Excursion Up the Ashley

Excursion Up the Ashley. . , When the Reverend John Grimké Drayton returned to Magnolia after the Civil War, he found Charleston in ruins, his congregation scattered, and the Magnolia house burned. Desperate for income, the Reverend sold more than half of Magnolia's land to a phosphate mining company. In 1871, realizing the only way to save his garden was to share it, he opened Magnolia to the public during the spring bloom., Roughly half of the men and women formerly enslaved at Magnolia remained on the plantation after Emancipation. They earned minimal wages as garden workers, greeters, and guides for the tourists who came up the Ashley by steamship and spent a few hours marveling at the azaleas, camellias, and cypress trees in the gardens before returning to Charleston., The trip from Charleston harbor took about two hours each way. Many of these first visitors were Northerners, some of whom came to satisfy their curiosity about the defeated Confederacy. When automobiles became the preferred mode of transit in the early 20th century, the journey became faster and easier, and the steamships ceased to operate.