Magnolia Gardens

Monday, October 16, 2023

This morning we were once again up early to write. We’re really trying to get a journal entry out every day, but (and this is totally our fault) these things take forever to write! Every year we learn something about how we want these trips to evolve. This year we clearly miss our “slow” mornings of coffee, journaling, listening to music, and just hanging out together before needing to shower and dress for the day’s activity. We have decided that from now on, perhaps two or three early starts are enough, and other than that, we can just leave at (or after!) noon to get where we need to be. Today we ended up having to hustle a bit, make lunches for everybody (us as well as the Vidot family), and fly out the door.

We had made arrangements to meet Rico, Mari, and Amara at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens at 10AM. Both parties were a bit late—Lori and I ran into a bit of traffic, and Rico and Mari were on toddler time . Lori and I got there first, sorted out the tickets and gathered whatever information we needed, and then . . . THERE THEY WERE!! I wrapped Rico and Mari in big fat bear hugs and kissed their faces in joyous reunion. I had not seen them for almost four years. I introduced Lori, and then focused on meeting Amara. Fortunately, I had reasonable expectations about meeting a three year-old who had never seen me before. I dialed my excitement and enthusiasm way back, squatted down (good Lord, considering the condition of my knees and ankles these days, that is no longer a position I can enjoy!) introduced myself, and told her I was glad to meet her. She stared for a bit, then scooted over by her mom, but did not turn away or burst into tears. It was, in a word, awesome, and very promising.

The only way I was going to visit a plantation was if I knew in advance that its history of slavery was going to be acknowledged and discussed, and that it wasn’t just some Gone with the Wind look-at-all-these-pretty-flowers-and-trees whitewash crap. According to their website, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens seemed to fulfill that condition. Rev. John Grimké Drayton planted the elaborate gardens in the 1840s for his wife, who was from Philadelphia and not entirely thrilled about moving to the middle of nowhere. He directed the enslaved people at Magnolia in planting these gardens. But before that, when they were first kidnaped from West Africa, those same enslaved people and their predecessors spent years dredging the swampy marshland surrounding the property and working to somehow fill it in to make land and then using the expertise gained from their homeland to plant, nourish, and grow rice, which is not indigenous to the United States, and which the colonial enslavers had no idea how to grow.

The enslaved people who were forced to work here were literally worked to death, if not from pathogens, parasites, mosquitoes, alligators, and snakes, then from the effects of 14 to 16 hours of forced field work under a broiling sun that could literally cause them to drop dead where they stood. The Drayton family has owned Magnolia since the 1670s. Rev. Drayton’s ancestors made a fortune from the rice my ancestors died for well before he ordered the gorgeous gardens to be planted to woo his wife. I wasn’t going to visit any plantation-turned-tourist destination that refused to acknowledge all of this.

We had 10:30 am tickets for the train, so the five of us headed over to the depot and boarded. The “train” is really an overgrown golf cart that seats about 20 people. The train tour was very informative, and it traveled the circumference of Magnolia’s massive acreage as well as rolled past the former quarters of the enslaved and also through the swamp and lake areas. However, it infuriated us that the driver WOULD NOT just stop for 15 seconds so we could take pictures. He would slow down, but not enough to focus and get good photos. He’d point out a great tree, or blue heron, or egret, or even alligators lurking in the pond or sunning on a muddy bank, but do we have good photos of those things to show? We do not. We think the trains are on a schedule and he had to keep moving, but they need to add 15 minutes between each departure time or something, and let the drivers stop sometimes.

After the train ride we went to the little outdoor café and enjoyed a snack of delicious mini pumpkin pies and yummy hot cider. The weather was sunny and beautiful, but only about 65 degrees, and there seems to be an almost constant breeze in the Charleston area. We were all a bit chilly after the train tour and the cider hit the spot.

We had tickets to the 12:00 noon “Slavery to Freedom” tour so after our snack we set out to find the meeting spot. Post Emancipation, roughly half of the newly freed African Americans stayed at Magnolia to work as paid gardeners, tour guides, and domestic servants. Descendants of the enslaved as well as other Black families lived on what was called the “Street” until the late 20th century! Four former slave cabins have been preserved and restored. Our tour guide, Joe, met us and our group of about 30 people, and we all walked out to the site of four cabins.

Joe was Black, extremely knowledgeable, and riveting, and spoke with a definite edge to his voice that had likely been sharpened by years of dealing with questions such as “But didn’t the slaves benefit from having been brought to America? That’s what I’ve heard” from his primarily white audiences. He gave detailed information about the cabins themselves and the people who had lived in them. Before he released us to go explore the cabin interiors, Joe told us he had spent 10 days living in these cabins. He had done the same in other slave dwellings all over the country. We found out later that he had written a book called The Slave Dwelling Project. He was a fascinating man. I could have talked to him for hours.

The four cabins had been built in 1850, and one had actually been lived in until 1990 by the head gardener who had raised his sons there. The cabins had been built as “duplexes” and each housed two families. They had been preserved and refurbished to reflect different periods of time: 1850 (when they were built), 1890, 1925, and 1969 (the one in which the head gardener lived). The largest of these cabins, the 1969 version, even after openings had been cut in the walls to turn the duplex into a single, two-room dwelling, was about the size of an average spare bedroom in the home of anyone reading this journal. This one cabin had been updated at some point with electricity and also with running water for a sink, but none had indoor bathrooms.

Everyone was pretty hungry by the time we finished exploring the cabins, so I went to the car to get our lunches and we ate at some picnic tables by the Wildlife Center. While we were eating, we were joined by 3 or 4 gorgeous peacocks strolling through and looking for snacks. Amara (who by now had decided that her Grammi was OK with her and had even chosen to take my hand rather than one of her parent’s while walking through the cabins!) was thrilled by the beautiful birds and kept asking us to call them over so she could see them, and then calling out to them herself. Despite her obvious charm, they completely ignored her attempts.

After lunch we went into the outdoor Wildlife Center, which was populated—like the Center for Birds of Prey—by rescued animals who would not be able to survive in the wild. Many of these animals, like the peacocks and a beautiful, sweet deer, were roaming about among us. Amara loved them all and ran from pen to pen, even gathering the courage to pet the deer after all the rest of us had done so.

After leaving the Wildlife Center we started exploring the gardens, walking the paths that led down to the water. This was an extremely sinuous route involving walking through narrow paths bordered by beautiful trees and plants, crossing several beautiful bridges spanning ponds and swampy spaces, and making many decisions about which way to turn to get to our desired destination, which was an observation tower we had passes on the train tour. Amara hit a wall well before we reached our destination, and Rico got a workout carrying the dead weight of a sleeping three-year-old all over the plantation grounds. Once we found the observation tower and had hung out there for a while gazing out over a vast expanse of what used to be rice fields, we decided to walk back along the road/bicycle trail to return to our starting point.

We bid the Vidot family a fond farewell, left Magnolia just before four, and arrived back at the condo about 4:50PM, looking forward to having a nice rest. While doing so, we ate the dragon fruit I had bought on a whim at the grocery. What a beautiful and interesting fruit! Neither of us had ever had it before, and I had to look up how to cut and serve it. I read that it had a “mild” flavor, and that was certainly true. So mild, in fact that it was almost all texture and not much flavor. We decided that it was pleasant enough, but not earth shattering.

Around 6:45 PM we went back out for a walk, determined to get to Rainbow Row (a famous row of pastel-colored historic homes located on East Bay Street—the same street we’re staying on—down closer to the bottom of the peninsula) to take photos before we lost all daylight. People in this city are totally dedicated to their window boxes! So many houses and buildings have them, and they are for the most part gorgeous with beautiful fall colors in the flowers and foliage. We kept going past Rainbow Row and walked along the Battery, passing huge colonial mansion after huge colonial mansion, many of which seemed to still be single family homes. Our conversation centered around reflections on seeing the crazy huge mansions in the same day as having visited the tiny little boxes where the enslaved people who had built and even in some cases designed them had been forced to live.

We walked quite a while, and it was well after dark when we returned home to watch an episode or two of our show and turn in.