A Southern Medical Device AND Courtship Aid

If you’re from the South, or have spent any time in Charleston, SC, you know what a joggling board is. We have one on our Atlanta patio, a gift years ago from my proper Southern in-laws. But I never knew it was originally a medical device!

First of all, what is a joggling board? Imagine a 16-foot-long, 20-inch-wide, 2-inch-thick board made of flexible longleaf pine, resting on rockers turned sideways. The long pine board is supple enough it will give without breaking. Sitting on the board and lightly tapping your feet on the floor will let you gently bounce up and down, and swaying side to side will let you rock back and forth. The combination is “joggling”. Always painted the traditional almost-black Charleston green, they are commonplace on Southern porches and patios.

Can’t quite visualized joggling? Look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ZT1Y77g2I

The most often-told story about the invention harks from 1804, at Acton Plantation in Sumter County, SC, near present-day Columbia, SC. The plantation owner, Cleland Kinloch, was a widower. His widowed sister Mary Huger lived with him and ran the household. She had terrible arthritis and was in frequent pain. Riding in a carriage with a rocking chair was less painful and something she could still enjoy. Cleland and Mary’s Scotland relatives, who were used to Scottish jostling boards (with a flexible board mounted on a post) devised the joggling board with rockers, and shipped her a small model. The plantation carpenter built one, and they found it could gently move her, giving her a little exercise and pain relief. It was an immediate hit.

Quickly, joggling boards became popular in Charleston and the nearby Lowcountry. Just the thing for arthritis and rheumatism. People also found they were pleasant for cool evenings on the porch, trying to escape Southern summer heat, and perfect for rocking fretful babies to sleep.

Remember that courting was very formalized in the South in the 1800s. Proper ladies could not go out with gentlemen unescorted, couldn’t sit too close, or hold hands.  Joggling board to the rescue! Sitting at each end of a joggling board (often called a courting board) on the porch allowed a proper distance, so no chaperone would be required. But the movement of the joggling board being what it was, the two young people might slowly slip closer and closer…

So, joggling boards became standard for the front porch of gracious Southern homes, part rocking chair, part hammock, and part trampoline for rambunctious children. They remained popular until World War II, when timber became hard to find, and joggling boards almost disappeared. Traditional furniture makers in the Lowcountry revived joggling boards in the 1960s and they remain a fixture on the porches of many Southern homes today.