The Plantation Owner Who Left Everything to His Slave… and Nothing to His Wife
South Carolina’s probate records contain a document so controversial that it remained sealed for 83 years. The last will and testament of Colonel Augustus Fairmont dated March 1857 distributed his entire estate valued at what would be millions today to a single beneficiary. Not his wife of 26 years, not his three legitimate children.
Not his brother who’d fought beside him in the Mexican War. The sole heir to Fairmont’s 1400 acres, his Charleston townhouse, his cotton factoring business, and his considerable investments was a woman whose name appeared in his ledgers under a very different category of property.
The reading of that will sparked a legal battle that would consume three law firms, divide Charleston society, and expose secrets that powerful families spent decades trying to bury. Before we continue with the story of Augustus Fairmont and the inheritance that shouldn’t have existed, make sure you’re subscribed to Liturgy of Fear. Hit that notification bell because stories like this one don’t appear in history books and tell us in the comments what state are you listening from right now. We love knowing where our audience discovers these dark corners of American
history. What makes the Fairmont case so disturbing isn’t just what the will revealed, but what it forced into the open about the hidden structures that existed beneath southern gentility. Charleston in the 1850s represented everything the antibbellum south wanted the world to see. White columned mansions lined the battery, their piazas catching the harbor breeze.
On Sunday mornings, church bells from St. Michaels and St. Phillips called the faithful to worship. In the afternoons, carriages rolled down Meeting Street carrying ladies in silk dresses and gentlemen in fine broadcloth. The city’s wealth came from rice, from indigo from Sea Island cotton, products of the plantations that sprawled across the low country like kingdoms unto themselves.
Augustus Fairmont’s plantation, Riverside, sat 30 mi inland along the Ashley River. The main house built in 1789 by his grandfather rose three stories in the Georgian style symmetrical imposing design to declare permanence. Live oaks older than the nation itself formed an alley from the river road to the front portico. Behind the house stretched the working buildings.
the kitchen house, the carriage house, the overseer’s cottage, and further back beyond a stand of pines, the quarters where nearly 200 people lived under conditions the law recognized as property ownership. Fairmont himself cut an impressive figure in Charleston society. 47 years old in 1857, he stood over 6t tall with the bearing of a military man, which he’d been during the Mexican War.
He’d returned with a commendation and a bullet still lodged near his spine that gave him a slight limp in damp weather. He served on the vestri of St. Phillips. He belonged to the South Carolina Society, the Hiburnian Society, and the Agricultural Society. His opinions on cotton futures carried weight on Broad Street.
When he spoke at public meetings about states rights and southern sovereignty, people listened. His wife, Margaret Louisa Fairmont, came from the Rutled family, old Charleston aristocracy, with connections that mattered. She’d brought a substantial dowy to the marriage in 1831, 30 enslaved people, $10,000 in railroad stock, and the kind of family name that opened doors.
She bore Augustus three children who survived infancy. Catherine, born in 1832. Augustus Jr., born in 1835 and Margaret called Meg born in 1838. By all appearances, they represented the ideal southern family, prosperous, respectable, devout, but appearances in Charleston society were carefully constructed performances, and the Fairmont household maintained its performance with particular rigidity.
The household staff at both the plantation and the Charleston townhouse operated under the direction of a woman named Celia Rouso. She was 28 years old in 1857, unusually light-skinned and literate, a dangerous combination of attributes that would have raised immediate questions in any other household.
Fairmont’s ledgers listed her purchase in 1843 from a Savannah estate sale for the extraordinary sum of $1,500, triple the typical price with no explanation for the premium. Celia held no official title. Yet she controlled access to Fairmont, managed his correspondence, and occupied a small room in the main house at Riverside rather than in the quarters. She dressed in plain but quality fabrics.
She wore a gold locket that no one had ever seen her without. She spoke with the diction of someone educated beyond her supposed station, and she moved through the Fairmont house with an authority that made visitors uncomfortable and made Margaret Fairmont’s lips thin, with barely suppressed rage.
Plantation society had its unspoken rules about these arrangements. Men of means often maintained relationships that existed in the shadows, producing children whose parentage everyone knew. But no one acknowledged. As long as certain proprieties were observed, as long as the legal wife maintained her position, as long as the children of these unions remained enslaved, as long as the whole structure stayed buried beneath gentile denial, society could function.
Augustus Fairmont had violated every single one of those rules, though no one yet understood how completely. The spring of 1857 brought an unusual drought to the low country. The rice fields that should have been flooded stood cracked and dry.
Cotton prices had begun their slow decline that would accelerate into the panic of 57 by August. In Charleston’s drawing rooms, conversation turned more frequently to northern aggression. To the DreadScott, decision handed down that March to whether the Union could survive. The air felt heavy with more than humidity. It carried the weight of a world beginning to crack at its foundations. At Riverside, the tension took a more personal form.
Margaret Fairmont had returned to Charleston in February, taking young Magg with her and had not come back to the plantation. Catherine, now 25 and unmarried, a source of growing concern, remained in the city as well. Only Augustus Jr., training in his father’s cotton factoring business, made occasional visits to Riverside, and even he found reasons to keep them brief.
The household at Riverside then consisted primarily of Augustus, Celia, the field workers, and the immediate house staff. It was during this period of relative isolation that Augustus Fairmont began to make arrangements that would shatter everything his family assumed about their future. On the evening of March 14th, 1857, Augustus Fairmont sent word to Charleston requesting the presence of his attorney, Josiah Prescott, at Riverside.
The message delivered by a trusted courier specified that Prescott should come alone and should bring the necessary materials for drafting a complex testimentary document. Prescott, who had served the Fairmont family for 15 years, found the request unusual but not alarming. Wealthy men often updated their wills. What he did not expect was the scene he encountered in Fairmont’s study two days later.
Prescott would later testify in court that he arrived at Riverside on the afternoon of March 16th to find Fairmont in obvious physical distress. The colonel sat behind his mahogany desk, his face drawn and gray, one hand pressed against his lower back. A decanter of whiskey sat at his elbow, unusual for a man who typically drank with moderation.
Most striking was Celia’s presence in the room, not serving, not waiting for instructions, but seated in the leather chair normally reserved for business associates, her hands folded in her lap, her expression composed. “Sir, I should perhaps call for Dr. Middleton,” Prescott said, noting the sheen of sweat on Fairmont’s forehead despite the cool March weather.
No doctors, Fairmont’s voice came rough but firm. I know exactly what’s wrong with me, Josiah, and no physician can cure it. I need you to write a will tonight, and I need it done exactly as I dictate, no matter what your professional judgment might counsel.
” Prescott glanced at Celia, whose presence made the situation deeply irregular. Colonel, these matters are typically I need witnesses who can read and write and who will testify to my soundness of mind. Fairmont interrupted. Celia is one of the most intelligent people I know. She’ll witness. You’ll find two others among my people who can sign their names. I’ve already arranged it.
The attorney’s discomfort was palpable, but Fairmont was a client of significant standing. Prescott opened his case and prepared his materials. What followed was a dictation that would take nearly 3 hours, interrupted frequently by Fairmont’s pauses to master what was clearly considerable pain.
The will began conventionally enough with the standard declarations of soundness of mind and body, though the latter was clearly generous and the revocation of all previous testaments. Then came the provisions that would change everything. I give and bequeath to Celia Rouso, Fairmont dictated, his words precise despite his physical suffering.
Currently held as property at Riverside Plantation, her immediate and unconditional freedom upon my death, along with all documents necessary to establish her status as a free woman of color under the laws of South Carolina and the United States. Prescott’s pen hesitated. Manumission clauses were not uncommon in wills, though they were becoming increasingly restricted by state law. But Fairmont was just beginning.
I further give and bequath to the aforementioned Celia Rouso, now to be known as Celia Rouso Fairmont, the entirety of Riverside Plantation, including all lands, buildings, equipment, livestock, and all persons currently held in bondage thereon.
I further bequeathed to her my townhouse at number 14 Trad Street in Charleston, along with all furnishings and household goods therein. The scratching of the pen stopped entirely. Colonel, I must strongly advise, writed Josiah. Fairmont’s voice carried an edge that silenced objection. I further bequeath to Celia Russo Fairmont all shares and interests in the firm of Fairmont and Lazarus cotton factors, all railroad stock, all bank deposits, all bonds and securities, and all personal property of every kind and description.
I appoint her sole execut of this my last will and testament with full power to act without bond or judicial oversight. The room had grown very quiet except for the sounds of Prescott’s pen and the distant evening songs from the quarters. Celia sat perfectly still, her face revealing nothing. Regarding my wife, Margaret Louisa Fairmont, Augustus continued, each word seeming to cost him.
I hereby grant her the legal minimum daer right required under South Carolina law, one-third of my real property for her natural life. However, said Daer, Wright shall be subject to Celia Russo Fairmont’s primary ownership and management, and Margaret Louisa Fairmont shall have no voice in the administration of any property whatsoever. Prescott had stopped even pretending to write.
Colonel, your wife has legal protections. Your children have expectations. This will not stand in court. Beyond the legal impossibilities a woman of color cannot own. Write it all down, Josiah. Exactly as I say it. There are ways around the legal restrictions and you know it. Property can be held in trust. Arrangements can be made. I’ve studied the law.
I’m not the first man to try to provide for. He stopped. His breathing labored. Write that I acknowledge Celia’s son Daniel, born June 12th, 1844, as my natural child, and I direct that he be raised as a free man with all advantages available to him. The silence that followed this statement seemed to thicken the air in the study.
Daniel was 13 years old in 1857, a boy who worked in the Riverside stables, and who bore such a resemblance to Augustus Fairmont that only willful blindness could deny the connection. The acknowledgement in writing made explicit what society demanded, remain forever unspoken. Furthermore, Augustus said, his voice weakening, I acknowledge Celia’s daughter, Ruth, born April 3rd, 1847, as my natural child, and I direct that she be raised with the same advantages.
two children, not merely one indiscretion, but an ongoing relationship spanning at least 13 years, producing offspring who shared blood with the legitimate Fairmont heirs, but who had lived their entire lives in legal bondage to their own father. Prescott found his voice.
Colonel, I cannot in good conscience allow you to proceed without understanding the consequences. Your wife will contest this immediately. Your children will never accept it. Charleston Society will Charleston society Augustus interrupted with unexpected venom built its fortune on systematic rape and called it breeding stock. Every fine house on the battery contains children whose fathers own them.
Every respectable gentleman conducts business by day and violates the very people he claims as property by night. The only difference, Josiah, is that I am telling the truth about it. I am putting in legal writing what every man in Charleston does in the darkness. He leaned forward and the movement clearly cost him. I am dying. Josiah Doctor Middleton told me 6 months ago that the cancer spreading from my bowels would kill me within the year. I’ve hidden it from everyone except Celia.
I have perhaps weeks remaining, possibly less. And I will not, I cannot leave this earth knowing that my own children will be sold to settle my debts, or that the woman I should have had the courage to marry openly will be returned to bondage when I die. The admission hung in the air like smoke. Prescott’s hands trembled slightly as he resumed writing.
For the next two hours, they worked through the technical details, the trust arrangements that might survive legal challenge, the specific bequests designed to provide immediate liquid assets, the careful wording that attempted to thread the needle of South Carolina law regarding property rights and manumission.
When the document was finally complete, Fairmont insisted on reading it through himself, his finger following each line despite the obvious pain the focus caused him. Then he signed it with a steady hand, the signature no different from the one he’d used on hundreds of business documents.
Celia signed as witness, her handwriting notably educated and precise. Two other enslaved people from the plantation, a man named Samuel, who served as a blacksmith and had taught himself to read, and a woman named Hannah, who’d learned letters from a former mistress, were brought in to witness as well. Prescott noted their marks and signatures with evident discomfort.
I’ll file this with my other documents, Prescott said carefully as he prepared to leave. But, Colonel, I urge you to reconsider. At least provide more substantially for your legitimate children. Make some gesture that might soften their response. My legitimate children, Augustus said, and there was infinite weariness in his voice.
will inherit the protection of their mother’s family name, the education I’ve already paid for, and the social position that comes with white skin in Charleston. Daniel and Ruth will inherit nothing but their freedom if I don’t act now. The law sees them as things, Josiah. Things I own, things that could be sold to pay my creditors if I don’t make this ironclad.
He looked at Celia then, and something passed between them that Prescott could not name. I’ve lived a coward’s life. Let me at least die honestly. Prescott departed Riverside that evening with a document he knew would destroy multiple lives, possibly including his own professional reputation.
He rode back to Charleston through darkness, turning over in his mind whether he had a legal obligation to inform Margaret Fairmont of what her husband had done. He decided, perhaps out of cowardice himself, that attorney client privilege prevented him from speaking. It would be his silence that allowed the situation to unfold as catastrophically as it did. Augustus Fairmont lived for another 6 weeks.
During that time, he remained at Riverside, his condition deteriorating rapidly. Celia nursed him through increasing pain, administering lordinum when it became unbearable, reading to him in the evenings from books they’d apparently shared for years. History, philosophy, poetry. Daniel and Ruth were allowed to visit their father openly during his final days, a site that scandalized the white overseers, but that none of them dared question, given Fairmont’s fearsome reputation, even in decline. Margaret Fairmont did not
visit. Whether she’d heard rumors of her husband’s condition and chose to stay away, or whether Augustus had deliberately prevented word from reaching her, the historical record does not make clear. But she remained in Charleston, attending social functions, maintaining the fiction that her husband was simply occupied with plantation business during the difficult agricultural season. Augustus Fairmont died on the morning of April 28th, 1857.
Celia was with him at the end. According to later testimony from the house staff, his last words were, “Tell them the truth. All of it.” The truth, when it emerged, would prove more destructive than even he might have anticipated. News of Colonel Fairmont’s death reached Charleston the same day.
By protocol and custom, Margaret received visitors offering condolences at the TD Street House. She wore black silk, received guests in the parlor, accepted their expressions of sympathy with appropriate dignity. Everyone remarked on her composure, on the strength she displayed in her time of trial. She had no idea that she’d already lost everything. The reading of the will was scheduled for May 3rd, 5 days after Augustus’s death, and one day after his burial in St.
Philip’s churchyard, a burial that Margaret had insisted be properly conducted, despite her private fury at her husband’s long absence and sudden death. She’d invited only family and close associates to the reading, her brother, James Rutlidge, her children. Augustus’s brother, William, and several family friends who’d served as informal advisers over the years.
Josiah Prescott arrived at the Trad Street house at 10:00 in the morning, carrying the will and wearing the expression of a man walking to his own execution. He’d tried twice to meet privately with Margaret before this moment to prepare her, but she’d been too occupied with funeral arrangements to see him.
Now he would have to deliver the news in public before witnesses. Margaret sat in the largest chair in the drawing room, her children around her. Catherine, at 25, had never married despite her mother’s efforts. A source of ongoing tension that had deepened when Augustus refused to provide an adequate diary for the matches Margaret had arranged. Augustus Jr.
, 22, worked in his father’s cotton factoring business, and assumed he would inherit both the firm and the plantation. Young Mag, 19, sat with her hands folded, still the beautiful daughter. The room smelled of furniture polish and the flowers that had been arriving steadily since the news of Augustus’s death. Spring sunlight streamed through the tall windows overlooking the garden.
Everything appeared civilized, ordered, proper. Prescott cleared his throat. Mrs. Fairmont, family members, I must begin by saying that the contents of Colonel Fairmont’s last will and testament are highly unusual. I advised against several provisions, but the colonel was adamant and in my professional judgment of sound mind when he dictated his wishes. Margaret’s expression suggested this preamble was unnecessary.
My husband was always particular about his affairs. Mr. Prescott, please proceed with the reading. What followed would be remembered by everyone present for the rest of their lives. Prescott read through the opening sections quickly. the standard legal language, the revocation of previous wills. Then he reached the substantive bequests.
His voice became strained as he read the words that granted freedom to Celia, that acknowledged Daniel and Ruth as Augustus’s natural children, that transferred the entirety of the estate to a woman who had been legally property when the will was written. The reaction was not immediate. For several seconds, the room remained silent as the assembled family tried to process what they just heard.
Catherine looked confused as if she’d misheard. Augustus Jr. leaned forward, his face reening. James Rutled gripped the arms of his chair. Margaret Fairmont went absolutely still. Then Augustus Jr. exploded. This is absurd. It’s forgery. My father would never. He couldn’t have Your father dictated this will to me directly. Prescott said quietly.
I witnessed his signature. The document has been properly executed with multiple witnesses. Witnesses? James Rutled’s voice cut through the chaos. What witnesses? Who would witness such a document? When Prescott explained that the witnesses included enslaved people who could read and write, including Celia herself, the room erupted.
Multiple people spoke at once. Augustus Jr. stood and paced, his hands clenched. Catherine began to cry, but Margaret remained seated and silent, her face hardening into an expression that suggested not shock, but confirmation of longheld suspicions. Finally, she raised one hand, and the room quieted. When she spoke, her voice carried the cold precision of sharpened steel.
“How long?” Prescott blinked. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fairmont. How long was my husband conducting this relationship with his property? The attorney hesitated. The will acknowledges children born in 1844 and 1847. 13 years, Margaret said softly. My youngest daughter was born in 1838. for 19 years of our marriage.
Then while I bore his children, managed his household, maintained his position in society, he was she stopped mastering herself with visible effort. And this woman, this Celia, she now owns my home. The will provides for your daer right onethird of the real property for your lifetime. Subject to her ownership under her management. She owns the house. I furnished the plantation.
I helped build the business. My dowy helped establish. Margaret’s voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, which somehow made it more terrible than shouting would have been. And my children inherit nothing. Prescott had no answer that would soften the blow. By the provisions of Augustus Fairmont’s will, his legitimate children received no direct bequests.
They had no claim to the plantation, the Charleston properties, the business interests, or even their father’s personal effects. Everything had been transferred to Celia and her children. Augustus Jr. found his voice. This is slavery’s revenge, my father went mad. He must have some disease of the mind.
Your father was in full possession of his faculties, Prescott said firmly. He understood exactly what he was doing. He stated explicitly that he was correcting an injustice. Injustice. Catherine’s voice rose. He’s made us beggars. We have nothing. How am I to marry with no portion? How is Augustus to establish himself in business? How is mother to live? The daer right provides.
The daeright provides for us to live as dependent in our own home at the pleasure of a woman who was property. James Rutled stood now, his voice shaking with rage. This is unconscionable. It’s illegal. A woman of color cannot own property in South Carolina beyond the most limited.
The property is held in trust with arrangements I believe will withstand legal challenge, Prescott said. Colonel Fairmont studied the law extensively before drafting these provisions. Margaret stood then, and something in her posture made everyone else fall silent. Where is she now? Mrs. Fairmont, where is the woman who has taken my life? Prescott’s reluctance was visible.
She remains at Riverside with the children, as the will specifies, is her right. Her right. Margaret tested the words like poison. Send word to her. Tell her that the family wishes to discuss the terms of the will. Tell her we may be prepared to reach an accommodation that would avoid the ugliness of a public contest. Tell her.
She paused and her smile was terrible. Tell her I wish to meet my husband’s other family. The message went to Riverside that afternoon. Celia’s response arrived the next morning. She would come to Charleston, but only with legal representation present. She suggested they meet at Prescott’s office rather than the Trad Street house, and she insisted that Daniel and Ruth would accompany her, as they had as much right to hear the discussion as Augustus’ legitimate children. The proposed meeting was scheduled for May 8th. In the 5 days between Margaret’s discovery
of the will and that meeting, Charleston Society caught fire with scandal. The details leaked, perhaps through household servants, perhaps through deliberate whispers from Margaret’s allies, perhaps simply because secrets of this magnitude could never be contained.
By the end of the first week of May, everyone in Charleston’s upper circles knew that Colonel Augustus Fairmont had freed his enslaved mistress in his will, had acknowledged their children, and had disinherited his white family to provide for them. The reactions split along predictable lines. Many expressed outrage on Margaret’s behalf, calling Augustus’s actions a betrayal of everything civilized society held dear.
How could a man of his standing, his reputation, his position, commit such an act. Others, particularly among the younger men, whispered that Augustus had only made public what half of Charleston practiced in private. A few, very few, dared to suggest that perhaps there was something admirable in a man trying to provide for children he’d fathered, regardless of their mother’s race.
But beneath all the public discourse ran a deeper current of fear. If Augustus Fairmont, respected, wealthy, connected, could do this, what did it say about the stability of other arrangements? how many other white families might find themselves displaced by the very people they’d kept in bondage. The will represented a fundamental violation of the unspoken rules that allowed southern society to function.
It had to be challenged, had to be defeated, or the implications would spread like cholera through the social order. The meeting on May 8th took place in Josiah Prescott’s office on Broad Street in a room far too small for the number of people who crowded into it.
Margaret arrived first with her brother James, her children, and two additional attorneys she’d retained, specialists in probate law from prominent Charleston families. They arranged themselves on one side of the long table that dominated the room. When Celia arrived, the effect on the room was immediate and visceral. She wore a dress of dark gray wool, simple but well-made, with a white collar. Her hair was pulled back severely.
She carried herself with remarkable composure for a woman walking into a room full of people who wished her destroyed. Daniel, at 13, wore a suit that had clearly been tailored for him, not servants clothes, but the kind of outfit a gentleman’s son would wear.
Ruth, at 10, wore a blue dress with careful stitches, her hair in neat braids. Both children bore the unmistakable Fairmont features, Daniel especially, with Augustus’ strong jaw and deep set eyes. The moment when Margaret Fairmont and Celia Russo faced each other across that table, contained more unspoken history than any document could capture.
These two women had lived in the same houses for 14 years, one as mistress, one as property. They had both born Augustus Fairmont’s children. They had both, in different ways, built their lives around a man who’d kept them in separate worlds that should never have intersected. Now those worlds had collided, and one of them would be destroyed in the wreckage.
Margaret spoke first, her voice controlled, but carrying an edge like ice cracking. You understand? and I presume that my husband’s will cannot stand, that the law protects a wife’s rights, that no court in South Carolina will allow this travesty. Celia met her gaze directly, a deliberate violation of the social codes that governed how a woman of color should address a white woman, especially one of Margaret standing. I understand that your husband chose to acknowledge the truth. Finally, the simple statement
landed like a physical blow. Margaret’s composure cracked slightly, color rising in her cheeks. You seduced him, used your position in his household to manipulate a man who I was 14 years old when your husband purchased me in Savannah. Celia’s voice remained level but gained intensity. 14. I didn’t seduce anyone, Mrs. Fairmont.
I was taught to read and write by my previous mistress, which made me valuable as a household manager. That’s what your husband told people. He bought me for the truth about what else I was purchased for. What I had no choice about. I assume you can imagine. The room had gone deathly silent. Augustus Jr. half rose from his chair. But James Rutled gripped his arm, holding him back.
You will not speak to my mother that way, Catherine said, her voice shaking. You have no right to. I have every right. Celia turned to Catherine, and now there was steel in her tone. I have the right your father gave me in his will. I have the right of someone who managed your household, raised your children when they were young, kept your father’s books, ran his business affairs when he was away, and bore his children just as your mother did.
The only difference is that I did all of it without choice, without legal protection, without the ability to say no. And now your father has tried to give me what he should have given me 13 years ago, my freedom and the means to protect my children. Margaret’s attorney, a gay-haired man named Bogard Simmons, interjected. Miss Rouso, your personal history, however unfortunate, is not relevant to the legal questions at hand.
Colonel Fairmont’s will violates multiple provisions of South Carolina law. Property cannot be transferred in this manner to a woman of color. Children born of an enslaved mother are themselves enslaved and cannot inherit. The daer rights of the legal wife supersede any testimeamentary provisions to the contrary.
This will is legally invalid on multiple grounds. Then why are we having this meeting? Celia asked. If you’re so confident the will is invalid, why not simply proceed to court? Simmons and James Rutled exchanged a glance. The truth was more complicated than Celia’s question suggested, and everyone in the room knew it.
The legal landscape regarding property rights and race in 1857 South Carolina was a patchwork of contradictions. While the law severely restricted what free people of color could own or inherit, it also recognized trusts, recognized private arrangements, and critically recognized that white men of property had certain privileges in disposing of their estates.
Augustus had structured the will carefully using legal mechanisms designed to survive challenge. More importantly, a public court battle would expose details that neither family wanted examined. James Rutled cleared his throat. We are here, Miss Russo, because despite the legal invalidity of this document, we recognize that a protracted court case would be unpleasant for all involved. The details of my brother-in-law’s private life would become public record. Names would be named.
Children would be scrutinized. We are prepared to offer you a settlement that would provide for you and your children’s future without the necessity of litigation. How generous,” Celia said, and the sarcasm was barely veiled. “What are the terms of this settlement?” Margaret leaned forward. “You receive your freedom, which the law would likely grant regardless.
You receive $20,000, enough to establish yourself and your children comfortably anywhere in the north, where attitudes toward your situation might be more accommodating. In exchange, you renounce any claim to the Fairmont properties, the business interests, and you leave South Carolina within 30 days. The offer was substantial in monetary terms. $20,000 represented significant wealth.
But it was a fraction of what the estate was worth, and everyone in the room knew it. More importantly, it required Celia to abandon the South, to take her children away from the only home they’d known, to accept exile as the price of their freedom.
“Your husband left me everything because he knew what would happen to me and my children if he didn’t,” Celia said quietly. “He knew that the moment he died, I would become vulnerable, that someone would try to sell me to settle debts, or that your family would try to remove me. He knew that Daniel and Ruth, his children, would be treated as property to be disposed of. He spent 6 weeks dying in agony, Mrs.
Fairmont, and he used that time to ensure we would be protected. I don’t believe he would want me to accept 30 pieces of silver and disappear. How dare you quote scripture at me? Margaret’s voice dropped to a hiss.
You who helped destroy my marriage, who lived in my houses, who bore children to my husband while I She stopped visibly fighting for control. Catherine placed a hand on her mother’s arm. Mother, please. But Margaret shook her off. No, I have been silent for too long, accommodating for too long, playing the gracious lady while my husband’s infidelity happened under my own roof.
She turned her full attention to Celia and the pain beneath the anger was suddenly visible. Did you love him? The question hung in the air, transforming the legal negotiation into something more raw and human. Celia’s composure finally cracked slightly. I was 14 when he bought me Mrs. Fairmont. I learned to survive.
Whether that became love or simply the need to protect myself and my children, I don’t know if I can answer that question. But I do know that he gave me the only gift he could, the chance to not be property anymore. And I know that if I surrender that now, my children will spend their lives vulnerable to anyone who decides their freedom is inconvenient.
Josiah Prescott, who’d remained silent throughout the exchange, finally spoke. Perhaps we might focus on the children. Surely both families can agree that the welfare of these young people, all of them, should be paramount. My children’s welfare, Margaret said coldly, is threatened by this will. My son cannot establish himself in business without capital.
My daughters cannot make appropriate marriages without portions. This woman’s children were born enslaved and should remain so under the law. Daniel, who’d been silent throughout the meeting, finally spoke. His voice was young but steady. I am 13 years old. For my entire life, I have been property. I have watched my mother serve people who owned her.
I have worked in stables alongside men who could be sold at any moment. I have a 10-year-old sister who knows that her life could be bought and sold. My father, and he was my father, everyone can see it. Everyone has always known it. My father tried to give us what you take for granted. The right to own ourselves.
How is it justice to take that away? The directness of the statement coming from a child who’d had no voice in any of this created a moment of uncomfortable silence. Augustus Jr. looking at Daniel perhaps seeing for the first time a half brother rather than property seemed about to speak but his mother’s glare silenced him.
Justice Margaret said is not served by destroying one family to benefit another. Mr. Simmons how do we proceed with the legal challenge? Simmons outlined the strategy. They would file for probate in the Court of Common please, arguing that the will violated public policy, exceeded the testator’s legal authority to dispose of property to persons of color, and infringed upon Margaret’s daer rights.
They would call witnesses to testify to Augustus’ erratic behavior in his final weeks, suggesting diminished capacity. They would argue that Celia had exercised undue influence over a dying man. As Simmons spoke, Celia’s attorney, a man named Thomas Grimbaugh, one of the few Charleston lawyers willing to take such a controversial case, made notes.
Grimbball was Quaker, opposed to slavery on religious grounds, and willing to weather social ostracism to challenge it legally wherever possible. The Fairmont case gave him precisely that opportunity. The meeting concluded with no agreement. The battle would move to court, and everyone present understood what that meant. Months or years of litigation, astronomical legal costs, and the inevitability that Charleston Society would be forced to examine questions it preferred to leave unasked.
As they filed out of Prescott’s office, Margaret and Celia passed within inches of each other at the door. Margaret paused, turned, and spoke so softly that only Celia could hear. He called your name when he was dying, didn’t he? Not mine. Not his children’s. Yours. Celia met her eyes. Yes.
Margaret’s face crumpled for just an instant before she mastered herself and walked away, her children and attorneys trailing behind her. It was the last time the two women would speak directly to each other. The legal battle that followed would consume Charleston society for the next 18 months and would expose far more than anyone anticipated.
The case of Fairmont versus Fairmont Estate entered the court of common please on May 15th, 1857. Judge Hamilton Pinkney, a distinguished jurist with 30 years on the bench and extensive ties to Charleston’s planter class, would preside. His initial ruling on the preliminary motion suggested which way the wind would blow. He granted Margaret’s attorneys broad latitude in questioning the will’s validity while restricting Grimaugh’s ability to introduce evidence about Augustus’ reasoning or intent.
But the case’s timing proved critical in ways no one initially understood. The panic of 1857 struck that August, triggered by the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. Banks failed across the country. Credit dried up. Cotton prices already declining plummeted. Businesses that seemed solid in May were bankrupt by September.
The financial crisis hit Charleston hard, and it hit the Fairmont business interests catastrophically. Augustus had been leveraged, not excessively by the standards of the time, but enough that the sudden credit contraction created immediate problems. Fairmont and Lazarus, the cotton factoring firm, had extended credit to numerous planters against their expected fall crops.
When cotton prices collapsed, those planters couldn’t pay their debts, which meant Fairmont and Lazarus couldn’t pay its creditors. The firm’s lines of credit with Charleston banks were called in. The railroad stock that had seemed like solid assets lost 80% of their value virtually overnight. By October 1857, Riverside Plantation faced the real possibility of foreclosure. The Charleston Townhouse had leans against it.
Even Margaret’s Daer rights would be worthless if the properties were sold to satisfy creditors, and under Augustus’ will, Celia Rouso was the legal owner responsible for managing this financial catastrophe. The situation created a bizarre inversion of the normal order.
Celia, still technically enslaved pending resolution of her manum mission, effectively controlled assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, while also being responsible for debts that could destroy everything. She had legal authority to make decisions about the estate. But exercising that authority meant navigating a world that fundamentally rejected the idea that someone like her could possess such power. She surprised everyone.
Working with Thomas Grimble and a small group of Charleston businessmen who saw profit opportunity despite social scruples. Celia began making ruthless financial decisions. She sold off the railroad stock before it could fall further. She negotiated directly with creditors, offering partial immediate payment in exchange for forgiveness of the remainder, taking advantage of the panicdriven desperation for any cash liquidity.
She cut costs at Riverside dramatically, reducing the household staff and consolidating operations. Most controversially, she sold 40 people from the Riverside workforce to a Mississippi planter for cash that allowed her to meet immediate debts. The sale prevented foreclosure, but it also revealed the fundamental impossibility of her position.
A woman who’d been enslaved herself was now forced to sell others into bondage in order to protect her own freedom and her children’s future. The moral complexity was lost on no one, least of all Celia herself. James Hworth, one of the men sold to Mississippi, was 26 years old and had lived his entire life at Riverside.
Years later, in testimony given to Freriedman’s bureau representatives during reconstruction, he described the day of the sale. Miss Celia called us all together in the yard. She was crying. She said she was sorry, that she had no choice, that if the bank took the plantation, we’d all be sold anyway, but scattered to whoever would buy. She said she was trying to keep families together as much as she could.
That the Mississippi man promised not to separate married folks. She said she knew what it felt like to be sold. Then she looked at me and I saw that she did know and I hated her for it and I pied her for it and I didn’t know what to feel because the woman selling me had been property just like me 6 months before.
The sales provided enough capital to stabilize the estate financially. But they also gave Margaret’s attorneys powerful ammunition. How could a woman claiming to act out of Augustus’s moral vision turn around and sell human beings for profit? How could she claim to deserve the estate when her first instinct was to liquidate it? Grimaugh had an answer, and it was devastating. Mrs. Margaret Fairmont and her children have never opposed slavery.
They have never questioned the right to buy and sell human beings. Their objection to Miss Rouso is not that she sold enslaved people to save the estate. It’s that she, having been enslaved herself, had the audacity to make that decision. Their argument isn’t about morality. It’s about who has the right to exercise power.
And their position is that power can never rest with someone who looks like Miss Russo, no matter what the law or the deceased’s intentions might say. The argument forced the case into territory that made everyone uncomfortable. Charleston’s elite didn’t want to examine the logical contradictions of slavery in open court.
They didn’t want to discuss why it was acceptable for white men to father children with enslaved women, but unacceptable to acknowledge those children. They didn’t want a smart Quaker attorney picking apart the rationalizations that allowed civilized Christians to participate in human bondage. But as the case ground forward through the fall and winter of 1857, that examination became unavoidable.
The witness testimony proved particularly explosive. Margaret’s attorneys called housekeepers and overseers from Riverside to testify about Celia’s position in the household, trying to establish that she’d exercised undue influence over Augustus. What emerged instead was a portrait of a relationship far more complex than either side wanted to acknowledge.
Sarah Yates, who’d worked as a cook at Riverside for 20 years, testified that Colonel Fairmont discussed business matters with Celia regular. She kept his books. She wrote his letters. When he was away, she made decisions about the plantation. Everyone knew she had authority, even if it wasn’t spoke of official.
Under cross-examination from Grimble, Yates was asked directly, “Did Colonel Fairmont appear to value Miss Russo’s judgment?” “Yes, sir,” he did. “Did he treat her with respect?” A pause. “More than most men treat their property, sir. Did he love her?” Margaret’s attorneys objected strenuously, but Judge Pinkney allowed the question. Sarah Yates looked at Margaret Fairmont, then at Celia, then down at her hands.
I don’t know about love, sir, but I know he was different with her than he was with Mrs. Fairmont. Quieter, like he could rest. Mrs. Fairmont always wanted something, some improvement to the house, some invitation to accept, some social occasion to attend. Celia just let him be who he was, I suppose.
The testimony devastated Margaret visibly. The courtroom had been packed for weeks. Scandals like this drew crowds even in winter, and the whispers after Yates’s testimony were audible despite the judge’s gavvel. But perhaps the most damning testimony came from Dr.
Robert Middleton, the physician who treated Augustus during his final illness. Middleton had known about the cancer for months and had, at Augustus’s request, kept silent about the prognosis. Now called to testify about Augustus’s mental state, he was forced to reveal conversations he’d had with his patient. Colonel Fairmont knew he was dying. Middleton testified.
He was fully cognizant of his condition and its progression. He was not delirious. He was not impaired by Lordham when we discussed his affairs. He told me explicitly that he intended to provide for Celia and their children. Their children? Margaret’s attorney pounced. He acknowledged paternity directly to you. He did, he said.
Middleton paused visibly uncomfortable. He said that he’d fathered five children in his life, three with his wife, two with Celia. He said he’d failed all five of them in different ways, but that he could at least ensure that Daniel and Ruth would be free. Did he express any concern for his legitimate children’s welfare? He said they would inherit the protection of their mother’s name and the advantages of being white in Charleston. He was quite specific about that phrasing.
Just when the courtroom thought it couldn’t become more uncomfortable, Margaret’s attorney asked the question that would explode the case entirely. Dr. Middleton, in your professional opinion, was Colonel Fairmont’s judgment impaired by his illness or medication? No. Did he seem rational? completely. Then why, in your medical opinion, would a rational man of his standing commit such an act of social and familial destruction? Middleton looked directly at Margaret Fairmont. He told me something else. He said that he’d lived his entire adult
life according to rules that required him to lie about who he was and what he wanted. He said southern society demanded that men like him maintain two families, one public, one private, and never acknowledge the truth of either. He said he was tired of lying, that dying focused the mind wonderfully on questions of honesty, and that the greatest crime he’d committed wasn’t the relationship with Celia.
It was purchasing her in the first place, owning another human being, and fathering children into bondage. He said if the law wouldn’t allow him to correct that crime, then the law was more corrupted than he was. The courtroom erupted. Judge Pinkney had to recess for 15 minutes to restore order. Margaret left the courthouse that day, surrounded by supporters, but the damage had been done.
Augustus’s own doctor had testified that the will reflected not diminished capacity, but moral clarity. that the man everyone thought they knew had actually been living a lie that he’d finally decided to expose. The testimony created fractures in Charleston society that went beyond one family’s scandal. Men who’d attended church with Augustus, who’d done business with him, who’d maintained their own dual families in the shadows suddenly had to confront the possibility that he’d been right to tell the truth. Women who’d maintained willful ignorance about their husband’s activities were
forced to wonder what was happening in their own households. The case stopped being about one will and became about the entire structure of southern society. And then in January 1858, something happened that changed everything again. Ruth Fairmont, Celia’s 10-year-old daughter, fell ill with scarlet fever.
The disease swept through Charleston that winter, killing dozens of children. Celia, desperate to save her daughter, hired the best physicians available and had the money to do so because of the estate she controlled. Margaret’s attorneys attempted to argue that Celia had no right to spend estate funds on medical care for a child who wasn’t legally recognized.
The argument made in open court proved too much even for Charleston’s tolerance of moral contradiction. Judge Pinkney, clearly struggling with his own conscience, made a ruling that startled everyone. This child is ill. Her father acknowledged her as his daughter in his will. Whatever this court eventually decides about the distribution of Colonel Fairmont’s estate, we will not allow a 10-year-old to die while lawyers argue about property rights.
Miss Russo is authorized to use estate funds for the child’s medical care. It was the first time the court had acknowledged Ruth’s humanity over her status as property. It was a crack in the legal armor that Margaret’s side had been building. Ruth survived, but the illness left her weakened, and the public sympathy generated by a sick child, combined with the doctor’s testimony about Augustus’ motivations, began to shift opinion in subtle ways.
Not among Charleston’s elite who remained committed to defending the social order, but among middling merchants, tradesmen, small farmers who read about the case in newspapers. These weren’t people with enslaved property to protect. They were people who could see the human tragedy beneath the legal technicalities.
By spring of 1858, both sides were exhausted by the costs, financial and social, of the continuing battle. The estate’s remaining assets were being consumed by legal fees. Margaret had been forced to accept loans from her brother to maintain appearances. Celia lived in a strange limbo, legally controlling vast properties while socially ostracized so completely that merchants refused to do business with her directly.
And then Thomas Grimaugh made a move that brought the case to its crisis point. On March 12th, 1858, Grimbball filed a new motion that fundamentally reframed the entire case. Instead of simply defending Augustus’s will, he went on offense, demanding a full accounting of how the Fairmont estate had been managed during Augustus’ life, specifically demanding documentation of all property purchases, all sales, all transfers, with particular attention to acquisitions made after 1843.
The motion seemed technical, but its implications were explosive. Grimald had found something in Augustus’ papers, and he was going to use it. The hearing on the motion took place on March 20th. The courtroom was even more crowded than usual, as word had spread that something significant was coming.
Grimald took the floor with the controlled energy of a man holding a winning hand. Your honor, the Fairmont family has argued throughout these proceedings that Miss Celia Russo is property, that she had no legitimate relationship with Colonel Fairmont, and that she has no legal standing to inherit his estate. I would like to introduce into evidence a document that was found among Colonel Fairmont’s private papers.
He held up a piece of paper, aged and carefully preserved. This is a manumission document executed in Savannah, Georgia on April 3rd, 1847, 10 years before Colonel Fairmont’s death. It grants freedom to Celia, a woman of color, approximately 28 years of age, in consideration of faithful service and other valuable considerations.
Oh, the document is properly notorized and filed with the Chattam County Courthouse in Savannah. The silence in the courtroom was absolute. Margaret’s face went white. Grimald continued, his voice gaining strength. This document was executed on the date of Ruth Fairmont’s birth, Colonel Fairmont’s second daughter by Miss Russo.
Under the law, a child born to a free woman is born free regardless of the father’s status. Ruth Fairmont was never enslaved. She has been legally free since birth. He let that sink in before delivering the next blow. Furthermore, I have here a second document executed in Charleston on June 15th, 1844, 3 days after the birth of Daniel Fairmont.
This document, also a manu Mission, grants freedom to Celia and her infant son, Daniel, under similar terms. Margaret’s lead attorney, Simmons, was on his feet. Objection. These documents were never presented before. This is these documents were hidden by Colonel Fairmont, Grimble said calmly, because he knew that acknowledging them publicly, would expose his children to danger.
A free woman of color in South Carolina exists in a precarious legal position. Her children, even if free by law, could be kidnapped and sold. It was safer for everyone to believe Celia and her children were still enslaved even though they had not been for over a decade. Judge Pinkney leaned forward, his expression grave. You’re saying that Miss Rouso has been legally free since 1847 and her son since 1844.
I’m saying more than that, your honor. I’m saying that for 13 years, Colonel Augustus Fairmont maintained the fiction that Celia was his property while secretly having freed her. He did this not out of cruelty, but out of protection. He understood that a free woman of color with children who looked white would be at risk. But the legal reality is clear.
Celia Rouso has not been property for over a decade. She has been a free woman living in the Fairmont household. The implications cascaded through the courtroom like dominoes falling. If Celia had been free, then her relationship with Augustus wasn’t master slave, but something else entirely. If her children had been born free, they weren’t property, but heirs.
If Augustus had been secretly protecting them under the cover of enslavement while actually having freed them years earlier, then his final will wasn’t an act of lastm minute conscience, but the culmination of a decadel long plan. Margaret found her voice, and it was ragged with fury and pain. He freed her.
He freed her on the day our daughter was born. While I was in childbed, risking my life to give him another child, he was at the courthouse freeing his mistress. The raw anguish in her voice silenced even those sympathetic to her cause. Here was the real wound laid bare, not just that Augustus had been unfaithful, but that he’d been planning for Celia’s future while Margaret gave birth to their children.
that he’d used legal mechanisms to protect one family while allowing the other to believe itself secure. Grimball pressed his advantage. Your honor, given these revelations, I move that this court recognize Miss Rouso’s legal status as a free woman, and recognize that Colonel Fairmont’s will was not a manu mission, but simply a testimeamentary transfer of property from one free person to another, which he had every legal right to make. The daer rights still apply. Simmons argued desperately. Mrs.
Fairmont still has legal protections which the will respects. Grimball countered. Mrs. Fairmont receives her one-third daer right as required by law. The remainder of the estate goes to Miss Russo just as it would if Colonel Fairmont had left his property to any other free person. Judge Pinkney called for a recess.
The courtroom emptied slowly, everyone stunned by the revelations. Margaret left supported by her children, her face a mask of devastation. Celia remained seated for a long time. Daniel beside her, both of them trying to process what had just been revealed. Mother, Daniel said quietly. Did you know about the manum mission papers? Celia shook her head.
He told me they existed. He told me to trust him, but I never saw them. I think her voice broke. I think he knew that if I believed I was free, I would act differently. And that might put us all in danger. It was safer for me to believe I was still enslaved, to act as enslaved, to never challenge the fiction. He protected us by making us complicit in our own bondage.
The psychological complexity of what Augustus had done was almost unbearable. He’d freed the woman he loved, but forced her to continue living as property. He’d ensured his children were born free, but raised them in slavery. He’d constructed an elaborate legal shelter while maintaining a social performance of ownership.
Every act of love was also an act of cruelty. Every protection was also a cage. The court reconvened two weeks later for Judge Pinkney’s ruling. He clearly struggled with the decision. His written opinion ran to 40 pages, full of legal reasoning that tried to balance law, precedent, and the moral quagmire the case had exposed.
His core finding was narrow but devastating to Margaret’s case. The manum mission documents were valid. Celia had been free since 1847, her children since their births. Therefore, Augustus’s will was simply the transfer of property from one free person to another, which South Carolina law allowed subject to the limitations of daer rights.
Margaret received her one-third daer right to the real property for her lifetime. But Celia received control of 2/3s of the real estate, the entirety of the personal property, the business interests, and the cash assets. More importantly, she received the legal recognition of her status. She was not property. She had not been property for over a decade.
She was a free woman of color with the same rights to inherit and own property that any free person possessed under South Carolina law. The decision was immediately appealed to the South Carolina Court of Appeals, but the appeals court declined to hear the case, letting Pinkney’s ruling stand. The legal battle was over. After 18 months, countless thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the exposure of secrets Charleston would have preferred to keep buried, Celia Rouso had won.
But victory, when it came, was hollow in ways no one had quite anticipated. Celia took possession of the trad. Margaret, exercising her da right, chose to remain in residence. The law gave her that option, and she took bitter satisfaction in forcing Celia to accept her presence. For 2 years, the two women lived in the same house, barely speaking, each occupying different floors, each the victim and villain of the other’s story. The arrangement proved psychologically unsustainable for everyone involved.
Margaret’s children refused to visit while Celia lived there. Charleston Society shunned any social function that might include both women. The household staff existed in constant tension, uncertain whom to obey when orders conflicted. In 1860, Margaret finally surrendered. She moved to her brother’s plantation in the interior, taking with her the only thing she truly wanted from her marriage, the legal status of Augustus Fairmont’s widow.
She would live another 32 years, dying in 1892, and she never spoke her husband’s name again in public. Catherine never married her. She lived with her mother until Margaret’s death, then moved to Colombia to live with cousins. She taught piano lessons to maintain herself and died in 1901, impoverished, but respectable. Augustus Jr.
attempted to establish himself in the cotton business, but his father’s reputation followed him. Few planters would do business with the son of the man who’d betrayed his white family for his enslaved mistress. He moved to Texas in 1865 after the war and disappeared from the historical record. Some family letters suggest he died in the 1880s, but no grave has been located.
Young Magg married in 1862, just before the war made such things impossible. Her husband was a junior officer who died at Gettysburg. She never remarried and worked as a governness until her death in 1909. The Civil War destroyed what remained of the Fairmont estate. Riverside was occupied by Union troops. The fields burned. The main house ransacked.
The Charleston townhouse was damaged by shelling. The business interests collapsed with the Confederacy. By 1865, the vast fortune that had caused such bitter fighting was gone, dissolved in the violence that tore the South apart. But Celia and her children survived. They left Charleston in 1860 before the war, sensing the coming catastrophe.
Using what remained of the estate’s liquid assets, Celia purchased property in Philadelphia in a neighborhood where free people of color had established a community. She invested in a boarding house in a small shop in modest ventures that would provide steady income. Daniel received an education. He learned a trade carpentry and established himself as a skilled craftsman.
He married in 1868, had children, lived to see the 20th century. He died in 1921 having spent 57 years as a free man and his grandchildren inherited the property he’d accumulated. Ruth recovered from her childhood illness and grew into a young woman of remarkable resilience. She became a teacher, educating freed children during reconstruction. She married a minister in 1870.
Her descendants scattered across Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, becoming teachers, doctors, lawyers, building lives that would have been impossible in the world where she was born. Celia lived until 1889. She never remarried. She kept the gold locket Augustus had given her until the day she died.
Inside were two small photographs, one of Daniel as a baby, one of Ruth as a toddler. She was buried in Eden Cemetery in Philadelphia in a plot she’d purchased herself under a headstone that read simply Celia Russo Fairmont 1819 1889 free. The case of Fairmont versus Fairmont Estate never appeared in the standard legal textbooks.
It was cited occasionally in property law discussions but usually in footnotes. The details were too uncomfortable, the implications too troubling. Charleston society preferred to forget the whole ugly affair to bury it under the more dramatic tragedy of the Civil War. But the case documents survived. Hundreds of pages of testimony, motions, evidence recorded and filed in the Charleston County courthouse.
They survived the war, survived fires and floods, survived attempts to purge embarrassing records. And in those pages, preserved in legal language and witnessed testimony, is the story of how one man tried to correct an injustice he’d spent a lifetime perpetuating, and how his attempt at redemption destroyed two families in the service of saving one.
The questions the case raised never received satisfactory answers. Was Augustus Fairmont a hero for trying to free his children or a villain for having enslaved them in the first place? Was Celia a victim of systematic oppression or someone who benefited from proximity to power? Was Margaret justified in her fury or was she defending an indefensible system? Could any of them have chosen differently within the constraints of their world? The truth, as the historical record suggests, is that everyone involved was trapped in a system that corrupted every human relationship it touched. Augustus’
attempt to be honest within a society built on lies exposed how completely those lies had infected everything. Family, law, property, love, parenthood. His will didn’t fix what was broken. It simply revealed how broken it all was. In the end, perhaps the most significant legacy of the Fairmont case was what it demonstrated about the unsustainability of the entire southern social order.
A system that required men to own their own children couldn’t last. A society built on the fiction that some humans weren’t fully human couldn’t survive. The civil war would arrive 3 years after Judge Pinkney’s ruling, and it would burn away the legal structures that made cases like Fairmont’s possible.
But it would take another century before the descendants of people like Celia and Daniel could fully claim the rights that Augustus Fairmont died trying to give them. And even now, the echoes of those systems, the assumptions about power, property, and who deserves what, remain embedded in the landscape he left behind. The Fairmont Plantation House still stands, partially restored, operated as a museum.
Now, tour guides tell visitors about the architecture, the furnishings, the important people who once visited. Sometimes they mention the controversial will, though usually in passing. They rarely discuss what the case revealed about the foundations on which Charleston’s grandeur was built. But in the courthouse archives, the case file remains, waiting for anyone curious enough to pull it from the shelves and read the testimony of a world that tried very hard to keep its secrets.
What do you think of this story? Did Augustus Fairmont find redemption in his final act? Or did he merely compound his crimes with one more act of cruelty, forcing three families to pay the price for his lifetime of cowardice? Leave your comment below. If you found this historical mystery compelling, subscribe to Liturgy of Fear for more true stories from America’s Darkest Chapters.
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