Six new signs in the Audubon Center and Sanctuary in the Francis Beidler Forest in Dorchester County tell the story of how enslaved people hid in Four Hole Swamp before they escaped to freedom in northern states.
Thanks to that history, Four Hole Swamp has been recognized as one of nine sites in South Carolina on the National Park Service’s (NPS) Network to Freedom Program, which honors, preserves and promotes the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight.
“The stories of the men and women who sought freedom from enslavement among these very trees are powerful reminders of the strength and resilience of the human spirit, even under the most challenging circumstances,” Rep. James E. Clyburn, R-S.C., said recently during an event at Beidler. “I commend Audubon South Carolina’s commitment to telling a complete history of the lands it protects.”
Audubon South Carolina sought NPS designation for the site after research revealed freedom seekers used the area around the Beidler Forest sanctuary as a refuge from slavery leading up to the Civil War.
An important part of that history focuses on James Matthews, who fled bondage on a plantation near Four Holes Swamp where he was born and who took refuge in the swamp before finally escaping North.
He later recounted his experiences anonymously in a memoir entitled “Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave.” Clemson University English professor Dr. Susanna Ashton connected Matthews to the anonymous narrative.
Audubon installed the six new interpretive signs along the boardwalk that winds through the forest earlier this year in a partnership that included the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston and Clemson University. Funding came from an NPS grant from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).
Four Holes Swamp is a blackwater swamp that rises in Calhoun County and flows for 62 miles to the confluence of the Edisto River. The watershed includes portions of the tribal lands of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso, a state-recognized Native American Tribe, which is headquartered in Ridgeville.
The Audubon sanctuary, which includes parts of Berkeley, Dorchester and Orangeburg counties, also provides habitat for vulnerable birds and wildlife and maintains water quality and mitigates the impacts of flooding to downstream communities.
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