About Charleston Time Machine
The Charleston Time Machine is an imaginary time-travel device created by historian Dr. Nic Butler. It uses stories and facts from the rich, deep, colorful history of Charleston, South Carolina, as a means to educate, inspire, amuse, and even amaze the minds of our community. By exploring the stories of our shared past, we can better understand our present world and plan more effectively for the future.
The Charleston Time Machine is piloted by Nic Butler, Ph.D., an interdisciplinary historian with an infectious enthusiasm for Charleston’s colorful past. A native of Greenville County, South Carolina, Dr. Butler attended the University of South Carolina before completing a Ph.D. in musicology at Indiana University. He has worked as archivist of the South Carolina Historical Society, as an adjunct faculty member at the College of Charleston, and as an historical consultant for the City of Charleston.
Recent Trips in Charleston's History
Charleston's Centre Market, Established 1807
In the spring of 1807, nineteen years after the initial creation of Market Street, Charleston’s municipal government faced a looming deadline to complete the proposed but long-delayed public marketplace. To avoid a second forfeiture of the extensive property donated by generous neighbors, City Council launched a rapid series of construction projects and drafted a landmark ordinance, the text of which defined the culture of urban food sales for the ensuing century.The Restoration of Market Street, 1804–1807
Amidst another influx of French-speaking refugees in the spring of 1804, Charleston’s municipal authorities negotiated with property owners to resuscitate the Market Street plan scuttled more than a decade earlier. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the project’s principal donor, dictated new terms to city officials and set a three-year deadline, triggering a flurry of site work and legal negotiations that eventually secured the permanent establishment of the present historic marketplace.Meandering Marketplaces in Urban Charleston, 1794–1805
Following the conversion of the city’s new Beef Market into a dormitory in the autumn of 1793, the business of vending fresh provisions in Charleston meandered across the urban landscape for more than a decade. The older marketplaces in Tradd and Queen Streets absorbed most of the central-city commerce, while residents of peripheral neighborhoods briefly patronized forgotten smaller markets on South Bay and the east end of Calhoun Street.The Refugees in Market Street, 1793
The legal foundation of Market Street, created in 1788, dissolved in 1793 when the City of Charleston scrambled to address a refugee crisis that shocked the community. Few in the Palmetto City today recall how a revolutionary struggle for civil rights in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola sparked a bloody insurrection that forced thousands of French-speaking migrants to seek asylum here and in other port cities of the United States.The Genesis of Market Street, 1783–1789
Market Street and its venerable public buildings exemplify the spirit of preservation and resilience in modern Charleston, but forgotten details of the site’s creation in the late eighteenth century shroud a troubled genesis. The city’s broadest thoroughfare was mostly underwater during its early years, and the site’s first edifice sheltered butchers only briefly before a distant political crisis unraveled its legal foundation.The Waterfront Markets of Colonial Charleston
In the spring of 1751, Governor James Glen described the Cooper River as “a kind of floating market,” hosting “numbers of canoes boats and pettyaguas that ply incessantly, bringing down the country produce to town.”[1] In today’s Time Machine, let’s follow those watercraft to a series of market sites along the Charleston waterfront and explore the daily routine of vending fresh victuals during the community’s first century.
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