USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 15
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
140
THE SPANIARDS ATTACK THE COLONY.
[1700 -- 1710.
during which space of time the colony was collected, and kept close together in the guard-room, which was used as a church, in a tropical climate and in a sickly season. They damped the courage of the people by continually presenting hell to them as the termination of life to most men, because most men are sinners. Carrying the Presbyterian doctrine of predes- tination to extremes, they stopped all exertions by showing that the consequences of them depended not on those by whom they were made. They converted the numberless accidents to which soldiers and seamen are exposed into immediate judg- ments of God against their sins."*
In this unfriendly and retaliatory way were the services of these zealous ministers spoken of by those who were evidently hostile to the truth. The services of these clergymen may have been, and doubtless were, too protracted. But the day of public thanksgiving, humiliation, and prayer, which was but a single Wednesday, is here held up as if this was the common and weekly method of service. Here is the old strife between the church and the world, carried out on both sides with many of the infirmities of our fallen nature.
The last party that joined the second colony, after it had been settled for some three months, was Captain Campbell of Finab, who was descended from the families of Breadalbane and Athole, with a company of people from his own estate whom he had commanded in Flanders, and whom he brought over in his own ship. He had no sooner arrived than news came that the Spaniards were marching against them, and that a party, 1,600 strong, lay encamped at Tubucantee, awaiting the arrival of a fleet of eleven ships, when they were to attack the settlement by sea and by land. The command being given to Captain Campbell, he marched with 200 men and fell upon the Spanish camp by night and drove them before him. Five days after his return the Spanish fleet hove in sight, and landed their troops, but after a siege of about six weeks- the ammunition being almost expended, most of the officers dead, their supply of water cut off-they capitulated with all the honors of war, and hostages for the observance on the part of the Spaniards of the conditions. The poor remnants of the Scotch colony then made arrangements to leave, but they were so reduced by disease and unwholesome food, that they found great difficulty in getting under way, and but for the assistance of the Spaniards, their largest vessel,
* Dalrymple's Memoirs, vol. iii., pp. 136, 137.
141
WRECK OF THE RISING SUN.
1700-1710.]
the Rising Sun, would have been lost in the harbor itself. They then commenced their homeward passage in seven ves- sels, making their way first to the nearest British colonies. Some of them reached Spanish ports and were well treated, English ports showed them little kindness. Of the seven vessels, only Captain Campbell's and one other reached home. Great numbers died on the homeward passage, and of the entire colony not more than thirty, saved from pestilence, war, shipwreck, and famine, ever saw their own country again. The Rev. Alexander Shields died in Jamaica of a malignant fever, and two students of divinity who had accompanied the expedition. On board the Rising Sun malignant fevers and fluxes prevailed, and many died. And to complete this chapter of disasters, this vessel encountered a gale off the coast of Florida, which brought them into great distress. They made for the port of Charleston under a jury-mast, and while lying off Charleston bar, waiting to lighten the vessel that she might be got into port, a hurricane arose, in which she went to pieces, and every person on board perished .* Rev. Mr. Stobo had, however, been waited upon by a depu- tation from the church in Charleston, and invited to preach in the pulpit which had been vacated by the death of Mr. Cotton, while the Rising Sun should be waiting for supplies, and had gone up to Charleston with the deputation the day before.t Lieutenant Graham, James Byars, David Kennedy, Lieutenant Durham, Ensign John Murray, Ensign Robert Colquohoun, William Bready, John Spence, James
* " A tradition prevails, that about the year 1700 a large vessel, supposed to be the Rising Sun, with 346 passengers on board, came without a pilot up Sampit Creek to the place where Georgetown now stands ; but finding no in- habitants there but Indians, the captain made for Charleston. On his arriving 'near the bar, he was boarded by a pilot, who told him that his vessel could not enter the harbor without lightening. The captain being in distress, sent his long-boat with the Rev. Mr. Stobo and some others to solicit assistance. Before the boat returned a hurricane took place, in which the vessel and every soul on board were lost. Tradition states further, that the same hurricane broke open the north inlet, and that previously there had been only one inlet from the sea to Winyaw bay. That a vessel came over Georgetown bar with- out a pilot which could not cross Charleston bar with one, if true, is very re- markable. It is rendered probable from the circumstance that the bar of Georgetown has from that time to the present been constantly growing worse." -Statistical Account of Georgetown, appended to Ramsay's History, vol. ii., 590, Charleston, 1809.
t Another story is, that he was sent for to perform the marriage ceremony for a couple who desired to be married by a Presbyterian minister. Nothing was saved to him but his Bible and Psalm-book, which he brought up with him .- Letter of T. Stobo Farrow.
142
REV. MR. STOBO'S LETTER.
[1700-1710.
Dick, Alexander Hendric, John Miker (a boy), James Pickens, and Mrs. Stobo went up at the same time, and were preserved. Captain Gibson, the commander of this vessel, was among those who were lost, and this was regarded by many in Scotland the retribution of heaven upon him for his cruel conduct towards those poor prisoners whom he transported to this same Caro- lina in 1684. " In the very same place," says Mr. Borland, the historian of the Darien colony, "it pleased the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth to call him in so terrible a manner to his account." Mr. Stobo himself, in a letter severely com- mented on by Sir John Dalrymple, and written to Mr. Borland shortly after this catastrophe, says: "I doubt not but you have heard how narrowly I escaped the judgment that came upon the Rising Sun ; I and my wife were scarce well gone from her, when wrath seized upon her ; and after our depart- ure the storm came so sudden, that none could find the way to her. It was the Lord's remarkable mercy that we were not consumed in the stroke with the rest. They were such a rude company, that I believe Sodom never declared such im- pudence in sinning as they ; any observant eye might see that they were running the way they went; hell and judgment was to be seen upon them and in them, before the time. You saw them bad, but I saw them worse ; their cup was full, they could hold no more ; they were ripe, they must be cut down with the sickle of his wrath .- Here I lost my books and all, and have only my life for a prey, with my skin as it were in my teeth."*
The idea of retributive justice in this life is a doctrine of divine revelation, and runs through all pagan religions. But the book of Job, in the Old Testament, occupies its conspicuous place to teach us caution in inferring peculiar criminality from peculiar misfortunes. And our Saviour's pregnant instructions to the Jewish people were: "Think ye that these men were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered these things ? I tell you, nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all like -. wise perish." Human nature is bad enough in all countries,
* THE HISTORY OF DARIEN, by the Rev. Mr. Francis Borland, sometime minister of Glassford, and one of the ministers who went along with the last colony to Darien ; written mostly in the year 1700, while the author was in the American regions. To which is added, a Letter to his Parishioners.
Quæque ipse miserrima vidi, -Hæc olim meminisse juvabit.
Deut. viii., 2, 15, 16 .- Thou shalt remember all the way, which the Lord thy God led thee, thro' the great and terrible wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, and to do thee good at thy latter end. Glasgow : Printed by JOHN BRYCE, 1779.
143
END OF THE DARIEN COLONY.
1700-1710.]
and under all circumstances; disappointments and calamities do not improve it, but reveal more glaringly its failings and its depravity, which are smoothed over and hidden in settled and polished society. These Scotch ministers were theoretical believers in the total depravity of the heart of man, but were not prepared to see it in its outward manifestations, and may not have been sufficiently aware that the same nature was shared by themselves, nor been ready enough to exclaim with John Bradford, when he saw a criminal led to execution,- " There goes Jolin Bradford, but for the grace of God."
Thus ended the Scotch colony at Darien, as disastrously as that of Lord Cardross at Port Royal. The one, however, was the feeble effort of a few persecuted men ; the other the vigor- ous enterprise of the whole nation of Scotland. It cost them 1,000,000 of dollars, and the lives of 2,000 men. The jealousy of the Dutch and English shows its importance and its great results, had it been crowned with success .* It was the noblest project that had been undertaken since the days of Columbus- the working out of a shorter road for East India commerce, and the establishment of a great commercial colony on the Isthmus of Darien : a project which is revived in this our day, which has been the subject of much negotiation with other powers, of many schemes of canals and railroads, which many of our countrymen are now embarked in, but which the jeal- ousy of England, the imbecility of local governments, and the physical difficulties which the nature of the country presents, have hitherto lindered.
It is interesting in this connection to notice the remarks of Sir John Dalrymple in his Memoirs in reference to our own country :
" If neither Britain singly, nor the maritime parts of England jointly, will treat with Spain for a passage across Darien, it requires no great gift of prophecy to foresee that the period is not very distant when, in order to pro- cure the precious metals at once, without waiting for the slow returns of trade, the States of America, who were able to defy the fleets of England, and the armies of England and Germany, will seize the pass of Darien, and with ease, by violence, from the feeble dominion of Spain. Their next move, or perhaps rather part of the same move, will be to take possession of the Sand- wich Islands in the South Seas, discovered by the immortal Captain Cook, where they will find provisions and salt enough, and besides these, swarms
* When the news of these disasters arrived, and the harsh treatment which the fugitives received from the hands of the English authorities in the West Indies and at New York was understood, the whole of Scotland was excited almost to frenzy, and nothing was talked of but a war with England, and a declaration that the throne of Scotland was forfeited by the conduct of Wil- liam of Orange in this matter.
144
SIR JOHN DALRYMPLE'S VATICINATIONS.
[1700-1710.
.
of mariners to sail in their ships. Stationed thus, in the middle, and on the east, and on the west sides of the new western world, the English Ameri- cans will form not only the most potent, but the most singular empire that has ever appeared; because it will consist, not in the dominion of a part of the land of the globe, but in the dominion of the whole ocean." * * * "On both sides of their continent, they will, during the wars of the European nations with each other, enjoy, under the sanction of neutral bottoms, the carrying trade of those nations from Europe to the one, and from India to the other side of the New World; and even during peace, they may enjoy the whole Indian trade of Europe, if they choose to exclude other nations from the benefit of the passage; in which event, the East India Companies of Europe will cease to be known, except by the territories which they pos- sess in India. To all nations their empire will be dreadful, because their ships will sail wherever billows roll or winds can waft them; and because their people, capable of subsisting either almost wholly on the produce of the waters, by means of their fisheries, or on the plunder and contributions of mankind, if they choose to do so, will require few of their number to be employed in manufactures or husbandry at home; and therefore, like the ancient Spartans, who defied all the power of Persia, or the roving Normans, who pillaged the sea-coasts of Europe from Jutland to Dalmatia, the occupa- tions of every citizen will lie, not in the common employments of peace, but in the powers of offence or defence alone. Whether they may have arts and letters will be a matter of chance. The Phoenician and Carthagenian rovers had, the present successors of those Carthagenians have them not now, and the northern rovers never had them. But if they shall be blest with arts and letters, they will spread civilization over the universe. If, on the other hand, they shall not be blessed with them, then they will once more plunge it into the same darkness, which nations have thrown upon each other, probably much oftener than history can tell. And when that happens, England, with all her glories and all her liberty, will be known only as a speck in the map of the world, as ancient Egypt, Sicily, Pontus, and Carthage are now. * * * It is however some comfort for those who feel for the cause of human nature, that if the States of America should, from the supineness of rulers and minis- ters, seize, and make the passage of Darien their exclusive property, the trad- ing nations of the world would combine to wrest it from them. And as the men of this age have seen almost all Europe join, either actively or passively, to rear America into eminence, they may live to see all Europe join to pull her down again. And of all those powers, none (if future history can be judged of by past history) will be so ready to lend a helping hand to the work, as that very one to which she thinks she has lately owed the most."*
These words were written immediately after the war of the Revolution, and it is interesting to see how far, as a prophecy, these vaticinations have been accomplished. Already our
* Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland; from the Dissolution of the last Parliament of Charles II. till the capture of the French and Spanish Fleets, at Vigo. By Sir John Dalrymple, Bart., Baron of the Exchequer, in Scotland, vol. iii., pp. 150-153. Sir John Dalrymple died in 1810, aged 84. He was born, therefore, in 1737, was a contemporary of these events, and obtained his knowledge of the Darien colony from the original documents of the Scottish African Trading Company, in the Advocate's Library and the Ex- chequer, Edinburgh. His first volume was published, in quarto, in 1771. The edition here quoted is the London edition of 1790, from the Smyth Library of the Theol. Seminary.
145
ARCHIBALD STOBO.
1700-1710.]
ships vex the most distant seas, and our mercantile marine equals, if it does not surpass that of Britain. We look from California upon the eastern coast of Asia. The Sandwich Islands have sought admission into this Union, but have been repulsed. Private citizens have sought to seize upon the Isthmus, but have been prevented by our government, which is endeavoring to secure a free transit of goods, not for itself, but for all nations. In several important respects, the antici- pations are not fulfilled. . We are an agricultural and manu- facturing people. We have made progress in literature and the arts, and in many things have successfully competed with the nations of Europe. There is a higher destiny yet before us, if we remain a united people. Let us never acquire foreign possessions by force or fraud, so as to give offence to other nations. Let our influence abroad be beneficent and just, and we shall have all the greatness which the Scotch baronet, by the second-sight which he possessed equally with the fabled seers of his nation, has foreseen, without fulfilling his auguries of evil.
CHAPTER II.
MR. STOBO's ministry commenced in Charleston immediately after the disastrous shipwreck which occurred on the night of Sept. 3d, 1700. " He possessed," says Dr. Hewatt, who came into the province sufficiently early to know the estimation in which he was held, "those talents which render a minister conspicuous and respected. To his treasures of knowledge and excellent capacity for instruction, he added uncommon activity and diligence in the discharge of the various duties of his sacred function. No minister of the colony ever engrossed so universally the public favor and esteem." He resigned the pastoral charge of the congregation in Charleston in 1704. The plan of the city of Charleston, drawn by Crisp in 1704, exhibits the site of his residence as in King street, above Queen ;* but whether he continued to reside in the city after he ceased to be pastor of the church, we are not able to say.
* See plan in Johnson's Traditions of the Revolution, published in Charles- ton, 1851, on page 2.
10
146
CHURCH AT WILTON.
[1700-1710.
He is represented by Ramsay* as having founded several churches, particularly at Wilton, Pon-Pon, James Island, and Cainhoy. The date of these several organizations, in the absence of any ecclesiastical records, it is exceedingly difficult to fix. Mr. Stobo was pastor of the church at Wilton in 1728. His name, in his own handwriting, is appended to a formal agreement, drawn up by the Presbyterian worshippers at WILTON BLUFF; and, together with his, are the signatures of four elders and six deacons. This would imply that there was a Presbyterian church at that time in that place, fully officered and considerable in numbers. It is evident, from the same and other documents, that there was a congregation previously to that date. Indeed, it is contrary to all expe- rience that a church demanding such a corps of officers could be gathered in a day. It implies, unless a most extraordinary effusion of God's Spirit should be enjoyed, either years of labor spent in sowing the seed, or a very large and homo- geneous emigration of Christian people from a Christian land at nearly the same time. But Wilton, or New London, was one of the earliest settlements in the low country, and those who resided there were Christian people. They would desire the ordinances of the gospel, and were too far from Charleston to be always there for the worship of God ; so that it is most probable that a church organization, more or less complete, existed there soon after Mr. Stobo retired from the pastorship of the Charleston church. A letter written from Charleston, June 1, 1710, six years after that time, says there are "five churches of British Presbyterians." The church of Pon-Pon was not one of these, since it was not organized so early. The church in Charleston being one, and Wilton one, the other three must be selected out of those of Cainhoy, James Island, John's Island, and Edisto. And the two declarations, that of Dr. Ramsay as to the agency of Mr. Stobo, and this of the letter-writer as to the number of Presbyterian churches in the province in 1710, argues much for the rapid growth of Presby- terianism, and for the activity and influence of Mr. Stobo.t.
The Rev. William Livingston succeeded Mr. Stobo in Charles- ton in 1704. Whether he was from Scotland or Ireland is not
* History of the Independent Church, Charleston, pp. 12, 13.
t The name Stobo is not unknown among the sufferers of the Church of Scotland. Robert Stobo, of Evandale, was one of eight who were shot on the highway, as they were successively met by the king's soldiers, on their ingenuously declaring that they were coming down to hear sermon .- Wod- row, iii., 105.
147
REV. WILLIAM LIVINGSTON.
1700-1710.]
known. The name of Livingston has been an honored one in the old country, as well as on these Western shores, from John Livingston, whose first sermon in the kirk of Shotts, June 20, 1630, was blest to the conversion of five hundred persons, down to liis great-great-grandson John Henry Livingston, D. D. of the Theological School of New Brunswick, who died in 1825. Mr. Livingston's ministry extended down at least to 1720, and somewhat beyond, and the testimony of tradition is that lie was a useful and worthy minister of Christ .* The church of which Mr. Stobo and Mr. Livingston were pastors, was the only place of worship for Presbyterians or Congregationalists in Charleston during this period, and was remembered in their benefactions.+
Of other Presbyterian or Congregational ministers in the colony, from 1700 to 1710, we have no knowledge. But in one way or another there seems to have been something done in re- ligious instruction. Dr. Le Jeau, who was the second mission- ary sent out by the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts into South Carolina, " transmitted to the society (in 1706) an account of the state of his parish (of Goose Creek) and other neighboring settlements, wherein he represented very earnestly (with something of the air of superiority of a Church of England minister), that it was the greatest pity imaginable to see how many various opinions had been spread there by a multitude of teachers and expounders of all sorts and persua- sions ; and yet lie could find very few that understood Chris- tianity, even as to the essential parts of it."# The people of St. Helens, in Port Royal Island, agreed in 1712 to have a resi- dent minister of the Church of England, and called Mr. Guy, then assistant of Mr. Johnson, rector of Charlestown, and ap- plied to the society, in compassion to their great wants, to allow him a salary. "Though there had been formerly some
* See Scottish Biographical Dictionary, Art. Livingston, and American Quarterly Register, vol. xii., Feb., 1840, pp. 217-233. Descendants of Rev. Wm. Livingston of Charleston, by the name of Tunno and Stewart, were living in Charleston and near Dorchester in 1815.
+ 1704 .- Frances Simonds, widow of Henry Simonds, planter, gave a lot of land, on which the old White Meeting was built, 100 by 130 feet,-agreeable to the designs of her husband, long before his decease. 1707 .- Frances Simonds also bequeathed another plot of garden ground adjoining the pre- ceding, and one large silver cup marked H. S.
# Humphrey, Hist. Acc. of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London, 1730. This society was incorporated by William of Orange, June 16th, 1700, in the thirteenth year of liis reign,- one of the last public acts of liis life.
148
JOHN LAWSON.
[1700-1710.
Anabaptist and Presbyterian teachers here, yet, at his arrival, the people had no teacher of any persuasion, and lived all without using any kind of public divine worship."*
Of the French Presbyterian church, especially of that on SANTEE, we have some few notices. The earliest European voyager who travelled through the country, and left any ac- count of the people, and especially the native tribes, is John Lawson, afterwards Surveyor-General of North Carolina, who left Charleston on Saturday, December 28th, 1700, in a canoe, and threading the bays and creeks of the coast, entered the mouth of the Santee on the Friday following. Soon after this he encountered a party of the Sewee Indians, who have given their name to Sewee Bay, and whom he represents as having been formerly a large nation, but at that time much diminished in numbers-by the small-pox, by intemperance, and by a disaster at sea, which reduced still more the remnant of this people. Under the mistaken idea that England was not far from the coast, they fitted out a large fleet of canoes, laden with skins and furs for the purpose of traffic, and em- barked all their able-bodied men, leaving the old, impotent, and those under age, at home. A part of their fleet was de- stroyed by a storm, and the remainder taken by an English vessel, which sold them as slaves in the West India islands, (pp. 11, 12). These circumstances illustrate the evils which came to the native tribes from the contact of the whites. In this instance their diseases and vices, and the aspiring imi- tation of their example, equally tended to their destruction. They show us how near together were the abodes of civiliza- tion and barbarism, and how these early settlers were sur- rounded on all sides by savage neighbors. He next describes the Huguenots on the Santee, among whom he arrives in Jan- uary, 1702. He considered them as exceedingly prosperous and happy. ""Tis admirable," he says, "to see what time and industry will (with God's blessing) effect." "Some of them bringing very little of effects, yet by their endeavors and united assistance among themselves (which is highly com- mendable), have outstripped our English, who brought with them larger fortunes, though (as it seems) less endeavor to manage their talent to the best advantage." "They live as decently and happily as any planters in these southward parts of America." He commends them for their temperance, in- dustry, and brotherly affection. On the fourth of January he
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.