TALL TALES

[Richie]

I don't want to hinder your plans.

Our plans involve us three Jake. Molly also wont want us to split. We were a gang in crime we will remain one in a lawful lifestyle. You can run your forge on our property and help out with plantation security when you have time. How does that sound Jake. We will make a new and honest life this time in wealth not poverty. The Rev had been trying to persuade his good friend since the voyage began 2 months earlier. Now a day out from Charleston the pastor was confident Jake wanted the three to stay together. He planned to send for his family once he was settled and then his life would be complete.

 

[Grier]

"No worries Rev, I'm with you for the long haul.
It'd be great if I could eventually bring my family out. I could sell my house and forge to my cousin at cost to be paid as an annuity to me and my family from the forge's profits. He'd love that.

 

[Richie]

No Jake you wont be selling your house, not when the Marshall Bell Company becomes as popular and profitable as I believe it will. You will instead be adding a storey to your house as your family grows.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR IF OUR LORD 1750: A clear day dawned the next morning as the Charleston Queen sailed into her home port, then docked. Shortly after the 35 passengers including new siblings Walter and Rose Lowell plus Edward Marshall, disembarked. An hour later after having passed customs the trio of friends were sitting in a carriage taking them into the bustling town of Charleston, originally named Charles Town by the early colonists, in honor of King Charles II. In 1680 Charleston became the first permanent white settlement in South Carolina.
A mixture of emotions overcame the Rev as the carriage clattered along the hard road, mostly relief, as for the first time in three years he felt free...

 

[Richie]

Terry do we wait for Jessica to return or continue with the story.

Jess (Molly) we want you back on the story.

 

[Grier]

I'm happy to carry on Craig.
A collaborative story.

I like your recent style of painting broad swathes of time in your writing. I'm happy to lean that way too, unless some turgid event happens. No worries about the American Civil War that started about 186. Still, there is always some unrest the story's times.
For the sake of historical input what year do you reckon it is now in the story. I may have missed it. Early, mid or late 18th century. I feel early to mid 18th Cen like 1738?
Google can then tell us more about outpr olace and time. Likewise my female shrill AI on my grunty new lap top. She goes on and on and I have trouble shutting her off. Seamless my ass!
You perhaps play Molly in maybe the chance Jessica returns. A forlorn hope? I hope not. Still, you've played her Molly very well before.
I like playing anyone as you know but I've learnt my lesson on throwing in too many characters, which is why I played Jake's big family aloofly like Jake referring to his wife, precosios! daugher

 

[Richie]

I feel early to mid 18th Cen like 1738?

Say the time frame is now 1755 with both the Lowell Cotton Co and Marshall Forge thriving. The main house is partly completed. There is a period to come of calm before the storm and the chaos of the War of Independence.

 

[Richie]

The three had gotten used to calling each other by their aliases, yet there had been one tricky time when the Rev used Jake and in front of company. But Jake, who is a big, lumbering kind of man, has a quick mind and replied that Jake was a nick name that his good friend used occasionally.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1750-53: The newly established Lowell Cotton Co struggled in its first two due to a succession of summer heatwaves that hit South Carolina, causing whole crops to wither, become dank and therefore unfit to sell due to excessive heat stress. The Rev/Walter was of a mind to accept he and Molly/Rose had made a mistake going into cotton production. The easiest part of the new business was finding indenture labor, made up of settlers and mostly new immigrants, mainly Irish, itching to get a foothold in a new land. He persevered and he had his first productive crop the following year. There were rumblings among fellow growers, Charleston big wigs and hard line slavers over this policy of not using black labor to work the cotton fields. When confronted about this by the Mayor the Rev/Walter told him that the company did indeed use slave labor, 50 men, women and children from the Caribbean were employed as house servants, gardeners and for cotton ginning plus some worked for the Marshall Forge. What he did not tell the mayor was that after 12 months they were all free men and women.
All the blacks chose to stay and work as free men and women to help build the company. They accepted their spartan accommodation as they knew as the company grew so would their living conditions....

 

[Grier]

At least Jake's Forge was bringing in money that Jake was happy to put the profits into Rev's safe box. His staff had grown with even some of the slave owners hearing of his good work. Jake asked Molly to do the books with her own office in our House. She was good and did all the other books too, along with running the household with its staff.
Jake even enlisted the unused cotton pickers to help out with the menial tasks about his forge, mostly. A few strong blacks took his interest as having intelligence. He taught them some basic smithing tasks which they did very well at and so they worked their way up the skills ladder. Two more apprentices thought Jake. They were good and Eddy/Jake paid them good wages and treated them as equals, except when he had to the boss. Eddy asked Walter/ Rev if he could hang onto them to further bolster his Forge team after the drought?
Some of the Irish men drifted away but with the rest, Jake had them building a big stable and still paid their wages.
Also the Irish built a small Catholic church which peaked the blacks' curiosity, eventually singing along with the service from outside with beautiful resonate voices. The church was extended after that with help and costs from everyone able and with masses said by a trainee Irish priest (a seminarian), just a lad really, but the Irish loved him. "Ee's ur prast, nay banes aboot tit."
Eddy was amused the Blacks were developing Irish accents. He thought he was too!
Also work was done on the outhouses hosting the workers. Molly suggested a communal kitchen with black female cooks and helpers, with even an eating hall. The Irish and the blacks got on very well which was nice to see.
Those poor Irish had had hard lives with Ireland's great Potato famine still starving people in 1750. The English didn't give a hoot. Skeletal Mothers and Children were eating grass with green stained lips they told the blacks. "That's why we send a Godly portion of our wages to our families in Ireland, and one day we'll bring our families over." said Pat the Irish spokesman and overseer."
"Amen to that" cheered the Irish, Blacks and Jake.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1756: The day came when Lowell Manor was finally completed.
Walter, Rose and Eddie looked in awe at the opulent 15 room mansion, with its imposing entryway of massive doric columns that Rose had requested. The Manor house was the epitome of an exclusive lifestyle that only seven years ago the impoverished pastor had only dreamed of owning. Its sweeping staircase, polished hard wood floorboards, high ceilings, resplendent furnishings will give those that pass through its large oak door a sense of majesty and splendor that is fit for only the elite.

 

[Richie]

Only Rose and Walter moved into their manor house Jake, now as Eddie was happy to continue residing in his small but comfortable cottage.

That year they had a good season with the cotton picked in Fall, ginned and sent off to market. Walter wondered whether life could be any better when his question was answered by the meeting of a local lady Eliza Wentworth, a widow 10 years his junior who lived just outside of Charleston. The two began seeing each other and their relationship blossomed. Walter resolved himself that he was finally in love and six months later he proposed to Eliza on bended knee and she accepted.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1757: The wedding was held in the small church Eddie and a his Irish workers had built on company land, with a pair of his own forged church bells. After the glittering reception which was held in the largest room in the house, Eliza formerly moved into Lowell Manor as the new mistress.

As was the English custom of the time the new Mistress of the Manor was introduced to the main servants before officially taking her place. First up was Joshua the butler, a large black man with greying hair and a huge smile that lit up his face. Next the Irish cook Maire O'Donnell a ruddy faced middle aged woman who had fled Ireland five years earlier as a result of the devastating Potato Famine, along with her husband Charlie the head gardener of the manor. Then came Celia, Joshuas wife and Roses personal maid, Leticia, Celias daughter and Elizas personal maid and lastly Jonathan, Walters personal valet.

 

[Grier]

Talking to Pat the Irish overseer Eddy saw how hard it was to pick cotton. He tried making tools to make their work easier but after several failures he gave up, until he had a simple idea. Tough gloves with good grip. That idea took off and Eddy had a number of Black women making gloves of all sizes for the cotton pickers. That worked well and production increased by about 20% which greatly pleased Rev and Molly doing the books.

Jake also tinkered with making clocks which wasn't easy. Making locks was much easier and he established a good reputation and market for them in Charleston.

Jake, now with the money, wrote to his wife for her and their immediate family to sail to Chareston to join him. He'd have to extend his cottage to house their children.
His nephew was still keen to buy his old forge in Romley. Jake didn't want to return to England.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1759 Eddie did extend the cottage. Shortly after he met the ship that carried his wife Louisa and their three children, Robert,15, his two siblings Milicent 13, and 11 year old Adeline then transported them to their new home at Summerville Town just outside of Charleston. Louisa fell in love with it and the children were of the opinion it was palatial in comparison to their former homes, firstly in Ireland then England.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1760: Walter was grateful to Eddie for coming up with the idea of the gloves for his pickers and ginners as both jobs were time consuming specially ginning, that is separating the cotton from its seed. This laborious task was to become a thing of the past when the automatic gin device was invented the following year. Walter ordered 20 on the spot at 25 Pounds a piece after seeing them in operation. The negress ginners, Rose too as she sometimes helped the girls in order to speed up the process, were very thankful as they no longer had to gin by hand. So was Walter as the shorter the ginning time the earlier he could have his produce at market. Not all cotton was sold as some was needed to loom clothes for the Negro workers.

the new automatic cotton gin.

 

[Richie]

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1770: The cotton business had been good to Walter and Rose over the intervening years. They had almost doubled their original crop and doubled their profit to be now the second largest cotton plantation in this part of South Carolina. Walter and Eliza were now the proud parents of a 10 year old daughter, Lucinda and 5 year old son, Jake. Rose too had married, the plantation foreman, a tall, jovial Irishman. She was pregnant with their first child..
However, political storm clouds were gathering with tensions and disputes arising between the colonial power Britain and the American colonists over a variety of rights and tax issues, culminating with the Boston Massacre in 1770 after the British military occupation of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This only strengthened further American Patriot desire for independence from Britain.

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1773. Things came to a head when on December 16, 1773 American patriots disguised as natives and under cover of darkness crept aboard three anchored ships belonging to the British East India Co, then deposited most of their cargo of tea into Boston Harbor. The incident became known as the Boston Tea Party and was the precursor to the American Revolutionary War.

 

[Grier]

Hi Craig,
Previously I had named Jake's wife as Julia. No one else though to keep it simple for Jessica.
I also had envisioned a much larger family.

Nevermind, but I'll stick with Julia's name. I named her after an old very charismatic and pretty girlfriend.

How about this drawing of Charleston:


Now in his late fifties Eddy was still fit and strong running his Forge with his son Robert. His youngest daughter Adeline had married and had three sons to her Lawyer husband George. They lived in Charleston town in a nice home but visited often. Tom had employed him several times over legal issues. So had Eddy and Molly. Our inner family family Lawyer.

Eddy's eldest daughter, the precocious Milicent, still lived in Eddy and Julia's large cottage and was very active politically pushing the Independence agenda. She had many suitors but was not interested in marriage preferring to push on Social issues. She like her father was anti-slaving and that got her in hot water with her outspoken views. Once being pushed off her soap box. She then punched the man senseless!
A real firebrand, she was strong physically like her father and a bit pretty. She didn't care much for appearances and rode a big brown Stallion.
Eddy didn't mind her strong convictions, but Julia often asked, "is she really my child!?"
" I don't want to be bound as a wife" Milli often said, even to her own mother Julia.

 

[Richie]

Terry if you think I am going a bit too quickly, no probs as happy to delete past few posts. When I woke I was in a imaginative mood.

Previously I had named Jake's wife as Julia.

Sorry mate I missed that. You change whatever you want regarding your family. Just trying to move along the story.

I have changed the Revs alias Thomas to Walter. Molly to Rose.

 

[Grier]

Terry if you think I am going a bit too quickly, no probs as happy to delete past few posts. When I woke I was in a imaginative mood.

Sorry mate I missed that. You change whatever you want regarding your family. Just trying to move along the story.

I have changed the Revs alias Thomas to Walter. Molly to Rose.

I'm ok with the pace so far Craig but think we should slow down for the war of Independence. I see you've done your homework on it which is great. I think Eddy would sign up but leave his son Robbie to run the forge.
Walter and Rose, ok, but why?
My old mate's Dad was a Walter and everyone called him Wally.

ps, I bought a brand new motor bike today but will have to wait 2 weeks to pick it up. I went for a long test ride today and got lost in suburbia for a while. Then a blast up the biggest hill in Perth. No issues there.