Walking: Out and Back

By Contributing Resident Jeanne Wells

Since Christmas day was 75 degrees and sunny, my husband and I decided to take a walk around Daniel Island, where we live. There are a lot of walking/biking paths and we picked a nice long one that we like. It winds around behind the Family Circle Cup arena/tennis center, over some marshy areas, and eventually runs parallel to the Wando River.

During our walk, we passed by a fence that we had noticed before, but since we were heading in the opposite direction from our usual route, we noticed what was beyond the fence for the first time: an old cemetery. Since the fence seemed to be more of a demarcation line than an actual barrier (there was ample space beside each end of the fence to walk around it, and it also would have been easy to crawl under, climb over, or step between the slats) we wandered into the cemetery to explore a little bit. There were a few headstones, and a couple of ancient benches, but it was clear from the unevenness of the ground that there were many more unmarked graves here.

It was a beautiful place, overlooking a section of marsh. Based on the headstones and markers we could see, it looked like the last time anyone was buried there was in the 1960s or 1970s sometime. When we got home, my husband did a little cursory Internet research, and came across an excerpt from a book about Daniel Island, which mentioned the cemetery. According to the information he found, it is known as Simmons Cemetery because it was adjacent to a plantation owned by someone named Maurice Simmons around the time of the Civil War. We also learned that some of the graves we had seen were those of African-American soldiers, two of whom had served in black infantry regiments during World War I and another who had served in the U.S. colored infantry during the Civil War.

It was interesting to find this old place in an area that is better known for its newness. It was so tranquil and lovely, and seemed like a wonderful final resting place.