"Revolutionary Lowcountry: The Almost Forgotten"

Off the beaten paths, away from the frenetic pace of today’s modern world, important stories are waiting to be told. And local history hunter Phillip Davis is doing his part to share them.

When Davis ventures into the woods and waterways of the Cainhoy Peninsula – or other natural landscapes throughout the greater Charleston region – he is searching for remnants of the past. He often finds them in the form of ancient landscapes hidden in plain sight: a dirt road meandering toward the marshlands, wide trenches and ditches carved for long-forgotten military campaigns, or other subtle traces of those who came before.

Among his most prized discoveries are centuries-old artifacts tucked beneath the surface – tangible treasures of a former life, place, or event.

“I usually wonder about the person or soldier who dropped the artifact and what he or she was experiencing at that time,” said Davis, who traces his interest in the past back to his childhood days in Greenville, South Carolina.

Today, he is literally spreading the word about it all. Drawn to military history, especially the local activities and skirmishes related to the Revolutionary War, Davis recently published his first book, “Revolutionary Lowcountry: The Almost Forgotten,” which details seven of his most significant discoveries.

Each of his finds reveals something about the people who once walked these lands, and, most importantly for Davis, it illuminates their stories and ensures they are remembered. Putting what he was learning into a book was a logical and timely next step, said Davis.

“I knew I wanted to write it all down,” he added. “Seeing places get built over… I just thought that some of the sites were important enough to document, in hopes that some of them would be preserved, or, at a minimum, (have) signs placed so people would know what happened where. Just from an educational standpoint, I thought they were worthwhile, documenting them in a real way, in a visual way, in hopes that we'll preserve more.”

THE SEARCH FOR LOWCOUNTRY RELICS

A Mount Pleasant resident, Davis has called the Holy City home for almost 30 years. He earned his medical doctorate in nuclear medicine from MUSC and his MBA from The Citadel. Today, he serves as the global clinical lead/senior director for Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Davis’s deep dive into local history when life shifted to more home-based work. In his downtime, he would head out to explore local landscapes, looking for whatever history chose to reveal.

“I started getting out and going to sites that I read about and decided to buy a metal detector to see if I could find anything cool,” he said. “And pretty much immediately started finding interesting artifacts!”

To put his hobby to good use, Davis created “Lowcountry Relics,” a group that assists in locating and recovering artifacts using period maps, military journals, GIS software, and state-of-the-art technology. As he points out on its website, it is a service and not a business.

The Daniel Island and Cainhoy Peninsula have been specific areas of interest to Davis and are featured in his book. Among his favorite local finds are a silver 1770s-era Spanish Reale coin bearing the face of King Charles III and a glass cameo of a woman from the late 1700s, likely dropped by a British or Loyalist soldier in a camp related to the Siege of Charlestown. He has also discovered numerous musket balls and military artifacts, including a piece of a Brown Bess musket. Davis calls the land and waterways between the Wando and Cooper Rivers a critical corridor during the Revolutionary War.

“It was definitely a major transportation hub, when you consider the ferry was the way they got across from downtown to move up what is now Clements Ferry Road… but Daniel Island was also a British post. They had people posted along the river, and they would have been monitoring the river. You have several engagements that took place either on the island or nearby.”

Much of the history of this particular area has been left out of history books, notes Davis, and that has been a driving force for his work.

“It's a fascinating time, and South Carolina contributed to the war in a significant way that's not really known. You had the Northern historians writing the books for schools, and they focused on Bunker Hill and battles like Saratoga and things that happened around Boston, New York, and Rhode Island,” he explained. “And so a lot of our interesting history was left out of the books for all these years, but if you dig deep enough, you can find it.”

SHARING STORIES, PRESERVING SITES

The release of important war documents online in recent years has helped enhance the narrative. Using information gleaned from his sources, Davis has found the sites of a British encampment and local skirmishes on the Cainhoy Peninsula. And he is always on the hunt for more. One of his most exciting discoveries was the site of a Revolutionary War conflict at Miller’s Bridge. After seeing a sketch of the spot in an old British document, he was able to locate it.

“It was written about by (General Charles) Cornwallis, who was second in command. It was written about by Henry Clinton, who was first in command of British forces when they seized Charleston, and it was written about by two other Loyalists, but no one ever knew where it was.”

Davis’s book will be available for purchase beginning June 29 on Amazon and at other retail sites. His goal for readers? To simply not forget.

“(I hope they develop) an appreciation for how deep our local history runs and how important the contributions of South Carolina and Lowcountry Patriots were in the fight for independence and ultimately the American victory at Yorktown.”

PHOTOS PROVIDED