Commercial Roof Repair in Ravenel, SC

The world’s most famous birdwatcher came to Charleston in 1831, returning over the next several years, each time staying in the home of a pastor on Rutledge Avenue.

In John James Audubon’s “Long-Billed Curlews,” one of 435 life-size watercolors in his “Birds of America,” the steeples of the Charleston skyline are visible in the background across the water.

Audubon, whose name is linked to birds as closely as Hershey is to chocolate, traveled the country hunting, stuffing and drawing birds in an attempt to catalogue all the species in the United States.

During that first trip to Charleston, Audubon befriended John Bachman, a Lutheran minister and naturalist who would later become a natural history professor at the College of Charleston.

“Never were men more dissimilar in character, but both were enthusiastic and devoted naturalists; and herein was the bond,” according to Audubon’s journals published in 1897.

Audubon’s sons would grow up and marry Bachman’s daughters, and he would name one of the birds he discovered Bachman’s sparrow. The men later worked together on a catalog of four-footed animals called “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.”

Audubon kept a studio at Bachman’s Rutledge Avenue home. Audubon painted the birds. Maria Martin Bachman, the pastor’s wife, painted the scenery, specializing in insects and vegetation. Audubon called the insects she drew “perhaps the best I’ve ever seen.”

Bachman, who would visit the gardens of local horticulturalists to observe and draw, is now recognized as one of the most influential women in natural history.

Some of her sketches can be seen on a tablet in the Charleston Museum’s exhibit on natural history.

Around the same time, Edmund Ravenel was a Charleston doctor who studied shells and fossils. Researchers still study shells from his collection that numbered in the thousands. A cousin, Henry Willliam Ravenel, was an expert on fungi and plants in the Lowcountry. Many of the more than 6,000 specimens he collected are held by the museum.

Charleston became known as the center of Southern natural history studies.

In 1853, the Elliott Society of Natural History was founded in Charleston, named for botanist Stephen Elliott, whose collection of plants is considered among the most important in the nation.

Today, the National Audubon Society, a nonprofit that works to protect birds, has more than 500 chapters around the country. Audubon South Carolina, the state chapter based in Charleston, boasts more than 25,000 members. Some of its work in the Lowcountry centers on the coastal islands where birds nest, the same spots observed by Audubon in the 1800s.

The Charleston Museum’s collection on natural history includes fossils, taxidermies and a few specimens in jars. Among the animals and plants discovered hundreds of years ago is a find from a few decades ago. In 1983 at the Charleston International Airport, a Charleston Museum volunteer found the fossilized bones of a new species of bird determined to be the largest type of flying bird that ever existed.

Audubon would arrive in Charleston about 2 million years too late to paint it.

The main reason for the special two-part exhibit “America’s First Museum: 250 Years of Collecting, Preserving and Educating” is to celebrate The Charleston Museum’s anniversary and show off objects from all five of its collections: archaeology, archives, history, natural history and textiles.

The other reason is to bring to light some objects that have been hidden from view.

Only 6,000 pieces are exhibited at any given moment, said Executive Director Carl Borick. That leaves about 2,394,000 objects left in storage, making the museum’s collection noteworthy for its size, variety and historical importance.

To be clear, many of those items are fragments of pottery or glassware or dinnerware recovered at archaeological digs. But that makes the museum’s collection even more remarkable: It is partly the result of nearly a century’s worth of investment in urban archaeology.

It’s also the result of 2½ centuries of donations. Very little is purchased at auction or elsewhere, Borick said.

Perhaps around 30 objects are added to the collection each year, he said. Dozens of items are deaccessioned, things outside the museum’s stated mission to tell the story of the Lowcountry.

For example, there are six old sewing machines with no Lowcountry provenance and little exhibition value. They’re pretty cool in their way, but they’re just taking up shelf space. So off they go. Possibly they’ll be sold at auction, generating a modest bump in annual income.

The sword used by Charleston Loyalist Hamilton Ballendine during the British siege on the city in the spring of 1780? Well, that will be added soon to the Revolutionary War displays, according to Jennifer McCormick, the museum’s chief of collections and archivist.

Many objects, such as fragile textiles, dolls, eggs and animal parts, are too delicate to showcase except rarely. Some of the old dresses and shirts cannot be displayed on a mannequin; they must be laid flat. Ultraviolet light will further deteriorate the fibers.

In some cases, objects are simply too numerous to display but a sample or two. For example, the museum has a fine assemblage of walking sticks, some folksy, some highfalutin. One has a tiny sword hidden inside. Another has a hand carved snake coiling around the stick. One has a handle made of horn, another of silver. They don’t find their way into the galleries very often, McCormick said.

A bunch of musical instruments enjoy the shade of storage, including an early banjo with an animal skin stretched over the drum. The banjo is African in origin, and this specimen likely comes from there.

Weapons. That’s another collection brimming over the edge. Handguns, rifles, swords — so many it’s impossible to show them all.

And furniture, including some stunning pieces from the 18th century, made in Charleston, like the desk by Thomas Elf. Not much space for all that either.

But that doesn’t stop students writing dissertations, interns helping with inventory, scholars studying ancient Native American communities, paleontologists interested in 18-foot giant sloths, and historians of the antebellum and postbellum South from poring over these objects and adding to our collective knowledge of bygone epochs.

While visitors admire the displays out front, others are busy behind the scenes scrutinizing the collected doohickeys and thingamabobs that, taken together, give us a vivid picture of the past.

Like the list of names of Black men who served in the city’s 19th century fire brigades.

Like The Charleston Mercury’s front page from 1861 proclaiming that the “Union is dissolved!”

Like the Carolina parakeets and pileated woodpeckers, mummified and kept safe in a drawer of the storeroom.

Like the gull eggs, painted porcelain, Edgefield pottery, 18th century undergarments and big rabbit costume, all of which tell us something of life in the Lowcountry of yore — which, in turn, tells us something about life in the Lowcountry today.

That’s what history is for: to answer that age-old question, “How did we get here?”

The cow horns, musket balls, prehistoric shark teeth, curtain rings, old furniture, Colonial currency and pocket watches hold the answer.

Now The Charleston Museum is planning for 2024, when it will introduce a new permanent collection of post-Civil War objects. The goal is to add a new narrative to the displays, telling the story of Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement.

A 12-foot-long church pew made by enslaved people and used in an Edisto Island sanctuary in the decades after the war will be among the items included in the new gallery.

A red shirt worn by white supremacist and militiaman Josiah McKie also will be included. McKie participated in the 1876 Hamburg Massacre, a violent attack on the majority-Black town in Edgefield County orchestrated by Whites (including future South Carolina Gov. Ben Tillman) who were opposed to the Reconstruction government.

McCormick said she is actively soliciting donated items associated with the period starting in 1865 and ending in 1970.

“We’re going to tell the full story no matter what,” she said. “The objects are what make things come alive for people. When you see an object that was part of something, that’s what is incredible.”

The collection, which has about 2.4 million items today, is getting bigger.

There’s always more history to tell.

RAVENEL, S.C. (WCBD) – A proposal for a new development in the Town of Ravenel would bring more than 300 homes and new businesses to the area. Ravenel residents say they have mixed feelings on the plan.

The nearly 600 acre mixed-use development just off Highway 17 in Ravenel would bring 381 homes to the area, a shopping plaza and medical services to the town. Town officials hope the new development would bring an economic boost to the area.

The plan also includes commercial space and resource extraction through mining. Some residents say they are excited while others fear the impacts the development could have on the town.

“I think that’s ridiculous,” says Rhonda Hailey. “We’re not ready for this.”

The plot of land is a little more than 597 acres and lies between Old Jacksonboro Road and Highway 17. The development would be annexed into the Town of Ravenel to receive sewer services. Hailey worries the town isn’t ready for the construction.

“Our roads are so bad, we live down the road,” says Hailey. “We can’t even get out on the road.”

Other residents say the plan is exciting for the small town. The project has been approved by DHEC and SCDOT and includes storm water runoff mitigation and traffic studies. The main entrance for the development would be located on U.S. 17.

“Building stuff around here and they’re not even building roads to accommodate it,” says Hailey. “We go in to town and it’s bumper to bumper traffic.”

Ravenel Mayor Steve Tumbleston says the land was originally zoned for 1,400 houses before the town negotiated with the property owner to drop the number of houses to just under 400. He sees it as a smarter way to develop to the area but some remain unsure.

“I mean we’re still rural thank god but the contractors come in here and they build and then they go back to the ocean or wherever the heck they live and we’re stuck with the traffic and the mess,” says Hailey.

Town Council is set to hold a public hearing on the development plan to let residents voice concerns or ask questions Tuesday July 6th before council’s regularly scheduled meeting for the month. The public hearing begins at 5:45 p.m.

This story was originally published in the Oct. 4, 2021 edition of the Charleston Regional Business Journal.

A second planned unit development has been pitched for Ravenel, the rural town of 2,700 residents, showing signs that progress is now pushing outward from West Ashley.

Residents are concerned the movement could fundamentally change the rural nature of the area they call home.

Plans for the Tea Farm Tract, a proposed 400-unit planned development in Ravenel, and the related annexation of over 3,100 acres of land in Ravenel, were blessed Sept. 16 by the town’s planning and zoning commission, with a recommendation to limit density on over 2,000 acres of land outside the development.

The Tea Farm Tract would sit on 395 acres of land.

Rebecca Baird, who lives adjacent to the property and whose husband runs a grass-fed beef farm on their property, also opposed the annexation and development.

“I’m begging you to not annex this property; it will be devastating for this community, it will change the traffic flow, it will change how we have grown to live in this rural area,” she said.

A public hearing was scheduled be held by the full council and possible vote on Sept. 28.

Earlier this summer, the council approved and filed annexation plans for the Golden Grove Planned Development District, with 381 single-family homes and a commercial area to be built on 597 acres between Highway 17 and Old Jacksonboro Highway.

Similarly, the Tea Farm proposed development would sit along Old Jacksonboro Road and Highway 17, next to E.B. Ellington Elementary School, about 11 minutes from the intersection of Bees Ferry Road and Glenn McConnell in West Ashley.

The site is currently owned by the McLeod Lumber Company.

“We have owned this property for nearly a century…times change, things move on,” said William McLeod Rhodes, president of McLeod Lumber, at the commission meeting. “We would look for a developer who would do it well, and of course all regulations would be done well.”

Representatives from Thomas & Hutton, the land planning firm for the site, said they have been working on the land use plan for the site for a year-and-a-half.

Land planners stated at the meeting that the development may impact wetlands, including a half-acre of “isolated wetlands” on Landover Road.

Nearly two dozen neighbors and community stakeholders — including the Preservation Society of Charleston and The Coastal Conservation League — spoke out against the development at the Sept. 16 commission meeting, which lasted two-and-a-half-hours.

One resident said he would move away from Ravenel if the Tea Farm development was approved.

Others questions why 3,000 acres needed to be annexed for a project a fraction of that size and expressed concern that the town was setting itself up for a larger buildout on the site.

Opponents cited disruption to the site’s wildlife and wetlands, potentially impacting the nearby Charleston County Parks’ Caw Caw Interpretive Center, as well as increased traffic and strains on the area’s sewer system, which could potentially lead to future flooding issues.

“That’s just an incredible amount of land that can be developed like this,” said Tim Blackwell, who spoke at the meeting. “This could start a program where it will cascade (with) partnerships and LLCs adding another 1,000 acres. Once you start this, you’re going to ruin what you’ve got and what Mount Pleasant wishes what they had. We’re going to have Highway 17 South look like Highway 17 North.”

Thomas & Hutton presented a complete plan with renderings of sidewalks, streets and bike lanes. Plans include single-family homes and townhomes, parks and open space, a community center and 16 acre-commercial area that could support a grocery store.

The Tea Farm plan calls for slightly more than two single family homes per acre, and, when combined with townhomes, comes out to six units per acre overall. The density of Golden Grove is three homes per acre.

The board’s conditional recommendation was to limit density to one home per 25 acres in the 2,700 or so acres not expressly in the Tea Farm development, as outlined in the Charleston County’s comprehensive plan for Ravenel,

Rhodes did not return an email from CRBJ, asking if he was agreeable to the density amendment by the commission.

At the meeting, however, he shared that the McLeod family has additional tracts totaling 1,350 acres, but they are not seeking that to be annexed at this time.

In his opening statement, town administrator Mike Hemmer tried to quell some concerns about the development, including that the town does have the capacity to run sewer to the planned development and that existing sewer line limits mean the remaining 2,000 acres could not be built out in full.

During public comments, only one citizen spoke in favor of the Tea Farm development at the meeting: resident Todd Johnson, who said he’s lived in the area for 20 years. He said the development will bring younger people to the area.

“I think it’s a great idea for the young people coming up; they need a place to live and work,” he said. “Everything is growing out this way anyway. I think it’s a wonderful idea and I’m glad for the town to continue to grow. We need to grow.”

Happy Halloween, Charlestonians. Over the years, we’ve told bone-chilling stories from around the Lowcountry, and today we’re sharing our favorites.

Remember: Some of these stories are merely tall tales, others include historical facts, and all make for a spine-tingling read for the holiday.

Flashback to 1771: The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon is completed. British forces transform the bottom floor into a military prison during the American Revolution.

This local landmark is home to several haunting tales, including that of Colonel Isaac Hayne, who was charged with treason, sentenced to death + held in the dungeon before being hanged in 1781.

Today, the building serves as a museum. Some of those who have toured the dungeon believe to have sensed Isaac’s spirit, hearing screams and the sounds of shackles.

It’s New Year’s Eve in 1889, and three young men are walking home when they stop near railroad tracks to watch the moon and are suddenly killed in a collision.

The men are said to be buried at a baptist church near the railroad and haunt Ravenel. According to legend, their spirits can be spotted in the form of three bright lights.

It is believed that if you knock three times on the doors of the church and say “We want to see the lights” three times, you may glimpse the lights approaching.

Tower Battery, later known as Fort Lamar on James Island, was attacked by Union troops in the spring of 1862.

When all was said and done, 150 bodies lay scattered across the land along with almost 900 casualties. The Battle of Secessionville was the only attempt during the Civil War to capture Charleston by land.

There have been reports of paranormal sounds in the early morning from James Island residents + visitors — including the metallic clicking of cannons and the splashes of fleeing soldiers.

Craving more creepiness? For more spine-tingling stories, go here — if you dare.

Credit: Shutterstock (2)

Cameran Eubanks, Thomas Ravenel and More ‘Southern Charm' Stars Who Left the Series: Where Are They Now?

Starting a new chapter! Cameran Eubanks and Thomas Ravenel are among the Southern Charm stars who have stepped away from the Bravo hit over the years. Viewers were introduced to Eubanks when Southern Charm premiered in 2014. The reality series focuses on the personal and professional lives of several socialites in Charleston, South Carolina. After participating as a main cast member in six seasons, Eubanks shocked fans when she announced her departure in May 2020. That same month, Eubanks shut down claims that she left due to her husband, Jason Wimberly, being unfaithful. “It has come to my attention that insidious rumors are now spreading and fake articles are being written … some of which pertain to my marriage,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. While referring to the claims to the rumors as “upsetting," Eubanks noted that she’s not surprised by them as “this is what reality television has come to nowadays and a large reason why I kept my marriage off air.” [jwplayer NAVNKDPq-zhNYySv2] At the time, the South Carolina native stood by her decision not to return to Southern Charm. “You must protect what is sacred to you. Some things aren’t worth a big paycheck," she continued. “What upsets me the most is that my husband, who is the most sincere and faithful human I know is being falsely dragged into this. It disgusts me. He always supported me filming the show even though he wanted no part of the spotlight." Eubanks added: “I can’t get too upset though because this is what you sign up for when you put your life on reality TV … and why I’m getting out of it now. Drama is needed to stay relevant on reality television and sadly false rumors about other are sometimes created. Make of that what you will and consider the source.” Ahead of the show's eight season, Eubanks explained that she has no plans to come back. “If I was to ever go back on television, it would have to be something boring that didn’t involve fighting or having to talk about people,” she exclusively told Us Weekly in April 2022. “It would have to be a whole different — no, I couldn’t do it.” The former reality star also confirmed she wasn't approached to make a cameo in season 8. “I would go back and do it all over again,” she admitted. “I closed that door and there’s really no need for me to go back. I don’t think it would necessarily serve a purpose. But the show’s doing great.” Scroll through for an update on the former Southern Charm stars: [podcast_block]

Cameran Eubanks

Eubanks starred on the Bravo series for six seasons before her May 2020 exit. Since then, the Real World: San Diego alum has released her first book, One Day You’ll Thank Me, in February 2021. Eubanks also continues to gush over daughter Palmer, who was born in 2017.

Thomas Ravenel

In May 2018, two women accused the former politician of sexual assault, including his kids’ former nanny. Ravenel, who shares two children with ex Kathryn Dennis, was arrested in September 2018 for the alleged assault, which he denied.

Ravenel pled guilty to third-degree assault and battery in connection to the attack on the nanny. He paid a $500 fine and donated $80,000 to a sexual assault survivors' charity.

After being fired from the show, Ravenel chose to keep a low profile on social media. He welcomed son Jonathan with Heather Mascoe in June 2020.

Landon Clements

Clements appeared on the reality series for three seasons before calling it quits in 2017. After her exit, Clements moved to Los Angeles to become a real estate advisor. She has used her social media to highlight her various vacations and her reunions with Southern Charm cast members such as Shep Rose.

Chelsea Meissner

Following her split from Austen Kroll, Meissner appeared as a main cast member during seasons 5 and 6. Since her departure, the former Bravo personality has documented her travels on social media and stayed in touch with several of her Southern Charm cast members.

Meissner made a small return to reality TV alongside former Survivor costar Kim Spradlin-Wolfe in HGTV's Why the Heck Did I Buy This House? in April 2022.

Eliza Limehouse

Limehouse retired from reality TV after two seasons on Southern Charm. The jewelry designer got engaged to Mark McBride Jr in February 2020. After exchanging vows later that year, the pair announced that they were expecting their first child. Limehouse welcomed their son in December 2020.

The South Carolina native is also the owner of Snaffle Bit Bracelet Company and candle company Private Label by PCC.

Jenna King

After her short stint on Southern Charm, King left Charleston and moved to Los Angeles. The former reality star, who has preferred to stay low key on social media, last offered a glimpse at her life in August 2021.

Ashley Jacobs

Following her split from Ravenel, Jacobs started dating Mike Appel in 2019. The duo tied the knot in March 2021 and welcomed son Grayson later that year. Jacobs currently lives in California with her family.