Cemeteries – The Distance Between Them
The Sams Family Cemetery and the Cotton Dike Cemetery: Two Burial Grounds, One Island, and What Memory Owes to Both Dataw Island: People, Places, and Legacy Both cemeteries are located…
Posts written in 2025 on that generally are more strategic in nature. They tend to identify and explain interesting gaps or connections not addressed in earlier posts.
Small boat. Large war. Quiet connections.
Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams Jr., the Etiwan, and Robert Smalls
Old newspapers sometimes open unexpected doors. A brief 1851 reference in the Charleston Mercury to “Dr. Sams” traveling aboard the steamer Etiwan seems minor at first glance. Yet that small notice links three very different stories: a Sea Island planter-physician, a working harbor steamer, and one of the Civil War’s most daring acts.