From Whence We Came – The Settlement of Charleston
“Alas, my luck is gone,” bemoaned King Charles I of England in 1648, late in the year when his deeply loved black cat fell ill and died. The following day he was arrested, charged with high treason, and ultimately beheaded. His son, Charles II, was forced into exile in France. In later years, the displaced heir would recapture his throne. Restoration England ensued, as did a lavish and decadent time of “eat, drink and be merry.” Charles II, the “Merry Monarch,” wished to repay the loyal supporters who aided him in regaining his crown. Eight men, known as Lords Proprietors, received a land grant in 1663. It became the Carolina colony, originally encompassing a vast stretch of land from present day St. Augustine, Florida, to the North Carolina-Virginia line and stretching endlessly to the West.
Arguably the most notable Lord Proprietor to the Lowcountry was Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftsbury, for whom the rivers gracing the Charleston peninsula are named. Naturally, the lords wished to repay their generous king, and named their colony “Charles Town” for him. Much of the dissention between the monarchy and Parliament that had led to the death of Charles I had been religious in nature. One bequest of his son was that the colony be formed with religious freedom, hence the nickname “Holy City” today. Lord Cooper’s secretary, John Locke, wrote a vital document known as the Fundamental Constitution, which granted private religious worship and no bothersome persecution. This appealing idea reached the hearts of many who had tired of the religious wars plaguing Europe, and a wide variety of settlers found Charles Town attractive. By 1682, Charles Town was a walled fortification to help defend the fledging colony, but it already boasted St. Philip’s Episcopal, French Huguenot, Quaker, Independent (a building shared by Huguenots, Congregationalists, Scots and Irish Presbyterians) and Anabaptist churches. Other religions would soon follow.
Settlement, however, would prove extremely difficult. A party of Barbadian settlers under the command of Sir John Yeamans settled on Cape Fear in 1665, but shipwrecks, lack of food, and other difficulties drove them further north to Virginia. In 1670 the first permanent settlement was established on the Ashley River, what is today Charles Towne Landing, a state park. This settlement was comprised of less than 150 men, women and children. It was a small, weary, hard to defend encampment that would struggle to survive. Fear of attack, especially from natives and the Spanish navy, begrudged these settlers to bypass Oyster Point (today known as White Point Gardens, as the oyster shells were bleached white by the sun), and choose Albermarle Point. This location was further upriver in more sheltered terrain guarded by the endless maze of salt marsh and canopy. “Memories of this camp still exist here,” says CJ Ohlandt, historic interpreter at Charles Towne Landing. “Our cannon embrasures have been recreated on top of the originals with the actual style of cannon that was used by the people of that time. They must have been very afraid, and very alone.”
However, tenacity reigned supreme. The colony was able to hold on, and within ten years made the move to Oyster Point and built the wall around the city, which continued to exist for the next forty years. Raids were still frequent; the burning of St. Augustine by English reprisal at the turn of the eighteenth century did much to banish that problem. Pirates, seeking calmer weather from the Caribbean and a fresh opportunity to prey upon the unprotected were common too, at first welcomed for their cheap goods and unquestioning labor. Yet they eventually fell out of favor as the English stronghold dug its roots deeper into the sandy loam. Thirty pirates, led by Barbadian planter Stede “Gentleman Pirate” Bonnet, had been in league with Edward “Blackbeard” Teach during a raid of Charles Town in May of 1718. They would hang in December that year for their crimes. Tired of the Lords Proprietors and their unwillingness to assist them, the Charlestonians petitioned the crown to take them under colonial rule and this was accomplished by the following year.
Immigrants continued to flock to Carolina as well. Samuel Dyssli of Switzerland wrote on December 3, 1737: “I am over here…hale and hearty, and doing at present quite nicely. I am working with an English master. He gives me every week…50 shillings, and…plentiful…food and drink.” Yet he was also astounded at the amount of slaves in Carolina, and tensions were already running high between the classes. On Sunday morning, September 9, 1739, the bloodiest slave revolt in colonial American history occurred at the Stono River Bridge, twenty miles south of Charles Town. In a paranoid scare, likely worsened by the onslaught of yellow fever, over forty people would eventually perish in what became known as the Stono Rebellion as a group of slaves heading for Spanish Florida were intercepted near Jacksonborough Ferry.
By the mid 1700s the English had stretched their dominance along the Carolina seaboard and trade grew more plentiful by the day. Indigo, rice and slaves made the settlers fabulously rich. Trade laws were often ignored, and this would come into play in later years as the royal customs tried to enforce these codes, often by unscrupulous means. Henry Laurens, who later became President of the 2nd Continental Congress, physically assaulted one customs official in Charles Town for his “customs racketeering.”
While a small percentage of the population flourished, dining in rich halls and wearing fine European fashions, the majority of the colony was still impoverished and enslaved. Natural disasters and social unrest silently threatened the economic boom felt by the planters and would eventually become their downfall. Captain Martin, of a British man-of-war, said in rhyme of Charles Town’s darker side in 1769: “Black and white, all mix’d together…inconstant, strange, unhealthful weather…Augues plenty, without doubt; sores, boils, the prickling heat and gout…Houses built on barren land; no lamps or lights, but streets of sand…Everything at a high price; but rum, hominy and rice.”