1911 English Avenue
Five years after Saxon Homes opened in 1953, the Columbia Housing Authority established another public housing complex, Jaggers Terrace, on the site of the nineteenth-century Barhamville Collegiate Institute for Women. Smaller than Saxon Homes, Jagger’s Terrace provided 74 units of apartment living for families for over 40 years. In 1999, the Columbia Housing Authority demolished this complex and erected 25 single-family houses on the site.
Designed for low-income families, the complex was named in honor of the Charles Jaggers, a figure legendary for his humble charity to the African American poor and elderly in Columbia during the 19th and early 20th century. Jaggers was born into slavery in Chester County, South Carolina. After the Civil War, he migrated north to Columbia, where he lived with his wife and sons on Oak Street in the Lower Waverly neighborhood. Though he never received official seminary education or ordination, Jaggers was addressed as “Reverend” by whites and blacks alike, and was beloved for his ministry to prisoners, the ill, the poor, and the elderly, the latter for whom he established The Old Folks’ Home in the Barhamville-Waverly area. When Reverend Jaggers died in 1924 at age 93, his funeral attracted thousands of mourners—including the state governor Thomas Gordon McLeod and former governors—and moved the mayor to call for the closure of all city businesses during the funeral service hour.
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Rev. Charles Jaggers. Image courtesy Columbia Museum of Art
