Charleston Graveyard History from the Remarkable Ruth Miller!

Charleston has so much intriguing history! Our class had the chance to hear the history from the woman who knows it as well as the back of her hand, Miss Ruth Miller! Ruth Miller came to visit our class last Monday and shared what she knows best, Charleston graveyards! She is a wonderful Charleston tour guide and has been since 1979! For more information on her, click on this link!

Ruth Miller's presentation on Charleston
graveyards and the history of them.

From the beginning, when Ashley Cooper and John Locke were encouraging people to live in Charleston. To the graveyards of Charleston that we know today! Ruth Miller explained to us how Charleston came about. She also explained to us how graveyards are significant now, as they were in the past through historical context! There were a couple of things that stood out to me and I thought were interesting during this lecture.

The three incentives that attracted settlers to Charleston by Lord Ashley Cooper were:
1. Free Land- where any man who came to the colonies were given land to white men.
2. Titled nobles- the declaration of the eight proprietors (Lord Ashley being one), gave them the right to settle the colonies and give acres to each man.
3. Freedom of religion (this is what helped churches come about in Charleston), for a religion to come about, it only took 7 people.
These three incentives are the foundation of Charleston and how it grew and continued to grow within the 1660s.

"There is no segregation in our churches before the Civil War." To think that there was no segregation before the Civil War is interesting. I did not know of this until Miller spoke to us. African Americans didn’t have the same rights as white men, but there was still no segregation. The African Americans had to sit upstairs in the balcony of the churches.

One of the things that Miller stated was "African Americans were never buried in a churchyard properly." It is obvious that during this time period that this would be accurate, but I thought that it was sad. There are no graveyards in Charleston that have African Americans with a labeled grave marker. This is very heartbreaking for families with ancestors who lived and died in Charleston that they may have known of.

If there were any African Americans buried in the churchyard, they would eventually get paved over, just to be forgotten. It is awful that this was something going on during the time period, but I believe that this was definitely one of the things that stood out to me. It was unfair for the African Americans. Even in churchyards now, you will not see an African American grave marker.

This is a picture of Ruth Miller and I,
after she spoke with us.

Ruth Miller told us, "Tombstones tell a story." This is something that I decided to put into this blog because we are discussing symbolism and grave markers now! It is so cool how each tombstone can be so simple or small, but they really do tell a story! We may not know the details behind what we do see on the tombstones. We can tell that there was effort put into them so we have an idea of who they were, what they did, or represented.

If anyone in Charleston gets the chance to go on one of her tours, take the shot! It was very interesting and I loved hearing from her! She loves what she does and she loves sharing it with others! For more information on her tours, click here!