Going "Beyond the Grave" with Charleston Historian and Author Ruth Miller

"Touring the Tombstones" with Ruth Miller

Have you heard the one about the busload of morticians?

No joke, it was this twist of fate that began to turn tour guide Ruth Miller into a taphophile- a person with a grave interest in graveyards.

Years ago, Miller took a group of visiting undertakers on a Charleston tour when they asked her to stop at a church graveyard. She complied and ended up learning so many interesting things from the morticians that she was driven to dig more into Charleston’s many churchyards.

Old Charleston Church an Exciting New Find!

Charleston is known as the Holy City for good reason. Look at the skyline and several tall church steeples can be seen.

From its 17th century inception, Charleston has been very religiously tolerant. Only a small number of people were needed to form a church.  Today, the city benefits from this benevolence with a treasure trove of churches of many faiths.

I maintain a separate blog for my College of Charleston First Year Experience course, "Beyond the Grave: What Old Cemeteries Tell and Teach the Living." I want to share two recent posts from my Charleston Beyond the Grave blog that deal with Charleston's religious richness.

St. Mary's is on Huger Street near King Street

This past Sunday Alesia and I attended Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church in the Holy City. Gorgeous inside, St. Mary's also has a lovely, historic and interesting graveyard that wraps around the building.

Here's my post from this enlightening experience!






Another treasure trove, this one of historic information, is Ruth Miller who has spoken twice now to my "Beyond the Grave" class. She is a longtime Charleston historian and tour guide. In this post I wrote, learn (as I did) of Charleston's many religious firsts and distinctions.

Ruth Miller and yours truly after her fall semester talk (photo by Megan Wright)