My parents were Jane Lucille and James Edwin McTeer. This memory takes place during the Great Depression. My father was very lucky to have his job as the sheriff of Beaufort County because many people were out of work. So to help his mother with her large family, my parents moved back home to her house on Bladen Street with their young daughter, Jane. I was born at that house on December 28, 1930. I lived there for about six years. My grandmother’s cook bought milk from Ben who lived with his mother not very far from our house. All the neighborhood children thought that Ben’s mother must be the oldest person in Beaufort because she always told us that she could remember when slavery ended. Even more amazing to all of us children was that even though Ben was blind he was able to care for his cow. Every day he took the cow to a pasture, and then in the afternoon he brought his cow back home. We children often waited by the old watering trough where Ben always watered his cow on his way home. The old watering trough has been moved at least twice recently. The first time it was moved just a few feet to a small park where it had been filled with flowers. Presently, it can be located at the waterfront park near the Carriage Tours where it is being used by the carriage horses. I believe that Ben would have approved this solution to what had become a traffic hazard on Beaufort’s busy streets.
Georgianna McTeer Cooke
The Beaufort County jail was new when the 1940 hurricane was about to hit Beaufort. My Dad took our family to the jail to ride out the storm.
McLeod’s dock was across the street from our house on Bay Street. There could be as many as 30 children swimming there at high tide any summer day. My uncle, Alfred Lengnick, would take my cousin, Paula Lengnick Harrell and me there for wonderful moonlight swims.
Sally McTeer Chaplin
This moment in Beaufort’s history is an excerpt from the book “Beaufort … Then and Now,” an anthology of memories compiled by Holly Kearns Lambert. Copies of this book may be purchased at Beaufort Book Store. For information or to contribute your memory, contact Holly at lowcountrymemories@hotmail.com or beaufortmemories@gmail.com.
