The Goose Creek Bridge
Gateway to Sacred Places
by
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Reverend Doctor Francis LeJau rose early, on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1716 to greet the day from his kitchen garden. He typically enjoyed a solitary walk through the glebe in the early hours, and though his buried seeds showed no signs of life, ferns sent tender asparagus shoots overnight above the temperate earth, as if defying chances of late frosts. That morning he felt his own confidence surge as his world gradually returned to normal. Spring rains scented his fields where Arthur Middleton sent two stout Africans the previous week to spread manure, and tomorrow he expected them to return to mound the corn rows, as they did each spring of his nine-year tenure. The humble priest accredited that type of charity and the mercy of God for seeing his family through the perils of war, the memories of which were fading into a terrible dream. A year ago, from where he stood, he watched frightened families noisily flee across the Goose Creek Bridge on creaking, overloaded wagons. Now, he listened as his beloved wife, his only son and two daughters, stirred from their sleep, and Mr. Dennis, the clumsy schoolmaster rustled next door.
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About the Book
The Goose Creek Bridge is the gateway to the Saint James, Goose Creek Parish in South Carolina and the church, cemeteries, chapels, and sanctuaries within. The work chronicles the bridge as it conveyed congregants to the pews of the church on selected Easter Sundays during every era of the three-hundred year saga and describes from that perspective, key personalities and their salient institutions transcending centuries in a small but critically important section of South Carolina. Readers find an in-depth description of the Yamassee War from the perspective of those residing in its vortex. The work chronicles English soldiers chasing wily patriots on both sides of the aging bridge and three generations later, young black warriors of the United States Army with equally youthful white officers camping near the overpass. This comprehensive account explains the trauma of wars and the aftermaths, as well as the impact of public roads, taverns, rail lines and the durable values of the old and new south upon the rural people, and their sacred institutions.
About the Author
Michael James Heitzler earned a Doctor of Education Degree from the University of South Carolina. He is a Fulbright Scholar and a retired school administrator of the Berkeley School District, South Carolina. He has served as Mayor of the City of Goose Creek since 1978. He is the author of Historic Goose Creek, South Carolina, 1670-1980, published in 1983 by Southern Historical Press, Easley, South Carolina, and Goose Creek, a Definitive History, volume I published in 2005 and volume II published in 2006, by the History Press, Charleston, South Carolina. The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce published his work, George Chicken, Carolina Man of the Ages in 2011 and the City of Goose Creek and the South Carolina Historical Society published many of his articles.