The Women Behind Summerville's Squirrel Inn and a Resident Writer's Story

Famous author and diplomat Paul Hyde Bonner wintered as a guest at Summerville's Squirrel Inn. He came to own the house at 127 West 5th South Street in 1954 and lived there for ten years. He wrote the best-selling novel called The Life of Llewellyn Jones while a town resident. It was released for publication on January 1, 1960.

The main character of Bonner's story is F. Townsend Britton, a career diplomat of fifty-odd years who carefully charts his disappearance from an authoritative, rich wife to become the widowed, retired, middle-western Liewellyn Jones, a good enough impersonation that fools everyone except Terry, a girl he meets in Cincinnati. To escape further entanglements, Jones retreats to a town in South Carolina where there is an establishment called Redbird Inn. He begins to sketch as a pastime before he fully realizes his serious ambition to become an artist. Europe is one step further from Terry, and in Paris, he finds the ideal house and a perfect maid who is also the model and the mistress to best serve his talent. His bold naturalism attracts the attention of a leading dealer and collectors, among them his wife. She retracts her vindictive threat to expose him, and finally, he is secure in the life he has made for himself, which now allows room for Terry.

The South Carolina town in Bonner's story was inspired by Summerville, and the Redbird Inn was a reflection of the well-known Squirrel Inn he wintered at as a guest.

Squirrel Inn opened around 1912. It became known for its hospitable atmosphere and distinctive cuisine. In 1941, Jeanne and Eugene Sutter bought the inn. Under their ownership, it received a nomination in 1957 for being one of the top forty rural inns in the nation. It continued to be a noted inn with fine cuisine until 1966. The building was renovated for condominiums in 1979.

Helen and Raven Lewis had the Squirrel Inn built, but Helen is seldom mentioned with her sister Raven as part-owner of the inn. In fact, the two sisters were inseparable. Lifelong companions, Helen having never married left her entire estate upon her death to Raven.

Helen (1852-1933) and Raven (1862-1940) were the daughters of John Williams and Anna Raven Vander Horst Lewis, a prominent Charleston family with a rich history who lived at 28 Chapel Street in Charleston. They were the great-great-granddaughters of New Yorker Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; great-granddaughters of Arnoldus Vander Horst, governor of South Carolina (1794–95); and granddaughters of Elias Vander Horst, a signer of the South Carolina Nullification Ordinance of 1832. They spent their cushy childhood dividing their time between the home in Charleston and their father's rice plantation, Ravenswood, on the Ashepoo River. Their fairy tale life would end.

28 Chapel Street

The Civil War erupted and Charleston was in the Union's crosshairs. The family remained in the city and vicinity until January 1865. With many of the buildings in ruins, they fled to Columbia with her mother, grandmother, two sisters, a brother, and a faithful family servant. When General Sherman's troops arrived in Columbia, they witnessed the burning of the city. Their mother, advanced in pregnancy, died there after giving birth to a son. The grandmother, Anne Elliott Morris Vander Horst, returned to Charleston to seek aid, leaving the children in the care of a black woman. Fearing the constant danger in Columbia, the woman took the children to Aiken, where they had cousins. According to family tradition, they made the journey on foot. During the 1890s, Helen and Raven established residence in Asheville, where they taught music and ran a boarding house.

Portrait courtesy of Clint McCrory-Mountain Xpress

The more famous of the two, tall and stately Helen was a force to be reckoned with during the 1890s in the women's suffrage movement in the South and organized the first woman's rights association in North Carolina. While in Asheville during the year 1894, she sponsored a public meeting on women suffrage, the first-ever held in the state. An equal suffrage association was organized with Helen as president.

The contemporary thinking of the day "framed women as intellectually unsuited to vote, and when not questioning women's smarts, opponents of the suffrage movement pointed to the unruly nature of politics itself as a reason to keep women clear of the process." Helen spoke out against such rebuttals and championed for equal consideration regarding women's pay. Ashville's Daily Citizen was so impressed by one of her addresses, it wrote in November of 1894: "It is very seldom that audiences in Asheville are addressed by a lady as 'fellow citizens.' That was the beginning of Miss Lewis' address and it sounded well." Her crusading zeal for woman's rights set its sights on other states. In 1895, she was part of a group of women who toured South Carolina on behalf of "votes-for-women."

Her public persona did not go unnoticed. In 1896, she was surprised to learn that she had received five votes for the office of representative in the U.S. Congress even though she was not a candidate for that or any other post. The votes came from an unlikely source. Five men, for reasons undisclosed, voted for her, which was unheard of in the 1800s. Three years later, she announced her candidacy for the position of superintendent of waterworks for the city of Asheville. She became the first woman in North Carolina to seek an elective office.

Helen and Raven gave up their home in Asheville and returned to Charleston in 1906. In 1912, they established the Squirrel Inn in nearby Summerville at the height of its Golden Age. In 1923, Helen bought a house in Asheville. The sisters spent their summers there during the next decade.

A contemporary described Helen Morris Lewis as a woman of "queenly beauty and grace." She was an accomplished public speaker who often received standing ovations from her audiences. She was also a talented musician and a writer who procured local notoriety from her often published articles in the Charleston News and Courier.

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An Early 1900s Mount Pleasant Horticultural Attraction--Pierates Cruze and an Epic Story

Interwoven into the early history of Mount Pleasant is a story similar to Shakespeare's epic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. The interchangeable components include two star-crossed young lovers and an age-old feud between two powerful families that erupts into bloodshed.

The story takes place in Charleston's early-1700s. It is about the son and daughter of two prominent landowners who owned large tracts of land across the Cooper River beyond Hog Island in the area known as North Point. Unknown to their feuding parents, they fell in love and for months met secretly in an oak grove along the shores of Charleston's harbor. When their parents discovered they had secretly married, the couple fled and joined a band of pirates on Sullivan's Island. Apparently they didn't read the book Never Trust a Pirate.

The pirate captain became enamored with the young woman and hatched a diabolical plan. He instructed the crew to kill her husband. Learning of her lover's fate, she fled to their secret grove. Determined to have her, the captain followed. Overcome by hopelessness, she buried a knife into her own chest. As she lay dying, her husband, having averted the malicious plot, arrived. Confrontation was forthcoming. Losing a duel with the pirate, he expired in his wife's arms. The grieving fathers of the young couple erected a stone marker as a memorial.

The story obviously mentions no names. However, after examining Mount Pleasant's history and matching various components of the story to specific names and places, I propose the following conclusion. George Haddrell and William Hort fit the bill of the feuding landowners and parents of the two doomed lovers of this tragic tale.

George Haddrell was a prominent name in Mount Pleasant's early history. He owned 500 acres. It included most of the area beginning at Shem Creek and bordered today's Highway 703 to Center Street.

William Hort was an early settler from Barbados and owned land along the harbor waterfront beginning near Alhambra Hall and extended to Cove Inlet. In 1775, he wrote in his diary that his daughter, Elizabeth Haddrell Hort, was born in the house of Shem Creek tavern owner Jonathan Scott. Ironically, George Haddrell owned the house. Elizabeth interestingly was identified with both names by her father, Haddrell and Hort. As stated in the story, the couple would secretly rendevous at an oak grove. It just so happens a stand of oak tree's on the land owned by Hort became known as Hort's Grove. A stone marker called Hort's Pillar by the locals once stood near today's Pierates Cruze, the memorial erected by the parents.

The pirate captain could possibly have been Charles Vane or Calico Jack Rackham, but can not be said with any certainty, just a hunch. Their Charleston connections make them a likely consideration and both had a reputation that could match the individual in the story. In August of 1718, Vane raided Charleston and took eight ships. William Rhett pursued him but never caught him. Calico Jack was known for his affair with Charleston's pirate native, Anne Bonny.

Deep in Mount Pleasant's Old Village just southeast of Alhambra Hall on the land once owned by William Hort is the residential borough of Pierates Cruze. The name Pierates is obviously a play on the word pirates and Cruze for the word cruise. In the late 1920s, this five-acre parcel was home to Massachusetts transplants Dana and Laird Osgood. A small moat with an imitation drawbridge encircled the house. The property had something of a pirate's den feel.

The Osgoods erected a very substantial concrete seawall along the entire length of the property that withstood numerous storms and several hurricanes. In the 1930s, the owners transformed the grounds into seven spectacular gardens. They were named: The Sea Garden, Wind'll Blow, Little Wheel, Twyfy's Garden, Eight Bells, Wiggins Walk, and Amalfi. There was an abundant variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees, including thousands of prize-winning camellias and azaleas.

The Osgoods opened Pierates Cruze to the public on February 20, 1943. A popular tourist attraction in the 1940s and 1950s, entrance fees were $2 from December to May and $1 the rest of the year. Ads for the attraction included a photo of the Amalfi garden. Plants with dark green, stiff, dagger-like leaves projecting from thick, trunk-like stems called Spanish bayonet lined a walkway along the harbor that ended in a Spanish mission-style bell wall. "See the Spires of Charleston against the sunset across the wine-dark sea," the ads raved. A brochure stated: "More than one hundred varieties of camellias bloom luxuriantly here; as do flowering shrubs, wisteria, azaleas, roses, tulips, pansies and violets." In 1947, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society awarded Mrs. Osgood the prestigious "Gold Medal" for the development of new varieties of hybrid camellias.

The gardens were closed in 1959. The land was sold and subdivided with each lot priced at $10,000. There are homes of varying styles on the property now. Some of the old oak trees still overshadow the quiet enclave, but the original house and moat are gone. No trace of the seven gardens survived the reckoning of residential expansion except for Amalfi's original garden columns, which remain on the seawall and are reminiscent of the Italian mission structure that stood there. The belled wall was no match for Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It was completely destroyed. However, the property owners reconstructed the wall from the original bricks and replaced the bells with ship bells in a tribute to Pierates Cruze's wild history.

The Osgoods celebrated Charleston's pirate past and named their garden estate in recognition of it with a twist. Perhaps, they knew of the tragic love story that haunts Mount Pleasant's moss-covered trees along with the secret grove and the pillar. Pierates Cruze has faded into the sunset of history like the infamous pirates that prowled Charleston's surrounding waters. However, hints of its existence remain to mystify curious seekers of what was before. If you would like to learn more about the Old Village of North Point bounded by Shem Creek, Simmons Street, Cove Inlet, and the Harbor, Mount Pleasant offers a tour that explores several of the historical sites located within its original settlements. The pirate story is courtesy legends and lore.

EVITA, now showing at South of Broadway Theatre, well worth your time to check out

My favorite all-time musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber is hands-down, no question about it, The Phantom of the Opera. The first time I had any exposure to the story of Eva Duarte was in the 1996 film release, where Madonna played the real-life, opportunistic lady of Argentina, using the designation "lady" loosely. According to the upper-class Argentinians of the day and the British royals, she was anything but ladylike. They had a few chosen words of the unflattering kind when referring to her. However, the definition of a lady can be subjective when you consider the behavior of some royals.

Evita the musical undeniably bears the mark of English composer Andrew Lloyd Weber with lyrics by Tim Rice. The stage production opened on June 21, 1978 at the Prince Edward Theatre in London with Elaine Paige in the title role and Joss Ackland as her formidable Juan Peron and then at the Broadway Theatre on September 25, 1979, where it had 1,567 performances. Harold Price was the director. It won an impressive seven 1980 Tony Awards including Best Book, Best Score and Best Musical of the year. In 1981, the Evita cast recording was awarded a Grammy Award.

Set in Buenos Aires between 1934-1952, the musical follows Eva Duarte on her journey from a poor, fatherless home, to an ambitious actress, to becoming the most powerful woman in Latin America. She left a trail of tears along the way, from dumping singer-songwriter Magaldi to giving Colonel Juan Peron's mistress the boot. In the meantime, Juan Peron was leaving a trail of bodies on his rise to power as depicted in a game of musical chairs, ending in an opponent's demise. Eva organizes rallies for the impoverished and gives them hope for a better future while Peron and his allies plot to dispose of anyone who stands in their way. For a short time, Argentina was hers, and the rest is history.

Director David McLaughlin, assisted by Chrissy Eliason, thoroughly prepared his well-chosen group of local actors for the task of winning over the audience. The large cast's finely tuned choreographed movements flowed as one, and when they sang all together, their vocals were harmonious and powerful.

Carlos Nieto was a dominant presence on the set as the antagonist Che, who seems to be a spokesman of the people. The character's attire was reminiscent of a Latin American revolutionary, and Carlos sings his words with the passion of a non-conforming rebel. He addressed the audience like they were a part of the play. His direct eye contact was engaging.

Elissa Horrell elegantly filled the role of the musical's protagonist, Eva, and shined in the play's signature piece "Don't Cry for Me Argentina." Elissa was paired with Steve Tarnow as the ambitious Juan Peron. Steve had command of his crisp vocals and strutted Peron's military-like demeanor.

Joshua Broome demonstrated his vocal abilities as Magaldi in his rendition of "On This Night of a Thousand Stars." As Peron's mistress, Olivia Gainey once again showed acting and singing are second nature for her as she performed "Another Suitcase in Another Hall."

The main characters did double duty in minor roles with talented supporting cast Sophie Marie Stanley, Savannah Cash, Andrea Catangay, Rusty Cooler, Michael James Daly, Anna Lin, Kenneth Mueller, Latanya Mueller, Dylan Rowe, Joseph Spiotta, and Robert Venne. Lighting handled by Ernie Eliason and set art by Robert Venne.

South of Broadway Theatre is a small venue and seating is very intimate. If you sit in the front row, you can literally reach out and touch the actors. In addition, you may experience temporary whiplash following the action from left to right. There were a couple of glitches with the sound, and a few times the spotlight was slightly off target, likely due to the quickly changing positions of the actors. However, I am sure with these minor mishaps addressed, Evita will be near perfect.

David McLaughlin's Evita is entertaining and compelling. The opening scene is dark and spellbinding, elevating your expectations for what will follow, and it does not let you down. Follow the progression of the characters closely, especially Eva, there are a few symbolisms for you to catch. If you are a fan of live theater, Evita is well worth your time to check out.

Purchase tickets.

Charleston Treasure Hunts-Join the Chase and Test Your Problem-Solving Skills

A wall at 8 Legare Street, the Sword Gate house

Charleston and the surrounding Lowcountry is full of legends of lost treasures. $63,000 in gold and silver is believed to be buried on or near the Hampton Plantation. Drayton Hall was occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War. Supposedly, a few buried treasures are in the area. A large quantity of Spanish treasure is thought to be buried near Cape Romain. The notorious pirate Blackbeard, may have stored treasures on Daufuskie Island. Pirate Stede Bonnet, who was hanged in Charleston, is said to have buried treasure along the banks of the Santee River.

However, hunters beware, packing a sense of humor along with your snacks is a must as seen in the following example. An old treasure chest brimming with what looked like silver and gold coins was unearthed by a jubilant woman with a metal detector on a Hilton Head beach. Surprise. They turned out to be toy coins. Nonetheless, treasure hunting can be fun and rewarding, whether the pursuit is authentic or invented for entertainment.

If you can solve this French riddle, you could win a Golden Owl statuette worth half a million dollars. Sur la trace de la chouette d'or (On the trail of the golden owl) is the title of the book created by Max Valentin, Régis Hauser's pseudonym name. It contains eleven double-page spreads, each of which is a discrete riddle composed of a title, text, and a painting. Each pair of pages is numbered with a wavelength associated with its colors, and with an owl face.

Michel Becker painted the eleven paintings for the book and also created the replica owl made of bronze, which was buried somewhere in France by Hauser on the night of April 23, 1993. Solve the treasure hunt, unearth the replica, and exchange it for the real Golden Owl made of gold and silver with a hundred diamonds embedded in the owl's face. 

The treasure hunt was launched on May 15, 1993. As of the present, it has not been solved. It is the second longest-running contest in the armchair treasure hunt genre. Of course, you will have to go to France to participate. I included this because of Charleston's strong French Huguenot history.

It is similar to the treasure hunt in the United States created by Byron Preiss in his 1982 book called The Secret, A Treasure Hunt, which also has not been completely solved.

In 1982, Byron Preiss buried twelve treasure boxes in secret locations in twelve cities. He commissioned twelve mesmerizing paintings to be created containing clues for the seeker to decipher. The book was authored by Sean Kelly and Ted Mann and illustrated by John Jude Palencar. The ornate boxes were hidden on city property, in local parks, and possibly in your own backyard. Ironically, Charleston is believed to be one of those chosen cities.

Each box contains one of twelve keys. If you solve the clues and retrieve the key, the prize you receive is the jewel accompanying the artwork. You are instructed to send the key to the author and in exchange, he would send you the valuable treasure. There is over ten thousand dollars worth of precious jewels. So far, three have been discovered in Chicago, Cleveland, and the most recent, Boston. Nine remain undiscovered.

Strangely, both Regis Hauser and Byron Preiss were killed in car accidents. Hauser left the solutions to his treasure hunt inside a sealed envelope, which are now held by his lawyer. Preiss kept no record of the treasure boxes' exact locations, but his estate has chosen to honor his endeavor.

Charleston is believed to be one of Preiss's chosen cities. One of the mysterious paintings unmistakably contains a map of what looks like an outline of the Charleston peninsula and surrounding landscape. Josh Gates of "Expedition Unknown" came to the Holy City in May of 2019 to film a dig that would take place near Charleston's Defenders of the Confederacy monument. It was believed the clues had been solved and pointed to that location, but the attempt failed to reveal the ornate treasure box. Can you solve it?

You have the opportunity to participate in another Charleston treasure hunt. Blue Steel Promotions, On Purpose Adventures, and On Purpose Games have teamed together to sponsor the biggest and most epic scavenger hunt the Holy City has ever seen called The Hunt: Charleston. It will take place Saturday, November 13, 2021, from 10 am – 9 pm. The grand prize is an all-inclusive trip to Cancun for 5 days. Tickets are $85 - $150.

Teams of four will be pitted against the clock, the elements, and the competition to accrue points and solve clues to be the first to find the buried treasure. They will face tasks and challenges of all types including physical activities like kayaking, skateboarding, handstands, human pyramids, and wheelbarrow races. Other activities will be solving puzzles, riddles, anagrams, brainteasers, decipher cryptic codes, augmented reality, and more.

There will be a Welcome Party Friday night where you'll pick up your "welcome packet", meet and mingle with fellow competitors while enjoying drink and food specials. The weekend will wrap up with an After Party at a restaurant/bar close by the treasure site. Location will be revealed at the finish of the hunt. For full details, go to The Hunt: Charleston.

In addition, I invite you to be the first to solve the accompanying clues with a prize on the completion of a successful journey. It won't be an expensive ruby, but it does have monetary value. If you love the Holy City, it will be an enjoyable hand-son quest to some of its most cherished sights where you must collect vital information by way of challenging clues needed to take you all the way to the secret location. A capsule is buried just underneath the surface with instructions inside.

Check out my recently released book on Amazon, Charleston and Summerville, South Carolina, Soak in the History-Bask in the Amenities. It talks about "the chilling ghostly drink," the "telling ball," and much more. Enjoy Charleston and have fun, my friends.

More Charleston Treasure Hunts:

Charleston Ghost Tour Scavenger Hunt: A Walk on Charleston’s Dark Side

Charleston Scavenger Hunt: Charleston Treasures

Charleston Bar Crawl Scavenger Hunt: Charleston Chase Bar Crawl