As we left off last month, on the morning of September 7, 1860, Thad Lowe’s adrenaline was rushing through his veins as a crowd of spectators assembled at Point Breeze to watch the inflation process of the Great Western. About 11:00 in the morning a strong wind rose, and Thad ordered the men to stop the inflation until it subsided. It was 4:00 in the afternoon before they could resume. When the inflation was nearly finished, Rev. Dr. Newton of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church presented the crew with a Bible and said, “The Creator has given man dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and the fishes of the sea.” He expressed his belief that man was meant to navigate the air and that in time he would take dominion of the realm of flight.
Providence, however, dictated it would not be that day. The wind regained velocity at 5:30 that evening, and again, Thad shut down the operation, believing it too risky. The crew reassembled the next morning with the same excited anticipation they’d had the previous day. By noon the inflation was nearly complete, and the airship was tugging at its bonds. “This is it!” shouted Thad. “Let’s waste no time getting off!” As he leaped into the basket, Thad heard a dreadful ripping sound. The wind had caught the balloon and ripped a 50-foot tear in the fabric. The balloon crumpled and collapsed.
Three weeks later, Thad and his crew tried it again. Perhaps the third time would be the charm. Inflation was nearly complete when Thad cried out, “Hold! For the love of heaven, hold!” A large bulge had appeared near the mended rip and was on the verge of bursting. The crew’s anticipation crumpled and fell to the earth. Thad knew his craft was in need of a major overhaul. He also knew that the window for a successful flight had slammed shut. The Great Western went into storage.
Thad returned home that evening with a heavy heart only to find worse news had come to Leontine — her father, Pere Gaschon, had been murdered on the streets of Paris by royalist brigands. Gaschon had returned to his war-torn country, where plots were thick to overthrow Napoleon III. Rumors of civil war in the United States caused Leontine to exclaim, “I pray that this country may never be torn apart by civil war — brother against brother, father against son. One cannot realize how horrible it is until.”
Later in the fall, Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, met with Thad and agreed to support the flight of the Great Western across the Atlantic. To promote the project among the population, Henry would call on his friend, Murat Halstead, editor of the Cincinnati Commercial, himself a balloon enthusiast. Throughout the winter of 1860-1861, Lowe and Henry labored together collecting data for the weather bureau they hoped to establish. That same winter, six southern states seceded from the Union, led by South Carolina.
During the winter Thad decided to bring the Enterprise out of storage and outfit it for the trans-Atlantic flight. In March he went to Philadelphia to get it ready and then headed to Cincinnati, the launching site. When Thad arrived in Cincinnati, he found the city full of excitement — Halstead had proven to be an able publicist. To create more of a stir, he announced that he would be taking a westward route against prevailing winds. The men were so busy getting the balloon ready, with evenings filled with banquets and other social events, that they gave little attention when the Commercial reported the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and the subsequent surrender of Major Anderson on the April 14. After all, most were predicting the fuss would be over in six weeks.
Once the Enterprise was ready for flight, Lowe had to wait for the weather to clear before its launch. During a dinner on the 19th, a crewmember came to Thad telling him that the weather had cleared and inflation of the Enterprise must start immediately. Thad rose from the table, and after asking his host to excuse him, he rushed to the site without changing his evening clothes. Other guests hastily put together an in-flight meal by gathering bread and butter, crackers, meats, cakes, and pastries in napkins. A pot of hot coffee was wrapped in several blankets. Thad climbed into the basket, thanked everyone for the picnic, and began throwing out the ballast. The ship disappeared into the darkness by 3:00am. He continued to drop sandbags until he reached 7,000 feet and the thermometer dropped to zero degrees.
By 10:00am he was nearing the Atlantic coast — in just seven hours he had traveled over six hundred miles! He changed his course for a southwesterly direction, which would take him over Confederate territory. The aeronaut continued that course for 30 minutes until the balloon had little lifting power. Thad began looking for a much-needed landing site. Eventually, he spied an opening, but as he neared the clearing, he saw a battalion of farmers running toward him, flaying the air with farm tools. He decided to find a more friendly location.
Floating farther on, he spotted a barren ridge where field hands were working on the hillside and threw out his anchor. When the hook caught on a rail fence, he began descending and calling out to the workers for assistance. The workers, both black and white, were spellbound and stood lifeless until he leapt from the basket and started toward them. Then they broke into a run, all of them except for one six-foot Amazon, Teresa Hames, who approached and offered her help. According to one account, a second woman, Susie Palmer, was brave enough to help Teresa with the lines. As Thad opened the gas valve and the balloon shrank, the leery farmers began to gather around.
The family story (told by Thad’s grandchildren to writer Mary Hoehling in 1958) portrays the people he encountered in unflattering terms. He claimed they appeared strange looking to him, having long hair and beards reaching just short of a potbelly and wearing slouch hats and jeans. He figured he was an “awesome sight to the simple folk and decided to prove he was not the devil they doubtless thought him.” He offered them food, he said, but they were not sure of him and backed off with suspicion. When he showed them the water bottles with frozen water and the thermos of hot coffee, the storyteller said, “The circle of people fell back again, eyes round with fear. Surely this was the devil himself if he could produce ice and boiling coffee from the same basket.” Then an old man came forward, shook his fist in Lowe’s face and said, “Only a Yankee could do a thing like that. He must be shot on the spot were he dropped from the skies.”
Thad’s Amazonian savior spoke loud enough for the others to hear, “Most of ’em are cowards. All the brave men of the neighborhood have gone to war.” Turning to the others she said, “We’ll take him to Unionville.” Unionville? It was then he thought to ask where he had landed.
Years later, Thad’s family, not knowing much about the area, said that she had told him he was on the “border between North and South Carolina.” Actually, he had landed in Union County, South Carolina, 40 miles from the state line. And to be more exact, on Pea Ridge, near the present-day communities of Kelton and Kelly. The area had earned it name from its soil condition — “so poor it won’t grow nothing but peas.”
Thad was taken into the woman’s cabin, where she fixed supper for him. Hot from a Dutch oven, she served him golden-brown corn dodgers and apologized for having “no butter nor nothing — that’s cause old Abe Lin-korn’s gunboats.” One of the men interjected, “There’s no butter nor bacon nor coffee, but we got good ol’ Louisiana molasses.” This entire statement disagrees with the time. Butter, bacon, and molasses would have been local products and would not have had to pass through the blockade. Also, the Union blockade was not put into place until weeks after Thad’s landing.
Local newspapers reported that a group of men on foot and in wagons who had been following the balloon joined with Teresa Hames and the field hands and their “captive.” Both the family story and the newspapers agree that Thad and his balloon were placed in a wagon and taken into town. It was nearly 10:00pm when they arrived in Unionville. Miss Hoehling writes that Thad was surprised when he was taken to an inn rather than the jail. A local newspaper reported that he was first taken to the jail, but finding it overflowing with “Yankee Abolitionists,” he was taken to the Goss Hotel (later Central Hotel) to find another town official.
Facing the hotel manager, Mr. Fant, the balloonist announced, “I am Professor Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt (a name he added when doing his magic show) Lowe, engaged in scientific research. I have just landed by balloon on Pea Ridge, and these folks have been kind enough to bring me and my equipment into town.”
Mr. Fant exclaimed, “Professor Lowe! It is you, indeed. What an honor! What an honor! But what an unfortunate time for you to visit us. Those ignorant fools might have shot you.” Fant offered the locals a dinner on the house and paid wagon-driver Stephen Fowler for his trouble. This pacified Thad’s “arresting officers,” and they headed home.
Taking Lowe into his hotel, Fant told him that he had been in Charleston the year before and saw him make an ascent, and even went aloft with him. While the men dined, Lowe showed Fant a copy of the Cincinnati Commercial to show he was in Cincinnati that very day. “This is Abolitionist literature, Professor, you could be hung for having it. You better keep it hidden!” Fant continued, “You Yankees don’t seem to realize the South means business. We intend to show the Federals they can’t push us around, begging your pardon, sir.” Fant looked at the date on the paper — 20 April 1861 — then he looked at his finger and saw smudges of ink. “You left Cincinnati at 3:00am and landed on Pea Ridge just after noon?” Lowe nodded. “Why that means you traveled some 900 miles in nine hours!”
Weary from his travels, Lowe retired for the evening but was awakened early in the morning by someone banging on his door. Fant apologized for disturbing his sleep and explained that a crowd had formed outside the hotel with Sheriff Joseph Fant; state legislator A. W. Thomson; and Charles W. Boyd, the editor of the Unionville Journal. Thad felt terrible. His face and hands were stinging and swollen from a terrific case of sun and wind burn. He hardly recognized himself in the dresser mirror. He took his time getting dressed before making his appearance.
Thomson stepped up and introduced himself saying, “You realize, Professor, that a state of war exists between South Carolina, as a member of the Confederates States of American, and the Federal Union. As a Yankee, you are an enemy of the Confederacy. Your entry into enemy territory was made in a manner so unusual as to lead our citizenry to assume your intentions may not be friendly.”
Thomson was soon convinced the aeronaut was not on a military expedition and decided that it might a good political move to drive him around the town and show off his celebrity. Nothing would have suited Thad better than to get out of town as quickly as possible, but there were no trains running on Sunday. Representative Thomson dined and roomed the airman for the night. On Monday morning Thad stepped aboard a train with a note of safe passage from Thomson, heading south to Columbia.
It took a good six hours to travel the 60 miles from Unionville to Columbia, and by the time he reached the capital, news of the Yankee’s landing had already reached the city, and a crowd was waiting, with threats of lynching. Thad disembarked and walked over to the Adams Express Company to make shipping arrangements for the Enterprise to Cincinnati. As he stepped from the office lugging the balloon instruments he preferred to carry himself, he heard someone shout, “There he goes! That’s the fellow with the gun on his back and the infernal machine is in his hands!”
Suddenly, Thad was surrounded by a mob, and without warning, the sheriff of Richland County flashed a badge and pistol and said, “I arrest you as an enemy of the Confederacy!” Thad thought it best not to offer resistance in front of the enlarging and angry crowd. They were shouting, “Tar and feather the damn Yankee! Hang ’em! Hang ’em!”
The sheriff directed Thad to a carriage and took him to the jail, where Mayor W. H. Boatwright and several town council members were waiting. After they examined his credentials and Thomson’s safe conduct certificate, Thad mentioned that someone on the staff of the South Carolina College might be able to identify him. The college president, a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute and personal friend of Professor Henry, came to the jail. As soon as he saw the airman, he vouched for Thad. “I know Professor Lowe well, both by reputation and by sight.” With outstretched hand the president walked over to the balloonist and said, “I saw some of your experiments in Charleston last winter, Professor.” The mayor validated Thomson’s safe conduct certificate, and Lowe was sent on his way.
Thad had to book passage through the Confederate west because there were no trains running directly north from the state capital to the northern reaches of the Confederacy. At every depot and station along the five-day rail trip, he saw young men in gray uniforms and heard brass bands blaring “Dixie” and other favorite tunes of the times. He changed trains at Nashville and was there when that state seceded from the Union. Thad breathed easier as he neared Louisville, finally crossing the Ohio River by ferry. It was April 27 when he stepped back into Ohio, and though it was only a week since he’d left Cincinnati, it seemed like ages.
On arrival his first order of business was to fire off a telegram to President Lincoln, telling him all he witnessed along his journey. He then went to the newspaper office of the Cincinnati Commercial and reported to Halstead. Thad was sure balloons could play a vital role in the war — balloonists could be eyes of the army. Halstead needed no convincing of the importance of air travel and promised that he would get in touch with an old friend and Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, to see if he could be convinced of the necessity of an aeronautic corps.
Thad decided that the quickest way to get back home to New York would be to fly. Contrary winds, however, blew him off course, and he had to land in Hamilton, Ontario. Canada was in the middle of celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday and he took the opportunity to raise needed funds, giving exhibitions and rides aloft.
Next month — spying on the enemy, General Scott’s shortsightedness, and Lowe’s resignation and retirement.
J.L. West – Author
This article and many others found on the pages of Roots and Recall, were written by author J.L. West, for the YC Magazine and have been reprinted on R&R, with full permission – not for distribution or reprint!
Stay Connected
Explore history, houses, and stories across S.C. Your membership provides you with updates on regional topics, information on historic research, preservation, and monthly feature articles. But remember R&R wants to hear from you and assist in preserving your own family genealogy and memorabilia.
Visit the Southern Queries – Forum to receive assistance in answering questions, discuss genealogy, and enjoy exploring preservation topics with other members. Also listed are several history and genealogical researchers for hire.
User comments welcome — post at the bottom of this page.
Please enjoy this structure and all those listed in Roots and Recall. But remember each is private property. So view them from a distance or from a public area such as the sidewalk or public road.
Do you have information to share and preserve? Family, school, church, or other older photos and stories are welcome. Send them digitally through the “Share Your Story” link, so they too might be posted on Roots and Recall.
Thanks!
User comments always welcome - please post at the bottom of this page.
Share Your Comments & Feedback: