A sand-carved etching on glass honors the 19th century legacy of Catherine B. “Kitty” Smith Springs, a little-known free woman of color whose philanthropy helped to build places to worship, learn and heal the sick in Summerville after the Civil War.
The Summerville Museum and Research Center on Sept. 28 will grow its permanent collection by adding Summerville artist Alexander “Lex” Melfi’s sand-blasted image of the Church of the Epiphany with Springs’s small, obelisk-shaped monument next to the sanctuary.
Springs was a founding member of the Episcopal congregation, which had a mostly Black membership at that time, according to Ken Battle, one of the museum’s board directors. “She wanted to support local churches and education programs for underserved people and people who were discriminated against,” he said.
When Springs operated a dress shop on King Street in Charleston, she met Richard Springs, a White man who owned a dry goods store on Hutchinson Square in the center of Summerville, Battle said. After they were married, Springs moved to Summerville, where she worked as a seamstress and milliner.
Springs, who had African-American and Native American ancestry, left money and land in her will to build the Epiphany church in Summerville; a hospital for Black and indigenous people and “poor Whites;” two schools for “mixed-race children;” the town’s first post office on Hutchinson Square and a theological seminary for Native Americans, Battle said.
Stephen Jackson, Epiphany’s senior warden, said Springs’s story is important “so that people will know who she was and all she did for the community.” Although Springs has been the subject of numerous stories, Jackson said, interest in her spiked in 2000 after the church was renovated. He hopes Melfi’s artwork will bring even more attention to Springs.
A complicated private life
The simplicity of Melfi’s art piece, Battle said, matches Springs’s “simple life in Summerville as a philanthropist who was just trying to make her community better.” But her story, he added, also illuminates her unique experience as a free woman of color married to a White man in the late-19th century — and helps explain her devotion to her adopted hometown.
As opposed to Charleston, mixed-race couples were more accepted in Summerville at that time, Battle said. Neighborhoods were integrated. “If you were of means, you could live where you wanted to, regardless of race,” he explained. “That’s what made Summerville different.”
Born around 1828 in Charleston, Springs died at age 70. She is buried alongside her husband in the White Church Cemetery on Dorchester Road near Bacons Bridge Road. “We assumed she was married because she used the name Springs,” Battle said.
“They were living together in the 1860 and 1870 censuses,” he said. But the race for the fair-skinned Springs shifted between the 1850 and 1880 population counts from mulatto to White.
A person’s race, in some cases, was determined by the census taker, Battle said. “If you looked White, you were listed as White.”
When Richard Springs died in 1889, Battle said, he willed his possessions and property to his wife for her years of service as a “housekeeper.” He did not identify Springs as his wife in the document.
Celebrating with hats
Melfi’s glass etching will be displayed in the museum’s Summerville history room, located on the second floor, alongside pieces honoring other prominent African-American residents, including the late Rollins Edwards, a World War II Army veteran who was among the Black soldiers forced to participate in secret mustard gas experiments. Edwards later became a jazz drummer with the Count Basie Orchestra, and was the first Black person elected to the Dorchester County Council. He also served on the Summerville Town Council.
Battle said the museum will further highlight Springs’s legacy next February during Black History Month. “We want men and women to wear hats to honor her in Summerville” during the Third Thursdays outdoor event.
An influential family
Springs was a member of a prominent family of free people of color. Her brother was Andrew Henry Dibble, a noted Camden tailor who was born in Charleston. Springs mentions her brother in her will, Battle said.
A year before the Civil War, Dibble obtained his “freedom papers” to attest that he had never been enslaved. It was a tense time in South Carolina for Dibble and other free people of color.
The anti-slavery movement was rising when he and members of his class feared backlash in the months before South Carolina’s secession from the Union. It’s possible that Dibble obtained his “certificate of freedom,” signed Aug. 24, 1860, as protection against kidnappers who’d sell him into slavery.
Dibble’s story is told in Elizabeth Clevland Hardcastle, 1741-1808, A Lady of Color in the South Carolina Low Country written by E. Louise.
Dibble’s freedom papers were unique because the documents were signed by the governor and secretary of state, indicating that Dibble was an influential figure who had high-ranking White people to vouch for him.
Springs, however, kept her freedom, Battle said, “because she was married to a White man, and she didn’t look Black.”
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