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Ever find yourself on a stroll through one of those Southern neighborhoods where the air around you just feels kinda… syrupy? Not just because you’re sweating—make no mistake about it, it is always sweating-level hot in the South—but really that slight, unexplainable difference that you can just notice. You’re walking by an old home with a nice wraparound porch, trailing ivy, and then you see it: this long, bouncy bench thing. Like a porch swing and a balance beam had a child. That is a joggling board.
The thing is, most people have absolutely no idea what they’re looking at the first time. It doesn’t look comfortable at all, and it seems like it just wobbles, even if you just breathe on it. But ask around—especially in Charleston or a place with strong porch culture. Someone will invariably tell you a story involving Scotland, sore joints, and a little matchmaking.
Where It All Started — Between a Rocking Chair and a Carriage Ride
So here’s the really weird part: this whole story is oddly specific. In 1804, a South Carolina man named Cleland Kinloch lived in Charleston, and that same year, he invited his sister, Mary Kinloch Huger, to come live with him. She was a widow and was apparently not physically well either, because her joints hurt, and the carriage rides (which would have been one of the few entertainments available) were painful for her.
Now here’s where it gets weirder: Mary had family in Scotland, and after hearing about her pain, they sent her… this thing. A long piece of wood balanced on two curved rockers, giving it a little bounce. A love seat or something that she could sit on and rock gently—maybe get the feeling like she was being carried along after all. A curious yet thought-provoking contraption—part exercise, part entertainment, part therapy.
Anyway, it became a thing. Quickly. Suddenly, more and more homes in the area had something like this out front, and by the 1850s, the joggling board had become just… a thing. You’d see them on porches throughout the South, sitting in a warm breeze, gently bouncing like they had always belonged.
The Whole “Courting Bench” Deal
This is where the mythmaking comes in. Southern families fit pretty neatly into… Southern families, and began to bestow a little more significance on the boards. Somewhere along the line, someone said if you had a joggling board on your porch, your daughters would not die single and old. Seriously. The belief was that it brought marriage luck. Or romance luck. Or, at the very least, offered your daughters a place to be seen (or courted) by a suitable young man.
And bingo, you have the term “courting bench.” The thinking was: when two people sat on the joggling board, one moment they’d be rocking gently, the next—oh hey, our knees are touching—and suddenly they’d feel comfortable enough to start flirting under the auspices of are you being scandalous? It was basically an acceptable excuse for some closeness. And since it’s just a plank of wood, if one person moves, the other feels it—thereby creating a kind of shared rhythm, right?
