Signing Their Lives Away: A Revolutionary Road Trip, Shooting Short Films in South Carolina

Middleton’s gift shop had this outdoor display featuring our book! Thanks guys!

How Southern Gothic can you get? The road to Middleton Place Plantation, just outside Charleston, South Carolina, is lined with live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. When you turn your car into the drive of the plantation, you behold a landscape the way it looked around the birth of the United States.

In recent months, my co-author Denise Kiernan and I have been driving up and down the east coast visiting historic sites associated with the signers of America’s founding documents. It’s our way of promoting our existing Quirk book, Signing Their Lives Away, about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and Signing Their Rights Away, about the Constitution signers, which pubs Sept 6.

When we have some free time, we’ve been working on a documentary about these sites. So far, in the state of South Carolina, we’ve created a short film about Middleton Place, Hopsewee Plantation, and the Governor’s House Inn in downtown Charleston. All three of these homes were residences of signers of the Declaration of Independence.

We think the videos have turned out pretty well, and we’re anxious to move on to other states.