S.C. Encyclopedia | Fort Moultrie was the site of the June 28, 1776, American victory in the Revolutionary War. Fort Moultrie I, the Revolutionary War–era fort, was replaced in 1798 by Fort Moultrie II, which was followed in 1809 by Fort Moultrie III, which served as a military post until 1947.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Unitarians in South Carolina boast a legacy of professional distinction and influence disproportionate to their size and numbers. Throughout the nineteenth century, Unitarians filled the top ranks of the growing urban professional classes and forged a respectable place for rational Christianity alongside an increasing evangelical culture.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut was born on her father’s plantation near Stateburg in Sumter District on March 31, 1823. She is recognized as “the preeminent writer of the Confederacy” because of the diary she kept during the Civil War and revised for publication in the early 1880s. No other southern writer of her era possessed the combination of literary cultivation, psychological perception, opportunity to observe closely the upper echelons of the Confederacy, and a willingness to write candidly about people, events, and issues—including slavery. The resulting publication, much revised and more appropriately labeled a memoir, secured her place in southern literary history.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Pierce Butler was born on July 11, 1744, in county Carlow, Ireland, the son of Henrietta Percy and Sir Richard Butler, fifth baronet of Cloughgrenan. His parents purchased a commission for Butler in the British army, and he rose through the ranks quickly. In 1766 he attained the rank of major, and in 1768 Butler’s regiment (the Twenty-ninth Foot) was transferred to South Carolina. Butler gained entry into Charleston society through his marriage to Mary Middleton on January 10, 1771. When his regiment returned to England in 1773, Butler sold his commission and remained in Charleston.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Maria Martin was born in Charleston on July 6, 1796, the youngest daughter of John Jacob Martin and Rebecca Solars. While no records of her formal schooling have been discovered, it is known that she was well read in literature, French, and German and possessed an interest in music, art, and natural science. By 1827 she and her mother had moved into the home of her brother-in-law, the Lutheran minister and naturalist John Bachman, and her ailing sister Harriet. Martin helped to raise and educate her sister’s fourteen children and manage the household.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Asparagus was an important cash crop in South Carolina from the 1910s until the mid-1930s. Commercial asparagus production began in response to the “cotton problem.” With cotton prices low and the boll weevil creeping ever closer, farmers in the “Ridge” counties of Aiken, Edgefield, and Saluda began planting asparagus to supplement their dwindling cotton incomes.
S.C. Encyclopedia | André Michaux was born on March 7, 1746, at Satory, France, son of the farmer André Michaux and Marie-Charlotte Barbet. Interested in plants from an early age, Michaux in 1785 was commissioned as royal botanist with the mission of finding useful plants for France in America. Originally landing in New York, he arrived in Charleston on September 21, 1786. The city became his base of operations as he ranged over North America as far south as Florida and as far north as Hudson Bay.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto Rivers in the South Carolina Lowcountry, which drains one-fifth of the state. The ACE Basin encompasses a range of ecosystem types from forested uplands to tidal marsh (salt, brackish, and fresh water). The basin is home for more than 260 permanent and seasonal bird species and seventeen rare or endangered species, including the wood stork and the loggerhead turtle.
Excerpted from the S.C. Encyclopedia | The experience of slavery’s demise varied around the state and followed the progress of the Civil War. Freedom came early and suddenly to Port Royal when on November 7, 1861, Union forces bombarded and occupied the area. Black Carolinians in the vicinity referred to this occasion as the “Day of the Big Gun Shoot,” and during the next several weeks Federal troops seized Beaufort, the rest of Hilton Head, St. Helena, Ladys, and other nearby islands. Most planters fled the Federal troops and attempted to persuade or coerce their slaves to accompany them northward toward Charleston or into the interior, away from the path of the invasion. While many relocated with their owners, a substantial number resisted evacuation; some were killed for their refusal.
S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina’s 180-mile coastline is replete with bays, inlets, and harbors. To assist shipping and aid navigation, lighthouses and beacons have dotted the South Carolina coast for centuries. The earliest warning lights were probably bonfires lit to aid ships entering the harbor at Charleston. South Carolina’s first lighthouse, built in 1767, stood on Middle Bay Island (now a part of Morris Island) in the Charleston harbor.
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