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| Excerpt from Charleston Blacksmith - The Work of Phillip Simmons by John Michael Vlach. "Poor People Done It Like That" Across the Cooper River from Charleston there stands on the shore a dense thicket of trees. This forest is interrupted by stretches of lush green marsh grass. The vast foliage of leaf and blade gives the impression that a broad expanse of land lies beyond. But it is just an impression, for what you see is only Daniel Island, a small dot of soil in the South Carolina low country. Surrounded by the Cooper and Wando rivers and a series of interlinked swamps and creeks, it is technically an island. At the thresthold of one of the oldest cities in the United States, the island's watery boundaries have kept it astonishingly isolated. Even now only one very roundabout road provides access. Daniel Island was once plantation land owned by Robert Daniel of Barbados, a colonial governor of South Carolina, and it has remained farm land ever since the end of the seventeenth century. It was here on a small holding, in 1912, that Phillip Simmons was born. Destined to become a blacksmith, he was first an islander who learned the ways of the farm and the river. | 
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| For more than half a century he has lived in Charleston and could rightly claim the cosmopolitan character of that city. Yet when asked about his origins, he is quick to say: I came from Wando, Daniel's Island. That's is in Wando and Wando is in Berkeley County. I born in Wando, up there i Wando. That's just near Cainhoy. |  | Phillip led the life of a Sea Island farmer and fisherman for this first thirteen years. He stayed on the island constantly until he was eight years old. It was then that he first saw Charleston. | |
| At that particular time children, student in school, then they [didn't] start school until they were seven years old. Now it is six but then it was seven. My seventh year -birthday- I went to school, start school. I went to school one years in Berkeley County and the next year the teacher didn't come. They money -bhte budget- they didn't get up the budget for 'em. At that time it was a little slow getting' that money. Money was scarce so the teacher didn't come early that year. They came about two months later. So my granddaddy send me here to Charleston. But when summer came he returned to the island. Used to work with my granddaddy in the country, fish and farming. I made a living off that. I helped buy all my clothes to come to school in Charleston. when I come to Charleston to go to school in September I got all my clothes and everthing I need. during the summer months I work and I | ||
| made enough money...Let me say every year until I was thirteen, I went back in the country and farm and fish with my grandparents and fish. So for every day for his first eight years, and during summer for the next five, Philip aquired the rural values of a Sea Islander. His great-grandparents had once been slaves, and the told him about those days in bondage. He learned tha the work was hard then and learaned from his grandparents that conditions had remained hard. He came to know and prefer a busy life full of chores and tasks, a routine that he has never abandoned. It was his Sea Island upbringing taht helped establish his current motto: "I like action." | 
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