Because the Blog is My Scrapbook, Part Two: Beaufort District Collection

I had a great plan this morning.

I was going to do some cleaning.

The cleaning extravaganza stopped with the first stack of papers.  With that, I give you the brochure of the Beaufort County Public Library’s Beaufort District Collection.  The BDC people were the folks that have the obituaries for the Daniel and Agnes Mann family, and also the link for the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, which helped me find Agnes Mann’s house on Craven Street.

 

 

 

Uh-oh.  Do you see the left-hand column above that lists the Beaufort County Historical Papers that discuss historic structures in the area?  Do you see Robertville?  Roe-BARE-ville?  Back to the Lawtons of Black Swamp…

A Stroll Around the Point, George Mosse Stoney’s Other House, and More Craven Street

So I’m jumping around a bit.

There was so much history coming at us so fast, and I really wanted to get the info about the Saltus/Habersham/MANN house onto the blog.  There’s usually some sort of secondary theme to our trips.  The primary reason lately has been finding out more about the family of Martha Mann, who married Sugar’s distant cousin Thomas Bateson of Lancashire, England, then New York, then Savannah, Georgia.  

A blog post is like a page or even a chapter in a book.  An entire blog is like a never-ending manuscript, unless, of course, the blog writer DIES.  So perhaps you are searching the internet for something specific, and you land on a blog post.  It’s like when you are trying to decide if you want to choose to read a particular book, and you open the book randomly and read what you see.  Do you like it?  Are you going to read the book?  Do you just want to read that page and then walk away?  I personally have never done this.  I have to read the entire book, start to finish, and I never skip over to the end to see if I like the ending.  Ruins it for me somehow, like there’s a book police monitoring my activity.  

Perhaps you have landed on this page.  You couldn’t possibly know that I’ve been writing about the Bateson/Mann family and their connections for months.  You wouldn’t guess that enough time has lapsed for Sugar to order a cemetery marker for the Bateson family, and for it to be installed.  You might have landed here because of your search for the Saltus people or the Habersham people or the Bateson people.  

I have to jump back in time now to the post about when we viewed the Arsenal in Beaufort.  It didn’t seem right to continue with the day after we’d started with Daniel Mann stuff.  

You know that our day continued with lunch, which was a block away from the Arsenal at Lowcountry Produce.  My BabyGirl and I had had a stroll around Beaufort less than a week before, and we stopped at the City News Coffee Shop, across Carteret from a place that looked named for a produce stand, yet no one was leaving with bags of vegetables.  That was my next choice for lunch, and Sugar was game. 

What was this wonderful building?  Why, it’s the old Post Office!  Sugar choked a little here, ’cause he’s a mail carrier.

He wanted to walk over to see the George Mosse Stoney house, the other one, not the one that became the Sea Island Inn, because that one is no more.

We’re only a block away from Bay, and look at all the traffic backed up.  If you are in Beaufort and you want to go to the barrier islands, you have to cross this bridge.  Sometimes, the bridge is open for passing boats.  Oopsy for those drivers today, but photo opportunity for me.

The sea wall made of tabby.

And a few random shots thrown in at the end.

I have to say here that WordPress has changed their blogging template for new posts, and I’m a bit challenged.  I don’t want the photos stuck together in a run-on fashion, like a bad sentence gone amok.  When I add a caption, the photo re-inserted itself somewhere randomly in the post.  

Ten, or a hundred, years from now, no one will care.  But I care today, because I want these little stories preserved just so, and I’ll stamp away now and tear at my hair a bit…

Daniel & Agnes Mann’s House on Bay

We found the house!  

I have personally walked by this house more times than I could count.  When I read that the house was three stories and was downtown, I couldn’t even imagine which house it could be.  There surely was not a house that tall in downtown Beaufort.

It just goes to show that I’m not cognizant of my surroundings, and perhaps, because I’m walking along talking to Sugar, I’ve never looked up, and the street scene doesn’t allow for a long range view.  Yes, that’s it.  Exactly.

So we parked at the library on Scott Street, paid for parking, and headed over to Bay.  (Sadly, the yarn store was not open.)

We’re at the intersection of Scott and Bay on the northeast corner.

To the left is another building that seems important, but I don’t know why at this point.  It’s been remodeled into several shops.  Ah, more research.

 

The house is divided into two sections. The left side is an art gallery, and the right side an antiques shop. Yes, through the window.

 

 

 

The Verdier House is directly across the street.

The Saltus/Habersham/MANN house has some sort of high wall blocking the space between it and the Bay Street Traders.  There was a bookstore in the Bay Street Traders building (perhaps that was the name of the bookstore – Bay Street Traders – I’ll have to look it up), and we went in there many times.  Sugar and the owner determined that they were distant cousins.  It’s a children’s toy shop now.

 

This is the alleyway from Bay to the Riverfront Park. The Bay Street Traders’s building is to our left.

Across the street is the Verdier House, which is a museum now.  I never wanted to go to the Verdier House before, but now, it’s personal.

Agnes and Daniel’s house was purchased by the Belk Stores, and was remodeled, and the enormous, warehouse-like wing was added to the back of the house.  We walk along the alleyway by the Bay Street Traders which is to the right of the streetside of the Mann house.   Now we’re behind the Bay Street Traders and you can see the rooftop of the Mann house. Hiding in plain sight.

 

 

 

 

We went into the art gallery, and the lady there said that there is an artist living above the shop space, so of course, I had to take a photo of the outside.  Wow, do I want to see the upstairs and the elliptical staircase.

So I wondered if Agnes was a hotel keeper in her own house, but since she was a hotel keeper in 1880 and they didn’t get the house back from the tax collector after 1865, that’s pretty conclusive.  Still, she was a hotel keeper on Bay Street, and there was the Beaufort Hotel, and there are more little rabbit holes to explore…

Daniel Mann & the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery

You might remember that Daniel Mann was a member of the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, and that Sugar and I went to see the Arsenal.

As it looks today.

 

I found a photo in a book, “Beaufort, A History” by Alexia Jones Helsley, in the Beaufort District Collection at the Beaufort Library.  It’s a marvelous book, rich is detail and research with numerous photos from historical repositories.

 

This photo would have been taken during the time that the Mann family lived in Beaufort. However, during the Civil War when Beaufort was occupied by Union forces, all white people evacuated.  I’m going to assume, until I get definitive proof, that the Mann family sojourned to Savannah, Georgia, which is how Martha Mann met Thomas Bateson, perhaps at Christ Church Episcopal, and so the Manns were known to the community.

The Mann family returned to Beaufort after the war, because they tried to reclaim the house from the tax collector, but were unsuccessful.  House?  What house?

Why, the Saltus/Habersham house.

Oh, people, just look at this resource.  Let me know if the link doesn’t work: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/sc/sc0500/sc0502/data/sc0502data.pdf .

And off we go to Beaufort.