A HOUSE OF TRAGEDIES, _the Hanging of Lavinia Fisher_: In 1820 lawlessness on the “Neck” northward of Charleston was regnant. “Gangs of white desperadoes occupied certain houses and infested the roads leading to the city. To such an extent did these outlaws carry their excesses that wagoners and others coming to the City were under the necessity of carrying rifles in their hands for their defense. Travelers passed these houses with fear and trembling. More dreaded than others of these haunts was that known as the Six-Mile (?) house, occupied by John Fisher and Lavinia, his wife,” says King’s _Newspaper Press of Charleston_. Fisher and his wife were taken into custody and high crimes and misdemeanors charged against them. In the cellar of their roadhouse were found the bones of guests they had murdered. Their motive was robbery. Their house was on the Meeting Street Road, a section of the Old State Road, Charleston to Columbia. The Fishers were tried and convicted in Charleston. According to King they were hanged February 18, 1820, “at 2 o’clock, just within the lines, on a hill east of the Meeting Street Road, about eight hundred yards north of the street known as Line Street continued.” Mrs. Fisher was unnerved and “called upon the immense throng assembled to rescue her and implored pity with outstretched and trembling hands.” King is mistaken about the Six-Mile house, as authorities say that it was the Four-Mile house, the site of which is readily located; it is four miles from the Charleston Court House on the Meeting Street Road, about a mile north of Magnolia Crossing, and visible from the King Street Extension which is the Charleston approach by the Coastal Highway, United States 52. [Illustration: _Monument to Defenders of Fort Moultrie on The Battery_] [Illustration: _Colonial Powder Magazine, 23 Cumberland Street_] WESTMINSTER CHURCH, _Rutledge Avenue and Maverick Street_: This Presbyterian congregation sold its building at 273-75 Meeting Street to the Trinity Methodist Episcopal congregation and erected a new church about two miles from the other site. The congregation derives from St. Andrew’s, or the Third Presbyterian, Church in Archdale Street, built in 1814. It was due to a separation from the First (Scotch) Presbyterian Church. The Reverend Dr. Buchan was the first pastor. About 1850 this church was razed, the congregation building anew on the west side of Meeting Street; the new church was called the Central and for more than twenty years was under the pastoral charge of the Reverend W. C. Dana. With it merged the Glebe Street Presbyterian Church of which the eminent Reverend Dr. J. L. Girardeau was pastor. The Central Church became Westminster. The old yard in Archdale Street is not now used for burials.