She once left the Catholic church. Now Beaufort woman cares for 175-year-old St. Peter’s
Theresa Pulliam left the Catholic church for more than a decade in the 1980s. Now she’s its biggest promoter and a devoted caretaker of one of the oldest Catholic church buildings in South Carolina, St. Peter’s Catholic Church in downtown Beaufort.
The small landmark with a big history, having survived hurricanes, the Civil War and time, turns 175 on Sunday. Pulliam is a survivor, too. Today, she loves on the little Beaufort church she attended as a little girl and later left like it was part of her family, which it is.
“People call this my church,” Pulliam said earlier this month, after bowing at the altar. “I do get a little possessive, but I shouldn’t.”
In 2012, St. Peter’s built a new, 1,200-seat church on Lady’s Island. At 1 p.m. Sunday, in celebration of the 175th birthday of the church’s beginning in the 108-seat original building in Beaufort, a “eucharistic procession” of parishioners will walk more than 2 miles from the main church on Lady’s Island to Waterfront Park. There they’ll hear a blessing of the city and first responders before moving on to the original church at 710 Carteret St.
A procession is a big deal — and it is not a parade, says Chris Pangle, a parishioner who helped organize the procession. “I can tell you,” he says, “there have been miracles attributed to processions.”
For the past eight years, Pulliam, 75, has been the caretaker of the original church, where masses and small weddings, baptisms, funerals and tours still are conducted. No job is too small. She dusts, blows leaves off the porch, mops, sweeps, washes windows and assists with the events.
During Mass, a diminutive woman standing 4 feet, 11 inches tall, with white hair with a splotch of red in the front, sits in the back row ringing bells during the consecration. It’s Pulliam.
“God tells you where you need to be,” says Pulliam, tears welling up in her eyes.
To hear Pulliam tell it, it was almost a miracle she ended up in caretaker role for the 9th oldest Catholic church in South Carolina, which still maintains its original columns in the front and much of its original foundation. It was built with the heartwood of pine trees, Pulliam explains, which is resistant to bugs and decay. Natural light floods the sanctuary thanks to huge, single-hung windows that Palmetto trees brush against during a breeze. During the Civil War, abolitionists reportedly used it as a school for recently freed slaves.
The church dates to 1846, when Michael O’Conner, who had immigrated from County Cork, Ireland, in 1922 at the age of 23, decided to build a church.
“He was disheartened when there was no Catholic church here,” Pulliam says.
Pulliam easily reels off facts and names from the historic church’s storied past and recites its exceptional classical revival style architectural features. All those details are affixed in her mind like the childhood memories of attending mass here in the 1950s with her father, a Marine. Mass was conducted in Latin. Most parishioners, she said, did not know Latin, but they knew the responses. Church members were a happy family, with members sitting in the same pew each mass. Pulliam always felt good after those services.
But she grew up, and life happened. In 1983, Pulliam, going through her third divorce and not living the life of a devoted Catholic, left the church and stayed away for 14 years. She attended worship services at other denominations, but something was missing.
In 1996, she decided to go to special mass at the little Beaufort church she had attended as a little girl. Mass was conducted in Latin. Memories came flooding back. That was 25 years ago, the 150th anniversary of the church.
Pulliam, recalling what she experienced that day, just knew. “This is where I’m supposed to be.”
Pulliam returned to the church in 1997. Now she incorporates her strong beliefs into her job as caretaker. When visitors come through during tours, like the two Baptists who thought Catholics pray to statues, she enjoys clearing up misconceptions.
“I absolutely love my Catholic faith,” Pulliam says. “I would die for it.”
Pulliam walks through a side door of the church. A cemetery is just outside. When she dies, Pulliam has decided, she will be buried here, too. “I don’t know of any other place I’d rather be,” she says.
Her plot isn’t far from O’Conner, who built the church, and Mary Howley, a slave owned by O’Conner, who died in 1924 at the age of 107. Howley’s last wish was to be buried close to her “mistress,” Mrs. O’Conner, Pulliam said. Special permission was needed from the diocese for her to be buried in the cemetery, even though Howley’s husband was William Howley, a white man who died at 36. At the time, Pulliam notes, the marriage was illegal. Beaufort-born “Tillie” Maude O’Dell, one of the best known stage actresses in the country in the early 20th century, is buried in the graveyard, too.
Sometimes, Pulliam swears, she has felt the presence of what she believes are ghosts, maybe spirits from the cemetery. Some people think she is crazy. Others, she says, believe in ghosts.
“One night — you can believe this or not —I felt a hand on my shoulder,” she says.
Pulliam was not afraid, even though she took the experience as her cue to leave. But Pulliam always returns, usually daily. She needs to check on her church, she explains. It isn’t always easy. After four back surgeries, Pulliam walks with a cane, “but I just keep on trucking.”
“I love this church,” Pulliam says.
