Colonial Period (1670-1764)

In August 1694 Archdale was chosen by his fellow proprietors as governor of the Carolinas, and he arrived in Charleston the following year.

Also known as Little Carpenter, he was an influential leader of the Cherokees in the mid-1700s.

In 1711 Barnwell was chosen to lead a South Carolina expedition against an uprising of the Tuscarora Indians in eastern North Carolina.

When captured, she refused to reveal the position of her husband’s company, and some accounts reported that the British beat her in retaliation.

William Bartram’s interests were broader than his father’s (John Bartram). In addition to botany, his book contains a great deal of information about animal life and both English and Indian societies.

In contrast to his time in Philadelphia and London, Benbridge achieved success almost immediately on settling in Charleston. Replacing the rigid colonial portrait style of the aging Jeremiah Theus, Benbridge worked instead in a manner that demonstrated the many different sources and influences he was exposed to in Europe.

Arriving off Charleston, South Carolina, in mid-May 1718, he blockaded the port for a week, seizing prizes and hostages for ransom. This infamous feat “struck a great Terror to the whole Province of Carolina.” Plundering eight or nine ships for supplies and specie, Blackbeard held hostages, including Samuel Wragg, a councilman. Under the threat of the hostages being murdered, a reluctant Governor Robert Johnson agreed to a ransom of a valuable chest of medicine.

Sometime after his arrival in Carolina, Blake was named a proprietary deputy and member of the Grand Council. Blake returned to the Grand Council during Philip Ludwell’s brief term as governor and remained a member until November 1694, when he succeeded Landgrave Thomas Smith as governor.

Bonnet was a member of the planter elite until 1717, when he purchased and armed the sloop Revenge and left his family to pursue a career as a pirate. After a significant defeat, Bonnet relinquished his command of Revenge and joined Blackbeard aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge. Augmenting their flotilla with two sloops, Blackbeard and Bonnet returned to the Carolinas, arriving off Charleston in mid-May 1718. After being captured by Colonel William Rhett, he was convicted and hanged on December 10, 1718, at White Point (now the Battery, Charleston).

Boone arrived in Charleston in December 1761 to a population satisfied with the appointment of one of their own as governor. However, Boone quickly dashed any hope of a peaceful administration.

The genesis of Boonesborough Township lay in the 1761 petition of John Pouag, the Reverend John Baxter, John Greg, John Rae, and David Rae for a grant of forty thousand acres to be reserved for the settlement of Irish immigrants. Pouag and Greg were merchants of Charleston and London, respectively, while Baxter had brought settlers from Belfast to Williamsburg Township.

Among his Carolina discoveries were four species of frogs (among them the handsome green tree frog, Hyla cinerea), three of turtles, and one species of lizard, found during his stay in Charleston. He also collected three new species of fish in Charleston harbor. He was especially interested in invertebrates, and the names of fourteen new species of coelenterates, mollusks, worms, and crabs that he described from South Carolina are still valid today, among them the familiar fiddler crab (Uca pugilator) of coastal salt marshes.

Bratton served as a regimental commander in Sumter’s Brigade until the end of the Revolution. After the war, he served as a justice of the peace for York County, sheriff of Pinckney District, and a state legislator in both the House of Representatives (1785–1790) and the Senate (1791–1794). He also operated a small store, was a successful planter and businessman, and owned several slaves.

Through his marriage, numerous land grants, and purchases, Brewton accumulated a large quantity of real estate. However, he made his fortune principally as a merchant rather than as a planter, becoming one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. Brewton served in the Commons House of Assembly from 1765 until his death, representing the parishes of St. Philip’s, St. John’s Colleton, and St. Michael’s in succession. In 1773 Lieutenant Governor William Bull recommended him for a seat on the Royal Council, but Brewton’s support of antigovernment measures led him to decline the seat. In July 1774 Brewton stood as a conservative South Carolina candidate for the First Continental Congress, but he lost to the more radical Christopher Gadsden.

Following the death of Governor Edward Tynte in June 1710, Broughton was a leading candidate for the governorship. He lost, however, after Robert Gibbes bribed a councilor and secured the post for himself. Broughton and armed supporters marched on Charleston in protest but withdrew shortly thereafter. Capitalizing again on family connections, Broughton became lieutenant governor of South Carolina in 1731, after being recommended by Governor Robert Johnson, his brother-in-law. Following Johnson’s death in May 1735, Broughton assumed the role of acting governor.

Brown was among the most notorious Loyalist commanders in the South during the Revolutionary War. In one of David Ramsey’s histories of the war, Brown wrote an impassioned defense of his conduct in reply to charges of cruelty. Brown died on his St. Vincent Island plantation on August 3, 1825.

In February 1742, when Bryan sent the assembly a journal of his predictions that God would use the slave population to punish those who profaned his laws, the Commons House ordered his arrest. Bryan fled and underwent a grave crisis of faith. Witnesses claimed that, like Moses, he attempted to part the waters of a creek and cross that way, and he was nearly drowned. Shortly thereafter, Bryan wrote the Speaker of the House apologizing for “the Dishonour I’ve done to God, as well as the Disquiet which I may have occasioned to my Country.”

Bull participated with General William Moultrie in the American victory at Port Royal Island on February 3, 1779. Two months later the lowcountry was overrun by British General Augustine Prevost’s invasion from Georgia, and defeat and desertions decimated Bull’s regiment. After the fall of Charleston in May 1780, Bull went into self-imposed exile in Virginia and Maryland and offered no more service to the patriot cause.

Bull inherited Ashley Hall, a plantation on the Ashley River. In 1704 he built a handsome brick mansion on the site and with his kinfolks, the Draytons and the Middletons, transformed the Ashley River area into a showplace of the planter elite. Bull was also among the early settlers in Prince William’s Parish on the colony’s southern frontier. His plantation, called Sheldon, was the main source of his economic wealth.

During the 1770s Bull’s political views grew increasingly out of step as South Carolina and other colonies moved toward radical opposition to the crown. Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor, arrived at Charleston on June 18, 1775, and took office, but his term lasted only three months. On September 15 he was forced to flee the city for refuge on a British warship in Charleston harbor. The revolution was under way, and Bull’s position was an impossible one. He resigned from the Royal Council and retired to his Ashley Hall plantation. In 1777 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government and was banished from the state.