JULY 7
1771
Henry Laurens left Charlestown with his three sons for Philadelphia, on his way to England to establish his children in school.
1776-Deaths
Sabina Ellis Ramsay died, age nineteen, leaving Dr. David Ramsay widowed for the first time.
1781
The pardoned Charlestown prisoners arrived in Philadelphia from St. Augustine, where they had been held by British authorities. Charles Pinckney took a room at Mrs. McFunn’s boardinghouse on Second Street with Arthur Middleton.
1849-Religion. Slavery
A riot broke out at the Work House – the Negro Jail – just around the corner, and thirty prisoners escaped. They were quickly recaptured, tried, and imprisoned. One of them, Nicholas was hanged.
1884
During his national speaking tour, Oscar Wilde appeared at the Academy of Music.
Oscar Wilde, 1882
Academy of Music, Market and King Street (present site of the Riveria Theater.
1911
The last hanging in South Carolina took place at Charleston’s Old City Jail on Magazine Street of Daniel Duncan, a Black man who was accused of killing Max Lubelsky on King Street.
Lubelsky had been killed a year before, in the summer of 1910, and a few weeks later his widow was attacked. A mob grabbed a nearby Black man named Daniel Duncan and Duncan was accused of both acts. Many thought that Duncan was innocent, but since African Americans were not allowed on juries in those days and he was pronounced guilty within less than an hour, and was sentenced to hang.
The day of his execution, Duncan gave a note to his pastor, Rev. L. Ruffin Nichols of Mother Emanuel AME Church. It said in part, “Tell them that I am at rest, because I am innocent and the Lord knows that I am today.”
Read the entire story in my book SOUTH CAROLINA KILLERS.
