Dispatches from Dorchester County, South Carolina. Filed weekly. Not all of it true. None of it made up.
An introduction to the county
That was the first thing I wrote down. It was not the last.
Every week I file one dispatch from the county between the Edisto and the interstate. Some of it comes from the police blotter. Some from the diner. Some from people who asked me not to use their names, and I didn’t.
You can read it here, or you can have it brought to your door.
All twelve are on the dispatches page. The real history behind them is in The County, and what’s across the line is at Beyond the County Line.
Send me the dispatchesRead the full barbershop story ↗
One story a week. No charge. Leave whenever you like, though most don’t.
North Parler Avenue. From the county files.
Latest dispatch
Every September 8 at dusk, a voice in a field on Smoak Road reads a British regiment’s pay roll, name by name, and always comes up one short. A man from Charleston wants to buy the digging rights. Ruth Ann Fender’s cows won’t go in the corner. Jackie Rhame went out to tell him who was missing.
Read the dispatch ↗Dispatch No. 14
In February 1865 everyone on the Wire Road believed Sherman was coming, and a cook named Hester buried the Marchant silver before dawn. He never came. The house burned in 1966. Out past Pregnall, a patch of ground stays warm, and a table is set for a guest who hasn’t arrived.
Read the dispatch ↗Dispatch No. 13
A cannon dug out of Four Holes Swamp fires once a year, on July 14, at dusk. The first shot came from Orangeburg. Twenty-six years later it came from the gun. Somebody has been walking home, one step a year, and Jackie Rhame's great-aunt kept a chair on the porch for him.
Read the dispatch ↗Dispatch No. 12
You climb the tower at night and you come down and you're not the same. Nobody who's done it will say why. This is the first letter from someone who did.
Read the dispatch ↗From the record
The dispatches are fiction. The places, dates and history behind them are sourced. Start with the ones people ask about most.
A standing invitation
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