Columbia, SC (WLTX) - The Historic Columbia Foundation is celebrating their 34th Annual Jubilee Festival of Heritage with a new exhibit that gives you a look at the daily lives of one courageous family.
"This is an incredible site with tons of history on it," explains Ashley Tucker with the Foundation, "Celia Mann, we know she was enslaved and she was able to purchase her freedom in Charleston and she made it to Columbia and she just really had an entrepreneurial spirit."
Celia worked as a midwife ad her home with husband Ben Delane once stood at the corner of Richland and Marion Streets downtown. Their family inherited that spirit, running several different businesses right here in the early 1900's. That's where the ghost structures come in. "We know that the family lived here for 140 years and during that time, there was the house, obviously, that they lived in. But they also ran a grocery store, they had a lunch counter," says Tucker, "And they actually had rental spaces too. so they also had other houses that they rented to people in the neighborhood."
Walking through the open space, where windows and doors almost float in mid-air, you step back in time. "This was a lunch counter that the family ran," explains Tucker while touring the property, "We kind of think it was a modern-day 7-11. You could pick up marbles or straight pins, so it was a little bit more than just food."
And time was exactly what it took to figure it all out. "We were able to find out that all these structures were here through an archeological dig that we've been doing for 6 or so years," says Tucker, "It's a great story and a lot of people don't know about it."
Jubliee Festival is Saturday, August 18th. You can get more information by checking out their website.