Monday, February 23, 2004. John Duncan, "An Introduction to Historic Savannah."

MR. BRATEK: John Duncan was born a Charlestonian, and did his undergrad work at the College of Charleston. He later earned a master's degree from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. from Emory. He has worked for the National Archives in Washington and as a history professor at Shorter College and Armstrong State, where he has been a professor emeritus since 1977.

He has written numerous scholarly articles on a variety of topics, including slavery and servitude in colonial South Carolina, the Harpers Ferry raid, presidential visits to Savannah, and numerous histories of local institutions in Savannah.

He has also appeared on many television interviews, including one with John Berendt on ABC's "Good Morning, America." And finally, he's also had a speaking role in the movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," directed by Clint Eastwood. Please welcome Savannah historian Dr. John D. Duncan.

MR. DUNCAN: I'm delighted to be here to be able to share my love and enthusiasm of Savannah history with you this morning.

I always like to begin this talk with an image of the Savannah River, named for the Savannah Indians, and what a beautiful name it is. You know, we could have been stuck with a name like Pittsburgh. Savannah is a port city and that makes it different, does it not?

This is a photograph taken by General William Tecumseh Sherman's official photographer on his march to the sea. And here is the old harbor light erected by the U.S. Government in the 1850s as an aid to navigation, just newly restored.

And here is the Waving Girl, we like to call her. Her name was Florence Martus, and she was the sister of the keeper of lights for the Savannah River. For 44 years she waved to ships coming in and out of the port of Savannah. And even at night she had trained her collie dog to wake her up and she would welcome the ships with a lantern at night.

Here is the Talmadge Bridge, the second bridge to Hutchinson Island, the first one erected in the 1950s, this one erected in the 1990s, and taller, so that large ships can now come into the port, which ranks about number 12 in the nation.

Now, some people have called Savannah a place of live oaks and dead people. But don't believe that. In fact, we're looking at Colonial Cemetery, and it reminds us a little bit of New Orleans where, in fact, you're required to be buried aboveground. But here what we see are icebergs, because underneath these tombs are great rooms large enough to hold generations of Savannah's families.

Now, there are lots of eating establishments. Here's the famous Pirate House Restaurant, made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson in his Treasure Island saga. By the way, there are lots of rooms, and if you decide to eat there, be sure and ask for one of the picturesque rooms, not in the cement rooms.

Here is the Pink House Restaurant, a fine 18th century mansion, now a restaurant. For many years they served a salad dressing the color of the exterior. It looked like someone had poured Pepto Bismol on your salad. Once you got past the color, the taste was wonderful.

And here is the Oglethorpe Club. This is a gentlemen's club, exclusive club. 400 men belong to this. No women, you understand. And traditionally, women are not allowed to use the front steps. Some have said that this is a little bit out of step with the rest of the world.

Now to begin the more traditional history, we begin with the aborigine. They came here 10,000 or 12,000 years ago in search of the giant mammoths that inhabited the low country.

Here at the Savannah Golf Club we had middens, refuse heaps, of these Indians excavated by Antonio J. Waring, an archeologist, in the 1930s, and what he found in these trash heaps were what you would expect: Broken pieces of pottery, deer antlers, fish scales, but also human bones, all scratched and split open for that tasty marrow inside. Dr. Waring wrote, "I had the very definite impression someone had been brought home for dinner." The first known Savannahians, 5,500 years ago, then were indeed cannibals.

Now, Tomochichi. Mico of the Yamacraw, who for some mischief in his nation -- we don't know what that was -- was exiled from his original homeland in western Georgia. He picked up his paper dolls and came and settled Yamacraw, the lot. And we remember Tomochichi in our Georgia Day Pageant. Look at him all incorrectly dressed up in white chicken feathers. That's me playing Oglethorpe on a very cold February morning.

Now, Oglethorpe took the Georgia Indians to England, where they were entertained and they had their portrait painted. And look out of the window. You can see the rear end of Westminster Abbey.

They visited the Archbishop of Canterbury across the Thames River. Tomochichi said, you know, "Why should such short-lived men want to build such long-lived habitations?" Indians were much more content with, in fact, living very modestly.

Now, Tomochichi comes back to England, comes back to Savannah, dies in 1739, and he asked to be buried among his English friends in Percival, now Wright Square, under a pyramid of stone. By the way, that grave was bulldozed in the 1880s, and a monument to William Washington Gordon I, the founder and first president of the Central of Georgia Railroad, was erected.

Mrs. Gordon was very embarrassed about bulldozing this Indian grave, so she got her pet organization, the Colonial Dames of the State of Georgia, to write the Stone Mountain Monument Company, outside of Atlanta, for a granite boulder. Since it was a public monument, the company did not want to charge, but Mrs. Gordon insisted. So the bill came back, "50 cents, payable on Judgment Day." By return mail, Mrs. Gordon sent in that 50 cents with the note, "On Judgment Day, I'm going to be much too concerned with my own personal affairs. Please accept payment now."

Oglethorpe. Now, understand, he didn't dress up like this in medieval armor in the 18th Century. This was the conceit of the day, to have your portrait painted.

Now, here's Robert Castell, that we heard about. Thrown in prison, got smallpox, died, and so Oglethorpe, as a member of the Parliament, decided to ask for an inquiry into the state of jails. He was made chairman of that Jails Committee, and of course, it was a muckraking report. If you weren't a criminal when you went to jail, you certainly were a criminal when you got out of jail. The Parliament released 10,000 debtors from the British jails and Oglethorpe, in the beginning, planned a debtor colony in Georgia -- an earlier Australia, if you will -- and here is the town that he established on a bluff 40 feet high.

Here is the statue of Oglethorpe on one of the Bull Street squares. Notice he's facing south. You know, most southern statues face north because their Confederate soldiers are going to repel that Yankee invader. But in Oglethorpe's time the enemies were the Spaniards down in Florida. He's got his sword drawn, ready to do battle.

George II. He was the king of England when Georgia was founded, "that stuffy old drone from the German hive," Oliver Wendell Holmes once called him. And his queen consort, Queen Caroline, sported a Georgia silk dress around court for a number of years.

Now, here is the town plan of Savannah. Established in 1733, you'll notice there are four modules there. They're called wards, in the very center of which is a square, although they're often rectangular in shape. And then to the east and to the west, trust lots, land held in trust by the Georgia trustees and reserved for public use. And then to the north and to the south, the tithing lots. These were 60 feet wide, 90 feet deep. These were the sites for the homes of the first Savannah settlers.

The town expanded into 24 wards with 24 squares, at first along the river, as you can see, using the town common.

Now, Noble Jones. He was the founder of the most aristocratic family in the state of Georgia, and he was given 500 acres of land. That was the maximum amount of land that anyone could own in colonial Georgia. Now, that sounds like a lot of land to us today, but in colonial times, 500 acres actually was not very much.

Now, he called his place Wormsloe, out on the Isle of Hope. That original site was excavated a number of years ago, photographed, and then covered back up for posterity. Now, what has survived at this first site are the tabby walls that surrounded that first house, made of oyster shells, sand, lime, and water.

Look at the entrance to Wormsloe Plantation. Those are pineapples and acorns as finials. And look at that oak alley. A mile and a quarter long. And look at the second big house at Wormsloe. Like Topsy, it just growed and growed.

But in the 1930s, a lot of that Victorian jigsaw work was ripped off and more traditional southern columns added out front. One collector at Wormsloe collected Georgia books and manuscripts and he built a little Greek revival temple to house that collection. That has since been moved to the University of Georgia in Athens.

Now, you know about the South being the Bible belt of the nation. And Savannah, it seems to me, is at the very top, because here is John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Any Methodists here? You don't want to hear this, now. Don't listen.

He came to be minister to the Indians, but ended up at Christ Anglican, now Episcopal, Church, and his undoing was falling in love with hard-hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah, GA. Except her real name was Sophia Hopkey, and she was 18 and he was 36, one of those May-December relationships. He walked out in the moonlight in magnolias, proposed marriage, she dropped him like a hot potato, married somebody else, and the next Sunday John Wesley refused to administer communion to the ex-girlfriend. It was the first big public scandal in Savannah, of which we have had no end.

And look at Wesley in one of our squares in exaltation to his Savannah community. And this is Wesley Monumental Church, built with contributions from Methodists all over the world. And his successor was George Whitfield. He was the great orator of the day. Short on theology, long on theatrics, he was the Jim Bakker of his day. But his significance in Savannah history was the founding of Bethesda Orphanage, still in existence, and now claiming to be the oldest operating orphanage in America. And there's the entrance gate to Bethesda.

And George Whitfield traveled up north to raise money, dies in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His skull was displayed in the crypt below the church for over 100 years, and not until 1929 was that skull put in the casket where it belonged in the first place.

Now, here is Wesley Monumental Church. It is the oldest unbutchered church in all of Savannah. It is a memorial to the Wesley brothers and to George Whitfield.

Here is St. John's Episcopal Church. By the way, this church uses the 1928 Prayer Book on the grounds that if the 1928 Prayer Book was good enough for Jesus Christ, it should be good enough for all. It's in the English Gothic style, as you can see, and this is the interior. This is my wife's church. We were married here. By the way, one of those big beams a couple of years ago fell down. Fortunately, it was on a Thursday night. No one was there. Nobody got hurt. But I am most uncomfortable in this church, forever looking up at those beams.

Now, we also have Presbyterians, the Frozen Chosen. And here is Oglethorpe dressed up a as the Scottish Highlander to welcome those soldiers that came to defend Savannah at New Inverness, now Darien, Georgia.

Here is Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah. Now, understand you can't be independent and a Presbyterian, except in Savannah, where apparently almost anything is possible.

Now, the most famous member of this congregation was Ellen Louis-Axson She was the granddaughter of the minister and, indeed, she was the first Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, she died of Bright's disease, and then, you know that story, Woodrow ups and marries Edith Galt a little too soon, which raised a lot of eyebrows. But economy was the explanation. They used the funeral -- no, it wasn't quite that bad.

Now, we have Lutherans in Savannah, and we begin the Lutheran story in Salzburg, Austria, where the Catholic archbishop expels the Protestants. They scattered all over the world, a small contingent comes, and Oglethorpe establishes them at Ebenezer, up the Savannah River 20 or 25 miles or so, the oldest church building in the state of Georgia.

Locally we have our Lutheran Church of the Ascension, originally in the Greek Revival style, but remodeled in the Gothic style at a later time. It's called Lutheran Church of the Ascension because of the stained-glass window that actually depicts Jesus physically ascending into heaven.

We also have Congregationalists, and we begin that story in Dorchester, England, in the 1630s, where they felt they were being persecuted. They picked up and went to Dorchester, Massachusetts, where they stayed 60 years. Then they moved to Dorchester, South Carolina, in the 1690s. And then after 60 years they picked up and moved to Dorchester, Midway, and Sunberry, Georgia. And look at that church. It looks like it belongs on a New England countryside. But here it is in the swamplands of the Low Country, inhabited, by the way, by fruit bats that come all the way up from Guatemala. You can't get them out of that building.

Now, locally we have a Congregationalist church. It was built right after the Civil War with Congregationalist ministers who came down to work with the freedmen. It's still a black congregation in Savannah.

We also have Jews, and we begin that story with Bevis' Marks Synagogue in London, England, the oldest Jewish congregation in all of England. This congregation sends a boatload of 42 Jews to Savannah in 1733. It was the largest single migration of Jews to the New World in colonial times. They brought with them the Torah. It's still in existence, and is the most treasured artifact of that congregation.

And look at their temple, Mickve Israel Synagogue. It looks like a little Episcopal or Roman Catholic church, but in fact, it is a synagogue and the give-away, right above the front door entrance, is a little Star of David.

We also have Catholics, although in the beginning, you understand, the Royal Charter says, "There shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God, and all persons, except Papists, shall have a free exercise of religion." There it was in black and white. Everybody can publicly worship, but not Catholics.

Well, that didn't last forever, and in the last part of the 18th century, Catholics were allowed in, and of course, we now celebrate St. Patrick's Day, the Mardi Gras bash, we like to call it. 400,000 or 500,000 rednecks come to Georgia. They drink green beer, eat green grits, and throw up green vomit.

By the way, that celebration is not honored in Ireland. It's a religious holiday, but not in Savannah, believe you me.

Here is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. For my money, it is the best architectural show in all of Savannah. The interior.

Blacks. Now, understand, Georgia has the unique distinction of being the only free colony of the British in the New World. But that prohibition did not last forever, and in the 1750s slaves were allowed, and we have First African Baptist Church, and Second, and Bryan Baptist Church. The congregation divides in the 1830s, and both churches claimed to be the oldest black Baptist church in all of America. Only in Savannah can we have two churches claiming but one distinction.

Now, Georgia and the coming of the Revolution. Georgia was the last of the British colonies founded in the New World. A lot of the people alive at the Revolution still remembered England, unlike in New England, where you could have four or five generations behind you. So the Revolution was a civil war for Georgia, and indeed Georgia had furnished as many troops to George III as it did to George Washington.

Now, Georgia eventually sends delegates to the Continental Congress, including Button Gwinnett -- I love that name -- Lyman Hall and George Walton. All three were destined to sign Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. And there are the signatures on the left, the three Georgia signers.

Actually, Button Gwinnett is the most interesting of our Georgia signers. He comes back down to Georgia and quarrels with Lachlan McIntosh. One calls the other a scoundrel and lying rascal. And you know about southerners, very hot-blooded. The result was a duel in Governor Wright's cow pasture at twelve paces, thank you very much. Gwinnett was wounded in the thigh, gangrene set in, and he died several days later. And because he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and was one of the earliest signers to die, his signature is the most valuable signature in the world. By the way, here is a wonderful fake, not worth the paper it's written on. But being worth a million dollars, there's always a scoundrel trying to fake it.

Now, look at Gwinnett's monument in Colonial Cemetery, although he may not be buried under the monument. In fact, the bones underneath are those of a woman. And unless there's a strange story there, I don't know what to tell you.

Now, blacks in the American Revolution. You know, they worked on that old adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." So blacks tended to side with the British, and blacks showed the British a back way into Savannah in late 1778. The Americans were all lined up in Bull Street, Madison Square, thinking the Brits were going to attack from the south. But lo and behold, they heard noise from the rear. Here's the re-enactment of 1978, and so the first battle of Savannah was a rout of the Americans, and the British then piled in and Savannah was an occupied town.

The following year, Benjamin Franklin, agent for the Colony of Georgia, had actually negotiated a Franco-American alliance. This was the first time we had French troops supporting the American Revolution. Again, the French were not interested in American democracy, but they, too, used that adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." So we had a combined Franco-American attack on British-held Savannah. Leading the charge is Count Casimir Pulaski. Anyone of Polish descent? You don't want to listen to this, either.

The first two seconds, all went well. Then he got within range and, of course, they mowed him down. And look at the monument, on Monterey Square. Just pulled down recently. It was going to cost $200,000 to restore. In the end, it cost over a million dollars to restore, but I understand, in for a nickle, in for a dollar.

The second casualty at the Battle of Savannah in 1779 was Sergeant William Jasper, an illiterate Irishman. He had rescued the flag over in a battle in South Carolina, had won great fame over there. He tries to do it in Savannah, was mowed down, and look at his monument on Bull Street, Madison Square. I think it's one of the most beautiful monuments. The scale is so right there.

Now, this is Nathaniel Greene, second in command of the American Revolution, a Quaker, although I don't know what a Quaker was doing fighting in the American Revolution. Never fought any battles in Georgia. But a very thankful Georgia legislature awarded Mr. Greene a confiscated Tory estate called Mulberry Grove Plantation up the Savannah River, 2000 acres. A black man's remembrance of the old plantation house. A white man's fantasy of the plantation house. Somewhere in between was reality.

And poor Nathaniel. He didn't understand about our summers. He walked out in the rice fields without his sombrero, got heat stroke, called in the Savannah physicians. Now, understand about doctors. You know they have done more harm than they have ever done good. 1940 seems to be the turn-around and you're supposed to have better luck with your doctor after that. But I don't know about my doctor. She's still "practicing" medicine in Savannah.

In any case, the doctors were brought in. They blistered his temples and bled the man twice. They killed Nathaniel Greene.

And here is the Marquis de Lafayette, that hero of two nations. He comes to Savannah on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and lays a cornerstone for a monument to Nathaniel Greene. And here is that monument in Johnson Square in the Greco-Egyptian style. And if you are there, read that inscription. Freud would have a field day with it.

Now, here is Eli Whitney. A recent graduate of Yale University, he comes south looking for a job. On the ship was the Widow Greene. She invites him to Mulberry Grove Plantation. He learns all about cotton and how those dreadful fibers stick to those little seeds. He applies his Yankee ingenuity and invents a cotton engine, or cotton gin for short, and overnight a cotton kingdom is created. It spreads all the way over to Texas. And slavery, that had been a dying institution, is now profitable once again and reshackled on the South for a couple of more generations. And Savannah now has a real economic reason for its existence. The largest cotton port in the world, and of course, with all the money, we have a Cotton Exchange. It was the first building in Savannah built on air rights. There's Drain Street underneath it, believe it or not, and they didn't pay property taxes in the beginning. Not built on land, you understand. They pay taxes now, although it is no longer a cotton exchange.

Now, after the revolution, George Washington comes on a southern tour, visits Savannah, and he sends down two captured cannon from the British, captured at Yorktown. They're found under a shed just east of the City Hall. We call them affectionately George and Martha, and once you see them, you will not have any problem understanding which is which.

But with all the new money coming to Savannah in the early 19th century, we get a new architect coming to Savannah from, Bath, England. His name was William Jay, and here is his first creation, a little palace, the Richardson-Owens- Thomas House. It was from this balcony that the Marquis de Lafayette spoke to the assembled citizens of Savannah, two hours in French, at a time when Savannahians were bilingual.

The second William Jay house was the Telfair mansion. The last member of that family was Mary Telfair. What a scandalous old witch she was. When she died, she willed her house and contents to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, stipulating that the word "Telfair" must be in larger letters and on a separate line from "Academy of Arts and Sciences."

And so it is still in existence, and it is a house museum and an art gallery. And look at the painting above the sofa. That's the Morrell-Wylie family. This lady had two husbands. The first husband was on the right. You can see the little son looking up to his daddy. The second husband was jealous and chopped him off. Human nature doesn't change over the years.

Now, outside the Telfair, there are these larger-than-life-size Renaissance style pieces of sculpture. This is Rubens. Now, one day I want to write a naughty history of Savannah, and I want to share with you a naughty limerick. This is Rubens, now.

As Rubens was mixing Rose Madder

His subject was climbing a ladder.

To him her position

Suggested coition

So he mounted the ladder and had her.

A third William Jay house was Scarbrough House. William Scarbrough was a great entrepreneur. He sent the first steamship across the Atlantic Ocean and appropriately enough, that home is now the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum.

Other houses built about the same time. The Davenport House, now a museum open to the public. Notice, built off the street to get away from the noise and the sand, and you catch a little breeze. The interior you will see.

Outside, a number of plantations. This is one that escaped Mr. Sherman's fury. This is the old Hermitage. It unfortunately was torn down in the 1930s and reassembled by Henry Ford on the Ogeechee River where it is now part of Peter Pollack's Ford Plantation Complex. By the way, if you're interested, the lots start at $600,000.

And look at Johnny Mercer, Savannah's native son, songwriter. His family home, Mercer House, on Monterey Square, made famous by John Berendt in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the worst gossip about the best people in town, all about what makes the world go round, money and power and sex and perversion, greed, incompetence, and killing, four murder trials, more sex, more perversions, and some voodoo.

Now, Ginger, my wife, has a short write-up in this book, page 142. Check it out. When her 83-year-old mother started reading this book, she got to Ginger's part and immediately called up and said, "Ginger, you're not going to be in this book anymore, now, are you?"

Other trophy houses built about the same time. The old Miners House. That house has always brought more money than any other house in Savannah. It recently sold to a member of the Tesch family, I think it is, which owns movie houses and hotels and used to own CBS. It's a trophy house, we like to call it. Look at the interior. Just gorgeous and spectacular.

The last little bit of the town common was made into a large park called Forsyth Park, a mile around its circumference, around its edges, in the center of which is a wonderful fountain surrounded by Victorian houses as the birthplace of Conrad Aiken. And there's the fountain. Spring is pretty everywhere, but is especially kind to Savannah. Come in late March, early April, for our tour of homes when the flowers are just spectacular.

Abraham Lincoln. His election in 1860 precipitates the secession of the lower South. Guarding the Savannah River is Fort Pulaski, guarded by two Union soldiers. Confederates went down with 138 soldiers. They stormed the fort, took the fort, and Fort Pulaski now becomes a Confederate fort. That is, until Quincy Adams Gilmore -- with a name like that, you know where he's from -- attacks the fort in April of 1862. It was the first use of rifle cannon in the history of warfare. And as is so often the case, it was overkill. And so the confederates surrendered, Colonel Olmstead says, "I surrender my sword. I trust I have not disgraced it." A time when honor was so very important.

And Ken Burns doesn't know about this photograph of Fort Pulaski. Look at the soldiers up front, all lined up for inspection. But it's those people in the back. Maybe it's the first photograph of an American baseball game. Abner Doubleday and all that.

But it was the blockade that did the South in, and modern warfare conducted by William Tecumseh Sherman, his famous march to the sea. He destroyed the railroads, the will of the South to fight. Savannah actually buckled down for a fight, but in the end, in the middle of the night, they built a little pontoon bridge, about where we are right now, and escaped over into South Carolina, leaving the town deserted of military. Sherman piles in, chooses the Green Meldrim House as his headquarters, and it was from the headquarters that he sent the most famous telegram ever sent out of Savannah to President Abraham Lincoln, "I beg to present to you as a Christmas present the city of Savannah with 25,000 bales of cotton."

After the Civil War, the erection of the Confederate monument. I understand this soldier faces north.

After the war, the relocation of the blacks coming into town. Look at the Gullah baskets that they made out of bullrushes and what have you.

And after the war, the founding of Georgia State Industrial College, now Savannah State University, the first black state college in Georgia. Still in existence, and still primarily black, I might point out.

After the war, we have Joel Chandler Harris coming down from the Wren's Nest outside of Atlanta to be the assistant editor of the Savannah Morning News. $40 a month he got paid. He heard all the wonderful Gullah stories, and wrote them up in his Uncle Remus tales.

After the war, we have a shift or a partial shift into naval stores, tar and pitch and turpentine, lumber, that kind of stuff.

And in the 20th century, chemical factories that dot the Savannah River, poison our air, and kill us about five years before the national average says we should die.

The preservation movement, very destructive in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the remembrance of a building, torn down to make way for a parking lot.

And look at the Old City Market, torn down to make way for a parking garage. I'm happy to report that lease is going to be up next year, and I suspect it will not be allowed to stand much longer. But the City Market area is thriving and very lively at night. Check it out.

The old De Soto Hotel, torn down in 1966, to make room for a filing cabinet. Just dreadful.

And the 1960s also brought a lot of federal money into Savannah, to redo the squares, the 24 squares that we have, and lending money at 3 percent, that was like giving it away, $27,000 for each unit we put in. Very yuppified now.

Look at River Street. You can see the Cotton Exchange. City Hall in the rear. It's got a new gold dome from Dahlonega, Georgia. Look at River Street with all of its shops. If you like cotton candy and T shirts, that's the place to go. There is one very nice restaurant I must point out called the River House. So check it out.

Look at Broughton Street. It used to be the commercial district of Savannah. But you know, in the 1960s, we had those malls built on the south side, just like they did in your hometown, I bet. Destroyed all those businesses, but Broughton Street in recent years has been coming back. Look at Levy's Department store, now taken over by SCAD as their library, and the old Weis Cinema, now taken over by SCAD as the Trustees Theater.

And look at houses that are being built nowadays on vacant lots. I hate to see a vacant lot in Savannah, Georgia. This is an urban area. It's like seeing somebody with a big broad smile with an empty tooth out in front, missing tooth. So look what Ed Shaver did. Once you put that stucco in, you don't know you're not seeing an old, old house.

And I close with a couple of photographs of our own house that my wife and I bought in 1976. Actually, when we decided to get married, we picked Monterey Square, thought it was the prettiest square in Savannah. Still think it's the prettiest square in Savannah. We waited for a house to come up for sale. This is the house that came up for sale. We paid -- are you ready for this -- $36,000. Our only regret is, we didn't buy every other house that came up for sale. They would have all been good investments. Look at the marble floor with stencilled ceilings, original chandeliers, marble mantels, and two very elaborate cornices, and a pier mirror. Very wonderful inside. We are so happy and so fortunate to live in this house. This is my library on the second floor. I'm actually a 12th-generation Charlestonian, but I have lived in Savannah now going on 40 years, and I love both towns.

And our back porch. You know, porches are what makes the South different from the rest of the nation, gives us a sense of having more time and makes us good storytellers. My father was the deer-hunter in the family. At age 82 he was still riding a horse and shooting those animals in the forests and fields of South Carolina. As a child I would not eat deer meat in protest. It didn't do any good. But now that my father's dead and those poor deer are dead, I don't mind giving them all their immortality, and I want to invite any and all of you, if you're in the neighborhood, to come by, 12 East Taylor Street. I'll be happy to give you a little tour of the house, and we also have a lovely world-class antique map and print shop in our basement.

Thanks very much. I have enjoyed it. There's time to answer any quick questions if you have any. There's going to be a test afterwards. Question?

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Where was the childhood home of Flannery O'Connor?

MR. DUNCAN: Charlton Street, although I don't believe it's open on Mondays. But you know, Flannery was a short-story writer and novelist. She had her first 13 years in Savannah. She was famous for her chicken that she had taught to walk backwards, and she had what I call the triple whammy. She was a woman -- her real name was Mary, you understand -- she was a Catholic, and she was a southerner. The triple whammy.

Any other questions? Thanks very much.

MR. BRATEK: Thank you very much. Lunch is right next door, and it's ready to go now.