A Property History of the Mary Porter Fowler House

This Story Map documents the history, significance, and story of 11 Magazine Street, Charleston, South Carolina, also known as the Mary Porter Fowler House. 11 Magazine Street’s long history spans from the early days of Charleston when the area was used as a burying ground, to the construction of the house circa 1821, to when the structure was saved from demolition by preservationists in the 1970s. 11 Magazine Street can be used as a case study for the evolving nature of Charleston's built environment as well as its demographic shifts through time.

11 Magazine Street is a two-story Charleston Single House constructed circa 1821. The house is a rectangular plan, two-bay wide by seven-bay deep, with a two-story piazza abutting the west side. The house has a flat roof and is affixed with wooden clapboards painted white. The windows are six-over-six double-hung wood sash. There are louvered shutters on the front facade painted black and held open with s-shaped shutterdogs. The piazza has a false front door that leads to the first floor of the piazza and the main center hall entrance. The piazza's false front door is paneled and painted blue featuring a mail slot and the house number “11”. Above the door is an electric porch light and above that is a metal Preservation Society Carolopolis Award plaque. The second story of the piazza features square columns with unornamented capitals and square-cut balusters. There are two doors leading onto the second-story piazza that have inset casement windows. The east facade features no windows or doors, the west facade features five windows and two doors on the first floor and four windows and two doors on the second, and the south facade features two windows below and two above. 

Magazine Street received its name from the powder magazine that was constructed there in 1737 on what was known as “The Old Burying Ground”. That magazine replaced the “Old Powder Magazine”, constructed circa 1713 which still stands today on what is now Cumberland Street. Magazine Street was home to two institutions, the Jail and Work House. Originally constructed as a poor house and hospital, the Work House was converted into a site of torture and imprisonment for enslaved people. Runaway slaves were brought to the Work House until they were claimed by their owners. Masters could also bring their disobedient slaves there and pay for corporal punishment including lashes, stockade confinement, and forced treadmill running. The still extant Old Jail was constructed in 1802 and operated until 1939.  It housed many notorious criminals and both Union and Confederate prisoners of war.

The lot was part of the Mazyck lands to the east of the original Grand Modell laid out for Charleston. It was part of lot number 20 (shown above) deeded to Isaac Mazyck Jr. from his father in 1742. The Mazyck’s were a wealthy family of French Huguenot merchants. The next direct mention of the property was in the will of Mary Lingard in 1812. She likely inherited the property from her husband James who died in the 1760s. Mary Lingard was one of the donors who gave land to help establish the Charleston City Market and was the namesake of Lingaurd Street. In her will, she named her three great-grandsons, the Griffith Brothers to equally subdivide the lot on the south side Mazyck Street. They then sold their lots to their cousin William Aiken Jr. in 1820.

The lot of land on Magazine Street was sold by William Aiken Jr. to Mary Porter Fowler, a free woman of color. He sold her two 35 foot by 100 foot lots combined at 70 foot by 100 foot for a sum of $1200 in November of 1821. In the deed, she is described as “a free black”. Mary (sometimes May) Fowler built the house sometime circa 1821-22. When she sold it in May of 1823 it mentions a timber frame house. She sold it to Simons (sometimes Sims or Simmons) Groning, also a free man of color for $625. Considering that Mary went through all the trouble of building a house and selling it quickly after for only $25 more dollars than she purchased the land, is it possible that she knew Simmons Groning? Or that he may have been a family member or friend?

Although Mary Fowler and Simmons Groning were free people of color, they both owned slaves. There are few documents concerning Mary Fowler and Simons Groning directly. From the Federal Census data, the Fowlers owned; in 1820, one slave, in 1830, five slaves, in 1840, two slaves, in 1850, three slaves, and in 1860, three slaves. In 1833 Mary Fowler's husband Stanhope purchased a 13-year-old boy named William who he trained to assist him in the making and repairing of threshing machines. William was in the servitude of Fowlers until emancipation. While the purchase of William succeeded the construction of 11 Magazine Street, it is possible that other enslaved people were used in the construction of the house.

In the 1830 Federal Census, Simons Groning's household in the Fourth Ward lists him as having five free colored people and nine slaves. While the 1830 Federal Census did not list addresses or street names, it is within the time period he owned the house, so it is very possible this is the household at 11 Magazine Street. In 1820 a bill of sale for an enslaved man described as “a mustee man named Carlos of the age of thirty” was purchased by Simons Groning for $300. It is also within the time period that Carlos may have been one of the enslaved people that could have lived at 11 Magazine. 

Both Mary Fowler and Simons Groning’s claims to their property were challenged in the newspaper two years apart and possibly in the courts. As free people of color, it is very possible that these challenges were forms of systemic racism and were attempts to confiscate property from them because of their race. An ad in the Charleston Courier from 28 September 1832, from a man named John Stent, cautions the public from purchasing the house and lot on Magazine Street from Simons Groning, a free man of color as he had purchased the property at public auction previously and has every intention of enforcing his claims on the property. The next day on 29 September 1832, Simons Groning sold the property to Francis G. Rolando for $2,200. It is unclear whether these claims against Groning were valid or were ever enforced. In 1834, there were several ads in the newspaper that the house next door, 9 Magazine, was being sold at auction due to delinquent taxes by Mary Porter Fowler.

Several news ads taken out in the Charleston Courier and Southern Patriot in September of 1845 urgently titled “Lost or Stolen, from No.11, Magazine Street, a small black girl child, about 30 months old, that answers to the name of Rebecca Brown or Nooddy.” Another ad from the Charleston Courier proclaims “We have been requested to call the attention of the public to an advertisement which appeared… concerning a colored child which disappeared in a mysterious manner from No.11 Magazine Street and is supposed to have been stolen with the view of disposing of it. Any information will be thankfully received by the mother, who is a free woman.” There could be no more information other than these newspaper ads found on the disappearance of Rebecca Brown. Further mention of Rebecca in later censuses, newspapers, or other documents couldn’t be located. The lack of information on Rebecca pointing to either a happy or more sinister resolution to her case was disconcerting. Her race likely contributed to later indifference about her whereabouts and also contributed to the way the language in the newspapers describes her as “it.” The ad also specifies that her mother was free, indicating that Rebecca was not a slave, which therefore gave her life more value than if she was enslaved.

Free people of color have left an indelible mark on the history of Charleston and 11 Magazine Street. Through the stories of Mary Fowler, Simons Groning, and Rebecca Brown, the history of free people of color can be contextualized within the greater narrative. The paradoxical fact that free people of color enslaved other black people is a part of history that is often ignored, misunderstood, or presented in an un-nuanced way. While it is impossible to know the relationship between the Fowler and Groning families and the people they enslaved, the evidence points to the use of their labor in a capitalistic way. The pervasiveness of Southern chattel slavery was one that not even free people of color could escape. “Whatever the reasons may have been to stimulate free blacks to acquire slave property, the system of American slavery was a universal institution..."

11 Magazine Street has an entwined history with the women who have owned it. It is named after one of its women owners, Mary Porter Fowler, a free woman of color who constructed the house. In its history it has had seven female owners from Mary Lingard who owned the land in the 18th century where the house now sits, to the more recent Patricia E. Kruger, who sold the property in December of 2021. The status of property rights for women before the Women’s Rights and Suffrage Movements of the early 20th century was essentially nonexistent. “Under the common law, a married woman could not own property, either real or personal. All property a woman brought to the marriage became her husband's. He gained managerial rights to her lands, houses, and tenements and decided if land was to be farmed by the family or leased. He also controlled the rents and profits from all real estate. With regard to conveyances, however, women held a single note of power. No husband could sell real property without the consent of his wife. The common law sanctioned conveyances only when wives freely agreed to them, although "free" consent was sometimes quite difficult to determine in court.”

These rights to conveyances have been shown in the history of 11 Magazine Street. Four women have owned the property before the 20th century; two women were widowed and inherited the property from their husbands, Mary Lingard and Julia Brennan. But two women; Mary Fowler and Hannah Frazier (or Fraser) were both married women who owned the house in their own right. Hannah Frazier purchased the property in July of 1869 through a trustee named George S. Cook, who was not her husband or seemed to be a family member. Hannah was married to Charles Peronneau Frazier for over three decades when she purchased the property. It is unclear who George S. Cook was and why he instead of Hannah’s husband Charles was the trustee. It is unlikely that the Fraziers ever lived in the house and likely used it as rental income. Hannah Frazier sold 11 Magazine Street in July of 1873 which coincided with the death of her husband in the same year.

In April 1911 Julia Brennan sold 11 Magazine Street to Ernest Henry Roebuck for $2,000. Roebuck would then sell the property to Frederick M. Wohlers in October of 1923 for “$10 and valuables”. Fred Wohlers owned the property for 50 years and used it as a rental property the entire time. During this time as a rental property, the house began to be neglected and over time began to decay.

In November of 1973 Wohlers sold the property for $15,000 to the College Preparatory School, which was adjacent to the lot. In January of 1976 College Preparatory submitted a demolition permit to the Board of Architectural Review. Also the owners of the two adjacent Logan Street properties, College Preparatory, wanted to demolish them to make room for more parking space and claimed that the renovation costs outweigh the benefits. The BAR denied College Prepatories request for demolition but they applied again in August of that year. This got the attention of both Historic Charleston Foundation and the Preservation Society of Charleston who advocated for the preservation of the homes including 11 Magazine. After the second demolition permit was denied, College Preparatory agreed to meet with representatives of the Preservation Society. They then agreed to sell 11 Magazine Street along with 98 and 102 Logan Streets and made it available for restoration. In August of 1977 the property was sold to Dorothy Dame Gibbs for $1200, who then restored the property

11 Magazine Street, Charleston, South Carolina, also known as the Mary Porter Fowler House, is a property with a long and rich past which situates its story within the greater narrative of Charleston’s history. By looking at 11 Magazine Street though its diverse residents, Charleston and the Fourth Ward’s history can be better understood. 11 Magazine’s residents include free people of color, women, families, and likely slaves. The home’s past has been used here to explore topics in history such as the lives and treatment of free people of color, free people of color who owned slaves, women’s history, and more recent historic preservation efforts. The significance of 11 Magazine Street is not that it is a high style work of architecture nor the home of some great person, but that the physical fabric can help narrate the history found in newspapers, deeds, wills, censuses, city directories, books, articles.

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