Blood, death, mourning: Hear spooky folklore at the Relic Room

Death and mourning were a big part of life in the 19th century. They even left an indelible mark on art and fashion, from such macabre stories as Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” to Queen Victoria wearing black for 40 years after the death of Prince Albert.

This was in evidence right here in South Carolina. When Lt. Col. Elbert Bland from Edgefield County was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga on Sept. 20, 1863, his wife Rebecca resolved to follow the queen’s example. She wore mourning clothes until her own death in 1891. She then went the British monarch one better – she demanded to be buried in the same coffin with her long-dead husband. Her request was granted.

Joe Long, curator of education at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, has a lot of stories like that, and he’ll be telling them in a free lecture at noon on Oct. 30 at the Cayce-West Columbia Branch of Lexington County Public Library at 1500 Augusta Road in West Columbia. The program is open to the public as part of the museum’s regular Noon Debrief program.

Joe has spoken about Col. Bland before, because the museum has in its possession an item that had temporarily preserved the Confederate officer’s life the year before he died at Chickamauga. It is a pair of opera glasses that Bland had in his pocket at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Wedged between the lenses is a bullet that the small binoculars stopped from killing him nine months before his actual death. During the summer between those dates, he was also wounded at Gettysburg.

On what one might redundantly call All Hallow’s Eve EVE, Joe will deliver his popular annual address, “Tales of Gore and Folklore.” Many of the stories, such as that of Col. Bland, have connections to the Relic Room, which at this time of year can be a spooky place.

Some others he might bring up include:

• The general who, it turns out, had not lost his foot after all.
• The ghost who had misplaced his walking cane, and sought it in the museum.
• The bullet that wounded a horse – “Old Jim” of Aiken – but didn’t stop him from being a legend later on.
• How South Carolina sailors during the First World War helped create the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
• Weirdness arising from some of the deadly duels fought in the Palmetto State. In case you haven’t heard, there were a lot of those, especially in Col. Bland’s home county.

There are so many such stories that Joe is now poring through his collection in an effort to keep the presentation under the traditional hour. Come on out and hear which tales he selects. You’ll be all right. The program is at high noon, and clear across the river from the creepy artifacts left behind by the dead from long ago.

About the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum

Founded in 1896, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is an accredited museum focusing on South Carolina’s distinguished martial tradition through the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, the War on Terror, and other American conflicts. It serves as the state’s military history museum by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting South Carolina’s military heritage from the colonial era to the present, and by providing superior educational experiences and programming. It recently opened a major new exhibit, “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.” The museum is located at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, sharing the Columbia Mills building with the State Museum. For more information, go to https://crr.sc.gov/.