Tour the Edmondston-Alston House

There are several fully-restored homes in the Battery area one can visit and even take inside tours. The Edmondston-Alston House is on 21 East Battery row.

It was originally built in 1825. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard is said to have stood on the second story piazza on April 12th 1861 to watch the bombing of Ft. Sumter.

One of our favorite items about this house is a painting displayed that pictures a street scene of East Battery street around 1825.

Their web site states:

The stately Edmondston-Alston House was built in 1825 on Charleston’s High Battery and is one of the city’s most splendid dwellings. A witness to many dramatic events in Charleston’s history, the Edmondston-Alston House is a classic example of the city’s changing and sophisticated taste in architecture and decorative arts.

The Edmondston-Alston House is a repository of family treasures, including Alston family silver, furniture, books and paintings that remain in place much as they have been for over a century and a half. There is an exquisite collection of prints and other artifacts collected on Alston family trips abroad. Guided tours of the house give visitors an insight into the lifestyle of merchant Charles Edmondston, who first built the house in 1825, and Georgetown County rice planter Charles Alston, who later bought the house in 1838.

Young South Carolinian woman writes of watching bombardment of Sumter

 

 

Nancy Bostick De Saussure (1837 - 1915) describes the evening she watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter from a roof top in Charleston on April 12, 1861. She was in her mid 20s.

It was an all-day journey with a drive of twenty miles to the railway. We reached Charleston about eight o’clock in the evening. My father-in-law met us, and after a warm greeting to the little stranger and ourselves, said, “You are just in time to see the fight at Fort Sumter, for it begins to-night.” I was terrified and begged to be taken home, but there was no train until morning and, therefore, we had to remain.

That night I was too frightened to sleep. Toward morning, about four o’clock, the first gun was fired, and it seemed to me as if it were in my room. I sprang up, as I suppose everyone else did in the city. I hurriedly dressed myself and went down to cousin Louis De Saussure’s house, which is still standing on the corner of South and East Battery.

From its numerous piazzas, which commanded a fine view of the harbor, we watched every gun fired from the two forts, Moultrie and Sumter. The house was crowded with excited mothers and wives, who had sons and husbands in the fight, and every hour added to their distress and excitement, as reports, which afterwards proved false, were brought to them of wounded dear ones. It was a day I can never forget.

That night we returned to Grandfather De Saussure’s and when morning came we spent another most anxious day following an anxious night, but when Fort Sumter took fire and the white flag was raised, our spirits rose over the Southern victory, to confidence and hope.

We little realized the long years of struggle that were to follow ending in defeat, and ruined homes and country. Later on I was in Charleston several times when it was under shot and shell and heard the explosions of the shells as they shrieked over our houses. Those were sad and exciting times, the awful memories of which are still active with me.

By Mrs. Nancy Bostick De Saussure (1837 - 1915), who lived just outside of Beaufort, South Carolina. This excerpt, and her war record is found in OLD PLANTATION DAYS : BEING RECOLLECTIONS OF SOUTHERN LIFE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR. NEW YORK. DUFFIELD & COMPANY. 1909; which she wrote.