The fiery story of Beaufort’s famous ‘nine steps to nowhere’ and the tabby structure that remains
There is a stoop in Beaufort that leads to nowhere. Spouting from tangled ivy, the staircase scales nine steps and then drops off.
That’s what most people see when strolling past the .44 acre lot in the historic Point neighborhood. But if you asked 93-year-old Therese Colquhoun she’d tell you she sees something more behind those steps: hundreds of years of history.
Therese was born next door in 1929, delivered by a midwife whose name she still remembers. The isolated stoop is where years ago her father and cousin would sit with a cocktail, drinking “probably anything they could get.”
She was given the house at 809 Hamilton Street by her parents when she got married. Now the property, which has been in her family for nearly 300 years, is for sale for just under $1 million. It includes the “nine steps to nowhere,” which were formerly the entrance to ‘The Talbird House.’ The house was likely built before 1820 by Col. Thomas Talbird, according to the Historic Beaufort Foundation. It burnt down in Beaufort’s ‘Great Fire of 1907’ and other remnants of the home — tabby ruins of an outhouse — are also on the property.
What’s livable is a five-bed two-bath 2,850-square-foot home, where Therese raised her three children, including her son John Colquhoun. It was built in 1955.
When John was growing up, ‘The Talbird House’ ruins were a battleground.
“These were our forts,” he said. “We had our BB guns and our slingshots. We would get in different windows and shoot at each other.”
Due to the danger of collapse, most of the tabby ruins were demolished at some point in the mid-20th century. The foundation of the three-story home still lies underneath the ground, according to John.
‘Great builders of tabby’
When Talbird died in 1806, so did much of the tabby construction in Beaufort.
He was known as one of the great tabby builders in Beaufort County, according to the Historic Beaufort Foundation. Talbird was an expert in the process, which included using concrete made from burning oyster shells to create lime and mixing it with ash, water, sand, and broken oyster shells. His projects included the original Beaufort Arsenal.
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‘The Great Fire of 1907’
Rumor has it that two 10-year-old boys started the fire that destroyed over 40 of Beaufort’s homes and buildings January 1907.
The boys were downtown at the foot of the the bridge to Lady’s Island when someone startled them and they dropped the cigarettes they were smoking, according to John. He said there was a warehouse with plenty of tinder, which caught fire.
“It went rooftop to rooftop and this was the final house that got hit,” he said.
Therese said the ruins from the fire stayed until they became a safety concern for neighborhood children jumping from and climbing on the walls. She couldn’t part with the steps though, which held too many fond memories of her “daddy.”
“I told them don’t touch those steps,” Therese said. “Those steps stay there.”
The name “nine steps to nowhere,” was coined by John one day while he was outside doing yard work and overheard a tour guide calling them the “seven steps to heaven.”
“Whoever came up with that, it’s just wrong,” he said. “It didn’t make any sense. Nobody in the family has told you to say that.”
In front of a horse-drawn wagon carrying 16 tourists they counted the steps and straightened it out, according to John.
When Therese lived there
‘The Great Fire of 1907’ wasn’t the last time the property saw fire.
Though, the second was much smaller. In the 1950s, Therese was upstairs with her baby girl when her husband came tiptoeing in, trying to be quiet and not wake the baby.
“You bet again, I think the house is on fire,” he whispered according to Therese.
Her husband and father had turned on the oil stove, but “they talked too much and drank, so they forgot they hadn’t put a match to it.”
When they got around to lighting it, there was so much oil that it started a small fire on the stove. They called Beaufort’s volunteer fire department and Therese’s father, who “was always known for having beautiful manners,” stood by the door and greeted each person “as if they just came for a big party.”
There wasn’t any damage, the fire department didn’t have to turn on its hoses and Therese didn’t wake the baby, but the volunteers did stay at the home a while.
“Y’all are dangerous to have around here,” Therese said to her husband and father.
Therese said that during her 93 years living in Beaufort she’s seen many changes. She saw Beaufort boom during World War II with the U.S. Marine Corps and rented out rooms to help with the influx of service members and military families. More recently, she’s seen the Point shift from mainly long-time Beaufortonian families, many of whom were Black, to people new to the area living there part-time.
“We knew just about everybody on the Point,” John said. “Almost every house had a family that was either kin to us, or was friends with different members of our family, or something of that nature.”
Now, that’s not the case, but Therese is there to stay, just not in the home she raised her family in.
“I was never a traveler,” Therese said. “I was a homebody.”
This story was originally published August 23, 2023 at 12:35 PM.
