WILLIAM PITT STATUE, in Washington Park: “The gentleman (Benjamin Franklin) tells us that America is obstinate, America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted! Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest!” William Pitt was speaking in the House of Commons, London, denouncing the iniquitous stamp tax. Charlestown heard of the Pitt speech and Charlestown applauded. Charlestown ordered a statue of the great statesman in recognition of his noble position. The statue was received in Charlestown May 31, 1770, and was erected in the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets, the most prominent position in the town at that time. During the Revolution a shell from a British gun on James Island struck off the right arm, explaining its absence into this day. Years afterward, interfering with traffic, it was removed to the yard of the Charleston Orphan House and in 1881, through the Carolina Art Association, placed where now it is in Washington Park.
LORD CAMPBELL’S HOUSE, 34 Meeting Street: Last of the Royal Governors, Lord William Campbell, precipitately left Charlestown September 16, 1775, taking refuge aboard H.M.S. Tamar. Lord Campbell by night went through his garden to a boat in Vanderhorst Creek (Water Street nowadays). He had come to Charlestown June 18, 1775, and was “received civilly, but without enthusiasm.” Fleeing, he carried with him the Great Seal of the Province. South Carolina was on the way to independence. The house was built about 1760 and was owned by Mrs. Blake, first cousin to Sarah Izard who married Lord Campbell. She belonged to one of the richest and most influential families in the Province. After the Revolution, about 1795, Colonel Lewis Morris, a Revolutionary officer, acquired the property. Colonel Francis Kinloch Huger, who had part in the frustrated plot to liberate the Marquis de Lafayette from the Austrian prison of Olmutz, was wounded on the steps of this house; a section of the bull’s-eye in the roof fell and fractured his skull. In the earthquake of 1886, a young Englishman was killed on the steps; a piece of the parapet fell on him. The house has been in the Huger family for years. The handsome piazzas on the south side were built for the late William E. Huger, whose son, Daniel Elliott Huger, is the present owner.
WILLIAM BULL’S HOUSE, 35 Meeting Street: Across Meeting Street from the Charlestown home of Lord William Campbell was the home of the first Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Province of South Carolina, William Bull, who is said to have erected it; he died in 1755. It was his son, William Bull, then also Lieutenant Governor who was occupying it at the outbreak of the Revolution. The office of Lieutenant Governor was devised to safeguard against an interregnum between the naming of Governors by the King of England.
MILES BREWTON HOUSE, 27 King Street: History, romance, legend and tradition crowd upon this famous mansion, built by Miles Brewton about 1765. Brewton and his family perished at sea and the property descended to his sister, the famous Mrs. Rebecca Motte (whose name is perpetuated in the Rebecca Motte Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution). This gallant and patriotic lady was living in the house when the British took possession of Charleston. Sir Henry Clinton commandeered it as his headquarters, and Lord Rawdon did the same thing. Lord Cornwallis was quartered in the house. Again, when the Union forces occupied Charleston in the War for Southern Independence, the general commanding set up his headquarters here. Later the house was the residence of the Pringle family, hence it is commonly known nowadays as the Pringle House. The visitor should observe the picturesque old coach house adjoining and to the north. The old garden is behind high brick walls, so typical of the old Charlestown. Her home in possession of the invading British, Rebecca Brewton Motte, widow of Jacob Motte, retired with his family to her plantation house in Orangeburg County on the Congaree River. The British, seizing the residence, built a parapet around it. Francis Marion and Henry Lee laid siege to it. Apprised that British reinforcements were approaching, the officers considered the burning of the fine property, but hesitated. Mrs. Motte, however, overcame their scruples. Bringing out an African bow and arrows for it, she deliberately sent flaming arrows to the roof which caught afire, causing the British garrison to surrender with alacrity. After independence Mrs. Motte undertook rice planting on scale and built up a considerable property. Her two eldest daughters, in succession, were wives of the great Thomas Pinckney.
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
Trinity Methodist Church
WILLIAM GIBBES HOUSE, 64 South Battery Street: William Gibbes came to Charlestown direct from England and was active in behalf of the colonies until the actual break with the Crown, when he fled to Bermuda, thence going back to England. The handsome house was built before 1776; the exact date is obscured. Gibbes was with others interested in reclaiming marshy areas in that section. Five years after his death the records show that Mrs. Sarah Smithe purchased the property, the consideration being twenty-five hundred pounds. An elegant ballroom occupies the width of the upper story. Within brick walls on three sides was, and is, a beautiful garden. For years the property belonged to the Drayton family and some years after the War for Southern Independence it was occupied by James Petigru Lesesne, son of the Chancellor Henry Deas Lesesne and a great-grandson of the Huguenot pastor, Jean Louis Gibert who came from the Channel Islands leading a French colony into upper South Carolina. It passed into the ownership of Colonel J. B. E. Sloan and in late years is the property of Mrs. Washington A. Roebling, widow of the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, New York.
WILLIAM BLACKLOCK HOUSE, 18 Bull Street: This fine mansion, built about 1800, is considered one of the best examples of its type of architecture. It is a two-story brick dwelling, with a double set of steps leading to an entrance platform. The carriage gates are gracefully ornate. There is the peculiarity that the gates are of wood, rather than of the wrought-iron pieces that would be expected.