Beaufort

Yesterday, we drove 70 miles down to Beaufort. Unlike Charleston, Beaufort was once held by the Spanish and then French before it became an English colony. During the Revolutionary War many of the residents were Tories and fled to Barbados and help establish Barbados as a British colony instead of Spanish.

Like Charleston, Beaufort had beautiful houses, nice shops, horse carriage rides and a "Bay Street". It also was a port town with a nice bay for trade.

We parked in front of the Episcopal

Church which dated back to the 1700s. During the Revolutionary War, the British used it as a stable and during the Civil War it was a hospital. after both conflicts the interior of the church had to be gutted and rebuilt.

In the graveyard were graves from Civil War, Revolutionary War (American and British and Confederate). The Sons of the Confederacy placed flags on the graves on Confederate Memorial Day (May 10).

Before we drove into the downtown area of Beaufort, we stopped at the National Cemetary which had veterans from all the wars from Revolutionary to present wars. Interesting is that we could see sections from the Civil War where whole platoons from Illinois or South Dakota or other states were buried. If they did not know the name the grave was marked "unknown". If the soldier was confederate it was marked "unknown" but it said CSA (we guess "Confederate States Army")

In tribute to the first all black regimate the graves from Shaw's command were buried together with a nice marker explaining who they were. (Their story is shown in the movie "Glory"). Their bodies were found in a shallow grave on the beach on James Island which overlooks Charleston.

Unknown WWI and WWII vets had smaller square markers with just numbers. These were put to mark the graves with the hope that some day the bodies would be identified. As we read some of the headstones on the veterans we saw a glimpse in to the men. "Gone Fishing", "Deep Sea Diving" "Resting in Peace" "Loved by everyone" were enscribed in stone.