St. Michael’s Episcopal Church attracts visitors to Charleston, particularly for its beautiful setting and adjoining cemetery graves. The old churches remain a prime research tool for genealogists.
The Proprietors of South Carolina planted colonists along the Albemarle and the Cape Fear Rivers in, North Carolina. Many of these settlers later found their way to old Charles Town, established not by English design but through circumstances. Robert Sandford, “Secretary and Chief 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. Still, his Indian pilot confused his bearings “until it was too late.” Sandford, however, renamed the River Kiawah as the Ashley River in honor of Ashley-Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the Proprietors.
So, the Cassique, or chief of the Kiawahs, was responsible for choosing 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. They named Carolina after him, 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. In 1680, the change was officially in force. The new village was facilitated by the voluntary action of Henry Hughes and of John Coming and “Affera, his Wife,” in surrendering land for the new city. 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 was the ideal port city. 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. Its y port city featured traders from the West Indies, and Europe. During slavery days, its markets received slaves from Africa and the Northern States. Today, Charleston is a beautiful city bordering the Cooper and Ashley Rivers.
Source: Landmarks of Charleston by Thomas Petigru Lesesne
The records of Charleston begin in 1640, and wills, estates, marriages, etc., are available online to the genealogist at https://southcarolinapioneers.net
Searching Charleston records is undoubtedly worth it to genealogists since Charleston served as a major port city since 1640. Its exploration is one of the primary sources of finding ancestors.