Our morning started with a carriage ride and a plethora of information from the driver about Beaufort. Pecos plodded along, powered we learned by his favorite treat, Sugar Pops cereal.
So here’s what we learned. Any house painted pink was a testament to the fact that you were wealthy. Reason being is pink paint wasn’t available here in the U.S. It had to be ordered from Europe. Think I’d rather be poor and not have a pink house.
On that same note, paint color on houses represented other things too. Note on this house the shutters and ceiling of the overhangs are painted black. Fact or fiction, I’m not sure, but according to our tour guide some sort of trauma related death happened in those house and it is believed to be haunted. Yikes!! Good luck selling a house painted with the black trim. This house also has a double staircase. Also called “the open arms of the south”. Tradition has it that the women went up one side and the men on the other. This allowed the women to raise the huge skirts they wore and move up the stairs without any men seeing their ankles. If a man glimpsed their ankle it was expected that he should propose to her to save her now compromised reputation. Wow, have times ever changed!
These two houses are examples of “shotgun houses”. They are long and narrow with the front and rear doors aligned so the air can flow through the house for ventilation. But it was said you could fire a shotgun at one door and it would exit the other door, hence the name.
This house was built in 1861 by Dr. Joseph Johnson. It is know as “The Castle”. He lived here for 3 months before being chased out by the Union Army who used it as a hospital. Most of the people in Beaufort left when the Union Army came in. It was know as “skedaddling”. Very few actually returned after the war to reclaim their homes. Dr. Johnson did, but had to pay over $2,000 in back taxes. The home remained in his family until 1981. This is one of the few homes in Beaufort said to be haunted. Supposedly by the ghost of a French dwarf named Gauche. Nope, I'm not making this up. When the explorer Jean Ribault came here he brought along Gauche.
This house is knows as The Succession House. It is where the meetings were first held pertaining to South Carolina succeeding from the Union. Which it did, being the first state to suceed.
This house is knows as “The Party House”. At what point it became know as this, I have no idea. The guy who originally owned this house is my kind of dad! His name was Dr. John Archibald Johnson. He had 5 daughters and he didn’t like paying taxes any more than the rest of us. Property taxes at the time were based on the linear footage of the front of the house. The front of the house being where the entrance is. So he put it on the side of the house.
Well, the guy needed every dollar he had. He put on many lavish parties and invited appropriate eligible bachelors. The lucky 5 daughters were the only women ever invited. (go Dad!)
There have been a number of movies filmed here. One was Forrest Gump. It is said that Tom Hanks seemed just a normal guy. Rode his bike around town, signed autographs and hung out at the coffee shops. On the opposite end of the movie star spectrum was when Barbara Striesand was in town filming Prince of Tides. She had the home she rented completely surrounded with a tarp screen so no one could see her. There is a Marine base in Beaufort and they train in F-18’s. Those are the same jets the Blue Angels fly. Anyway, Ms Striesand didn’t like them flying around while she was trying to film and somehow got a hold of the commanding officers private phone number. She called him and told him she wanted him to stop flying those jets around while she was filming. Being a southern gentleman he said “yes ma’am”. Well she didn’t say anything about flying them at night! So at 2 a.m. there was a squadron of F-18’s that flew at 1000 feet over her rental house. If you’ve never experienced an F-18 flying that low the earth shakes and it feels like supersonic impending doom descending on you…..fast! (I know this from our Blue Angels experience) In the morning paper there was a public apology to the residents of Beaufort for the “inadvertent fly over” the previous night. Babs wasn’t happy and phoned the commanding officer. He politely explained to her “the noise you heard is the noise of freedom” and hung up on her. Don’t you just love it?
Ate lunch on the back patio of Luther's.
Tipping Pecos with carrots I brought along. I’m thinking he was wishing it was Corn Pops instead of health food.
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