Michelsohn, Lynn
Description
Two sixty-ish Hostesses at Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry recount tales of pirates, ghosts, and buried treasure, along with their
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connection to Drunken Jack Island and its famous Hot and Hot Fish Club. These storytellers from the mid-Twentieth Century also add fascinating bits of information about Modern Day Pirates along the South Carolina coast: Rumrunners during Prohibition and German U-boats during World War II.
The Storytellers of Brookgreen Gardens
One of my greatest treats as a child was to spend the day at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, nestled in the warm South Carolina Lowcountry, Here, Twentieth Century philanthropists Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington had created America’s first public sculpture garden among the ancient, moss-draped live oaks of four historic rice plantations.
Inside the cool dim interior of Brookgreen's Museum, Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie welcomed visitors in the 1950s. These two “sixty-ish” Southern ladies in sturdy shoes sold postcards, gave directions, and told stories to visitors interested enough to ask questions about the Gardens.
Cousin Corrie, my first cousin one generation removed, was born Cornelia Sarvis Dusenbury in 1888 as her home state of South Carolina emerged from the chaos of Reconstruction. She spent much of her childhood at Murrells Inlet, a fishing village on the Carolina coast, and then worked for many years as a schoolteacher and librarian in the larger town of Florence.
In retirement, Cousin Corrie returned to Murrells Inlet. Here, she joined writer, artist, and local historian Genevieve Wilcox Chandler to become a Hostess at Brookgreen Gardens.
Miss Genevieve was just a bit younger than Cousin Corrie. As a child, she had come to Murrells Inlet with her family from Marion, South Carolina, but stayed, married, and raised five children here. She often supported them by writing magazine articles on local subjects after the early death of her husband. When the Huntingtons created Brookgreen Gardens, they asked Miss Genevieve to become its first Hostess.
During my visits to Brookgreen Gardens, Cousin Corrie and Miss Genevieve—as I called her, using the traditional Southern form of address for a grown-up family friend—let me help them with their hostess duties, to my delight, But my very favorite activity was listening to them tell stories of Brookgreen and the Carolina Lowcountry to spellbound Garden visitors, me included.
Each Hostess had her own distinct repertoire. One never encroached on the other’s territory. “Now you will have to ask Mrs. Chandler about that,” or “Miss Dusenbury can tell you that story,” were common responses to visitors’ queries. If one or the other of the ladies were absent that day, then the unlucky visitor left without hearing her special tales.
Miss Genevieve tended to cover historical figures and folktales. She had collected local stories for “Mr. Roosevelt” as a writer for the 1930s WPA government employment program.
Cousin Corrie focused on hurricanes, family tales, and accounts of Confederate and Yankee conflicts along the Carolina coast. Her stories related more to her own personal experiences.
Of course, each Hostess cherished her own unique collection of ghost stories.
Some of these stories were repeated to countless visitors. Other stories, I only heard once or twice and remember only in snippets, although I have often been able to fill in gaps from other sources.
These are the stories Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie told, as best I remember them. In my mind, these tales weave themselves together with swaying Spanish moss, sparkling, splashing fountains, and winding, gray-brick, latticework walls of Brookgreen Gardens to create visions of the timeless spirit forever living in the heart of the Carolina Lowcountry.
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