More Ghosts of Georgetown by Elizabeth Huntsinger Wolf

Author:Elizabeth Huntsinger Wolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folklore/Ghosts
ISBN: 9780895875310
Publisher: John F. Blair, Publisher
Published: 1998-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

Bucksville and Bucksport seemed destined to thrive. But this was not to be. Why? According to some, the reason lay generations earlier.

When Captain Henry Buck founded Bucksville on the Waccamaw River in 1825, he was not the first in his family to establish a town. In 1762, Boston native Jonathan Buck had sailed north to settle in Maine. There, on the Penobscot River, he had discovered an excellent site for the shipping of lumber, fish, and other products. He began the town of Bucksport—then called Buckstown—in 1764.

In addition to being founder of the town, Jonathan Buck had the honor of being elected magistrate. One of those pronounced guilty under his jurisdiction was a woman believed to be a witch. Buck sentenced her to a severe whipping. Just as he finished announcing her fate, the woman laid a curse on him. Never again, she swore, would a Buck stand in judgment over his own town as Judge Buck did here. Any attempt, anywhere, to create another such township would eventually fail, she decreed. The sign of the curse, she said, would follow him to his grave and appear in plain view on his tombstone as proof the curse had truly been cast. This sign would be a likeness of her leg with whip slashes upon its.

According to many local residents, the witch’s punishment was much worse. Rather than being merely thrashed, they say, she was burned, and her foot dropped off into the execution fire.

Judge Buck died on March 18, 1795. After his death, the sign appeared on his tombstone, just as the witch had predicted. Some of the judge’s descendants voiced their indignation at what they considered a besmirching of his memory. Nevertheless, the unmistakable foot and leg of the witch mark the judge’s tall, graceful monument above his grave site in Bucksport, Maine, to this day.

And the curse? Some say it was borne out a thousand miles away and a hundred years later in the lumbermills of Bucksville and Bucksport in South Carolina, which declined after less than a century of prosperity. Many towns have suffered hardships that resulted in economic depression, neglect, and diminished population. But none has ever thrived so vigorously and then disappeared so completely as Bucksville. It is truly a town that vanished.

Although applications were submitted more than once for the busy port of Bucksville to be made a port of entry, Congress refused each time, first suggesting Bucksville as a port of delivery instead. Upon the second application, the customs collector of Georgetown told the secretary of the treasury that to allow Bucksville to become a port of entry would be to legitimize what was one of the best places for smuggling in the United States.

And the fine, cost-efficient construction that produced the Henrietta was a feat never to be repeated. The pride of her home port, the Henrietta never returned to Bucksville. She drew too much water to cross back over the sand bar at the entrance to Georgetown Harbor even at high tide.

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