USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 21
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" Thus ended," says Hewatt, to whom we are indebted for these particu- lars, " that tragical scene of fanaticism, in which seven persons lost their lives, one was killed, two were murdered, and four executed for the murders. A signal and melancholy instance of the weakness and frailty of human nature, and to what giddy heiglits of extravagance and madness an inflamed imagina- tion will carry unfortunate mortals. It is hard for the wisdom of men to conceive a remedy for a distemper such as religious infatuation. Severity
197
POPULATION .- IRISH EMIGRATION.
1720-1730.]
and persecution commonly add strength to the contagion, and render it more furious. Indulgence and lenity might perhaps prove more efficacious, as the swellings of frenzy would in time subside, in proportion as they exceed the bounds of nature. Had they given this unhappy family time for cool thought and reflection, it is not improbable that those clouds of delusion which over- spread their minds might have dispersed, and they might have returned to a sense of their frailty and error. But it belongs to the civil power to prohibit wild enthusiasts and mad visionaries from spreading doctrines among vulgar people, destructive of civil order and public peace. The majority of mankind everywhere are ignorant and credulous, and therefore are objects of compas- sion, and ought to be protected against the baleful influence of such men as seduce them from their duty and subjection to legal authority, by poisoning their minds with notions hurtful to themselves and others."
During this period, 1720-1730, fourteen Episcopal minis- ters came into the province, and eleven either died or left it. A church was built in the parish of St. Helen's on Port Royal Island. The inhabitants of St. Paul's parish, which suffered so greatly in the Yamassee war, received an appropriation from the public funds to enlarge their church. In 1722, eight Bibles were sent by Governor Nicholson, by the hands of Rev. Mr. Guy, for use of Commons House, in the pews, and in church. The parish of Prince George, Winyaw, was erected in the year 1725, and was also aided by the public funds ; and foun- dations were created for public schools by Mr. Whitmarsh in St. Paul's, Mr. Ludlam in Goose Creek, and Richard Beresford in St. Thomas. A free school was also erected in the town of Dorchester at the public expense in 1727, the schoolmaster to be sent by the Society for Propagating the Gospel. In the middle of this period, in 1724, the white population of the country, men, women, and children, was computed at about fourteen thousand : the slaves at about thirty-two thousand, mostly negroes. The increase had been steady, but not rapid. It was hindered by the unhealthiness of the climate, and by the discouragements and troubles prevailing under the pro- prietary government. But the province now furnished pro- visions in abundance, and exported largely to the West Indies. And as, after the accession of George II., which occurred on the 11th of June, 1727, there was great pecuniary distress in the north of Ireland, it is not improbable that the population, especially the Presbyterian portion of it, experienced a con- siderable increase. After the revolution of 1688, the landed proprietors in the province of Ulster, anxious to settle their waste lands, had granted favorable leases, under which the Presbyterian tenantry had been induced to improve their holdings and extend their cultivation. These leases, usually made for thirty years, were now expiring ; the gentry raised their rents, and the farmers became exceedingly discouraged,
198
MANNERS OF THE PEOPLE.
[1720-1730.
and entertained thoughts of removing to Scotland or emi- grating to America. An increase of tithes for the support of a clergy not of their choice galled them still more, and roused anew their conscientious scruples. Three successive harvests after 1724 had been exceedingly unfavorable, and the price of living and the stagnation of trade in 1728 exceeded what the men of that generation had ever experienced. Archbishop Boulter gives, in the latter part of 1728, a "melancholy ac- count" of the extensive emigration taking place to the wilds of America. " It is certain," he says, " that above four thou- sand two hundred men, women, and children have been shipped off for the West Indies within three years; and of these above three thousand one hundred the last summer." " The whole north is in a ferment at present ; the humor has spread like a contagious distemper." In March, 1729, he writes : "There are now seven ships at Belfast that are carry- ing off one thousand passengers thither."-(Reid, iii., pp. 339, 340, 341, and note, 343, 395.) In the year 1724 four hundred and thirty-nine slaves were imported into the country ; and the statement already made shows that the increase of the servile population greatly exceeded that of the whites. Popu- lation still timidly kept itself within its former bounds. The middle and upper portions of the province were inhabited by the native tribes; and the memory of the massacre of 1715 prevented settlers from venturing beyond the assistance and support of their neighbors. The parish bounds alone were occupied, save by a few daring traders ; and St. Bartholomew's and St. Helen's slowly recovered the population they had lost during the Indian troubles, although efficient measures had been taken as early as 1716 to maintain garrisons on the San- tee, on the Savannah river (Fort Moore, on the Bluff below Hamburgh, at Beech Island), on Edisto, at Port Royal, and Combahee. Previous to 1730, too, there seems to have been a military and trading establishment on the Congaree, at or near the site of Granby, which is marked on Humphrey's map as "An English Corporation." There was also a fort at Palachachola, which was an Indian town on the Savannah, above Purisburg. The Congaree garrison, Fort Moore, Fort King George, the fort and town of Palachachola, are named and provided for in the acts of 1722, 1723 .*
The manners of the people were simple. "The white in- habitants lived frugally, as luxury had not yet crept in among
* Hewatt, i., p. 309.
199
DIFFICULTIES WITH NEIGHBORING TRIBES.
1720-1730.]
them, and, except a little rum and sugar, tea and coffee, were contented with what their plantations afforded." "In those primitive times, it was customary for families [in Charlestown] to dine at twelve o'clock, and take their tea at sunset ; after which the old folks sat around their street-doors ; or, like good old-fashioned neighbors, exchanged kind greetings with each other from house to house : while the young people as- sembled in groups to walk or play about the streets. It is said that on summer moonlight evenings, the grown girls and young men amused themselves after this fashion, in playing 'Trays-Ace,' 'Blind Man's Buff,' &c .; and doubtless enjoyed these rural sports quite as much as our more refined modern belles and beaux enjoy the Battery promenade of the present day. But the fathers and mothers of that day had greater regard to regular and early hours than their descendants have ; for it was considered a great breach of family discipline for a child to stay out after nine o'clock at night, when the house was closed, and all its inmates assembled around the family altar to unite in the devotions of the evening. After which, the little community were soon wrapped in slumber, and thus preparing themselves for an early start on the duties of the coming day."-(MS. History of the Legare Family, by Mrs. Flud.)
Among the concurrent events of a political nature belonging to this period, were the return of Governor Nicholson to Great Britain in 1725, and his being succeeded in office by Arthur Middleton. Under his administration, efforts were made to settle the boundaries between the Spaniards and the English colony on the south. The grant of Charles II., in 1663, had extended to St. Simon's, on the coast of Georgia, and the Carolinians had built a fort in the forks of the Altamaha, of which the Spaniards complained. There being no final agree- ment with the Spaniards, the Yamassees continued to harass the settlers with scalping-parties, and the abduction of their negroes. This instigated reprisals on the part of the English. Colonel Palmer, with a force of whites and Indians, about three hundred strong, entered the Spanish territories, carried his arms as far as St. Augustine, and compelled the inhabitants to take refuge in the castle. He burned the houses and huts of the settlers, destroyed their fields, drove off their stock, killed some of their Indian allies, and captured others. The French, too, had made a settlement at Mobile, and built a fort on the Alabama river, and were intriguing with the Creeks and Cherokees, so that a constant effort was required
200
PROGRESS OF ERROR.
[1720-1730.
to counteract their policy, and Captain Fitch and Colonel Chicken were employed, the one among the Creeks, and the other among the Cherokees, to keep those tribes steady in their alliance with the English. The summer of 1728 was one of severe heat and great drought, and was rendered memorable by a dreadful hurricane late in August, which damaged or destroyed most of the shipping in the port, and compelled the inhabitants of Charleston to take refuge in the upper stories of their dwellings. It was followed by the yellow fever, which desolated many families. At the close of this period, in September, 1729, the proprietors sold their rights to the crown for twenty-two thousand five hundred pounds sterling, excepting what belonged to Lord Carteret, the pecuniary emoluments of which were continued in that family.
This period, 1720-30, was in some respects a dark day in the English church. In polite society, "Free Thinking" be- came the great idol to be worshipped. Collins published his discourse, "On the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Re- ligion," in 1724. Woolston attacked the miracles of Christ in 1727, and Tindal strove to erect natural religion on the ruins of Revelation. Barrow, Tillotson, and Atterbury, the great preachers of the English church, were discoursing with elo- quence and force on the high themes of Christian ethics, and Butler, Sherlock, Gibson, and Leland were ably defending the outworks of Christianity in their immortal productions. But it was reserved for the Dissenters, in the closing part of this period, to arouse the heart of the church with the trumpet of the gospel. Dr. Watts' Psalms, Hymns, and Divine Songs, his Guide to Prayer, his Discourses upon Death and Heaven, were all published before 1730. Mr. Soames's sermon "On the Method to be taken by Ministers for the Revival of Re- ligion," delivered in 1729 and published, some earlier writings of Dr. Doddridge, and Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Bible, were greatly blessed in restoring among them the spirit of primitive piety ; and in all these happy influences our people shared.
In Scotland, the General Assembly, misled by its com- mittee, condemned the book we have before mentioned, "The Marrow of Modern Divinity." This led to a representation, in 1721, drawn up with great ability, and signed by James Hogg, Thomas Boston, John Bonar, John Williamson, James Kid, Gabriel Wilson, Ebenezer Erskine, Ralph Erskine, James Wardlaw, Henry Davidson, James Bathgate, and William Hunter. These men, who are known in Scottish ecclesiastical
201
1780-1740.]
SCOTCH CHURCH, CHARLESTON.
history as "The Representers," were censured at the bar of the Assembly, in 1722, and annoyed by the Neonomians and Moderates in the Scotch church. In 1727-28 new charges were brought against Professor Simpson of holding and teaching Arianism. Notwithstanding his skillful defence, he was suspended from preaching the gospel, and from his office of teacher of youth designed for the ministry. Boston took grounds against the decision of the Assembly, as being more mild than the case demanded of the church. And with these things, not without their bearing upon the interests of religion in the New World, the third decade of the eighteenth century terminated.
BOOK SEVENTH. A. D. 1730-1740.
CHAPTER I.
SCOTCH, or FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHARLESTON .- During the incumbency of Mr. Bassett, in the year 1731, the Presbyterians withdrew from their fellow-worshippers, and were organized as a strictly Presbyterian church, after the model of the Church of Scotland. The members thus separat- ing were chiefly natives of Scotland, and were then known by the name of the Scotch Church, as is the case now. The number of seceding families is said to have been twelve, who left the ministry of Mr. Bassett to establish themselves as a Presbyterian church. Their first minister was the Rev. Hugh Stewart. Their house of worship was built of wood, with a steeple and chanticleer vane, in Meeting, and a little south of Tradd street, near the site of the present church edifice, which stands at the corner of Meeting and Tradd streets. The causes of this separation may easily be understood to be the dif- ference of views entertained in reference to the subscription to the Confession of Faith, their strong predilection for a strictly Presbyterian form of government, and the strong national par- tialities which they have ever manifested. Their separa- tion from the parent church seems not to have been completed until their new house was finished, and was occupied for wor-
202
WILTON AND PON PON.
[1730-1740.
ship, which was on June 23d, 1734 .- (Memorandum in vol. 4 of MS. Records of Circular Church ; Ramsay, and Yeadon's History of Circular Church.)
Progress was made during these ten years towards the establishment of Presbyterianism on Edisto Island. In 1732 certain negro slaves were conveyed by a deed of gift to the Presbyterian congregation of Edisto Island, to be employed, with their descendants, upon the tract of three hundred acres conveyed in.1717 by Henry Bower for the benefit of a Pres- byterian minister on said island. The preamble of this deed, in setting forth the reasons of the gift, says, "Whereas a Presbyterian congregation is collected upon the island of Edisto." It then stipulates that the gift of the slaves is "for the perpetual maintenance, out of their yearly labor, of a Presbyterian minister who owns the holy Scriptures for his only rule of Faith and practice, and who, agreeably to the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, shall own the Westminster Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, as a test of his orthodoxy, and that before the church session for the time being, before his settlement there as the rightful minister of the aforesaid church or congregation." About the same period a valuable donation of land was made to the church by "Mr. Waills." In the next year [1733] there is notice of the death of the "Rev. Mr. Moore, minister of a congregation at Edistoe."-(MS. Records of Circular Church, Charleston.) How long he had been laboring in that congregation there are no means of determining.
WILTON : [1731.] There exists a subscription list for building a Presbyterian meeting-house at Wilton, bearing date 1731; so that either this was the first church edifice or the second. It is probable that their first meeting-house was but a rude and inconvenient building, and that this was the first suitable structure erected by the congregation. Regarding it as the second, there have been at the least four houses of worship erected at different times, including the present. Ten years later, in a paragraph of Paul Hamilton's will, proved and recorded the 7th of March, 1738, mention is made of the fol- lowing elders and deacons as serving under Rev. Archibald Stobo's ministry : Timothy Hendrick, John Bee, Jr., George Farley, John Hayne, John Splatt, John Atchinson, John Andrus, Thomas Burr, John Mitchell, and Jacob Denham.
There is evidence too of progress in the more complete establishment of the Presbyterian church and congregation of
/
203
RECORD OF CHURCH SESSION.
1780-1740.]
BETHEL, PON PON. We learn that " in October, 1735, several of the new congregation, with the Rev. Mr. Stobo, met at the old meeting-house, and consulted for sending for a minister." They signed a blank call for Scotland, and lodged an obliga- tion in the hands of Mr. Stobo for the minister's salary of £400 currency per annum. They also collected money and bought a bill to pay the minister's passage out. They also subscribed money (£1410) for the purchase of eight negroes, to be employed in planting or otherwise, to raise the aforesaid salary yearly. In September, 1736, the purchase was made, and the negroes committed to Mr. George Farley, " on shares in his plantation." Rev. John McCallister came out in answer to their call, in the year 1737, and received his salary from the yearly income of these negroes, till his death in 1738-9. He was succeeded in the pastorate by Rev. Hugh Stewart, the first minister of the Scotch church in Charleston; and Mr. John Andrew, Jr., executor and successor to Mr. Farley, paid the Rev. Mr. Stewart the same salary from the proceeds of their labor from the first of August, 1739, to August 1st, 1740. The balance of near £200 was used to purchase "a negro woman called Phillis, on the same footing with those others aforementioned, for the use of said congregation." In April, 1738, a subscrip- tion of £390 was raised for building a parsonage on the glebe before purchased, and in January, 1739-40, an additional subscription of £390 was made for completing the work. While the temporalities of the church were thus provided for, there is evidence of equal care for things ecclesiastical and spiritual. The following record of the session, under date of August 27th, 1739, is preserved :- " Sederunt, the Rev. Mr. Hugh Stewart, minister ; George Farley, John Mitchell, elders ; Isaac Hayne, > William Melvin, and John Andrew, deacons, absent.
"After prayer, Isaac Hayne, William Melvin, and John Andrew were chosen ruling elders. William Jackson, Robert Oswald, William Little, John Martin, and Joseph Mitchell, deacons. Their names were intimated to the congregation the Sabbath following, and the third Sabbath in September, for their ordination respectively. Thomas Buer is appointed ruling elder to wait on Presbytery with the minister the ensuing year." Rev. Mr. Stewart and Mr. Buer were ap- pointed to inquire for the legacy left the congregation by John Kermicle, and other business was transacted. We thus see a Presbyterian church organized, officered, under the care of Presbytery, and providing with commendable zeal for the
-
204
THE REV. J. WITHERSPOON.
[1730-1740.
ordinances and worship of God's house,-a church numerous enough to support a pastor and to furnish a full and efficient corps of elders and deacons for the service of the church.
From the records of the Circular Church, Charleston, of the death, in 1733, of Rev. William Porter, minister of the congregation at Seewee, probably the same which is known as the church of WAPPETAW, the settlement at Seewee Bay, originally made by New. England colonists, seems to have been still continued and flourishing. Mr. Porter must have been followed immediately by Rev. Job Parker in the pastor- ship of that church.
In the same year the Rev. John Baxter appears to have commenced preaching as a licentiate. His register of texts preached from, commences in January, 1733-34. His two first sermons were delivered in Charlestown, but CAINHOY was his stated place of preaching. Three of his early sermons are marked as "Tryals to Presbytery." His register shows that he preached occasionally at "Charlestown," "Williamsburg," "Dorchester," "Wiltown," on the "Santee," "James Island," " Winyaw," "John's Island," "Black River," " Waccamalı Township," on the "Pedee, at Mrs. Britton's," " Wakamaha Neck," at "Col. Lynch's." Some of these occasions were days of public fasting. Several of them were sacramental occasions. Mr. Baxter's ministry continued beyond the middle of this century. His register was among the MS. collections of Dr. Robt. W. Gibbes of Columbia, but with much else that was valuable was destroyed at the burning of Columbia by General Sherman, February 17th, 1865. The following grants of land to Rev. John Baxter are recorded in the office of the Secretary of State. In 1737, 1100 acres in the Township of Williams- burg; in 1739, 300 acres ; and 400 acres on the west side of Pedee in 1758.
There are two other ministers, the duration of whose life and ministry we have no means of determining. The day of their death is all that is known to us. Mr. Baxter's register has the following entry, August 15th, 1734-" The Rev. Mr. John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister of James Island, was buried." In the South Carolina Gazette, August 10-17, 1734, there occurs this notice-" Died, on the 14th, Rev. Mr. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister at JAMES ISLAND." In the Gazette of December 21-28, Rev. John Witherspoon's books are advertised to be sold in Charlestown on January 1, 1734-5. This is all we know of one who may have labored long in preaching the gospel in this infant state of the Pres-
205
DEATH OF THE REV. H. FISHER.
1730-1740.]
byterian church in South Carolina. If it were so, his ministry will reach back to near the beginning of this century. He may have been one of the worthy Scotch ministers of whom Cotton Mather [anno 1715] speaks. What were his labors, his anxieties, his success, his influence, we know not. He scat- tered the precious seed of the gospel, and proclaimed that Word of God, which is as a flint and a hammer to break the flinty rock in pieces. The same remarks are equally appro- priate to those unknown ministers whose death we have also recorded. They served their generation, and that generation has passed away. How much of the virtue and prosperity of their descendants may be the result of their ministry, the All- Wise alone knows. Their record is on high. There are still pointed out beneath the church on James Island, the head- posts of the grave of a former minister of that church, whose name has faded away from the memory of the congregation. Can the cypress timber still mark the resting-place of one interred one hundred and thirty-six years ago ?
DORCHESTER CHURCH .- Mr. Baxter's Register also records the death of another minister, who, though the pastor of a Congregational church, was a member of the old Presbytery of South Carolina. " October 7th, [1734], the Rev. Mr. Hugh Fisher, Presbyterian minister at Dorchester, departed this life." The records of this church, as perpetuated in Liberty Co., Georgia, names October 6th, 1734, as the day of his death. Dr. Hewat speaks of him as a minister of the Church of Scotland. Of his orthodoxy and zeal for the truth, what has already been said of the part he took on the debated point of subscription or non-subscription to the Confession of Faith, are a sufficient testimony. He sat in Presbytery with Witherspoon, probably with Moore, of Edisto, possibly with Smith [see p. ] and Bassett, with Livingston, and Stobo, and Stewart, the new minister of the Scotch church. A son of Rev. Hugh Fisher, James Fisher, was living in Charleston, in 1817. Mr. Fisher was succeeded by Rev. John Osgood, who was born in Dorchester, South Carolina, was graduated at Harvard in 1733, and ordained at Dorches- ter, March 24th, 1735.
But before these lamented deaths, Rev. Josiah Smith was called from the church at Cainhoy, May 14th, 1734, and settled in CHARLESTON, as a colleague with Rev. Mr. Bassett, in the pastorship of the " White Meeting," now the " Circular Church," both names being given by the populace -the one from the color, the other from the form of the
206
REV. JOSIAH SMITH'S LETTER.
[1730-1740.
house of worship. The reason of this call we are left to con- jecture.
The congregation was large and influential, and required much pastoral labor. Mr. Smith was of an honorable family, being a grandson of the Landgrave Thomas Smith, once governor of the colony, and was a man of active character and ardent piety. Another reason may have been the diversion which was now made in favor of the new Presbyterian church and its new pastor, which called for greater effort to repair the breach thus made upon them. In 1738, on the 26th of June, Mr. Bassett died with the small-pox, in the thirty-seventh year of his age; and in the same year the church wrote to Rev. Drs. Harris, Watts, Wright, and Mr. Chandler, ministers in Lon- don, to send out a minister for them, having " a strong, audible voice, a clear and distinct pronunciation, good elocution, decent deportment of body, an affable temper in conversation, and great moderation in principles."
The "Independent or Congregational Church at WAPPETAW, Christ Church Parish."-On "October 28th, 1735, Rev. Job Parker, Independent minister on Wando Neck, was buried."* Of Mr. Parker, some account is given in the following letter of Rev. Josiah Smith, dated " Charles Town, South Carolina, November 7th, 1735, and addressed to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman, pastor of a church in Boston, New England, via New York." The original of this is in the library of the Mass. Hist. Soc. at Boston.
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