USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 2 > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02317 3435
REYNOLDS HL TORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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HISTORY
OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN
SOUTH CAROLINA.
BY GEORGE HOWE, D. D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina.
PREPARED BY ORDER OF THE SYNOD OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
VOL. I. PART 2
COLUMBIA : DUFFIE & CHAPMAN. 82 9254 2
1870.
Allen County Public Library Ft. Wayne, Indiana
С ТЯАЯ
355
NEW BORDEAUX.
1760-1770.]
2260585
The site of the town was selected with the view to the nav- igability of the stream and the adaptation of the soil to the culture of the vine; for our fathers, coming from the south of France, had experience in vine-dressing, and were not without knowledge of the blessings of commerce ; though at this dis- tant period of time we can but wonder at the short-sighted policy which prompted them to reject the sunny hills and fer- tile valleys and smooth current of the Savannah for the more damp and inhospitable region of this now sluggish stream.
In February, 1765, the emigrants had erected their houses and commenced to labor on their half-acre and four-acre lots ; and by the 13th of June they had finished planting, in corn and beans, all the land which they had prepared. But they were greatly stinted in provisions.
In the month of July, in the same year, the peace of the little community was disturbed by a rumor of a threatened invasion by the Indians inhabiting the upper portions of the State; and all labored actively to dispose some trees so as to form a fort, which was built on a high hill, overlooking the town, and to which they gave the name "Fort Bonne." The Indians, however, did not arrive, and quiet was gradually restored.
From the remoteness of other white settlements, the colony was naturally kept in constant apprehension of attack. The nearest neighbors were a small colony planted only a few years before, in 1756, by Patrick Calhoun, the father of our late distinguished statesman, some fifteen miles distant ; and they were too feeble to render material aid to the French colony, but rather needed assistance themselves.
Freed from alarm as to the Indians, the inhabitants now gave themselves in earnest to their labors. Silk and flax were manufactured, while the cultivators of the soil were taxed with the supply of corn and wine. We can easily imagine how the hum of cheerful voices and the busy sounds of industry arose during the week, mingled with the fervent chanting of the once-interdicted psalms. Among a pious and simple peo- ple, there are no idlers. Every one had his appointed work, and on Saturday afternoon might even the little children have been seen, each with a wicker basket and snowy napkin, going and returning from the oven with loaves of bread.
Finding the culture of the vine less successful than was anticipated, they devoted themselves chiefly to the raising of flax, Indian corn, and tobacco; but with some, silk,
356
FRENCH PROTESTANTS AND CIVIL LIBERTY.
[1760-1770. indigo, and the vine were not wholly abandoned for a genera- tion .*
But it is in their religious history that we should delight to contemplate this little colony. For freedom of conscience, for the sake of an independent worship, they had been induced to abandon the endearments of their native land to seek a home in the forests of America. Through all their toils and sufferings they had followed a devout and worthy minister, in the hope that they would some day hear, unmolested, the divine precepts falling from his eloquent lips ; and now that this privilege was secured to them by all the freedom of a soil yet unpolluted by the tyranny of man, it may be well con- ceived that they regularly and faithfully exercised all the rites of their religious worship. Of the fact that they had a regu- larly organized church, and kept a baptismal registry, there is substantial proof, though the oldest inhabitants have no recol- lection of a church building in and about the town. It is believed that divine service was held in the town-hall on the public square. To a people accustomed to worship God in the glens of the mountains and in the caves of the earth, the simplest edifice might become a temple if secured from the eyes of persecution."t
These suffering people of France have taught the world a great and memorable lesson. They have proved that the apostolate of the sword is powerless in the conversion of souls, and that for the overthrow of the most colossal despot- ism it is sufficient always, that a people, however weak in themselves, should suffer in silence and in hope. Far more is due to these Protestants of France than to its speculative
* The Gibert family were the most successful silk growers, and long con- tinued to produce a beautiful and useful fabric. Many persons for a long time supplied their own cellars with wine, but the vintager par excellence was Mr. Jean Noble, an unmarried gentleman, the remains of whose cellar and the house above it in which he kept a school are still, in 1857, pointed out. Rev. Mr. Gibert produced six hundred and thirty pounds of cocoons upon the plantation of Gabriel Manigault, called "Silk Hope," out of which he has made thirty-six pounds of fine drawn silk, and will be able to make fourteen pounds more .- (South Carolina Gazette, August 3d, 1765.) He seems to have been in Charleston in 1766. The Commons House voted £10.0 to establish a silk filature in Charleston in that year, and in the follow- ing year attention is called to it .- (South Carolina Gazette, January, 1766, and May 11th, 1767.)
t Address delivered at New Bordeaux, Abbeville district, South Carolina, November 15th, 1854, on the Ninetieth Anniversary of the arrival of the French Protestants at that place. By W. C. Moragne, Esq. Published by the citizens of the neighborhood. Charleston, South Carolina, 1857. See also for docu- ments, Coll. of Hist. Soc., vol. ii., p. 75, 1858.
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357
IMMIGRATION.
1760-1770.]
philosophers. They secured to the French people, at least in theory, to be more perfectly wrought out in practice hereafter, absolute toleration of religious worship, liberty of conscience, the equality of all forms of religion which acknowledge a supreme and merciful Creator. This in France was one of the consequences of the French Revolution. The edict of Louis XVI. proclaimed it in despite of the remonstrances of his clergy, and in despite of the gigantic shade of Louis XIV., under whom these bitter persecutions took place. It was the elo- quent voice of Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, son of the pastor of the Desert, which, on the 23d of August, 1789, secured the formal declaration of this doctrine in the Assembly Constituante. By the side of their synods, and after their model, they founded political assemblies which exercised a great influence upon the liberties of France. From that illustrious Frenchman, Jolin Calvin, proceeded an influence which has regenerated civil governments. Exiled from his own country, he still ex- erted a powerful influence upon it. His city of Geneva, like a young mother, nourished in her fruitful womb the germs of many tribes of men who have been the advocates of civil and religious liberty. They remained there exiles from their own lands, to issue forth at the propitious hour to deliver them from tyranny. The new republic of Holland adopted the principles of Calvin ; Scotland received them with tumultuous joy, and transmitted them to England to obtain their full tri- umpli under Cromwell. They passed over to North Ireland; and from all these sources poured themselves forth over this Western continent, and prepared it for the high destiny which has awaited it.
CHAPTER V
THE period of which we now treat was the period of exten- sive immigration. One Stumpel, who had been an officer in the King of Prussia's army, conceived the design of trans- porting a German colony to South Carolina ; and having ob- tained some encouragement from the British government, seduced some five or six hundred poor people, by promises of land in America, to migrate under his guidance. Having got them to London, finding himself unable to fulfil his promises, he decamped, leaving them in an open field, ready to perish. A benevolent clergyman took compassion on them, obtained for them the protection and bounty of government, and the
358
GERMAN AND SCOTCH-IRISH.
[1760-1770.
public spirited charity of the citizens of London. The king provided two ships, abundantly provisioned for their trans- port, and placed in their hands one hundred and fifty stand of arms from the Tower of London. They took leave of their benefactors with songs of praise to God in their mouths and tears of gratitude in their eyes. In the month of April, 1764, they too arrived in Charleston, and were received with corre- sponding kindness. The Colonial Assembly voted them £500 sterling. The township of Londonderry was allotted to them. Captain Calhoun, with a detachment of the rangers which liad been organized for the protection of the country in the Long Canes settlement, had orders to meet them on the way and conduct them to the place in the northwest part of Edgefield district, where their town of Londonderry was to be built, and every assistance was given towards their speedy and comfort- able settlement.
But of all other countries, none furnished the province with so many inhabitants as Ireland. Scarcely a ship sailed from any of its ports for Charleston that was not crowded with men, women, and children. About this time, too, above a thousand families, with their effects, in the space of one year, resorted to South Carolina, driving their cattle, hogs, and horses before them. From these Scotch-Irish people is the chief strength of the Presbyterian church in South Carolina derived.
Thus have we gone over the particulars of this tenth decen- nium of the history of this colony, and reached the end of the first century of its existence. We have traced its growth from its first beginnings, and have given, as faithfully as we could, a narrative of the religious state and external sufferings of its early colonists. We have been able to find but little which would throw liglit upon certain important interests. Among these, that of education ought to have a special prominence. We presume it was for the most part private and domestic. The circumstances of the colony did not yet allow of expensive and well-ordered institutions of learning. The wealthy, for the most part, sent their children to England or Scotland for education ; and in these cases the highest advantages were enjoyed, as the ability of the public men of the colony fre- quently manifested. A few were educated in the Northern colonies. Yet the Low Country was not without its institu- tions of charity, which accomplished something in the way of education. The South Carolina Society was formed in 1736 by French refugees, who met twice in the week, contributing each night of the meeting two bits, or four half-pence, and
359
" BETHESDA COLLEGE."
1760-1770.]
received the name from this circumstance of the "Two-bit Club." This became wealthy, and was able to provide for the education of the families of its deceased or indigent members. The St. Andrew's Society was formed by Scotchmen even ear- lier, in 1729, for similar purposes. The Fellowship Society, formed in 1762, cared for the afflicted maniac, but appropriated one-half of its funds to the education of the children of mis- fortune. The Charleston Library Society was established in 1748, and incorporated in 1754.
We find Mr. Whitefield, during this period, abandoning his project of an orphan-house in the new colony of Georgia, and seeking to convert the institution into a college. He memo- rialized the Governor and Council of Georgia, in December, 1764, and obtained from them a grant of 2,000 acres of land on the Altamaha for this purpose. In his memorial to the king, he mentions the fact that there is no seminary for aca- demical studies yet founded south of Virginia ; that with the addition of the two Floridas, Georgia will be central for the southern district; that numbers in Georgia and South Caro- lina are waiting with impatience to have their sons initiated in academical exercises ; and he prays therefore that a char- ter, upon the plan of the New Jersey college, be granted, and proposes to make a free gift of his possessions in Georgia for the support of an institution to be called " The Bethesda Col- lege, in the province of Georgia." His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury desires that the institution may be a Church of England institution. But Mr. Whitefield cannot allow that the master of the college shall always be a member of the Church of England, nor can he enjoin the daily use of the liturgy of that Church, as persons of all denominations have been con- tributors to its funds, in New England, New York, Pennsyl- vania, South Carolina, Scotland, and England. Mr. Whitefield states the income of his property to be between £400 and £500 sterling. He proposes to give the whole to the uses of the college ; to wit, eighteen hundred acres of land on which the orphan-house stands; two thousand acres granted by the governor and council; and one thousand left to the institu- tion by the Rev. Mr. Zauberbuhler. From his accounts ap- pended, it appears that he had expended £12,855 sterling for the orphan-house, being £2,000 over and above what he had ever received for this specific purpose .*
Of the benevolent intentions of Mr. Whitefield in these pro-
* Sce a Letter to Governor Wright, etc. London, 1768, pp. 30. 12mo.
360
" BETHESDA COLLEGE."
[1760-1770.
positions there can be no doubt. He has the merit of antici- pating, by a number of years, a want subsequently felt, which at length gave rise to those numerous institutions of learning which have since sprung up in the southern States. Yet not all were favorable to his project, or thought he had the right to appropriate the funds of the orphan-house for this end. We have copies of two letters of Rev. Mr. Zubly of Savannah, touching this point, the originals of which are preserved in the Stiles MSS. in Yale College library, from one of which we make the following extract :--
" REVEREND AND VERY DEAR SIR :
" You have doubtless seen Mr. W.'s correspondence with the late arch- bishop, a piece to those who are acquainted with matters very surprising. I am amazed at the project to turn orphans out and erect a college on their ruins, and more amazed that not a creature in America has opened his lips against it. I have published a memorial on the subject which you will receive, and should have printed something more striking but that his managers desired I would delay it a little longer. I am convinced the whole is designed as a seminary for Methodists, and that Mr. Whitefield in truth loves church power, and is not that open friend to dissenters that he would be thought. Of this I think I have irrefragable proofs, and his own letters plainly show that he did mean to leave things designedly in the dark. It is astonishing to me that he offers to make a free GIFT his present TRUST, that he tells the King and all the world he will GIVE what is none of his, and of which in the same line he owns himself only a trustee.
" The 25th of March was sacred to the laying of a foundation stone for the intended wing of the College. It was so decreed in England, and tho' I dare say there was not 500 brick provided, nor the foundation dug (which I am told is not done this day, and the bricks only beginning to be moulded), yet it must be that day. Mr. Frinck preached on Luke i,-' And the angel came in unto her,' and observed that probably the founder had an eye to the solem- nity of the (Lady) day. He also told them who knows but the Angel Gabriel, who attended the royal maid (having now no further occasion to guard her), may take this house under his protection, and the holy Trinity grant it a bless- ing. I do not hear that he said more upon the subject, nor the Governor when he laid the first stone. Nothing has been done since, but the clay is carting 3 miles in order to be trode, tempered, and made up into bricks. For 4 years past no orphans have been in the house, and I have good authority to say that instead of its income being between 4 and 500 per annum in these 4 years that it has been empty of orphans, not one hundred has been laid up.
"I have wrote to Mr. Whitefield very freely, but do not expect that it will be much noticed. When he arrived here on his last visit he laid his hand in my hand and said, 'I am afraid of nobody in Georgia but this little man,'-the sense of which I think I now understand. I am apprehensive that by all this Religion will greatly suffer, and if an Orphan house can be turned into a Col- lege, to the expulsion of those for whom the charity was given and the land granted, I do not see but it might by a second change be turned into a Bed- lam if those that think themselves authorized should so think fit. I know, however, my dear Sir, you will make a prudent use of what I write and what may be consistent with a real regard I have for Mr. Whitefield, notwithstand- ing his mistakes and blunders. I think, upon the whole, every man before man is more or less valuable as true sincerity appears or is wanting in his actions.
ـــديـــ
361
1760-1770.] SOCIETY FOR PROPAGATING RELIGION.
"I think I have not before sent you a funeral discourse on Peter the Great, which so pleased me in the reading that I translated and printed it, and have sold at least half a dozen copies of the impression.
" I lately had the pleasure of the company of the Revd Mr. Halsey, by whom I learn that the Controversy about episcopizing America is still vigorously carried on. I find petitions for this purpose are also gone home from the Southern colonies, tho' the church people in general are very far from being zealous for any such importation.
"I beg to be remembered sometimes in your retirement, and hope ever to approve myself, dr. Sir,
" Yr. unworthy brother and humble Servt. " J. J. ZUBLY.
" St. Gale, April 19, 1769."
P. S. on a separate slip of paper.
" Capt. Bouck having sailed without the inelosed, I am glad another oppor- tunity offers so soon.
"Since my last a Presbyterian meeting is set on foot in this place, as the house I preach in is upon so general a plan as to receive the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some think it done out of opposition to me, however, Phil. i. 18. If the right of taxation takes place, those that are for being taxed will not choose to have anything to say or hear from me .*
"In using but § of a sheet I reduce the duty upon paper g. " Vale quam plurimum.
" To the Rev. Ezra Stiles, D.D., "Newport, R. I."
The subject alluded to in a portion of this letter gave great uneasiness to the dissenters from the English church. The conduct of the Society for Propagating Religion in Foreign Parts was charged by them with entirely departing from its professed purpose of enlarging the boundaries of Christen- dom, and with devoting itself to the work of episcopizing the dissenters in America. It was founded, Jonathan Mayhew of Boston shows, for disseminating religion among the heathen, especially among the Indians and negroes in the colonies, so the annual sermons of 1710, 1724, 1747, 1754, and 1764 had professed. Bishop Butler says of it, in 1739, " It were much to be wished that serious men of all denominations would join it. William of Orange, who gave its charter in 1703, was a Cal- vinist and a Presbyterian. Yet the society bestowed its mis- sionaries among those very non-conformists who left England on account of their sufferings from prelatical domination. At first the society attempted to carry out its original purposes. For eight or nine years they sent no missionaries to New Eng- land, but after that the increase was rapid. In 1718 the num-
* These allusions we do not fully understand. Dr. Zubly was ordained in the German [Reformed] Church at London, August 19th, 1744. There was no Presbyterian organization from which an effort of the kind alluded to could emanate but the presbytery then in existence in South Carolina.
-
362
AMERICAN EPISCOPATE.
[1760-1770.
ber was three; in 1727 it was ten ; in 1730, fourteen ; in 1739, twenty-two ; in 1745, twenty-four, and in 1761, thirty. In the last year, too, there were sixteen missionaries in New York, ten in New Jersey, nine in Pennsylvania, five in North Caro- lina, five in South Carolina, one in Georgia, one in Bahama, and two in Barbadoes. The charges of the prelates against the colonists were galling in the extreme. The Bishop of Llan- daff, in his sermon before the society, February 20th, 1667, says that "instead of civilizing and converting barbarous in- fidels, as they undertook to do, they became themselves infidels and barbarians, and that this their neglect of religion was contrary to the pretences and conditions under which they ob- tained royal grants and public authority to their adventures." Well does William Livingston reply -- (Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, pp. 31, 12mo, New York, 1768),-" What barbarians, my lord, have they [your missioniaries] civilized ? What in- fidels have they converted ? The immense sums expended by the venerable society are not laid out in missions among the native pagans, who know not the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. They are squandered, ridiculously squan- dered, on missions to places where the gospel was preached, and (admitting the articles of the Church of England as the standard of orthodoxy), were faithfully preached before." There arose at this time a great dread of an American Epis- copate, and the extending of Episcopal power over the colonies under the British crown. We cannot learn that this dread was especially felt by the churches of South Carolina. Indeed Mr. Zubly says, "I do not hear that the Episcopal clergy in South Carolina or this province [Georgia] have any itch for a bishop, and you can inform me whether I am out in my guess that it is chiefly such as have been bred in America and among the dissenters that appear in this matter." -- (Letter of October 10th, 1768, to Rev. Ezra Stiles, Newport, R. I. Stiles' MSS., Yale College library.)
We have recurred to this matter, not so much for any bear- ing it has in itself on the history of the churches in South Carolina, as for the fact that in a very elaborate treatise on this subject found among the voluminous MSS. of Rev. Dr. Stiles, of Yale College, replete with statistical information, the object of which is to show the preponderance of dissenters throughout the colonies, we find the only enumeration of the ministers and churches of South Carolina of so early a day that we have been able to discover. The first enumeration is of the date of 1760, the commencement of our present period.
المعدات
363
1760-1770.] DENOMINATIONAL STATISTICS.
" PRESBYTERIAN MINISTERS .- Jno. Baxter; Jno. McLeod; Jno. Rae of Williamsburg, P .; Charles Lorimer, St. John's, 2 churches; Archibald Simp- son, Prince William's (Cong') ; Philip Morrison, Charlestown (mixt); Patrick Kier; Jno. Alison, St. Paul's ; William Richardson ; Charles Gordon, St. Bar- tholomew's (mixt); Jno. Martin, Christ's Church, (Cong') .- Eleven.
" CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS .- Josiah Smith, James Edmonds, Andrew Bennet-three.
" Note .- Rev. Messrs. Simpson and Martin are Presbyterian ministers settled over Congregational churches.
" EPISCOPAL MINISTERS .- Of these he enumerates 13, of parishes 17, of churches and chapels twenty-four. And 6200 whites, and forty-six coloured. BAPTIST MINISTERS three, Messrs. Hart and Wheeler of Charleston, and Ste- vens of St. Andrew's. IN GEORGIA he names two, Mr. Zubly of Savannah, (Ind. Pres.), and Mr. Osgood of Medway (Cong!)."
Under the date of 1768 we find the following vague enumer- ation, on the authority of Rev. Dr. Chauncey :
" EPISCOPALIANS .- Florida and Georgia, 10,000; South Carolina, 13,000; North Carolina, 25,000. Total, 48,000. DISSENTERS .-- Florida and Georgia, 10,000; South Carolina, 14,000; North Carolina, 70,000. Total, 94,000."
In the same year the following statement was made by Rev. Elam Potter, who we have seen was the guest of Mr. Simpson, and the supply for some time of the church of Salem on Black River, and was sent out as a missionary by the synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1767.
"SOUTH CAROLINA .- Waxhaw, 120 families, Pastor, Mr. Richardson. Near by, 70 families, but vacant. Lynche's Creek, 60 families; Great Creek, 50; Black River, 40; Williamsburg, 90; Sumter, 30; Pedee, 20; all vacant. In- dian Town, 50 families, Mr. [K] nox; Pine Tree, 50 families ; Rocky Mount, 20; near by, 20; Indian Creek, 20; about Saluda, 200; all these vacant. Wando Neck, 60 families, Mr. Martin, æt. 35; Charlestown, 70 families, Mr. Huit, æt. 28, Edinburgh. Wiltown, 50 families; Pon Pon, 50; Indian Land, 50, Mr. Simpson, fr. Edinburgh [Glasgow], æt. 32. Port Royal, vacant. Salt Ketcher, Mr. Simpson (same); John's Island, Mr. Latta, Retd to Glasgow, æt. 25; James Island, 30 families, vacant ; Near by, Mr. McLeod, at. 50. Near Savannalı, 30, vacant. [Three] Runs, 30; Shell Bluff, 30; New Windsor, 30; these all vacant. Long Canes, 500, vacant, Missionary frontier; Charlestown, 80, Mr. Thomas, æt. 24. Wales, Mr. Josiah Smith, æt. 70. Set down by him to NORTH CAROLINA, Bethel, 60; Catupa, 30; Fishing Creek, 40; Bullock's Creek, 100. GEORGIA, Savannah, Mr. Zubly, æt. 34 or 38, Switzerland. Sun- bury, Mr. -; near by, Mr. Osgood. Briar Creek, 30 ; Buck Head, 30 ; near Savannah, 40; all these vacant.
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