Special Program on the History of the Pest Houses and the Slave Dwelling Project by Joe McGill

Event Details

The Slave Dwelling Project, founded by Mr. McGill, focuses on identifying slave cabins and how to preserve them. Mr. McGill increases the awareness of these slave dwellings by spending the night in them, and presenting programs. He is also the founder of Company “I” 54th Massachusetts Reenactment Regiment in Charleston, South Carolina. He has worked as a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation; as Executive Director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Director of History and Culture at Penn Center; and a park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument. He is also a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau and an Air Force veteran.

The first pest house was built on Sullivan’s Island in 1707. Over the next 80 years four pest houses were located between Fort Moultrie and the western end of Sullivan’s Island. When ships arrived carrying infectious diseases, their free or enslaved passengers were quarantined either aboard ship on in island pest houses. Later on, quarantine stations moved to James Island and in the 1830s to Morris Island.