About Backwater Frontier
Backwater Frontier is a chronological compilation of either lost or long-forgotten and little-known stories of events and people who, in their time, dramatically changed the world around them and set the course for the future to follow. That all these events happened in a place that was then, and is now, a relatively remote part of the world called Beaufort County, South Carolina, makes them all the more improbable and significant to us today. These stories, which span 450 years, took place over a period of time in recorded history that runs longer than at any other single location in the United States, and is a location still categorized by the government as a “rural” county and generally recognized as a “backwater” to the present day.
A string of remarkable “firsts” in American history, the subject matter of the stories chronicles game-changing developments whose principal characters courageously led the way into virtually unknown and risk-laden territory, often against unimaginable odds … these include the first European colony in North America to last more than two years, the first and largest amphibious military operation prior to D-Day in Normandy, the first fully self-governing African-American Freedmen’s city in the United States, and the first environmentally-sensitive, planned retirement-resort community in the world. These stories and others feature principal characters with well-known names such as Clara Barton and Harriett Tubman, less well-known names like Robert Barnwell Rhett and Samuel DuPont, more recently recognizable names like Charles Fraser, and largely unknown names such as 16th Century Spanish explorer Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, 18th Century planter Eliza Lucas Pinckney, Civil War General Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, and Reconstruction pioneer and former slave Robert Smalls.
As much as anything, these are examples of epic leadership, conveying vivid imagery of resiliency and resourcefulness, of perseverance and dedication to vision, mission and goals, unwavering accountability, and of astounding management and organizational skill most frequently in the absence of direct or explicit authority. In its totality, Backwater Frontier is meant to assert for Beaufort County, SC a singular and rightful place as a principal frontier in American history, and it attempts to duly recognize the remarkable men and women who lived and served here, people whose revolutionary accomplishments truly directed later progress and shaped the future for generations to come.
