Colonial Period (1670-1764)

The act laid out voting requirements and electoral districts. Each candidate for the Commons House of Assembly was required to reside in the area he was to represent and to be worth £500 currency or possess an equal amount of land.

Elfe’s accounts reveal the general structure of his shop, the types of labor and raw materials he utilized, and the extensive list of clients and associated artisans with whom he conducted business.

The committee, which Farrow chaired, reported that the state contained numerous lunatics who needed the protection and care an asylum would provide.

Returning to South Carolina in 1769, he found the city full of quacks: “It is Sufficient for a man to call himself a Doctor, & he immediately becomes one, & finds fools to employ him,” he complained to Rush.

Because the activities of a feme sole trader could deprive the husband of services that marriage entitled him to, his consent was required, as was his agreement not to meddle in her business dealings.

In the mid–eighteenth century Fenwick’s son, Edward, constructed two-story brick flanking buildings, one a stable for fine racehorses, the other for coaches and carriage horses.

The first boats were large canoes or flat-bottom scows that were powered by paddles, oars, or poles. Within one hundred years, flatboats capable of holding a wagon or carriage had become commonplace.

Located on Charleston harbor, Fort Johnson was constructed on the northeast point of James Island in 1708.

For most of its history, Fort Moore served as the province’s major Indian trading center for deerskins and other animal hides.

It was a one-hundred-foot square ditched fortification, surrounded by palisade-topped earthen walls and with a bastion in each of its corners. The interior sheltered a guardhouse, a storehouse, a kitchen, a magazine, a barracks, and the commandant’s residence.

Free blacks never exceeded two percent of the state’s antebellum black population, which was consistent with its lower-South neighbors but starkly contrasted with states in the upper South.

He became secretary of state in 1787 and retained the position until 1795. Freneau also operated a variety of business interests, including land speculation and shipping. By the early 1800s he owned shipping vessels, which he engaged for some years in the Madeira trade. Earlier in his shipping career, he had taken part in the sale of at least one slave cargo.

The Fundamental Constitutions established a Carolina aristocracy, with the Lords Proprietors at the apex of society, provincial nobles called landgraves and cassiques (or caciques), and freemen. Landless tenants, called leetmen, were the base of the social pyramid described in the constitution. Slavery was authorized and protected.

Furman greatly influenced the development of the Baptist denomination, although his fellow Baptists sometimes disagreed with his preference for centralized church governance.

While Gadsden’s zealous and suspicious personality was ideal for organizing American resistance, it was counterproductive in the post-1776 political structure. In 1777 he impulsively resigned his commission as brigadier general over a petty dispute with General Robert Howe.

Charleston Catholics received Gallagher with enthusiasm. Eloquent and personable, he was successful in galvanizing the small community and achieved prominence in Charleston and beyond, earning respect and increased tolerance for Catholics.

Unlike many traders, Galphin maintained amicable trade relations with the Creek and Cherokee. He was respected by his Native American clients and traveled freely through their territories.

The most important figure in eighteenth-century natural history investigations in South Carolina, Garden is best remembered today for the plant Gardenia jasminoides, named for him by John Ellis in 1760.

. In 1729 the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, named Garden the commissary to South Carolina, North Carolina, and the Bahamas. On October 20, 1730, Garden held the first convention of the South Carolina clergy at Charleston.

In June 1781 Emily Geiger volunteered to be a courier for General Nathanael Greene, who needed an urgent message delivered to General Thomas Sumter. Geiger evaded capture the first day, but the British stopped her on the second day. While waiting for the British to bring a woman to search her, she read and memorized Greene’s message and then ate it.