hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4080.txt

Episode: 4080
Title: HPR4080: Georgia to South Carolina
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4080/hpr4080.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:20:26

---

This is Hacker Public Radio, episode 4,080 for Friday the 22nd of March 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Georgia to South Carolina.
It is part of the series travel.
It is hosted by Ahukab and is about nine minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We visit the beautiful city of Savannah and Georgia and then move on to Charleston, South
Carolina.
Hello.
This is Ahukab for Hacker Public Radio and inviting you to join us in another exciting
episode in our series about our RV travels.
And we left off having arrived in Savannah, Georgia, and started to do some sightseeing.
So on the next day, February 4th, we slept in a little this morning and did some reading.
And then after lunch, we headed out to Pinpoint Heritage Museum, which is devoted to the Gullah
Gichi culture of African Americans along the coast.
But when we got there, we could not see any evidence of parking.
So we turned around and came back to the RV.
There was what appeared to be a walking path, not large enough really to be a road.
Too bad, but with our big truck, we can't take chances.
In the evening, we boarded the Georgia Queen River boat for a dinner journey on the river.
Unfortunately, the day got very cold and we both found it prudent to wear our winter
coats.
Thankfully, we did not have to go out on deck in the cold and we didn't.
We did make the acquaintance of a couple from Argentina, Carolina and Alfredo, who now live
in the U.S., and who are also traveling in an RV and are staying in a camp just down
the road from where we are staying.
So we talked about maybe getting together later.
Next day, February 5th, we saw what looked like a wildlife observation area with hiking
paths just down the block from our RV park.
But when we got there, we discovered everything was flooded.
So we came back to the RV and made lunch and then headed out to the Moon River area where
we toured Old Fort Jackson.
This fort was named for a revolutionary war hero named James Jackson.
The fort is on the river at the narrowest point and from here, it can fire on ships coming
up the river to Savannah.
During the revolution, it was mostly dirt mounds to provide some protection.
But in 1808, the federal government reacted to increasing problems with the British,
particularly the impressment, which is essentially kidnapping of Americans as sailors for the
British Navy.
So they started a building program for forts at strategic points along the coast.
Fort Jackson was among them and it received a brick structure facing the river with wooden
fortifications on the land side.
Now following the War of 1812, they rebuilt the land using brick as well, they rebuilt
the land side.
Now it happened to be Super Museum Sunday in Georgia, so admission was free.
And they had men in period costume from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and
the Civil War to do demonstrations.
A lot of it involves firing muskets and cannons, but the Civil War soldier also did a demonstration
of signaling flags.
Now the fort remains in good condition because in fact, it was never attacked, which may
be a testament to how well it was placed.
Now after visiting the fort, we drove a short distance to the Bonaventure Cemetery, where
for Super Museum Sunday, the Bonaventure Historical Society was giving free tours.
This was far more interesting than you might suspect.
Our guide was a local historian, and he used the cemetery as a prop to get at the stories
of the interesting people of Savannah.
The cemetery was built on the grounds of what had once been a plantation, and it became
the place where all of the top people in Savannah wanted to be buried.
So there were some very interesting grave markers.
One of them is Johnny Mercer, who our guide called the most famous person from Savannah
that no one under 35 has ever heard of.
He was, of course, a brilliant lyricist of songs such as Skylark and Days of Wind in
Roses, but one of his more famous songs was, of course, Moon River, his home area in
Savannah.
Another grave, quite plain actually, was of a man named Richard Arnold M.D.
He was the mayor of Savannah when Sherman was approaching the city.
Sherman had about 60,000 troops.
There were only about 10,000 Confederate troops to oppose him.
One decided to bypass Savannah temporarily, and went about 20 miles south to Fort McAllister,
which he proceeded to take quite easily.
This opened up the Oghichi River to federal gunboats, and Mayor Arnold saw this and realized
the war had been lost.
So he approached Sherman's forces with the right white flag of surrender.
That is the only reason Savannah survived to this day, instead of burning down the city
he made it a present to President Lincoln.
Another interesting grave with a story was that of Mary Telfer.
She inherited the family fortune when her brothers died and decided to keep that fortune
by not getting married.
Of course, if she had gotten married, her husband would have taken over everything.
She had one relative a niece who she cut out of her life when the niece first married
at age 12, by the way, an unemployed man, and then compounded the offense by divorcing
him two years later.
So Mary did not hold with divorce.
Mary was smarter and better educated than most of the men around her, and would often argue
with them about the questions of the day.
In her old age, she decided to leave a legacy, and in her will endowed a number of institutions,
such as museums, libraries, and a hospital for women.
The hospital was notable because not only it was for women, it was run by women.
In fact, no man was allowed inside.
If a woman went here to give birth and it was a girl, she could stay as long as necessary,
but if she gave birth to a son three days maximum, the niece was totally disinherited.
Now she had in the meantime married into a wealthy family, and they had the resources
to contest the will.
They used the fact that men were not allowed in the running of the hospital to claim that
Mary was mad, and in the initial trial they prevailed.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before Mary's will was finally upheld.
So while this was ostensibly just a tour of the cemetery, it was really a social history
of Savannah and quite fascinating.
I would recommend it highly.
February 6th.
Today we met up with Catalina and Alfredo for dinner at their RV, so in the morning we
relaxed and in the afternoon we went to do some shopping.
They were planning to cook some meat on the grill, so we bought some vegetables to cook
on the grill to go with it, which was good because otherwise we wouldn't have had
any vegetables.
We started outside and built a fire, but it was really too cold, so we moved inside to
their kitchen area of their RV.
We had a nice dinner and some nice socializing, but we were up a lot later than we were used
to.
Still, it's nice making friends on the road.
February 7th.
We slept in a bit after our late night with Catalina and Alfredo, and then after lunch
went for a walk.
We first went to the creek behind the RV park, which was quite swollen, and then across
the street, to walk on what looked like an abandoned road, it took us to a pond, and
just passed the pond a couple of buildings that had no trespassing signs.
But the signs suggested maybe the pond was feeding drinking water to Savannah.
We walked down the road a bit further, then came back, walked around the pond.
That was the extent of our activity for this day.
February 8th.
Another travel day.
After breakfast, we picked up the RV and drove for about two hours to Lake Air RV Park
just outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
It seems like a nice park and a good base of operations.
Unfortunately, we have several days of rainy weather in the forecast, but tomorrow looks
pretty good.
It is warm enough here that I'm back in shorts and a t-shirt.
We did a little shopping, and then compiled our list of things to do in Charleston.
So this is a hook up for Hacker Public Radio, signing off and encouraging you as always
to support FreeSoftware.
Bye-bye!
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio, and Hacker Public Radio does walk.
Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of a quick podcast, you click on our contribute link to find out how
easy it leads.
Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by Anonsthost.com, the Internet Archive, and
R-Sync.net.
On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution, 4.0 International