USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 13
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On the 22d of October, 1695, being the usual lecture day in the town of Dorchester, Mass., and messengers having been invited from neighboring churches | to constitute a Council, or Provisional Presbytery, according to congregational usage, Rev. Joseph Lord # was duly set apart and ordained to the gospel ministry, and a church was organized, with him for its
* Archdale, p. 105; Oldmixon, p. 416, in Carrol, vol. ii.
+ Of Boston, Milton, Newton, Charlestown, and Roxbury.
# Joseph Lord was of Charlestown, Mass. He had graduated at Harvard College four years before in the class of 1691, and was then teaching a school in Dorchester and studying theology with the pastor .- Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix.
121
EMBARKATION AND ARRIVAL.
1685-1700.]
pastor, as a missionary church, One of the members was William Norman, from Carolina, who probably went on to Massachusetts for the purpose of encouraging and securing the execution of this missionary enterprise. The name of Norman still exists in the Midway congregation, Georgia, and the correspondence referred to from Carolina may be accounted for from the fact that the population of Dorchester, Mass., was from the counties of Devon, Dorset, and Somersetshire, Eng- land,* from which came also many, perhaps most of the dissent- ers then in Carolina. The text of Mr. Lord's sermon at his or- dination was in accordance with the occasion and object in view. " Ye are the salt of the earth," Matt. v. 13. Their friends ac- companied them to the place of embarkation, where they took leave of each other, " after kneeling down and mingling their supplications, with every expression of Christian tenderness." They embarked on the 5th of December, and set sail on the night of the 14th, in two small vessels, towards the land God had . given them as an inheritance, not knowing whither they went. Not without peril and severe trial of their faith was the voyage accomplished. A severe gale was experienced soon after their embarkation, and one of the vessels came near being lost. A day of fasting and prayer was observed on board. One vessel arrived in about fourteen days, the other had a passage of near a month. " What an interesting sacred company did those two frail barks contain! Infancy, not knowing whither it went ; youth, with all its joyousness ; middle age, with all its conscious weight of responsibility ; the old and the young, the strong and the weak, the protector and the protected ; a sacred company -aye, sacred, because they were a whole church of Christ, with their chosen, consecrated pastor in their midst."+ Thread- ing their way up the Ashley river, in quest of a convenient place for settlement, they fixed upon a spot which they named after Dorchester, in Massachusetts, which was named after Dor- chester, in England, whence their first minister came. Here, in the midst of an unbroken forest inhabited by beasts of prey and savage men, twenty miles from the dwellings of any whites, they took up their abode. The Westoes and Stonos were the
* The church of Dorchester, Mass., was composed of a company of Puritans gathered out of these several counties, who, early. in 1630, met at the new hospital in Plymouth, England; and after a day of fasting and prayer, elected the Rev. John Warham of Exeter, and Rev. John Maverick, to be their pas- tors, and resolved to settle in New England. They sailed on the 30th of March, 1630, and arrived in about two months, encountering many hardships in the waste howling wilderness to which they came.
t Sheldon's Discourse on the 150th anniversary of the Dorchester church.
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122
THEIR FIRST COMMUNION.
[1685-1700.
two most powerful tribes around them, and were at this time very hostile, so that the settlers, as they erected their dwellings, were obliged to station their sentinels to watch the foe. They did not fail in their duties to God. Shortly after their arrival, on the 2d of February, 1696, under the spreading branches of an oak, which still stands,* stretching out its weather-beaten limbs, affording a shelter to the living and to the resting-places of the dead, they celebrated the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and renewed their vows and thanksgivings to Christ their Saviour. Never have their descendants failed in religious duty, nor when their country called them either to do or suffer. Though they migrated to a neighboring State in the middle of the next century, they were the first there to embark in the struggle of the Revolution, and sent their delegate on horseback to. Philadelphia to represent them in Congress, when the State of Georgia had not yet decided to abandon the royal cause.
The communion above referred to has been said to be the. first sacrament of the Lord's Supper ever administered in the colony,t and the Dorchester church the first organized Con- gregational church in the State. Both these statements are open to adverse criticism. St. Philip's (Episcopal) church was earlier by several years. The first Episcopal minister in the province, Atkin Williamson, was here as early as 1680, and the second, Samuel Marshall, came in. 1696.
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The second statement can only be true if the church now called "THE CIRCULAR CHURCH," but known in its earlier records as "THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH," were Presbyterian strictly. Dr. Ramsay argues that it was formed and consti- tuted between 1680 and 1690. One reason for this declara- tion is the assertion in a letter written by this church in 1750 to Rev. Drs. Guise, Doddridge, and Jennings, "that upwards of sixty years ago they had been a church." Another is found in the consideration that a community, a large major- ity of whom were dissenters from the Church of England, and zealous in their religion, would not have remained very long without some religious organization. To this we may add, the residence of Rev. Thomas Barret, Makemie's correspon- dent, on Ashley river, in 1684-5, and Makemie's own attempt to remove here in 1684, to which he was drawn, probably, by knowing the existence here of a religious community desiring
* It had fallen and was fast decaying in 1859.
+ Holmes, Annals, ii., p. 34; History of the Town of Dorchester, Mass., 1856, p. 263 ; Mallard's Short Account of the Cong. Ch., Midway, Ga., p. 4.
123
REV: JOHN COTTON.
1685-1700.]
the services of a Presbyterian minister. Benjamin Pierpont, the first regular pastor of this church of whom we read, "was graduated at Harvard University, in 1689, and emigrated from near Boston, in 1691,* with a select company, to found an independent church in South Carolina. He died near Charles- ton in 1698, aged about thirty."+ Of his successor, Mr. Adams, probably from the same region of country, we know nothing. Of John Cotton, his successor, a more ample history might be given. He was son of the celebrated John Cotton of Boston ; was graduated at Harvard, in 1657, at the age of seventeen years and four months. From 1664 to 1667 he preached as a missionary to the Indians on Martha's Vineyard, in whose language he became a proficient. In November, 1667, he re- moved to Plymouth, where for thirty years he preached to the descendants of the Pilgrim fathers. Some difference of opin- ion arising between him and his church, he was dismissed October 5th, 1697. He was invited to South Carolina, and set sail for Charleston, November 15th, 1698, where, say the au- thorities we have consulted, he gathered a church, and labored with great diligence and success till his death, which occurred September 18th, 1699. During his brief ministry of nine months, twenty-five were added to the church, and many were baptized. In his labors he was very abundant and successful, as appears from a daily journal kept by him, which yet exists among his descendants.# The existing records of this church
* He was the fifth son of John Pierpont of Roxbury, Mass. Born at Rox- bury (as supposed) July 26th, 1668, died at Charleston, S. C., January 3d, 1697 (1698), where he had been for some time preaching. He died without issue.
+ American Biographiical Dietionary, by William Allen, D.D.
t John Cotton was born on the 13th of March, 1640. For some reason he was excommunicated by his father's church, May, 1664, but was soon restored. He preached first at Guilford, Mass. He was eminent for his acquaintance with the Indian language. He hired an Indian for his instructor at twelve pence a day for fifty days ; but liis teacher, before twenty days elapsed, having received his whole pay, deserted him. He found means, however, of perfecting himself in it, and frequently preached to the Indians, who lived in several congrega- tions in his neighborhood. The whole care of revising Elliot's Indian Bible fell on him. He died, according to Cotton Mather, who was his nephew, of yellow fever: "the horrible plague of Barbados was brought into Charlestown by an infected vessel." "It had been there little above a fortnight before many above an hundred were dead." He liad eleven children, five of whom died young. Four of his sons were graduates of Harvard, three of whom were ministers,of the gospel,-Jolin at Yarmouth, Rowland at Sandwich, Theophilus at Hampton Falls .- American Quarterly Register, vol. x., p. 246; Allen's Amer. Biog. Diet., p. 268 ; Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv .; Magnalia, iii. ; Holmes ; Savage, Genealog. Diet. of N. England.
124
THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH.
[1685-1700.
do not ascend to so early a date. The first records were de- stroyed in the hurricane in the fall of 1713, which beat upon the house of Rev. Mr. Livingston, who then lived on the spot occupied by the battery, at the foot of East Bay ; and we are dependent on these northern sources for information. Ac- cording to these both Mr. Pierpont and Mr. Cotton organized the church-the one in 1691, the other in 1698. The proba- bility is, that these statements are either not perfectly accu- rate, but refer to the revival of the church organization under these different ministers, or have reference, the one or the other, to the organization of a church in the country near Charleston, (at Wappetaw, in the New England colony ?). As to the time of the erection of the first house of worship for the Dissenters in Charlestown, we have no certain data which ena- ble us to determine. It was very early. In the deed of gift, bearing date October 23d, 1704, by which "Madame Symonds" conveyed the land on which the meeting-house stands, it is said, "And whereas the Protestant Dissenters of the southern part of the province have for many years since built a meet- ing-house on said plot of ground." These "many years since" would suggest to us a time considerably earlier than the ar- rival of Mr. Pierpont in 1691. The preamble also to the act for building a new church, bearing date December 18th, 1729, commences thus : " Whereas the present Publick Meeting-house in Charleston, which in the early times, or beginning of the settlement thereof, was erected for the publick worship of God, after the Presbyterial form and discipline, is now by long time gone to decay, and become old and out of repair," &c. These passages would intimate a very early date for the erection of the house of worship, perhaps as early as, or earlier than, that assigned by Dalcho for St. Philip's. It was a wooden edifice, and long known as "The White Meeting." The Calvinistic church of French Protestants, Dalcho allows, was built be- fore 1693. The Quaker meeting-house, whose erection was promoted by Governor Archdale, was built, according to this authority, in about 1696. A Baptist church was organized about 1685,* and its first pastor was Rev. William Screven, who began his labors in the province about the year 1693.
* Rev. Wood Furman, in his History of the Charleston Association, dates the organization of this church in about 1683. This is the date of the first Baptist emigration into the province. "They came," says he, " in separate colonies, about the year 1683, partly from the west of England, with Lord Cardross and Mr. Blake, and partly from Piscataway, in the district of Maine. Of the former
125
" THE WHITE MEETING."
1685-1700.]
In " the White Meeting," the Presbyterians, whether English, Irish, or Scotch, and the Independents, worshipped together. Those of English origin were accustomed at home already, by force of persecution, to see their own discipline imperfectly practised. Philip Henry, the father of the commentator, had no session in the church he gathered in his own house at Broad Oak. His son Matthew had none in his church. And the times were such as to render a private ordination in his own case most eligible. His ordainers were Presbyterian ministers of London, six in number, who performed the service in private, and gave him the following certificate : "We, whose names are subscribed, are well assured, that Mr. Matthew Henry is an ordained minister of the gospel. Sic Testor." To which were attached their signatures, and the date, "May 9th, 1687." *. From the Act of Uniformity to 1694, it is not known that there was a single public ordination among the Dissenters in England. At this latter date the Presbyterians began to ordain publicly several candidates at the same time, probably in imitation of Episcopal ordinations, and conse- quently not in the congregations where they were to minister. In 1690, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists in and about London drew up "heads of agreement" for the main- tenance of friendly intercourse between their ministers and churches. And in addition, there was a board at the metrop- olis, consisting of the most influential men of these denomina- tions, who watched over their general interests, as dissenters from the Established Church; and before the accession of Queen Anne the Baptists also began to act in concert with them, so that when she ascended the throne the three denom- inations united in a joint address to her majesty. The Pres- byterians were represented, because of their superior numbers, by two delegates to one of each of the other denominations. All these things tended to wear away the distinctive peculiari- ties of Presbyterian government in the English Presbyterian church, and among those who migrated from that church to America.
some settled about Ashley and Cooper rivers, others about the mouth of the Edisto river. The latter settled at a place called Summerton, situated on Cooper river, and at a small distance from Charleston. Here they were formed into a church under the eare of the Rev. William Screven." As to the emigration with Lord Cardross, we had supposed it was entirely Presbyterian. It is more probable that the earliest English Baptist emigration was with Mr. Blake, whose wife, and her mother, Lady Axtell, Mr. Furman informs us, were Baptists .- Furman's History of the Baptist Association, pp. 5, 55, 68.
* See Memoir prefixed to his Commentary.
126
POPULATION .- TERRITORY OCCUPIED.
[1685-1700.
As we have now reached the close of the sixteenth century, and of the third decade of the history of South Carolina, it will not be amiss to take a review of several points touching her general, and more especially her ecclesiastical history.
Population .- This was computed to be, in 1700, between five and six thousand whites, besides Indians and negroes .* Of these, as late as 1706, it was said, " 'Tis notorious that above two-thirds of the people of Carolina are Dissenters." The Rev. Mr. Marston, of the Church of England, in a letter to Rev. Dr. Stanhope, says of them, that they are "the soberest, most numerous, and richest people of the province."t
Extent of Territory occupied, and Political Divisions .- On the northeast, the French settlements on the Santee seem to have been the utmost limits to which population had reached. On the southwest, after the Scotch were broken up and driven in from Port Royal, the population seems not to have extended far beyond the Edisto river. The chief settlement being at Wilton, then called New London, in the vicinity of which were the plantations of Gov. Morton, of Landgrave Axtell, and Paul Grimball.
In the interior, the settlements of the French reached no further than the neighborhood of Lenud's Ferry on the Santee, and the church and congregation of Dorchester was the re- motest settlement in the interior on the banks of the Ashley, and for a considerable time far distant from any other settle- ment of the whites. The province was divided under Gov. Mor- ton into three counties, named after three of the proprietors. Craven extended on the sea-coast from the North Carolina line to the Sewee river ; Berkley extended from the Sewee to Stono Creek ; Colleton extended on the coast from Stono Creek southward. These counties were understood to be bounded in the interior by a line parallel with the coast and thirty-five miles from it.
Churches .- These, as we gather from the preceding, were of five denominations of Christians.
Episcopalian .- Two churches. 1. St. Philip's, Charles- town. First minister in the colony, Atkin Williamson, whose arrival was prior to 1680. Erection of house of worship : 1690, Ramsay ; 1682, Dalcho, Rivers. Second
* Hewatt, p. 132; Rivers, p. 216, who concurs in Hewatt's statement, and regards as incorrect the assertion in Humphrey's Historical Account, in which the white population in 1701 is said to be above 7,000 persons.
+ "Case of Dissenters," quoted by Oldmixon, p. 430; vol. ii. of Carroll's Historical Collections, p. 430, and by Rivers, p. 217.
127
NUMBER OF ORGANIZED CHURCHES.
1685-1700.]
minister, Samuel Marshall, appointed to this church in 1696, died 1696.
2d Church, Goose Creek. First clergyman, Rev. William Corbin. He arrived in the province in the year 1700, and left in 1703. His successor, Mr. Thomas, two. years after, found here but five communicants. It appears to be quite uncertain whether the church here was an organized Episcopal church before Mr. Corbin's arrival. The first house of worship for Episcopal service, out of Charleston, was built on Pompion Hill, in the parish of St. Thomas and St. Denis, in 1703 .*
Presbyterian. French Huguenots .- 1. The Huguenot church in Charlestown. Date of its migration, 1686. Pastors, Elias Prioleau and Florent Philip Trouillart.
2. The Huguenot church on the Eastern Branch of Cooper river, 1686 or 1687. First minister, De la Pierre.
3. The Huguenot church on the Santee. Date of settle- ment, 1686 or 1687. First pastor, Pierre Robert, of the Waldensians of Piedmont.
4. The Huguenots of Goose Creek. This was a small handful of people, under the pastoral care of Florent Philip Trouillart.
Mixed Presbyterian and Independent Church .- This church was composed of Presbyterians, chiefly from Scotland and Ireland, Congregationalists from Old and New England, and French Huguenots, who were. strictly Presbyterian in their form of government, and had been recently driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, has been known by various names : the Presbyterian church, the White Meeting, the Independent church, the New England Meeting, the Circular church. Date of church organization, previous to 1690, and between 1680 and 1690. Date of first church struc- ture probably as early as 1690, and perhaps still earlier. First known minister in the province, and but as a temporary resident, Thomas Barret, 1685. First regular pastor, Benja- min Pierpont, 1691.
(Presbyterian church at Stuart-Town, composed of Lord Cardross's colony, and existing from 1683 to 1686. Minister, William Dunlop.)
Congregational church of Dorchester. Date, January, 1696. First pastor, Joseph Lord.
* Dalcho, 32, 33; Ibid., 284, 244-5.
128
THOMAS SMITH.
[1685-1700.
Baptist church. Date, 1685. First pastor, William Scre- ven, 1693.
Quaker Meeting. Date, 1696.
During the period over which we have passed, the governors of the colony were sometimes of the Church of England and sometimes Dissenters. The first governor, Sayle, was a Pres- byterian, so probably was his successor, West; Jos. Morton was, it is supposed, either a Presbyterian or Congregationalist. Thos. Smith and Joseph Blake, Presbyterians, and John Arch- dale a Quaker. Of Joseph West, Prof. Rivers says, in high commendation, "In a government carefully planned to be an aristocracy, and under the fostering direction of a distinguished nobility in England, he, a plebeian, faithful, wise, and modest, became for fifteen years the guiding spirit of all that was good and successful." Gov. Morton " was a man of a sober and religious temper of mind," had married the sister of Joseph Blake and had increased his personal influence by this alliance, and was connected with several other respectable families in the colony. Much was hoped from his government in checking the more irregular and licentious of the people. But his council were of a different mind from himself, and thwarted him in his endeavors to carry out the instructions of the pro- prietors. Thomas Smith came into the colony in 1671, with his brother James, who afterwards removed to Boston. He was one of the earliest citizens of Charlestown,* and had been in- duced to emigrate to this country, from Exeter, in Devonshire, England, the place of his birth, from religious 'motives, and for the enjoyment of civil liberty. He was possessed of large estates, having received various grants from the proprietors, and accumulated more by good management. He held other estates by his marriage with the widow of John D'Arsens, who was the owner of 12,000 acres by grant of the proprietors. He had been deputy in council, sheriff of Berkley county, and been chosen to succeed Colleton in 1690, but did not enter upon the office, Sothell having meanwhile arrived and claimed the authority. He was made landgrave in 1691, with 48,000 acres of land, and much being hoped from his acquaintance with the colony, and his great personal influence, he was made governor in 1693. He encountered the same difficulties with his predecessors, from the confused and tur- bulent state of the colony, and the conflicts between the pro- prietors and the settlers. These difficulties arose about the
* Thomas and James Smith held lots 41 and 57 in the original plan of the city.
1685-1700.]
TREATMENT OF THE FRENCH. 129
tenure of lands, the collection of quit-rents, and various mat- ters touching the order of judicial procedure and popular elections. One of the chief controversies was as to the rights and privileges to be enjoyed by the Huguenots. While treated kindly by the proprietors, they met with a less hospitable treatment here than among any other Protestant people. The old hostility of the English to the French seemed to be re- vived. They were told that the marriages solemnized by their ministers were illegal, because these ministers were not epis- copally ordained, that their children were therefore illegiti- mate, that their estates would be escheated, and not descend to them. They were not allowed to sit on juries, and other privileges belonging to citizenship were pertinaciously denied them. They were required to hold their worship at the same hour with the English church, although several of their con- gregation lived out of Charleston, and could reach the place only by water, and as the tide served, and for this reason their hour for public worship had varied as their convenience re- quired. Of these things they complained to the proprietors in England for redress, whose instructions to the governors and deputies afforded them some measure of relief. This relief, however, was reluctantly accorded to them. When these proprietors issued orders to Gov. Ludwell, the predecessor of Smith, to allow six members of the Provincial Parliament from Craven county, which was settled by the Huguenots, there had arisen a great clamor. "Shall the Frenchmen," said the British colonists, "who cannot speak our language, make our laws?" Landgrave Smith at length wrote to the proprietors in utter despair, and informed them that he and many more had resolved to leave the province, and expressed his conviction that nothing would restore harmony unless they sent out one of the proprietors to redress grievances. To Governor Smith is ascribed the process of drawing juries in South Carolina, by a little boy under ten years of age, from a box in which the names of the freeholders are placed; but, this again has been questioned." He has the credit also of introducing the culture of rice into the colony, which has been so great a source of its wealth,-having received the seed from the captain of a brigantine on its way from Madagascar to Britain. He took pains to have it distributed and cultivated in different soils, until the means of its successful culture were ascertained. He was the founder of a family which contrib-
* Rivers, p. 161.
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130
THEIR RESTLESSNESS UNDER WRONGS.
[1685-1700.
uted much, in succeeding generations, to the advancement of the church. His suggestion was followed by the proprietors, and the Quaker governor, Archdale, was sent out, whose ad- ministration was a popular and successful one, though he was not able to accomplish all that he desired. He was a kind and pious man, and sought the good of the colony and of the Indian tribes by which it was surrounded. He appointed Joseph Blake, son of the Joseph Blake before mentioned, as governor, under whose administration the French refugees, and other aliens, were instated in all the rights of English- men, and have ever since lived in the utmost harmony with them.
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