Charleston and the Caribbean Connection
Much of Charleston’s colonial cultural identity can be attributed to the windswept islands of the Caribbean—Charleston’s Caribbean Connection.
Records show the first English ship to call at the island of Barbados was the Olive, homeward bound from a voyage to Brazil in 1625. The Olive’s captain, John Powell, ceremoniously claimed the island in the name of the Crown and by the 1630s a number of British settlers (along with their African slaves) were on the island raising crops of tobacco and cotton for trade. Sugar production followed in about 1640. By the 1650s, sugar plantations throughout the West Indies were producing intoxicating amounts of wealth for a relatively few planters.
Particularly on Barbados, some plantations grew so large they soon crowded out the smaller, independent farmers who couldn’t compete against the sugar plantations’ economies of scale. Thus, the expanding success of the sugar industry, within the confines of Barbados, fostered nothing short of an exodus. The numbers say it all. In 1643, there were 8,300 landowners living on Barbados. By 1660, there were only 760. Clearly, small scale farmers, tradesmen and second sons (who could not inherit their father’s land) left in large numbers for Jamaica, Guyana, and nearby islands of the Caribbean. But ultimately they looked to Carolina as a land of open opportunity.
After the frigate Carolina delivered the 130 founders of Charles Towne to their chosen site of Albemarle Point, along the Ashley River, the boat reported back to Barbados (on November 4, 1670) with news that the settlement was secured. It was a kind of public relations campaign aimed to entice Barbadians to follow suit and emigrate. With the blessing of the Lords Proprietors (eight English noblemen chartered by the Crown to settle and govern the colony) a “Barbados Proclamation” was issued. It encouraged “all manner of people who desired to transport themselves together with their servants, Negroes or utensils” to book passage for the new colony. Free transportation and a grant of land once they arrived sweetened the deal for many would-be settlers. Others paid for their passage by indenturing themselves to the Crown for goods or services rendered in the New World. Although the Carolina’s passenger manifest was made up of English settlers, for the most part, the profile of settlers quickly changes. By 1690, immigrants from Barbados comprised more than half of Charles Towne’s settler population. So, almost from the beginning, transplanted Barbadians became influential in colonial government and left their strong-willed stamp on every aspect of the colony—both politically and economically.
The Single House
On the subject of early architecture, Charleston has traditionally laid claim to its own unique contribution to the American catalogue of styles, namely the “Single House.” It is said to have evolved as a “creative response to indigenous factors,” according to Professor Kenneth Severens, a long-time architectural scholar and respected authority on Southern vernacular architecture. He goes on to say it was a response “to climate and location.” The limited space of the 17th and 18th century Charleston (confined on that narrow peninsula between two rivers) resulted in long, narrow housing units. European urban housing popular at the time (row houses) proved to be insufferably hot in the Carolina summers, and the Single House evolved in the need for long, narrow, free-standing units around which cooling breezes might occasionally blow. The single house was the dominant house type by the mid-18th century, and still dominates the historic district today.
The basic Single House form is a narrow rectangle, one room wide with a gable roof. The short side (or gable end) faces the street. The primary entrance to the house usually opens—mid way—on the long side of the rectangle into a central hallway. Sometimes, if a business was housed on the ground floor, a street entrance was added for commercial access. Instrumental to the quintessential Single House is the side veranda, (in Charleston it is always called a “piazza”) almost always on the south or west façade to catch the breeze off the ocean. Beside each piazza is an open space for a narrow garden, frequently walled for added privacy.
It seems reasonable that these strong-willed, independent-minded Barbadians would have brought with them some of their inspired solutions to the discomforts of residing in an ocean-side sub-tropical climate. Architectural historians still differ on the subject.
Archaeological Evidence
The ties binding the Caribbean to the art and architecture of the colonial South aren’t just those in evidence above ground. Lydia Pulsipher, Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee, is drawn to the archaeological record. Her work includes the little-known culture of slaves; their building and gardening arts, plus their domestic crafts. Her 15-year study on the Caribbean island of Montserrat has resulted in a wealth of information on the day-to-day life of Caribbean slaves working on sugar plantations. She also draws some uncanny comparisons with the folkways and traditions of blacks on the relatively isolated Daufuskie Island, S.C., near Hilton Head.
Her insight is particularly poignant because the catastrophic volcanic eruption of 1997 on Montserrat completely destroyed the villages, landscapes, and even the archaeological record of her study site.
The links between Charleston to the Caribbean are numerous with a webbed connection as complicated and dramatic as the Holy City itself and the verdant array of wind-swept islands that spawned many of its early values.
This article was generously provided by Preservation Progress, for the Preservation Society of Charleston, Vol. 52, No. 3. It has been edited for space.