That included the Coffin Point Praise House, a center of worship and community decision-making during Legree’s childhood. Among Legree’s first projects was rehabilitating the old structure on Coffin Point Road. She also researched its history and taught others the significance of the 10-foot-by-15-foot, white clapboard building and others like it. Praise houses harken to antebellum days, when white plantation owners built small houses of worship for slaves but kept the size modest out of fear that a larger space might facilitate organized rebellion. After the Civil War, many praise houses remained in use for religious services and as a community meeting spot for the former slaves and their descendants.

Legree, who turned 80 in August 2021, has worked toward the preservation of other aspects of Gullah tradition, as well. She has served on the St. Helena Community Preservation Committee and the St. Helena Cultural Protection Overlay Committee. She was president of the Penn Club for four years and joined the board of the Beaufort History Museum in 2021. Her research yielded lectures that she has delivered to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Penn State University, Senior Leadership Beaufort and the Peace Corps Alumnae 50th Anniversary and Celebration. Her work resulted in a narrative titled, “A Brief History of Saint Helena Island.”

But arguably, the stories of Gullah heritage that Legree shares are rivaled by her own remarkable story. Born in Coffin Point, Legree’s mother died when she was 3. Unable to make a sufficient living, her father moved to New York, where he later remarried, leaving Legree and two siblings to be raised by relatives.

On weekdays, Legree stayed with a maternal grandmother, who cared for several of her cousins, as well. On weekends, she went to the nearby home of a paternal great grandmother, joining one of her sisters who stayed there full-time. Legree would arrive on Friday evenings at the home with no refrigerator and few other modern amenities. But she received plenty of love and often baked goodies that had been set aside for her.

“If (my great grandmother) got any treats through the week, like cinnamon rolls, she would fold them up in a towel and put it under her pillow and hide it for me, so that my sister didn’t get it all,” Legree recalled with a chuckle. “I still remember that. If that wasn’t love, I don’t know what was.”

The harscrabble life required children to help care for animals and work gardens each morning before school. Seldom did anyone go hungry, even if the fare became a bit monotnous — sea food, sweet potatoes and grits were served for most meals, with a large-grained variety of rice reserved for Sunday dinner. Syrup made from sorghum often replaced processed cane sugar, and Legree said she often

drank soured milk called “clabber,” which she made more palatable by mixing in crumbled cornbread. Legree’s living arrangement persisted until about 1950, when her grandmother and great grandmother died within a month of each other — yet more trauma for a girl whose young life had already been marked by it. “Then came this tall, handsome man taking me by the hand and taking me to New York,” Legree recalled.

Her father took her to live with him and his new wife in a single-room apartment in Harlem. The adjustment was difficult. Legree lived with a stepmother she did not know well. Though her new home had amenities not available to her on St. Helena, she missed the expansive woods, fields and creeks that she shared with a small circle of friends and family. The cramped borough, on the other hand, offered little room to roam that was not covered with concrete and people.

And despite being surrounded by so many, Legree felt isolated nonetheless by peers who teased her because of her Gullah accent.
She found salvation in school, however. Even as a younger girl, Legree found ways to indulge her love for learning. After morning chores, she attended a Rosenwald School school on St. Helena — one of the philanthropic, one-room schools formed by Booker T. Washington and others in the 1920s to educate impoverished African-Americans across the South. In New York, Legree found schools that were even better appointed and just as much of a lifeline.

“I was always smart in school,” Legree said. “I became my teacher’s pet. For that, I got bullied, but I also got a great education.”
Legree didn’t attend college right away, however. She found that, even in the North, African-Americans were often shunted into non-academic tracks and sent to trade schools. Instead, she went to work out of high school, landing secretarial work with the U.S. Department of Labor, then with the advertising company now known as Grey Global Group.

Legree married a diamond-cutter who wanted to set up business in Detroit. Though they eventually divorced, she followed him from New York to the Motor City in 1968. She found work as a secretary to the Ford Motor Company’s director of public relations. It proved to be another of her life’s turning points. “For someone from the South to wind up in the world headquarters of this big company was such a wonderful thing,” Legree said.

Even more wonderful? Among the rich benefits package offered to Ford employees was free tuition for those who wanted to earn a degree on the side. Legree got a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Detroit. While in Detroit, she also worked for the First Independence National Bank of Detroit, a minority-owned institution formed after the 1967 Detroit Rebellion that was sparked by confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department. She finished her time in Detroit with an eight-year stint at United Auto Workers International.

All the while, she maintained her relationships with family on St. Helena. As a girl, her father often brought her back from New York for weeklong reunions that were a tradition around Independence Day. Her father also moved back to St. Helena himself in the 1980s, living in a cabin built on family land on Coffin Point. When Legree decided to retire, too, a daughter who works as a pharmacist tried to convince her to join her in Arizona. Legree’s heart still lived in the sea islands, however. “This is where I was called to be,” she said.

Back in her native community, Legree began researching the history of the Coffin Point Praise House and also learned of a tax benefit for Gullah descendants. Those who could prove their heritage and who have lived in Beaufort County 50 years or more could cut their property tax bill in half. Legree’s sister qualified, and she helped her secure the tax break.

She said she’ll never forget the day when a lady at the counter of the Beaufort County Register of Deeds brought to her a hand-written deed showing her family’s land had been convey to Abraham Rivers, one of her great grandfathers. “When I saw that deed, my heart filled up,” Legree said. “That deed proved our family’s Gullah roots, and I felt like I belonged to something. Now I can say, ‘I can document this. I am Mary Rivers Legree.’ I came to tears. I’m not sure my sister fully understood the significance of it at the time, but that solidified my identity as a Gullah.” And it bolstered her resolve to tell that remarkable heritage to the rest of the world.