broaden the discussion of the role African-Americans played in Lowcountry culture. "The wide array of presenters and subject matters is an indication that African Americans contributed to numerous facets of this nation's history."

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, founded in 1915 by educator and historian Carter G. Woodson, is calling for Black History Month events this year to highlight the contributions of black women in American history and culture. In keeping with ASALH's nationwide call, presenters during Magnolia's program will include the contributions of women.

On Feb. 11, the Black History Month program and guided tours of the "From Slavery to Freedom" cabin project are free with a $15 garden admission. The times and the events in the Carriage House are:

• 10 a.m., Michael D. Coker, assistant to the director, Old Exchange Building, Colonial Roots: African Americans in the Lowcountry.
  
• 11 a.m., Dr. Bernard Powers, history professor, College of Charleston, African American role in the Civil War.
  
• 1 p.m., Storyteller Alada Shinault-Small, "Gullah Storytime: Cum Yeddi!"
  
• 1:30 p.m., Joseph McGill, Slave Dwelling Project.
  
• 2:30 p.m., Preston Cooley, Magnolia historian, abolitionist Archibald Grimke.
  
• 3:30 p.m., Dr. John Rashford, anthropology professor, College of Charleston, Plants in African Religious Traditions of the Americas.
  
• 4:30 p.m., genealogist and historian Toni Carrier, Lowcountry Africana, University of South Florida.
  
  Concurrent outdoor demonstrations at the "From Slavery to Freedom" cabin project will begin 10 a.m. and end 3 p.m. They include:

• Storyteller Alada Shinault-Small, "Gullah Storytime: Cum Yeddi!"
  
• Rodney Prioleau, master mason, Fort Sumter National Monument, brick laying demonstration.
  
• African-American Civil War re-enactors, 54th Massachusetts, Co. I, Civil War Reenactment Regiment.
  
• Heather Welch, Magnolia's food historian, cooking with the Mass. 54th.
  
• Blacksmith Joseph "Ronnie" Pringle and Carlton Simmons, Simmons Blacksmith Shop. Pringle and Simmons were trained by legendary blacksmith Philip Simmons.
• Rose Marie Manigault, sweetgrass baskets.

Interpretation of the "From Slavery to Freedom" cabin project will also feature Isaac Leach, a member of the Magnolia garden staff, who will discuss his experience of living in one of the cabins with his family.

Tom Johnson, Magnolia's director of gardens, said Magnolia has consistently told the story of the role African Americans played in the creation and maintenance of the gardens.

Magnolia's camellia collection includes two plants named for Tina Gilliard, who was a long-time greeter at Magnolia in the early 1900s, and the Rev. John Bennett, former Magnolia garden superintendent.

Year-long celebration joining
Magnolia Gardens and Old St. Andrew's Church

Two of Charleston's oldest institutions – Magnolia Plantation and Gardens and Old St. Andrew's Church – will honor John Grimké Drayton in a series of celebrations this year to highlight his importance to the gardens and the church.

Drayton established America's oldest public garden at Magnolia and served for 40 years as rector of St. Andrew's Parish Church, longer than any other minister in the church's 305-year history.

As Magnolia and Old St. Andrew's came together to discuss ways of more closely linking the two organizations, the idea of focusing upon Drayton became apparent. Last year was the 160th anniversary of the start of Drayton's ministry at the church and the 120th year of his death.

"Rev. John guided St. Andrew's Parish Church through one of the most tumultuous periods in its history," Rev. Marshall Huey, rector of Old St. Andrew's, said. "Of singular importance, he focused his ministry on the enslaved Africans in the parish before the Civil War and freed men and women after the war. He was the most influential rector of the nineteenth century at Old St. Andrew's, and one of the greatest of all time." A marble tablet placed in the church memorializes the importance of Rev. Drayton to Old St. Andrew's.

Preston Cooley, the Drayton family historian at Magnolia, said, "John Grimké Drayton transformed Magnolia into one of the most recognized gardens in the world. It is because of Drayton that we are able to enjoy this magnificent setting into the twenty-first century."

Magnolia and Old St. Andrew's will present a series of six events in 2012 to honor Drayton's tenacity, struggle and devotion, especially to his congregants of African descent. Most will be open to the public.

The series begins Saturday, Feb. 11, during Black History Month, with a genealogy lecture on the Drayton family and the enslaved workers at Magnolia. The discussion will be led by historian and genealogist Toni Carrier, founding director of Lowcountry Africana at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The other events include:

• An Easter sunrise service at Magnolia on the banks of the Ashley River, Sunday, April 8.

• A Fourth of July celebration at Magnolia to highlight Drayton's contributions at Magnolia and Old St. Andrew's.

• Feast Day of St. Andrew, a dinner at the Carriage House at Magnolia on Friday, Nov. 30. Descendants of enslaved Africans from Magnolia, parishioners of Old St. Andrew's and special guests will be invited to this event.

• A special Sunday service on Dec. 2 at Old St. Andrew's will celebrate Drayton's life and accomplishments. A tour of the church and graveyard will follow the service.

More information about the celebration will be available throughout the year at www.magnoliaplantation.com and www.oldstandrews.org.

Drayton was the eleventh rector of St. Andrew's, serving from 1851 until 1891. He focused his efforts before the Civil War on ministering to the enslaved at chapels on three plantations Middleton, Magnolia and Magwood, established by his predecessor, the Rev. Stuart Hanckel. Before the war, slaves accounted for nearly nine of ten communicants and baptisms, a rate significantly higher than the diocesan average.

In 1855, Col. William Izard Bull of Ashley Hall Plantation supervised a major restoration of the church. But the onset of civil war was foreboding. "Everything here looks very dark … our population walking as if it were on the crust of a volcanoe [sic]," Drayton wrote in 1861 to his friend and fellow clergyman the Rev. Samuel Crawford Brincklé of Wilmington, Delaware.

During the war, Drayton saw an influx of Confederate soldiers quartered in the area and refugees from the islands. He left Charleston shortly after the city surrendered. When he returned he was not allowed access to the church. One of the few buildings west of the Ashley not burned by Union troops, the church became a polling place. So Drayton renewed his ministry at the three plantation chapels – this time among freed men and women.

Eleven years after the end of the war, the church reopened on Easter Day 1876. The steamer Republic brought visitors from the city. Drayton recounted the parish's history, its periods of prosperity and decline since its establishment in 1706. He ended with a hope of a new beginning: "I thought my mission to Ethiopia was closed. But he in whose hands are all hearts ordered it otherwise. At the solicitation of my people, I have returned to take charge of this parish."

But this optimism was short-lived. Phosphate mining along the Ashley surrounded the church. Drayton's health began to deteriorate. In 1886, the Great Earthquake, with one of its epicenters just a few miles north near Summerville, devastated the church, the chapels and Drayton's house at Magnolia, which "was rendered uninhabitable."

Drayton died April 2, 1891. Sixty-six years after his death, Bishop Albert Sidney Thomas, writing a history of the Diocese, said that Drayton "not only planted seed in the earth to form what has been called the most beautiful garden in the world (Magnolia) but he planted a seed of the Word which we doubt not will flower to all eternity."

Garden graced with Dodd seedlings from Georgia

When two French horticulture students completed internships recently at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, they left behind a garden that honors a Georgia man who spent a lifetime growing thousands of camellias from seeds.

Nearly 100 plants that were cultivated by the late Richard E. "Dick" Dodd are in a small garden designed by Coralie Beune and Baptiste Salliou, students from the Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture near Paris.

Before his death in 1995, Dodd spent most of his life growing camellias on his Marshallville, Ga., farm.

Tom Johnson, Magnolia's director of gardens, said the camellias grown from seeds are genetically different from the parent and most of them are not attractive. But Dodd chose the best flowers to propagate.

Johnson said that one hundred of Dodd's camellias have been planted in what will become a one-acre garden near Magnolia's historic camellia garden. "This garden will eventually have thousands of unnamed camellia varieties, all of which can be show winners," he said.

Dodd's widow, Claire Dodd, said her husband did not create the garden to draw attention to himself. "Publicity meant nothing to him," she said, "He wouldn't expect anything like this. It was a hobby for him. He just enjoyed it, and it made him happy that other people came to see his garden. As far as I am concerned and the children are concerned, (the garden at Magnolia) is a very nice honor," she said.

Magnolia took cuttings from the Dodd camellias and grew them in the greenhouse then relocated them when they were large enough to plant in the ground. Johnson said the Dodd camellias in the new Magnolia garden were grown from cuttings taken in June 2009. Additional cuttings from the Dodd garden will be collected in July 2012.

Unlike many camellia hobbyists, Dodd did not submit the new varieties he created to the American Camellia Society to be registered.

Miles Beach, director of Magnolia's camellia collection, said, "Having seen the Dodd seedlings in bloom, Magnolia Plantation is very fortunate to have been given access to the Dodd camellia collection of the original plants. Many of the Dodd cultivars are worthy of recognition on an international basis."

Magnolia’s restored colonial map returns

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens has received a rare and an early Christmas gift that won't fit under the tree, but it would delight any child who loves history.

For generations, the Drayton family has owned a three-foot by four-foot original engraving of Henry Mouzon's 1775 map of South Carolina and North Carolina. The restored map has been returned in time for the holidays.

Only 15 of the original Mouzon maps are known to exist in the world, according to the WorldCat database, a subscriber-based catalog of archive and library holdings worldwide.

This rare document hangs in the Rev. John Drayton's study in the main house at Magnolia. The map, which was used for two generations, is considered to be the finest and most important map of the Carolinas.

The framed map was restored by the Audubon Gallery, a natural history and sporting art gallery, in Charleston. Burton Moore III, the gallery's manager, said that every five years his gallery gets a request to restore a Mouzon map. But this year has been unusual. In addition to the Magnolia map, the gallery has restored a map owned by the Charleston Library Society. A private collector in North Carolina also brought a map in to be appraised.

Along with the maps in the WorldCat catalog, Moore said he estimates that about 50 maps have survived and most of them are in private hands.

Produced on the eve of the American Revolution, the map was used by American, British and French forces. In a close-up view of the map, the Drayton property is noted on the west bank of the Ashley River in St. Andrews Parish where 8,000 British soldiers were camped in 1780 before the siege of Charles Town.

Preston Cooley, the Drayton family historian at Magnolia, said, "The map was extremely accurate if you take into consideration that Mouzon conducted the surveys on horseback and canoes. It is also interesting that the map shows all of the Native American settlements."

In addition to being a mapmaker, Henry Mouzon Jr. (1741-1807) was also a civil engineer. The grandson of a Huguenot immigrant to South Carolina, eight-year-old Henry was sent to France in 1749 for his education following his father's death.

In Europe, it is presumed he learned map-making skills. He received his first important public commission in 1771, when he and Ephraim Mitchell, subsequently the surveyor general of South Carolina, were appointed by Gov. Lord Charles Greville Montague to survey the boundaries of the civil districts of South Carolina. In May 1774, Mouzon advertised a proposal for a corrected map of South Carolina to be issued the following January.

When the map was published, it included both North and South Carolina and corrected some of the mistakes of the two previous maps of the area.

Mouzon served in the Revolution with his first cousin Francis Marion. George Washington and Lord Charles Cornwallis carried a copy of the map, considered the most accurate map of the region for 50 years.

The map is entitled "An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina with their Indian Frontiers, Shewing in a distinct manner all the Mountains, Rivers, Swamps, Marshes, Bays, Creeks, Harbours, Sandbanks and Soundings on the Coasts; with The Roads and Indian Paths; as well as The Boundary or Provincial Lines, The Several Townships and other divisions of the Land In Both the Provinces."

In addition to Magnolia and the Charleston Library Society the WorldCat database also shows that other owners of the map include the College of Charleston, Charleston Southern University, the S.C. Historical Society and the University of North Carolina.

Walk with Magnolia’s camellia experts

through colorful gardens

Day Dream, White Doves and Sparkling Burgundy are some of the early camellia varieties that are spreading color during scheduled walks along the paths at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

Follow Magnolia’s camellia experts Tom Johnson and Miles Beach on daily walks through the gardens at 11 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 1:30 p.m. on Sundays. The walks, limited to groups of up to 25 people, are an added feature to Magnolia’s daily schedule until mid-March. Call the ticket kiosk to make reservations.

Magnolia’s ancient camellias, first imported by the Rev. John Grimke Drayton in the 1840s from France and Belgium, are producing a colorful display of pinks, purples, reds and white.

Join Beach, director of Magnolia’s camellia collections, on weekday walks. Beach has more than 50 years of experience working with camellias and has given talks throughout the United States.

The gardens have expanded since Johnson led his first walk four years ago. Since then, Johnson has been leading a restoration of America’s oldest public garden. During walks with Johnson, he’ll talk about this expansion of the gardens and future plans to return pre-1900 camellia varieties to the gardens.

As the winter turns colder, the Duke of Wellington, General Washington and Julia Drayton are among the other varieties that will make a showing throughout the gardens.

For more information call, 843-571-1266.

Magnolia Gardens expands

horticulture internship program

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in 2012 will add another country, possibly Barbados, to its horticulture internship program and send two American students to study in the gardens of France.

The proposal to include Barbados surfaced during a recent meeting between Magnolia and the organizers of the Barbados Comes (Back) to Charleston event that will be held here Sept. 1-5.

(http://www.barbadoscharleston.com/index.html)

On Sept. 1, more than 700 Lowcountry school children are expected to participate in a program at Magnolia to highlight the connection between Barbados and the Carolina colony.
      

Because of its connection with Barbados, the late John Drayton Hastie, opened a greenhouse filled with plants indigenous to the island. Charleston resident Rhoda Green, Barbados’ honorary consul in South Carolina, said, “Mr. Drayton Hastie was responsible for the Barbados Gardens at Magnolia way back when the discussion on the connection was more muted.  He was extremely proud of the gardens. He had a picture of a Barbados chattel house and the Barbados Coat-of-Arms displayed prominently in the garden.”

English settlers from Barbados arrived in April 1670 at the present site of Charles Towne Landing State Park to establish the Carolina colony.

This is the second year that Magnolia has hosted two French horticulture students. Coralie Beaune and Baptiste Salliou, students at the Versailles National School of Landscape Architecture near Paris, recently completed a month-long internship at Magnolia.

A third French student, Laura Simonet, also recently ended a two-month internship at the gardens on the Ashley River. She is a student at National School of Higher Studies in Nature and Landscape Architecture in Blois, France.

In addition to the French students, Magnolia is sponsoring Trident Technical College student Katherine Reeves, whose 13-week internship at three French gardens ends Sept. 8.

Tom Johnson, Magnolia’s director of gardens, said, “We have had such a great relationship with France that we want to involve more countries. We are considering Barbados because of Charleston’s historic ties with Barbados.

“We want to create a cultural exchange through horticulture, whereby a love of nature can be the bridge across languages and distance to make the world a smaller place,” he said.

January 15 is the deadline for an American student to apply for an internship to France. Two students will be selected to study in France next summer. The students must be studying horticulture at an accredited two-year or four-year college and be American citizens. To apply, send a cover letter and resume to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, 3550 Ashley River Road, Charleston, S.C. 29414, to the attention of Herb Frazier.

The New York-based French Heritage Society, a 30-year-old organization that promotes French-American friendship and historic preservation, selects the French students. Greg Joye, a Williamsburg County native and College of Charleston graduate, is its executive director. Joye said the French interns at Magnolia get a diversity of activities to expose them to gardens not only in the Lowcountry but in other Southern states.

(www.frenchheritagesociety.org)

In addition to the American-style gardens, the French visitors also are surprised by the Lowcountry scenery and Magnolia’s animals. Alligators and peacock eggs and the Audubon Swamp Garden with “so many knees of cypress” will be among Beaune’s memories of Magnolia.

Salliou said he finds Americans friendlier than his countrymen and more willing to express their faith. “Here, people pray before dinner,” he said. “In France, we believe in God, but we demonstrate it less. When you demonstrate your religion it makes people closer together.”

The French students also are exposed to their country’s contribution to American gardens, said Mary Miller, chairperson of the Michaux Garden Committee of the Charleston Horticulture Society. Beaune and Salliou saw the Michaux Garden site and historic marker in North Charleston and the gardens at Mulberry and Rice Hope plantations and Mepkin Abbey influenced by American garden designer Loutrell Briggs.

Miller and Susan Epstein, manager of tours for the Horticulture Society, took the students to Mepkin and Rice Hope and Mulberry plantations. Because there is no French Heritage Society chapter in Charleston, the Alliance Franciase in Charleston, headed by Marie Arnaud, assists the French Heritage Society with the internship program at Magnolia and Drayton Hall.

A third French student from Versailles, Romain Lepesqueux, is on a month-long internship at Drayton Hall. He’s living with Miller while in Charleston.

In September, Johnson and Miles Beach, director of Magnolia’s camellia collection, will visit the gardens at Versailles.