Landmarks of Charleston / Including Description of an Incomparable Stroll

by Thomas Petigru Lesesne

Historic Charleston

Why Charleston? Three European nations were claiming this southern country—the Spaniards called it Florida, the French Carolina and the English Southern Virginia. The Spanish claim was through Ponce de Leon, 1512; the French through Verazzano, a Florentine, 1524, and the English, it is said, by virtue of a grant by the Pope of Rome, and through John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, both of them in the service of the English King Henry VII, 1497-98. To Edward, Earl of Clarendon, and his associates Charles II of England gave a charter in 1663—“excited by a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Gospel.”

The Proprietors planted colonists on the Albemarle and the Cape Fear, North Carolina. Things did not go well and many of these people subsequently found their way to old Charles Town, which was established, not by English design, but through circumstances. Robert Sandford, “Secretary and Chiefe Register for the Lords Proprietors of their County of Clarendon,” had explored this coast in the summer of 1666, and would have seen the site of Charles Town, but his Indian pilot confused his bearings “until it was too late.” Sandford however, renamed the River Kiawah the Ashley in honor of Ashley-Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the Proprietors.

Sandford, off Edisto, near Charles Town, was sought by the Cassique, or Chief, of the Kiawah Indians and importuned to plant an English colony near the Kiawah village on the west bank of the Kiawah (Ashley) River. The Cassique, Sandford related, was known to the Clarendon colonists. Sandford agreed to investigate, but missed the entrance and chose to lose no further time by putting back. The Sandford report so impressed the Proprietors that they authorized the planting of a colony, not at Charles Town, but at Port Royal, to the south. Colonel William Sayle, soldier of fortune, was commissioned Governor when Sir John Yeamans, already Governor of the more northern colony, left the adventurers. Three ships were in the enterprise, but one of these was separated. The other two made land at present-day Bull’s Island in the spring of 1670. The Cassique of Kiawah was there and Governor Sayle was importuned to abandon Port Royal and bring his colonists to the Kiawah country.

Sayle, however, followed his instructions and proceeded to Port Royal, arriving in mid-April of 1670. The Cassique of Kiawah had told the colonists that the Indians were on the warpath and his story was confirmed. Carteret, who was in the “friggott” Carolina, flagship, says: “Wee weighed from Porte Royall and ran in between St. Hellena and Combohe (Combahee).” Here the first English election in Carolina was held, five men “to be of the Council.”

The sloop which had come with the Carolina was “despatched to Keyawah to view that land soe much commended by the Casseeka,” and soon returned with “a report that ye land was much more fitt to plant than in St. Hellena which begott a question.... The Governour adhearing for Keyawah and most of us being of a temper to follow though we know noe reason for it, imitating ye rule of ye inconsiderate multitude, cryed out for Keyawah, yet some dissented from it being sure to make a new voyage, but difident of a better convenience, those that inclyned for Porte Royall were looked upon strangely, so thus wee came to Keyawah.”

So, it was the Cassique, or chief, of the Kiawahs, that was responsible for the choice of the site of old Charles Town. First the colonists named their settlement Albemarle Point, but in the fall of 1670 they renamed it Charles Town, in honor of their King, Charles II. Carolina they named for him also, but the French had previously called it Carolina for their King, Charles IX. However, there were no French in Carolina when the English colonists arrived; the French effort at colonization had ended in tragedy, a hundred years before.

No sooner were the colonists established at Albemarle Point (where the Seaboard Air Line Railroad touches the west shore of the Ashley) than they looked with favor on the peninsula between the Ashley and the Cooper (the Indians called this river the Etiwan), as much the more desirable for their town, and in 1680 the change was officially in force. The new town was facilitated by the voluntary action of Henry Hughes and of John Coming and “Affera, his Wife,” in surrendering land for the new town. John Culpeper was commissioned to plan it. “The Town is regularly laid out into large and capacious streets,” said “T.A., Gent.,” clerk aboard H.M.S. Richmond, “in the year 1682.”

Charles Town on the peninsula prospered as a port and as the capital of the plantations. To ships in its commodious harbor came the things of the fields, the woods and the streams. Constantly new people were arriving and the outpost of civilization rapidly took on the appearance of European manners and customs, notwithstanding the incongruity of savages, red and black, and Indian traders in their bizarre garb. It was Charles Town under the Proprietors, Charlestown under the Royal Government, and Charleston since its incorporation in 1783.

This Carolina metropolis has had part in Indian, Spanish and French wars. It has had bold adventures with pirates. It was conspicuous in the Revolution and in the War for Southern Independence. It furnished men for the famous Palmetto Regiment in the Mexican War. The War of 1812 little affected it. Its men served in the Spanish-American War and the World War. It is said that from the tops of the highest buildings come under the eye more historic places than come under it from any other place in the United States, explaining the slogan, Charleston—America’s Most Historic City. It is in order to remind that William Allen White, in an address, said that “Charleston is the most civilized town in America,” and that William Howard Taft, then President of the United States, pronounced it, “the most convenient port to Panama.”