Rhoda Green, a Barbados native and long time Charleston resident walked a fascinated audience through the myriad connections between her home island and the city she has come to realize mirrors her home island in multiple ways! Our May 16 program, “The Barbados-Carolinas Connection” outlined the multiple, and deep parallels of the two one time British Colonies.
Green said that when she moved to Charleston in 1978 she was amazed at how many things locally reminded her of her home in Barbados.
Some of the connection was family names. Barbados is a small (166 square miles) island that shared a British heritage. Many of the familiar names locally, Middleton, Drayton and, yes, Daniell, migrated here to the Carolinas in search of opportunity not available to them on Barbados..
Green’s slide show (see screen right) walked us through the ties that bound the two colonies….agriculture dependent on slave labor (sugar in Barbados, rice here in Carolina), architecture, religion, even piracy!
The parallels were so strong that some called the Carolinas “a colony of a colony.” Some of the connections are amazing. For example, Barbados 1652 Charter actually called for “no taxation without representation”…a sentiment later echoed in the continental colony.
Here’s a gallery of photos from Green’s presentation at the Church of the Holy Cross Parish Hall…..
To see the video of Rhoda Green’s presentation via YouTube CLICK HERE
Green is the President of the Barbados and the Carolinas Legacy Foundation. There’s lots more information on the group’s website at https://www.barbadoscarolinas.org/the-connection-1
And here’s a link to the PBS video “Beyond Barbados…The Carolina Connection…. https://www.pbs.org/video/beyond-barbados-carolina-connection-jf10ch/