In the Lowcountry with Gullah, gulls and great food

The beach at Hilton Head is hard packed making it perfect for bicycle riding

Editor’s Note: Dick Myers story about his summer vacation to Nashville and points south (http://www.thebaynet.com/staff/articles/preview/53669 ) was so well received by you, our The Bay Net readers, that Dick has agreed to share another one of his trips. This was written after a trip to the South Carolina Lowcountry in the summer of 2014. Dick says the information contained in it is still valid for travel planning.

Tucked into the southernmost point of South Carolina sits a magical place called the Lowcountry. Just to the east of I-95 sit Beaufort and Jasper counties (population just under 200,000), which call themselves the South Carolina Lowcountry (always one word)

I discovered the Lowcountry on trips to and from Florida and found three distinct places with their own personalities yet united by the common thread of a sense of place. A lot of visitors have made the same discovery. More than two million visit annually.

The Lowcountry is Pat Conroy country (he graduated from Beaufort High School and lives in Beaufort today). When the son of the Great Santini talks about South of Broad, however, he is referring to the street in Charleston.

People who live in the Beaufort County’s Lowcountry often differentiate themselves as living south or north of Broad, but in that case they are referring to the river that bisects Beaufort County. The two areas are often at odds over political and land use issues.

My first three days here will be spent north of Broad, in Beaufort and the Sea Islands. The rest of the time I’ll be south of Broad, in the two other distinct areas, Hilton Head Island and Bluffton with its Old Town. Visitors here will soon find out that each of the three areas is distinct enough to deserve individual immersion. My idea of immersion this time around is a mix of history, the beach and seafood.

St. Helena Island

My first three nights are at the Frogmore (of stew fame) Quality Inn on St. Helena Island, part of the Choice Hotels chain.  Although very no frills, it was clean and the staff friendly. What it offered especially was a chance to be in the center of the Gullah culture of the Lowcountry and also to be close to one of the best ocean beaches on the East Coast – Hunting Island State Park.

The word “Gullah” is often used interchangeably with “Geechee,” although the former is usually associated with the South Carolina Lowcountry and the latter to the Georgia coast. Both are the descendants of the African slaves who were brought here to the coastal islands. The terms are used to describe not only the descendants, but their language and culture. The word Gullah may be a derivative of Angola, where many of the slaves originated.

One of the best ways to get an introduction into Gullah culture is to sign up for the excellent Gullah-N-Geechie Mahn Tours that leave twice daily from the Penn Center just east of Frogmore. The location for the tour’s start is significant, for the Penn Center was the site of one of the country’s first schools for the children of freed slaves. It operated as a school from 1862 until Brown vs. The Board of Education in the early 1950s. It is now a museum and cultural center. The grounds contain the Gantt Cottage where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed and where he reportedly wrote the first draft of the “I Have a Dream” speech.” The Penn Center museum is open Mon-Sat., 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. ($5; you can walk around the grounds for free).

Our tour guides for Gullah-N-Geechie Mahn Tours were the owner, Kitty Green and her daughter, Seretha Tuttle. Green was born in Ohio and returned to the Lowcountry to be close to her family. Her 22-year old tour company is the oldest of its kind in South Carolina. Green is royalty, having received the title of “Honorary Queen” of Ghana for her 1997 book “Lessons Learned from the Gullah Experience.”

The tour starts at the Brick Chapel built by slaves in 1855 to replace a clapboard church built in 1812. Green said, “The church was built for slave owners; it showcased their wealth.” Some parts of the structure show how society worked in those days. There were separate doors for the white men and women and a separate entrance entirely for the slaves. Whites would sit in front and behind them were the domestic slaves, and in the rear the slaves who worked the land.

Green explained that Union forces took possession of the Sea Islands early in the war. This will also be highlighted later in my trip on Hilton Head Island. After the war some of the plantations would be taken over by freed slaves. Up until recent times when there has been some gentrification the island was 90 percent African American.

Green said it was isolation on the island communities that caused the continuance of the Gullah culture and language. She explained that the slaves came from many African communities, with different language and culture. “In order to communicate the language came together and blended with English and Creole,” she said. And the language varied from place to place. Green talked of a reunion in Charleston and an elderly relative expressing reluctance to go because “they don’t talk like we.”

One of the tour stops is Tombee Plantation built in 1790 and restored by in 1970 by Jim Williams, made famous in the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” by John Berendt. Tuttle explained that the plantation was run by an African overseer named Robert for the owner, who was an opium addict. The owner went off to serve for the Confederacy and when he returned he was refused entrance to the plantation by Robert, who had come into possession of the property in a tax sale.

The last stop of the tour was the Coffin Point Praise House, built in 1830. Praise houses were small places of worship built by slaves on plantations and continued in use after slavery was abolished. There are only four remaining on St. Helena, and one is actually still used today.

Tuttle explained that pre-teens were assigned a “spiritualist,” who was a leader of the community. As a “rite of passage,” according to Green, the youth were sent into the woods until they experienced a dream. They would then come back and tell the spiritualist about the dream and he or she would interpret it.

The weather during the tour was mostly in the 80s. Summer in South Carolina may conjure up images of oppressive heat and humidity. But I have been down here a number of times and it surely isn’t any worse than DC in the summer. And at least the beach is close at hand. Which is where I am headed next after the tour.

Hunting Island State Park was recently chosen the seventh best beach destination in the country by Trip Advisor. On this day after the 4th of July it was easy to see why. The line at the entrance ($5 admission) was long but once in there was no difficulty finding a parking space at my favorite spot in the park — North Beach with its iconic lighthouse, built in 1859. You can climb the 167-step spiral staircase to get a panoramic view of the Atlantic and the Sea Islands ($2 admission). 

After leaving Hunting Island I headed for what I had been dreaming about all day, the aforementioned Frogmore Stew. There are a number of stories about its origin. Richard Gay of Gay Seafood Company says he originated it while on National Guard duty in the 1960s when he prepared a cookout for his fellow guardsmen that included leftovers; he then brought the idea home to St. Helena. It’s basically a concoction of shrimp, smoked sausage, red potatoes, corn on the cob and Old Bay seasoning (yes, Chesapeake Bay residents, good old Old Bay).

I had heard that Johnson Creek Tavern near the park had a good Frogmore Stew, and it didn’t disappoint. This is a neighborhood restaurant that is reminiscent of a Chesapeake Bay crab house, without the paper table coverings.

Hilton Head

As I drive across the river on my way South of Broad to Hilton Head Island I am reminded that Pat Conroy reveals in the Death of Santini:  “I’ve come home to the place I was always writing about.”

Beaufort has been on a tourism roll lately, with a feature in Where to Retire Magazine and headlined in a story called “Small Towns We Love” in Southern Living Magazine. It deserves a lot more time than I’ve given it this time around in my quest for the total Beaufort County experience. So it fades in my rear view mirror as I head to my next stop, Hilton Head Island.

Crossing the J. Wilton Graves Bridge from the mainland to Hilton Head Island is a culture shock after St. Helena. What we see on the island today is the direct result of the first bridge to the island opening in 1956. It was also the direct result of the vision of Charles Fraser, who that same year bought out his father’s interest in Hilton Head Company and began constructing the island’s first new community, Sea Pines Plantation.

One of the first things you notice in traveling the William Hilton Parkway (Business Rt. 278) through the center of the boot shaped, 12-mile-lomg, five-mile-wide island: many residential communities are called plantation and are gated, set behind tasteful monument signs.

Shopping centers are strung along the highway, yet well back from it with tree buffers virtually hiding their presence. The signs are also low to the ground with muted lighting. There are no billboards. There has obviously been an attempt to create am “eco-friendly community” and planners have largely succeeded.

One note of caution: the low lighting and small signs make it a navigational challenge for island newcomers. I highly recommend a reconnoitering trip in daylight.
There is no discernable downtown on Hilton Head. Coligny Plaza, the island’s first shopping center, comes closest. The brand new mid-island Shelter Cove Town Centre, which replaced an aging mall, apparently has aspirations for the downtown designation. Harbor Town at Sea Pines has a small town, village feel.

Local media are reporting some visitors saying the island experience is showing signs of aging. There is talk of redeveloping some of the older shopping centers. The town council recently relaxed zoning regulations somewhat, although not too drastically, to accommodate some changes.

This regular visitor, for one, thinks things are just fine. Coligny Plaza, is one example. It is the island’s oldest, yet retains a perfect island vacation vibe that continues to be popular with hordes of visitors. More parking is needed, but surely what isn’t needed is a tear down and rebuild. Historic doesn’t always mean something has to be 200 years old. In this case 50 years equals historic charm worth saving.

For the next four nights of my Lowcountry tour I stayed at the Comfort Inn, just a short walk to the beach and Coligny Plaza. Its location is its biggest advantage although it is also a perfectly good alternative for the budget conscious traveler. I highly recommend the upgraded room with a sofa and a good porch view of the pool and lagoon.

There are numerous lodging options on the island. In my most recent previous visit I stayed at the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa in Palmetto Dunes Plantation. This resort at 513 rooms is the biggest on the ocean and is particularly good for families with a number of activities for the kids and the ocean at your door step. There’s an indoor pool for those few rainy days.

The housing boom that created the Hilton Head we now see was not its first. The Union Army and Navy during the Battle of Port Royal on November 7, 1861 made quick work of the enemy forces, sending them inland. They occupied Hilton Head Island (and Beaufort) for the rest of the war. The occupation of Hilton Head began an incredibly interesting and little-known historic social experiment.

Slaves on the island and eventually along the entire coast descended on the Union Army and what they hoped was freedom. The assimilation was slow. At first the white Union forces didn’t know what to do with their visitors. They were called “contraband of war.” But eventually the slaves asserted their independence before the Emancipation Proclamation.

The big hero of this story is Maj. Gen Ormsby Mitchell, who realized that the former slaves needed housing and ordered the creation of the new town which would be named Mitchellville. He even allowed the African Americans to choose their own housing designs.

Soon a new town of 15,000 people sprang up, with the former slaves allowed to create their own law and order, establish mandatory schooling and build churches and own businesses. More than 40,000 Union troops came through Mitchellville during the war, and the town’s role was to take care of them. It portended the town’s future a hundred years later as a place for visitors.

When the Union troops left the island at the war’s end many of Mitchellville’s inhabitants left as well to carry on their lives as free men and women. By the end of the century the town had virtually disappeared. There is now a concerted effort on the part of the town and a group called Mitchellville Preservation Project to preserve what is left and construct some replicas of the buildings.

Part of Mitchellville was in what is now Port Royal Plantation, one of the island’s upscale residential communities. Westin Hilton Head Resort and Spa, which is within Port Royal, has an exhibit through October 1st called “Dawn of Freedom: The Freedmen’s Town of Mitchellville. The exhibit shows fascinating photos of town’s houses and commercial buildings. Just tell the bellhops at the entrance that you are there to see the exhibit and they will direct you to parking.

Another good way to learn about Mitchellville is to take the Gullah Heritage Trail Tour that leaves from the Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn (70 Honey Horn Drive). Hilton Head native Melvin Campbell returned home to the island after teaching school in Boston for 20 years, He tells of the former slaves who remained on the island after the war. Like their neighbors to the north at St. Helena, their culture was preserved through isolation.

The Gullah tour includes a stop at the Historic Mitchellville Freedom Park located within Fish Hall Creek Park at the end of Beach City Road. In the park is a bench that was dedicated last year by renowned author Toni Morrison as part of her Bench by the Road Project. This was the 20th such bench sited at major points along the Civil Rights Trail.

One of the stops on the tour is at what was one of two beaches open to blacks prior to the Civil Rights era. Bradley Beach is now called Driessen Beach Park and is one of a series of fine public beaches along the Atlantic side of Hilton Head Island. The beaches here are well maintained and parking is at a reasonable fee. The sand is compact, allowing for jogging and biking, which is a very popular pastime all over the island, with its well-marked trail system.

After the tour I went to dinner at the nearby Old Fort Inn which is located within gated Hilton Head Plantation. One of the keys to getting a look inside these plantations is to make reservations at one of their many public restaurants, some of which are at the major ocean hotels.

Another tip for budget conscious tourists: take advantage of one of the early-bird specials. The early special at Old Fort, which is called the Tasting Menu, is a good deal. And the view of Skull Creek is free.

There are more than 200 restaurants on the island and the food is uniformly good. During the height of the summer season some of the more popular restaurants can get very busy. I had on my list an unassuming place called the Sea Shack that purportedly had the best seafood on the island. I tried it the first night but the line was legendary-long. So I went back for lunch the next day and there was no line at all.

The menu is virtually the same and slightly cheaper. For less than $15 the Shack Attack sampler had fish, crab cake, shrimp, oysters and scallops, prepared fried, broiled or blackened. It was one of the highlights of my seafood quest.

One way to absorb life in the Lowcountry is by reading Kathryn Wall’s Bay Tanner mystery series. The heroine lives in Hilton Head but her family home is on St. Helena Island, so she divides time between north and south of Broad. Her locations are all real, including her favorite watering hole, Jump and Phil’s just outside the Sea Pines gate.

Bluffton

Bluffton is hard to get a handle on, because it really is three different communities that in total have grown to an area with a population larger than Hilton Head. Bluffton includes: a number of gated plantations off Route 278 along the Colleton River; numerous newer housing developments; and Old Town. Prior to the arrival of Hilton Head, Bluffton was the definition of sleepy. Only 15 houses and two churches had survived the pillaging of the town on June 4, 1863 by Union forces led by Maj. Gen. David Hunter. Among the survivors are the lovely 1854 Church of the Cross, overlooking the peaceful May River, and the Heyword House, owned by the Bluffton Historical Society.

Bluffton is generally not considered a resort town, with one major exception which I’ll get to shortly. The reputation may be changing as the Old Town gets on the tourism radar. It seems to have a festival or event just about every weekend. It is a quaint yet funky place with many unique antique stores and a burgeoning restaurant scene.

A half a dozen chain motels can be had along Route 278, including the Fairfield Inn and Suites where I stayed for my final two days in Bluffton. It can be a convenient option for folks wanting to split time between Beaufort and Hilton Head, since it is midway between them.

Now for the exception: The Inn at Palmetto Bluff. This is the only AAA five-diamond accommodation in this part of the Lowcountry. The inn is nestled in a storybook village at the end of a several mile tree-lined road. In antebellum days there were 21 plantations on this 20,000 acres of low country. The property was purchased in 1902 by Richard T. Wilson, Jr. to be a hunting estate. But his wife liked to throw parties so it became a social center for the entire region and a small village emerged to support the plantation.

Today more than 7,000 of the 20,000 acres are in forest management or land conservation. The rest is systematically being developed. The inn in what is now called Wilson Village is actually a group of cute cottages nestled on a point with the May River on one side and a marsh on the other, plus a number of single-family homes scattered around the village. The inn is operated by Montage Resorts and they are about to embark on a $100 million expansion including a new inn close to the existing one.

I haven’t stayed at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff; it is on my bucket list (for a virtual tour of the cottages go to http://palmettobluff.com/accommodations.aspx). I have visited on several occasions. I just stop at the gated entrance and tell them I am going to Buffalo’s restaurant in Wilson Village (which always has been true as it is a great place for lunch). That gives a pass to Wilson Village and a chance to walk around this magical place that just drips of Southern hospitality and Lowcountry charm.

Another Bluffton institution is the Toomer family. Larry Toomer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather in The Bluffton Oyster Factory that was constructed around 1940 on the spot where a factory existed for more than a century. According to the Island Packet/Beaufort Gazette, the area’s daily newspaper, the Toomer family is being featured in an article in the July “Family Circle” magazine.

Today a good spot to view the business is from the Bluffton Oyster Factory Park that sits on a bluff above the cannery. But the real place to sample the wares of the Toomer family is at their much newer Bluffton Family Seafood House adjacent to the Promenade area. So for my last meal on this Lowcountry quest I go there and am not disappointed. I get the Larry’s Seafood Platter in honor of the Lowcountry seafood king. It’s fried oysters, and blackened shrimp and scallops with creamed succotash, and tomato and cucumber salad. Put a crown on Larry’s head.

As I drive up Route 278 through Hardeeville towards I-95 and away from the Lowcountry I am reminded that when Pat Conroy’s father pulled his family away from the area Pat loved to his next assignment at Offit AFB, NE, he didn’t know what his future held. He wanted to go to college and become a writer but his father resisted. Little did he know that his father was plotting his acceptance into the Citadel and that he would be returning to that other Lowcountry, Charleston within a few months.
Conroy shed a tear just before getting into the car for that drive to Nebraska but composed himself and dried his eyes so his stern father wouldn’t see. No need for me to shed a tear because I know for sure I will be back. There are too many more things to see and do in the Lowcountry.

DETAILS

United offers three daily non-stop flights to Savanah Hilton Head International from Dulles and US Airways offers three from Reagan. US Airways Express has a Saturday flight to Hilton Head Island Airport. The Lowcountry is an 8-9 hour drive from Southern Maryland or about 560 miles.

Where to Stay

Quality Inn St. Helena Island
2141 Sea Island Parkway (US 21)
St. Helena Island, SC 29920
843-838-5052
Convenient to Penn Center and Hunting Island State Park
www.choicehotels.com
Doubles from $80

Hilton Head Marriott Resort & Spa
One Hotel Circle
Hilton Head, SC 29928
843-686-8400
On ocean; good for families
www.marriott.com
Doubles from $359

The Inn at Palmetto Bluff
476 Mt. Pella Road
Bluffton, SC 29919
843-706-6500
Cottages, village homes
www.palmettobluff.com/the-inn
Cottages from $440

Where to Eat

Johnson’s Creek Tavern
2141 Sea Island Parkway (US 21)
Harbor Island, SC 29920
843-838-4166
www.johnsoncreektavern.com
Frogmore Stew — $18.95

Old Fort Pub
65 Skull Creek Dr.
Hilton Head Island, SC 29926
843-681-2386
www.oldfortpub.com
Entrees from $25.50; Early Tasting menus, 5-5:30 p.m.

Bluffton Family Seafood House
27 Dr. Mellinchamp St.
Bluffton, SC 29910
843-757-0380
www.blufftonoyster.com
Entrees from $16; Capt. Larry’s Platter, $26

What to Do

Gullah-N’-Geechie Mahn Tours
Leaves from Penn Center
110 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.
St. Helena Island, SC  29920
Mon.-Sat. 9:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m.
$25; Reservations required, 843-838-7516

Gullah Heritage Trail Tours
Leaves from Coastal Discovery Museum
70 Honey Horn Dr., Hilton Head Island 29926
Tues.-Sat., 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
$32; No reservations; show up a half-hour before tour

Heyward House Historic Center
70 Boundary St.
Bluffton, SC 29910
843-757-6293
Mon.-Fri, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sat. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
House guided tour, $8; Old Town guided walking tour, $18 (reservations required).

INFORMATION:

Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce, 843-525-8500, www.beaufortsc.org

Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, 1-800-523-3373, www.hiltonheadisland.org

Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com