Fort Sumter tunnel

HWW - another photo from my rediscovered archive of a US road trip.

This was taken in a passageway through the fortifications at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Constructed on a man-made island atop a sandbar near the entrance to Charleston Harbour, this fort was the site of the first exchange of fire at the commencement of the US Civil War in April 1861.

I discovered an interesting US Civil War fact... the last widow of a Civil War veteran died just a few years ago in December 2020. At age 17, in 1936, Helen Viola Jackson married 93 year old James Bolin, who had served in the (Union) 14th Missouri Cavalry. Bolin had offered to marry her so that she could inherit his war pension, as thanks for helping with his chores. When he died three years later, his daughters from a previous marriage threatened to ruin Helen's reputation if she applied for Bolin's pension, so she never did - passing up a small fortune - and never remarried.