Six Miles to Charleston Read Online Free Page B

traders still flocked to Charleston to sell their products.
    The trips were long and tiresome. Horses wearied and so did their owners. Teams of six to eight horses were needed to pull the loads to market. They needed places along the route to stop and rest and receive water. These places took form in the stage taverns or inns known as “Houses” that dotted the roadways on the outskirts of towns and cities. These inns were usually designated by the distance from the appointed destination. The Four Mile House was, of course, approximately four miles from Charleston. Five Mile House, Six Mile House, Ten Mile House were likewise and so on. Eventually the inns and taverns took on other names in the following years, but the mile marker designations seemed to endure. Most still endure to this day.

    In 1819, ships such as these were becoming less of a common site as commerce slowed, and piracy still continued. Courtesy of author.
    The stagecoach taverns or houses were not what we imagine an inn or tavern to be today. The countryside inns or taverns were more social centers for the countryside. The latest news and gossip was spread by passengers to the taverns and later diffused to the people of the city. The inner-city inns and taverns served food and drink and provided lodging. These were more of what one considers an inn to be today.
    Of course being a proprietor of one, or several, of these inns could be advantageous. Traders, avoiding the higher costs of the city, may take advantage of your inns. If you were an honest proprietor, you could make a fair wage taking care of your customers. Add the care of the horses and the price goes up.
    A map of the Charleston district by Robert Mills, dated 1825, actually has several of the taverns locations denoted. Six Mile House, rebuilt after being destroyed by fire six years earlier, was a little beyond the intersection of Goose Creek Road, now Highway 52 or Rivers Avenue, and Dorchester Road. The Four Mile House was, of course, a little closer to the city.
    The Four Mile House is often, erroneously, said to be the location of the Fishers’ crimes. In the South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine (volume 19, January 1918–January 1919), it appears that Judge Henry Augustus Middleton Smith identified the Four Mile House as being upon a tract known as Discher Farm. That is true but then he states, inaccurately, that it was the scene of the incidents with the Fishers. His confusion may be due to the fact that the Four Mile House was originally called the Six Mile House in the 1700s, not the 1800s when the incidents took place in the location ran by the Fishers. The first mention of the place Smith is referring to being called the Four Mile House Tract is in a 1786 deed of sale from James Donovan to John Bowen.
    According to research, the Four Mile House was demolished in October 1969 after several efforts were made in a four-year effort by the preservation society to maintain it as a landmark. The house and its four-acre plot were purchased by the Milton F. Truluck Trust and was the remaining portion of the seventy-acre plot on which the inn was built. Edward Evans, a member of the demolition firm, was interviewed and stated that he saw no hidden compartments, trapdoors or cellars on or around the house during the demolition.
    Leaving Charleston along what was once Goose Creek Road, one can locate Discher Road and Four Mile Road. They are apparently the only reminders left of the Four Mile House and its seventy-acre tract.
    A little over a mile from that location is Five Mile Viaduct. A little over two miles from there behind Whipper Barony subdivision is an area known as Seven Mile and lastly, at the Intersection of Highway 52 (Rivers Avenue) and Remount Road is a business park known as Ten Mile Station. Although the taverns have been long gone, it is obvious that the mileage designations created back then are still used to this day.
    In overlaying and comparing