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The Church Act and the Parish System

The Cooper River planters played a major role in defining the political, religious, and social system of colonial South Carolina. With the increasing dominance of the "Goose Creek Men" or Anglican party in the Commons House of Assembly, the colonial government moved farther away from the intent of the Fundamental Constitutions. The Vestry Act of 1704, excluding all but Anglicans from the Assembly, was followed in 1706 by the Church Act, dividing the province into parishes and establishing the Anglican Church as the state church.17 Though a certain amount of religious tolerance had been guaranteed by the earlier Fundamental Constitutions and the dissenting groups continued to worship freely, they grudgingly paid taxes to support the established religion. This act ensured the dominance of the plantation system by creating political as well as religious units with both church vestries and Assembly elections controlled by the large planters in each parish.18

 Two of the three extant rural Anglican churches stood within the bounds of present-day Berkeley County in 1706: St. James Goose Creek and Pompion Hill. The area was divided into six parishes by the Church Act in that year. Portions of three of these (St. John’s, Berkeley; St. James, Goose Creek; and St. Thomas, incorporating the then-separate Huguenot parish of St. Denis) are part of the Cooper River region. Within each parish an official parish church was built and additional chapels of ease were designated for the convenience of those residents living in areas distant from the main parish church.

 Pompion Hill Chapel, overlooking a high bluff on the East Branch of the Cooper River, was the first Anglican church in the province to be built outside of Charleston. The early wooden church built ca.1703 became “ruinous” and it was replaced by the current brick Georgian chapel in 1763 with outstanding architectural details including a pulpit carved by William Axson.19

Pompion Hill Chapel was designated the chapel of ease for St. Thomas Parish in 1747, replacing the chapel of St. Denis on French Quarter Creek. The Huguenot church of St. Denis had been established as early as 1695 on French Quarter Creek. It was recognized as a parish of Frenchspeaking adherents in the Church Act of 1706, and one historian has observed that St. Denis was the “first and only linguistically defined Anglican parish ever created in America.”20 Unlike other Huguenots, who were expected to become Anglicans in practice, the Orange Quarter congregations revolted against Anglican-style worship in 1712.21 The parish of St. Thomas merged with St. Denis and by 1784 was officially known as the Parish of St. Thomas and St. Den[n]is. A monument was erected on the site of this church by the Huguenot Society of South Carolina in 1922. The principal parish church of St. Thomas, built in 1708, was part of a special act of the assembly recognizing the unusual dual English-French nature of the parish. It was destroyed by fire in 1815 and was replaced by the current smaller building, with early Greek Revival details and proportions, in 1819.22

 Biggin Church, at the head of the West Branch of the river, was the parish church of St. John’s, Berkeley. Sir John Colleton donated three acres for construction of the parish church at Biggin Creek in ca. 1711. This church burned in 1755, was rebuilt but burned again during the American Revolution and partially burned during the Civil War. It was finally reduced to its current ruined state by a late-nineteenth century forest fire.

The chapel of ease for St. John’s was Strawberry Chapel. This, the oldest surviving church building in the region, was constructed ca. 1725 and is remarkable for its surviving exterior fabric, including its windows, doors, and jerkinhead roof. Strawberry Chapel often functioned as the parish church after the eighteenth-century fires at Biggin Church and eventually replaced it as such in 1825.23

 Strawberry Chapel was constructed within the planned town of Childsbury. This town, laid out in 1707 on the 12,000 acres granted to James Childs, was located at the Tee of the Cooper River. With its important ferry, its chapel of ease and other buildings, Childsbury achieved prominence for a time in the eighteenth century. Its subsequent decline was due to the growth and development of the plantation society in the area during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.24

Home Page for the Historic Resources of the Cooper River, ca. 1670-ca. 1950

Historic Resources of the Cooper River, ca. 1670-ca. 1950
Name of Multiple Property Listing Berkeley County, South Carolina
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet