What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm Saturday 9am - 5pm

Hilton Head History Tours

Name: Hilton Head History Tours
Address: Hilton Head Island, SC, 29928, US
Telephone: +18439490144
Rating: 5

Home
United States
Hilton Head Island, SC
Hilton Head History Tours

We provide small groups with a fascinating history tour of significant sites on Hilton Head Island
(9)

06/10/2023

June 10th, 1692 marks the first witch hanging in the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trials consisted of a series of hearings and prosecutions of over 200 people accused of witchcraft in the colony of Massachusetts spanning over the course of a year from February 1692 to mid-1693.

The first to be tried for witchcraft was Bridget Bishop of Salem. Known for her problematic moral character, she was said to frequent taverns, dress flamboyantly, and had been remarried several times. This made her the most accused of any defendant. Despite pleading her innocence, she was found guilty and executed by hanging.

June 10th, 1752 marks the day that Benjamin Franklin flew his kite during a thunderstorm.

Our Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), wears many hats being one of the leading figures of early American history. He was an author, publisher, scientist, inventor, among several other roles. He was also the first to demonstrate that lightning was a form of electricity.

On this day, it is said that Franklin flew his kite during a thunderstorm to collect ambient electrical charge in an assembly which he called a “battery” that was really just multiple Leyden jars linked together. While he did not “invent” electricity, he did discover many things about it which was the foundation of its commercial use today.

June 10th, 1973 marks the day that Secretariat won his triple crown at the Belmont Stakes.

Only 50 years ago today, champion American thoroughbred racehorse, Secretariat, was the ninth winner of the American Triple Crown. However, this extraordinary stallion still holds the fastest time record in all three of the constituent races. Enjoy the races today!

If you would like to learn more about history, specifically on the island, please visit us at www.HiltonHeadHistoryTours.com

06/07/2023

We are VERY excited to announce the beginning of our brand new 2-hour Family History Tour. Join us on this educational and interactive tour as we share stories and explore the historical sites of the Natives, Pyrates, and Soldiers who once roamed the shores of Hilton Head.

During this tour, we will visit the location of a 2,000-year-old Native American village marked by the remains of a shell structure, investigate the beaches upon which pirates were known to careen their ships to clean their hulls, and explore an intact Civil War fort that was built to protect the nearby town of Mitchellville.

Children will learn basic archaeology skills, dig for pyrate treasure, and walk in the footsteps of Civil War soldiers as part of their experiential learning of the Natives, Pyrates, and Soldiers who were part of Hilton Head’s long and colorful past.

Tours depart from Coastal Discovery Museum at 2 PM, Monday - Friday. Children must be accompanied by at least one adult from the family of which they are part of, and no more than four children can be with one adult chaperone.

To learn more about our tours, visit our website www.hiltonheadhistorytours.com

03/19/2023

On this day, March 19th

In 1911 the first International Women's Day was observed.

03/18/2023

On March 18, 1889, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte becomes the first Native American woman to graduate from medical school. She was top of her class at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

As an eight-year-old on Nebraska’s Omaha Reservation, La Flesche experienced a formative moment: staying at the bedside of an elderly Omaha woman in agonizing pain, waiting all night for the white doctor to arrive. The woman died overnight and the doctor never appeared.

"It was only an Indian and it [did] not matter," she later recalled—had the old woman been white, La Flesche intuited, the doctor would have hurried over at the first notice.

La Flesche went on to study at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania and, at 24, graduated a year early. While her colleagues encouraged her to stay and practice medicine on the East Coast, she returned home to Nebraska with the intent of serving her community. Soon after, she became the sole physician for more than 1,200 people in the Omaha and nearby Winnebago Tribes, across over 400 miles. After she married in 1894 and had two sons, she continued to serve patients across the reservation, taking her children on house calls as needed. In 1913, with help of her husband and donations, La Flesche opened up the first privately funded hospital on a reservation. She intended to help anyone who needed it, white or Native.

La Flesche was a passionate advocate on the reservation for temperance. Alcohol had been introduced to the Omaha tribe by white fur traders and had devastated the community (La Flesche's own husband died of complications from alcoholism). She lobbied the state legislature, begging them to not allow whiskey peddlers to sell in the reservation, and eventually did persuade the Office of Indian Affairs to ban liquor sales in towns formed in the reservation.

After several years of declining health, La Flesche died of bone cancer on September 18, 1915. Her legacy lives on.

Credit History.com

03/11/2023

On this Day in History March 10th-

On this Day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell first communicated using his "liquid" transmitter design with his assistant Thomas Watson. The beginning of the phone and eventually the beginning of the device you are now looking at.

03/10/2023

On March 9, 1959, the first Barbie doll goes on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.

Eleven inches tall, with a waterfall of blond hair, Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features. The woman behind Barbie was Ruth Handler, who co-founded Mattel, Inc. with her husband in 1945. After seeing her young daughter ignore her baby dolls to play make-believe with paper dolls of adult women, Handler realized there was an important niche in the market for a toy that allowed little girls to imagine the future

Barbie’s appearance was modeled on a doll named Lilli, based on a German comic strip character. Originally marketed as a racy gag gift to adult men in to***co shops, the Lilli doll later became extremely popular with children. Mattel bought the rights to Lilli and made its own version, which Handler named after her daughter, Barbara. With its sponsorship of the “Mickey Mouse Club” TV program in 1955, Mattel became one of the first toy companies to broadcast commercials to children.

02/24/2023

On this day in history, Feb. 23, 1945, US Marines raise American flag over Iwo Jima

02/21/2023

On this Day,

John Glenn, Marine Corps combat pilot, pioneer of human exploration and later a longtime United States senator, became the first American to orbit the Earth on this day in history, Feb. 20, 1962.

Glenn’s ride into space, a great technical accomplishment, "held even greater significance for the country",says the website of the John & Annie Glenn Museum in the astronaut's hometown of New Concord, Ohio.

Americans saw the event as political as well as a scientific milestone. Across the country, they welcomed Glenn as a hero who had conquered the bounds of Earth and given new wings to America’s spirit.

Glenn made three trips around the planet on his historic flight as the United States feverishly attempted to keep pace with the Soviet Union in the space race.

Kerry Byrne
Fox News contributor

02/04/2023

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY -

On this day in history, Feb. 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified — granting African American men the right to vote.

The amendment declared that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

As the U.S. National Archives notes, "Set free by the 13th Amendment [and] with citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, Black males were given the vote by the 15th Amendment."

Attorney Ron Coleman, partner at the Dhillon Law Group in New York, told Fox News Digital about the amendment's ratification, "By guaranteeing the vote to former slaves and prohibiting racial discrimination in elections, the 15th Amendment was a major step toward fulfilling America's destiny to be what Lincoln called ‘the last best hope of Earth.’"

Added Coleman, "Despite everything, America is still that."

The 15th Amendment guaranteed that the right to vote in America could not be denied to anyone based on race.

As the Library of Congress notes, however, about the ratification, "the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century."

It adds, "Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans."

It further says that "it would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans were truly allowed to vote.

Fox news contributor
Maureen Mackey

01/20/2023

Can you believe it took all the way until this day in 1952 for the PGA to allow the "participation" of black golfers.

True. Unfortunately true.

01/10/2023

On this day in History - January 10th, 1776

Thomas Paine published Common Sense.

Paine shared his Common Sense by printing pamphlets (47pages in this case).and distributing them amongst the colonies.

Sharing the vision of our Fore Father's with the "Common Man", Thomas Paine is credited with helping to spark the American Revolution.

As of 2006 Common Sense remained the all time best selling American book title and is still in print today.

Common Sense

01/06/2023

THIS DAY IN HISTORY
JANUARY 05, 1980

The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” becomes hip-hop’s first Top 40 hit.

Hip hop’s roots as a musical phenomenon are subject to debate, but its roots as a commercial phenomenon are much clearer. They trace back directly to January 5, 1980, when the song “Rapper’s Delight” became the first hip hop single ever to reach the Billboard top 40.

Prior to the success of “Rapper’s Delight,” hip hop was little known outside of New York City, and little known even within New York City by those whose orbits were limited to Midtown and Downtown Manhattan. The basic elements of hip hop—MCs rapping, DJs mixing and scratching, B-Boys break-dancing—were all in place by 1979, but you could not walk into a record store in Times Square and buy a hip hop album. Hip hop was something you had to experience live, in clubs and at parties in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem.

Those were the settings in which founding fathers of hip hop like Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow and DJ Kool Herc were busy making their names while the crowds at Studio 54 danced away the last days of the disco just a few miles to the south. Meanwhile, it was a businesswoman from New Jersey who put the two trends together to give birth to an industry. Her name was Sylvia Robinson, formerly a singer and later the owner of a small record label called All Platinum. After hearing a DJ rapping over records in a Harlem club, she set her son Joey to the task of finding someone who could do the same thing on tape. Joey recruited his friend Big Bank Hank from an Englewood, New Jersey, pizzeria, and Master Gee and Wonder Mike from the surrounding neighborhood. This was on a Friday. Sylvia named the newly formed trio after the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, chose Chic’s disco smash “Good Times” as a backing track and scheduled studio time for the following Monday.

What happened between that Friday and Monday is a subject of some controversy. It involves Big Bank Hank borrowing his lyrics almost wholesale from the notebook of Harlem MC Grandmaster Caz, whose name appears nowhere on the credits or royalty checks for “Rapper’s Delight.” What happened on Monday, however, was straightforward and revolutionary: the making of a record that began, “I said a hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie…” and ended up changing the course of music history.

01/02/2023

This day in History - January 2, 1778

The Continental Congress publishes the “Tory Act” resolution on January 2, 1776, which describes how colonies should handle those Americans who remain loyal to the British and King George.

The act called on colonial committees to indoctrinate those “honest and well-meaning, but uninformed people” by enlightening them as to the “origin, nature and extent of the present controversy.” The Congress remained “fully persuaded that the more our right to the enjoyment of our ancient liberties and privileges is examined, the more just and necessary our present opposition to ministerial tyranny will appear.”

However, those “unworthy Americans,” who had “taken part with our oppressors” with the aim of gathering “ignominious rewards,” were left to the relevant bodies, some ominously named “councils of safety,” to decide their fate. Congress merely offered its “opinion” that dedicated Tories “ought to be disarmed, and the more dangerous among them either kept in safe custody, or bound with sufficient sureties to their good behavior.”

The lengths Congress and lesser colonial bodies would go to in order to repress Loyalists took a darker tone later in the act. Listing examples of the “execrable barbarity with which this unhappy war has been conducted on the part of our enemies,” Congress vowed to act “whenever retaliation may be necessary” although it might prove a “disagreeable task.”

In the face of such hostility, some Loyalists chose not to remain in the American colonies. During the war, between 60,000 and 70,000 free persons and 20,000 enslaved people abandoned the rebellious 13 colonies for other destinations within the British empire. The Revolution effectively created two countries: Patriots formed the new United States, while fleeing Loyalists populated Canada.

Address

Hilton Head Island, SC
29928

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm
Saturday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+18439490144

Website

http://www.hiltonheadhistorytours.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Hilton Head History Tours posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Hilton Head History Tours:

Shortcuts

Our Story

A former executive officer of global consumer goods and services companies and CEO in the healthcare industry, Richard E. Thomas has over 25 years’ experience as an organizational effectiveness and leadership consultant with Fortune 200 companies in seven different industries. Mr. Thomas led culture-blending and enterprise-wide change management and transformation initiatives with an emphasis on leadership development, performance management, and team development for five organizations, in one of which he was a senior partner and two of which he founded and headed as President or CEO.

He is currently President and CEO of Legacy Leadership, LLC, a firm specializing in the design and delivery of leadership and team development programs using examples from historic events as a framework for experiential learning. The Legacy programs are frequently delivered on location at the historical sites where the events took place. For the past fifteen years, Rich has pioneered in the development of history-based experiential learning as a tool for leader and team development in the corporate sector. He has personally designed and led hundreds of programs for multi-national corporate executives at such locations as The Bulge and Waterloo in Belgium, Normandy in France, Gettysburg, the Alamo, Antietam, Chickamauga, and the Little Bighorn battlefield in Montana.

Since 2015, Thomas has focused on the Southeast U.S. and has been researching and developing programs based on historic events in such locations as: Charleston, the Beaufort-Savannah corridor in South Carolina and Georgia, the Cowpens battlefield between Charlotte and Spartanburg, and the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield in Marietta, Georgia. In the Beaufort-Hilton Head, South Carolina area, Thomas has developed programs on the founding of the 16th Century Spanish colony at Santa Elena, the establishment of Mitchelville, birthplace of freedom for African-Americans, and the Battle of Port Royal on Hilton Head, the Siege of Fort Pulaski in Savannah, the Battle of Honey Hill, and the development of the Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head, the first environmentally-sensitive retirement-resort community in the world.

Mr. Thomas is a Board member of several history-oriented charitable organizations in the Beaufort-Jasper County area, a presenter of history-related talks on numerous subjects to a wide range of area organizations, and he is one of the most highly-rated lecturers at the OLLI learning centers in the area. He has guided customized tours at various historic sites in Europe and the United States for hundreds of groups ranging in size from 6-60, and has conducted programs for and delivered speeches on a host of topics to audiences of various sizes comprised of corporate executives, leadership groups of various sorts, and civic organizations. His knowledge of Lowcountry history is extensive, and his delivery style is easy and interactive. He lives on Hilton Head Island with his wife Suzanne.