South Carolina Historical Society Oral History Collection
TAPE LOG and TRANSCRIPT – TOM WARING; HERMINA WARING
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TOM WARING; HERMINA WARING
Miriam Cooper
9 May 1983
Charleston, South Carolina
14 minutes 19 seconds
One cassette
MP3
R. Hunter Newton
TAPE LOG– TOM WARING; HERMINA WARING
Timestamp
.17
Topic
Mr. Waring states that both he and Mrs. Waring grew up in Charleston
and derive from a long line of native Charlestonians—“almost from the
beginning of the city.”
.27
Went to work for the News and Courier in 1927 and by 1983 the
population had increased three-fold. Continued to write a Sunday article
for the News and Courier after his retirement around 1978.
2:30
Speaks of the view of the Cooper River from his house at 10 Atlantic St.
in which he had lived for over 45 years at the time of the interview.
3:05
Born March 30, 1907 on Bee St., making him almost 76 years old.
3:35
Talks about the changing of cities over time, the emergence and growth of
North Charleston over the past 50 years, and the population growth and
expansion of the Charleston city limits since 1927.
6:07
Seaport brought in industry making Charleston “like other cities.” The
preservation of houses south of Broad St. compared to other sectors. The
recent restoration of neighborhoods like Ansonborough, Radcliffeborough,
and Wraggborough. Explanation as to why so many old Charleston homes
still exist compared to that of other cities: poverty would not allow it.
9:05
Hermina Waring talks about the evacuation of Charleston during the Civil
War and how a “beloved butler” buried the Yates family silver in the
backyard. She also talks about dividing this up amongst her siblings when
the time came for her mother to move to “a home.”
10:34
Mentions Yates Snowden and the credit given to Mr. Snowden for first
referencing Charleston as the “Holy City.”
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11:26
Talks about the many Charlestonians, including some of his family, who
fled Charleston towards the close of the Civil War and the poverty that
Charleston faced following the war. Mentions the employment boost that
World War I and the period of depression that followed. Mentions the
New Deal, Pearl Harbor, World War II and the subsequent influx of
newcomers to Charleston.
13:55
Tells a very brief local Gullah joke.
TRANSCRIPT – TOM WARING; HERMINA WARING
Miriam Cooper: Hello, I’m recording. It is May 9th.
Tom Waring: Hermina and I have both grown up in Charleston. We’ve got families that have
been here almost from the beginning of the city and we have seen Charleston grow. It has
increased in population more than three times since I first went to work for the News and
Courier in 1927. We still cling to some of our old customs in Charleston but we live in a modern
age and we realize that time does march along.
Well, I’ve been retired from being the editor of one of the local newspapers. I’ve been
retired for more than five years but I keep my hand in by writing a Sunday profile of somebody
who has something of interest, preferably elderly people who have memories. They’ve lived long
enough to know something about the past and the effort is to tell in terms of one man or
woman’s life and career a little piece of history whether the history is local or whether it’s not
but the person or the history has a local connection. Frequently I’ll interview some interesting
person who has moved to Charleston and has only been here relatively recently but the reasons
why the person moved here blend in with who the person was in the first place and how they
happen to come to Charleston and where they were before. We turn up some quite interesting
characters. There are fifty two Sundays in the year and Sunday comes around very frequently so
I have to hustle to interview and write the copy and get the photographs made. Takes me all
week to do what I used to do without a week.
I am fortunate in living a block from the Battery and I can see out of my window a little
piece of the Cooper River which merges with the Ashley at the Battery. I’ve lived now forty-five
years in this house and in other houses in the neighborhood for about seventy-two or three years
and I’ll be seventy-six in a few days so I haven’t moved very far.
I was born on May 30, 1907 on Bee Street. Bee Street is near where the Medical
University is now. The house where I was born was standing until a few years ago and I was
intending to put a plaque on the outside saying Tom Waring was born here but before I could get
my plaque up they had torn down the house. (laughter) Of course neighborhoods changed to
some extent. When I was coming along there was not quite as much attention paid as there is
now to south of Broad. Not everybody had to be an SOB. There were nice neighborhoods all
over Charleston. The patterns of cities do change. A good many Charlestonians, since the south
of Broad area is so full and prices of real estate have gone unreasonably high, many have moved
west of the Ashley or east of the Cooper River. And then at the same time a whole new city,
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namely the city of North Charleston, has grow up around the industrial and business
developments which have come along in the last fifty years.
When I first went to work for the News and Courier in 1927 the population of Charleston
County was approximately 101,000, of whom about 68,000 lived within the city limits of
Charleston. At that time the city limits were entirely on the peninsula and the city had not
expanded west of the Ashley as it has now. And today the population of Charleston county is
well over 300,000 and the population of the city is about the same, still with sixty-seven or so
thousand people. So the new population obviously has to be somewhere outside the peninsula
and that is largely around the North Charleston area, James Island, Mt. Pleasant and other
neighborhoods. Charleston county is a long skinny piece of territory that runs from the Santee
River to the Edisto River about a hundred, a little over a hundred miles long, in some places only
about fifteen miles wide. The shape is like Chile in South America. For many years Charleston
was sort of an end of the line, out of the way place and now the seaport has developed and
industries have moved in and now its more like other American cities. The reason I guess for the
emphasis on South of Broad is because more of the old dwellings have been preserved in that
area. There are plenty of nice old houses in other areas but they’re not quite as choice
neighborhoods and some of them have been allowed to deteriorate. I’m happy to say that in
many neighborhoods—Ansonborough, Radcliffeborough, and Wraggborough - to name three of
them—people are moving back in and restoring old houses and the neighborhoods are beginning
to look spruced up again. There is a long way yet to go.
In the period after the Civil War, in the 1870s, 1880s and ‘90s when other old American
cities were tearing down their older buildings and building Victorian structures, Charlestonians
were too poor to do much in the way of new construction and they just had to live in the same
old Georgian and Adam houses that they had lived in since this town was founded in 1680. So
we are in a sense today lucky that our ancestors were too poor to destroy what now is cherished.
Hermina Waring: There are so many mysteries surrounding the old city that have never been
fully explored. For instance we’re living right in close proximity to the …..Yates House, named
for my father’s family. There during the Civil War was a very beloved butler. Everyone had to
flee upstate for safety and all the priceless possessions we had to leave momentarily the situation
was so tense. He was given the job. They said “do the best you can to try to conceal.” He buried
the silver in the backyard.
When I was a young girl with Cousin Yates Snowden they were doing some renovations in the
back - whether to enlarge the kitchen or to do some work in that nature of plumbing or
something - they were digging in the backyard. And all of the sudden this terrible crunch when
the pickaxe went through a jar that I do not have (we drew lots of things up in my mother’s will
to divide the house up) a beautiful jar with the Chinese dragon type figures on it and
(unintelligible) had to filled with plaster of paris- but it was packed with the Yates silver. And
then we found near that the remains of an old linen table cloth that he’d rolled up the rest that he
couldn’t get in and put that in the ground. The linen was just in tatters and this had been recorded
many times here locally. (unintelligible) chose to give an antique exhibit every year of old silver.
People would bring in their priceless things and just leave them. In those days it was good to do
these things and it is so sad that it isn’t now.
But they dug up these beautiful pieces and we had to draw out these things when we were
dividing things for my mother, which was a very sad fate because she could not be in a place by
herself anymore. She’d have difficulty with servants and she wouldn’t worry if one didn’t turn
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up or something. So, she is in a home now. So, we divided these things out and I did not draw
any of these things. But I decided a long time ago that family love and peace were worth more
than any personal possessions. So my sister has a jar and I think a (unintelligible) Yates bowl and
something else. We drew by lots. We said “sister we will take turns.” Whoever would want to
pick first she said “No. Shouldn’t anybody have the first pick. Draw numbers and if you pick that
number, no argument, no questions. If you wanna swap with somebody, swap. No fuss, please.”
We are gonna keep it right.
TW: Yates Snowden, a descendent of the Yates Family that you were just talking about, was a
newspaper man in Charleston and subsequently a professor of English at the University of South
Carolina and a well known, popular writer in his day. Some people credit Yates Snowden with
the introduction of the expression the “Holy City” for Charleston as a name for Charleston. Not
so much because it is holy in the religious sense or even because there are so many churches
here, as people nowadays say, but simply as a somewhat droll description of how Charlestonians
feel about their city.
HW: Worship the city.
TW: They just feel it’s something special and the Holy City sounds good. Some of my family
refugeed in Columbia and got there just in time for Sherman to burn the city—
HW: See you left the town for safety, but it wasn’t.
TW: And they went to various places in South, mostly in South Carolina. The railroad was still
running and the railroads took the women and children. The men were already away in the army
and the federal troops were advancing on the city. Fort Sumter had been under bombardment for
three-and-a-half years and the land forces were closing in on the city and people just had to get
away and many of them left. The city was damaged both by shell fire but more by fires. When
the city was captured there were not a great many people inhabiting the place. They trickled back
after the war was over and made do with what they could put together and find. There were
many hardship stories. Almost any old family could tell you hardship stories about what
grandma and grandpa had to do after the war. But somehow they hung on and for eighty or more
years Charleston was a very poor almost shabby community.
World War I brought the Navy Yard that was very busy and furnished employment. Then
after World War I there was another period of depression because cotton was not bringing in
much money. Various economic reasons long before the 1929 stock crash which brought the
depression to other regions of the country, the south in general, was undergoing depressed
economy. And of course then came the New Deal and unemployment relief and finally Pearl
Harbor and we were catapulted into World War II. That brought in a great many new people into
Charleston and that is responsible to a large extent for the growth in the community within the
last half century.
Charlestonians love Gullah stories about themselves and the example is the story about
the wallflower at the dance at the Sea Island Yacht Club on Wadmalaw Island. Somebody said,
“You wanna dance?” and she said, “What do you think I come here for, (unintelligible)?”
(laughter)