Monday, Sep. 07, 2009

‘History Detectives’ cross Sherman’s bridge

Has ETV solved a Midlands mystery? Tune in tonight

“The History Detectives,” with a lot of help from local experts, believe they have solved the mystery of the location of Sherman’s bridge to Columbia.

The Sherman’s bridge story will be one of three segments when the popular PBS history series airs at 9 tonight nationwide (including ETV stations across the state). Everyone involved has been sworn to secrecy until the episode is shown.

The bridge over the Broad River was burned to prevent Gen. William T. Sherman’s troops from entering Columbia near the end of the Civil War.

Several other bridges were built in the general area through the years, and the exact location of the Sherman bridge has been a smoldering question.

A few years ago, inquisitive riverfront resident David Brinkman sparked interest in the bridge site again after he found some large stones in his backyard.

Brinkman wondered if the stones might have been a bridge abutment. A story in The State about Sherman’s march on Columbia made him suspect Sherman had come through his yard, near the current Broad River bridge.

Brinkman did exhaustive research of his own, but he reached a point where he needed help proving or disproving his theories. So he contacted “The History Detectives.”

“This was my baby, but it grew up,” Brinkman said of the search. “For it to stand on its own, however, I had to get the experts to believe in it. ‘History Detectives’ was a way to do that.”

He wasn’t worried that he might be proven wrong. He just wanted others to look at the evidence he had gathered and help him move forward. He also thought the story would be good publicity for the state’s historical resources — the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, the S.C. Department of Archives and History and the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC.

Experts from those three organizations helped uncover evidence on the 1865 bridge location. “The History Detectives” staff also spent five weeks researching and writing the script before the four days of filming March 30-April 2 in Columbia.

Another six weeks of film editing turned more than 20 hours of footage into a segment of less than 20 minutes.

Along the way, Brinkman had some idea what the detectives would find, but he still was surprised by details in the “reveal” segment — and especially surprised at his emotional response.

“It could not have turned out better,” Brinkman said, “and I was really speechless.”

But “speechless” only works for a few seconds in the world of television, so host Elyse Luray kept prompting Brinkman to explain what it meant to him to have the mystery solved.

“Each time, the pressure to give an answer grew until it just happened and I spoke from the heart,” Brinkman said.

His emotional response was strong enough that it choked up others on the set, he said. He hasn’t seen the final version of the show, but Brinkman suspects the emotion will come through during tonight’s debut.

Reach Holleman at (803) 771-8366.

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