Friday letters: Descendants of slave, owner will gather this weekend

My great grandfather, Townsend Mikell, fought in the Confederacy and was captured by Union troops and spent time with several other sons of Edisto in a Union prison camp. His friend and former slave, James Giles, served alongside him during the war. James received a Confederate pension, and his name is on the Edisto Confederate monument. The two men remained friends all their lives.

After the war, Townsend encouraged James to start a business in Charleston because, although a plantation owner, Townsend was penniless and could not pay James. James raised produce and chickens and sold them door to door in Charleston. My mother, who grew up on Broad Street, remembers James Giles (wearing her grandfather’s suits) coming to the house weekly to sell to them. This is a remarkable story of a man who went from slave to Confederate soldier to Charleston entrepreneur but remained friends all his life with the white boy with whom he’d grown up. Some of this is documented in Edisto history books, some in Townsend Mikell’s memoirs, and their photos are on the wall of the Edisto Island Museum.

The descendants of James Giles will be having a reunion on Edisto Island on Saturday and will be spending time on Townsend’s plantation with some of the Mikell descendants.

In light of the massacre at Mother Emanuel A.M.E., the subsequent grief and the conflict over the Confederate flag, I thought that this would be of interest to many.

Columbia

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 7:35 PM.