Landmarks of Charleston
POWDER MAGAZINE, 23 Cumberland Street: In the early days of Charles Town this storehouse for ammunition was built of brick covered with “tabby.” It is known to have been in use in 1703. It continued as a storing place of gunpowder years after the town limits had been pushed northward of Cumberland Street. When the British were besieging Charlestown in 1780, a shell exploded near the magazine and attention was thus directed to its danger. It was abandoned as a magazine. Nowadays this ancient building is the property of the Charleston Society of the Colonial Dames of America. In it are many interesting and valuable relics. How this magazine escaped through the years is one of the mysteries.
NICHOLAS TROTT’S HOUSE, 25 Cumberland Street: Next door to the Powder Magazine is Charleston’s first brick house, standing in its old appearance until a few years ago when it was done over for business offices. It was the home of Nicholas Trott, one of the chief men of Charles Town. It is a large two-story building, its back to St. Philip’s western graveyard. Trott, born in England in 1663, came to Charles Town from the Bahamas about 1690. He was Attorney General in 1698, Speaker of the Assembly in 1700, Councillor in 1703 and the Chief Judge after that. With the overthrow of the government of the Proprietors, Trott’s star waned. He revised and published Laws of South Carolina (two volumes, 1736) and Laws Relating to the Church and the Clergy (1721). He died in Charlestown in 1740. Dr. Shecut says that the Trott House was standing in 1719. “The great ability and legal attainments of Chief Justice Trott, who acted as Chief Justice in all for some fifteen or sixteen years,” Henry A. M. Smith wrote, drew all the business and litigation to it; his became practically the only court in the Province. The Proprietors sustained Trott when the people complained “and the response on the part of the people was to overthrow the Proprietary Government,” Judge Smith is quoted.
WILLIAM RHETT’S HOUSE, 58 Hasell Street: Wade Hampton, South Carolina hero of the Reconstruction period after the War for Southern Independence, acclaimed as the savior of his state, was born in the house wherein lived William Rhett, captor of Stede Bonnet, notorious pirate, and his fellows, who were hanged, in 1718. William Rhett was a great man in the early Carolina and Wade Hampton in the later. Rhett’s large square house was in excellent condition in 1722, says Joseph Johnson, M.D., in his Traditions of the Revolution. It is in good condition in this year, 1939. It is entered through a broad piazza on the west side and contains four large rooms on each floor. Colonel Rhett is remembered chiefly for his capture of the pirates, but other marks in his record are lustrous. He commanded the little fleet that in 1706 put down the harbor against a hostile French fleet under Le Feboure: the Frenchman weighed his anchors and went to sea without offering a single shot. A few days later Rhett’s flotilla, a short distance up the coast, captured a French vessel; among his prisoners was the chief land officer, Arbouset. Rhett was born in London, September 4, 1666, and came to Charles Town in November of 1694; he died here in June of 1722. On his tomb in St. Philip’s western graveyard, it is chiseled that “he was a person that on all occasions promoted the public good of this colony and several times generously and successfully ventured in defense of the same.... A kind husband, a tender father, a faithful friend, a charitable neighbour.”
QUAKER GRAVEYARD, 138 King Street: Graves among the oldest in Carolina are in the yard of the old Quaker Meeting House property. The first Quaker house of worship was built on this site in 1694. John Archdale, Quaker, Proprietor and Governor, came to Charles Town in 1695, and attended services with his fellow Friends. The property is a parcel of the old Archdale Square, nowadays bounded by King, Queen, Meeting and Broad Streets. It was just outside the town in those early years. This building was blown up in July, 1837, to stop a fire. The rebuilt Meeting House was destroyed in the conflagration of 1861. Quakers came to Charles Town while it was across the Ashley River. A letter from Shaftesbury, dated June 9, 1675, said: “There come now in my dogger Jacob Waite and two or three other familys of those who are called Quakers. These are but the Harbingers of a greater number that intend to follow. ’Tis theire purpose to take up a whole colony for themselves and theire Friends here, they promised me to build a Town of 30 Houses. I have writ to the Gov’r and Council about them and directed them to set them out 12,000 acres.” The Society of Friends owns this property, but there is now no meeting house in Charleston. The name of Governor Archdale is preserved in the street of that name, on which are the Unitarian and St. John’s Lutheran Churches.
THE GATEWAY WALK, from Church to Archdale: No visitors to Charleston should forego the pleasure of using the Gateway Walk of the Garden Club. A bronze plate on a gate at the Charleston Library says:
Through hand-wrought gates alluring paths
Lead on to pleasant places,
Where ghosts of long-forgotten things