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Curtis Kauffman with a 1950s Vendo 39 Coke machine—which he has not yet refurbished—at the Route 11 Antique Mall in Hagerstown, Maryland.

When This Restoration Expert Gets His Hands on a Relic, the Result Can Send You Back in Time

At a Maryland antiques mall, Curtis Kauffman takes trinkets from the past and makes them better than ever. For his customers, that’s worth a lot

Live oaks in Beaufort, South Carolina, photographed using an old-fashioned wet-plate process

The Live Oak Tree Has Withstood the Ravages of History

Majestic and sturdy, the icon of the American South has offered protection time and again

Robert Smalls, memorialized in a bust at Beaufort’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, was sent to work in Charleston at age 12 after he started defying the strictures of slavery.

Terrorized African-Americans Found Their Champion in Civil War Hero Robert Smalls

The formerly enslaved South Carolinian declared that whites had killed 53,000 African-Americans, but few took the explosive claim seriously—until now