Selden B. Hill – A Tour of the Brick
Church at Wambaw- St. James-Santee Parish Episcopal Church- 3.2.2018.
This was originally recorded, and the text below is a transcript of that
recording. Transcript has been lightly edited for readability.
Welcome. My name is Bud Hill. I'm
the Director emeritus of the Village
Museum at McClellanville, SC. Welcome to the Brick Church at Wambaw or St.
James-Santee Parish Episcopal Church. I'd like to tell you a little bit about the
church building since this year is a wonderful occasion in its history. This
year, 2018, our church building will turn two-hundred and fifty years old.
Two-hundred and fifty years is
longer than America has been a nation, and that is a great reason to celebrate
the building of this particular building. While the church building is that old, our
parish is much older. St. James-Santee
Parish is the second oldest parish in the state of South Carolina. Only downtown Charleston is a little older
than we are.
I want to tell you a little bit
about the parish first and then we'll get to the present church building. Our
parish was founded in 1687 when a few
Europeans came and settled here at a place called Jamestown. Even today,
there's a little small community inland from here named Jamestown.
There were two boatloads of French
that came into Charleston to settle there, and u they quickly discovered that
they weren't wanted there. Onboard these two ships were artisans and craftsmen. The problem was that, in Charleston, there
were already English artisans and craftsmen. Any time a community or a colony is established, the
first people to come in are the craftsmen and the tradespeople who establish
shops and build things.
Well, here come two boatloads of
French to do the same thing. The English, who had first come in 1670 –
seventeen years earlier- didn't need or want any competition in Charleston so they
decided among themselves to send away "those French" as they called
them. The French settlers were creating
a problem so the English decided to send them out into the wilderness - thirty, forty miles away from Charleston onto
the banks of the Santee [River].
Now, this created a great problem
for the French settlers because most of those [people] had soft hands. A lot of them were shopkeepers who had never
grown anything in their lives. They'd never planted corn or potatoes or the
basics of life. They'd never chopped trees down. They'd never built a home, and
they didn't have a lot of money.
It was a great challenge to “those
French” to establish a settlement there on the Santee. We all think about planters
sitting on horses watching other people do the building and the farming. Well,
these men, their wives, and their children had to work on each end of a whipsaw
and to cut logs into timber in order to build homes.
Their first nights on the Santee
were spent under sails they had brought from Charleston. The little boat sails were
stretched between trees. If it hadn't have been for the Native Americans in the
area, the Sewee and the Santee Indians, those French wouldn't have made it
because they were almost starving to death. It was some time before they even
had a loaf of bread.
It was the Native Americans who
came and taught them how to plant crops and how to cut the trees and how to
build some little structures to sleep in. They did prosper, though. They made
it. They survived. The second and third generation did real well because the land was perfect for
growing crops such as indigo and cotton and, later, rice. They not only
survived but they prospered. Those French end up with fine homes in Charleston,
being accepted in Charleston, and marrying into a lot of the prominent families
there.
We have ties into all of the
communities in Charleston and this end of Charleston County as well as the larger
parish. Our parish, St. James-Santee Parish, starts at Awendaw Creek and comes
up to the mouth of the Santee. At one
time, it also went straight inland. Nobody knew what was back there. The lines
just went on indefinitely. Later, other parishes were broken off from the
parish.
When the French settled at
Jamestown they established a church there. It was a Huguenot church - they were
French. Some time passed and they petitioned the English to create a parish -
St. James-Santee Parish- and it was done in 1704*. Of course, with the English
being in charge of the country, it was their country, and the church that was
established was an Anglican church. Over the years, it has evolved into the
Episcopal church we celebrate today.
The French were later joined by
some English. When you stand in our church today all the land on the backside
of the church is called French Santee. All the land on the frontside is English
Santee. The dividing line is where Hampton plantation is today. Everything
above Hampton is French, everything below was settled by English and Irish-Scots.
Back behind the church were great
families like the Porchers, the Ravenels, the Gaillards, and the Bonneaus. Many other French families settled there as
well. On the lower portion were the Rutledges, Pinckneys, McGregors and McClellans as well as many
other families.
They got along very well. It's
often said that the French came into what is now the back of the building,
entering through a door there, and the English came in through the front door.
It's kind of implied that perhaps it's because they didn't get along well.
It's not so. There was a road that
swept down to the backside of the church and that's how the French came to church.
The English came on the present road called the King's Highway. They came in
that way because that's the closest place to the parking lot [the area where
they lived]. They came in and sat together in church and there were many great marriages
between the English and French communities.
Our church has box pews. Most
people who come and visit ask two
questions. Why is the church here in the middle of nowhere and why does it have
box pews? The answer to the first question is that it was not in the middle of
nowhere. It was in the middle of the Rice Kingdom, a powerful bunch of people who
lived in this community and this was their church close to their homes. It was
not too far from the great centers of Charleston or Georgetown and it was near
their homes- close enough for them to come and worship.
The other question…. When you came
to church in the wintertime, it was cold! The box pews kept the drafts away from the
family. Some coals in a pan could be brought in to warm the pews and blankets
to keep you warm as well. The main thing, though, was that the pews were a way
of bringing revenue into the church. You rented the pews and for a fee you got
to sit closer to the front if your fee was high enough and you could see the
minister much better from the front pews.
The other question about the pews
of course is, well, they're box pews. Can you see over the walls? How do you
see the priest? Well, that's no problem. Sit down and look around. You can look
right over them and see the priest because the priest is standing up looking
down at the pew.
Families gathered there. I like to
sit in the pews and imagine which family sat here because we had great
families. This church had among its members, people who ran for president and
the Pinckney brothers. We had Thomas Lynch, who signed the Declaration of
Independence and went to church here. Eliza Lucas Pinckney gave us indigo. She and her family went to
church here. Great [figures] from colonial history came to church here. It's
said that George Washington on his 1791 trip stopped off at the church. I don't
know whether he went to a service there or just stopped at the church. We don't
know for sure but it's said that he did.
Great men have come to church here
and great ladies. When you look back at those people who came out of this
congregation and what they did for the state of South Carolina, they were the
people who established this state and went to Washington and helped form our nation.
When you have a young man from St. James-Santee who puts his name on the
Declaration of Independence - pretty powerful people. We're proud of those
people who came out of our community.
The building we're celebrating
this year is unlike a lot of the churches that you see throughout the South -
the beautiful white clapboard houses with the steeples. This is a colonial
period church. Many of the churches during the Colonial period are beautiful
and have a unique style but they were
also built the way they were because the builders wanted a church made of
materials which would require less maintenance.
Our church is made of strong
brick. The wooden construction is of cedar and cypress. Look at the beautiful vaulted ceiling. It gives the building absolutely magnificent
acoustics. The builders wanted beauty
but they also didn't want to spend a lot of time maintaining a church. They
wanted one that would last. Because this church is celebrating 250 years, I'd
have to say they were successful in building a church that would last.
Today I believe it has another 250
years to go because it's in as good a shape today as it's ever been. Look
around our church at the wonderful craftsmanship. These craftsmen were black
men, probably enslaved Africans. These were craftsmen who had learned boat building and other trades
because some of that is evident in the construction, up in the ceiling of the
church. The way that they fashioned the vaulted ceiling is very reminiscent of
a ship itself.
Brick masons of extraordinary
talent formed the bricks. Some of them
right here on site. Others were imported in the holds of ships - ballast bricks.
These were used for the outer structure.
Look at the columns that surround
the church. Those bricks were made
onsite. For the first five feet they go straight up as an arrow. Then they
taper in slightly. When you stand back
from the columns, they look like they're tapered from the base to the top but
they aren’t. The first five feet are straight and all the rows of brick that go
around were of the same dimensions. Once it started to taper that brick mason
had to recalculate that row, reform his molds, make the bricks for that row,
put them in place, and then calculate the next row.
To keep it from having a jagged
edge they would take and put the bed of mortar down, put the brick in place,
tap the back end, and slant the front edge backwards a little bit so it'd have
a nice incline all the way up. If you were able to look inside those columns
you'll see that these are not ordinary rectangular bricks. They're cast a curve
on the front and they're pie-shaped bricks. They go into the column almost to
the center. There's only a small opening in there that had to be filled.
They're strong, stout columns, and they're going to stay with us for many, many
years.
The style of them are very
reminiscent of another church near Yemassee in the lower part of the state. It’s known as Old Sheldon. At Old Sheldon, the columns are very much
like ours but being a little biased towards Brick Church I think that the brick
mason here had a little bit more talent than the other man in the lower part of
the state because ours look like they were just built yesterday. It's amazing.
I'd like to take you on a quick
walk around the graveyard at Brick Church. I was instructed years ago that
there's a difference between a cemetery and a graveyard. A cemetery is
freestanding. A graveyard is attached to a church. I didn't know that. I used
to call this the cemetery but I was corrected. This is a graveyard.
In our graveyard there are just a
few graves. The reason for that is most people during the colonial period were
buried on their properties at their plantations. If you go to the plantations
nearby everyone has a cemetery there for the families that owned it and for the
slaves that lived there.
Here, though, when this church was
built 250 years ago they started burying a few families here. There are some
notables in the crowd. Go to the left
side of the graveyard. If you face the church and go to the far fence, there's
the McClellan family there. Among those few stones that belong to that
particular clan is Archibald James McClellan, one of the founders of
McClellanville, the little community that's near the church today.
He and Richard Tillia Morrison
teamed up and they leased and sold some lots that would become the little
village of McClellanville. There are also some interesting stones on the other
side. One is the resting place of Reverend Samuel Fenner Warren and his son,
Colonel Samuel Warren. These two men were important to the history of this
parish.
Reverend Warren was a very popular
man. He married people, he buried people, he saw to the sick and the dying. He
was loved from St. James-Santee Parish all the way up to Georgetown. He was
greatly respected.
When the war came with England he
had the bad luck of being in England visiting family and had to make a big
decision. His decision was, "What do I do? Do I stay in my homeland or do
I come back to my adopted home?" He decided to come back to America.
When the family in England heard
of his decision they were furious with him. They were even madder at his son,
Sam, because Sam decided he was going to fight the homeland and stand with the
Patriots. Two old maid aunts raised that boy over in England. They were furious
at his decision and they wrote him a nasty note and said, "We hope you get
an arm or leg blown off in the war."
Sure enough, he was down at the
Siege of Savannah and was wounded in the leg and they had to remove his leg to
save his life. He took his leg and put it in a container of alcohol and shipped
it to the old girls. I believe that Colonel Warren got even. They got their
wish. He was quite a character.
We have some modern characters
buried here. We have Peter Manigault, a great newspaper man and comes from an
old Huguenot family. He and his son Pierre have been great stewards of the land
that surround Brick Church and more land that's on the Santee. For generations
and generations they seem to have [children] who feel the same way about
protecting the land in this particular region. We were lucky to have the
Manigaults in our community.
Most of the land surrounding the
Brick Church today is protected land in some kind of conservation easement so
it'll never be built on. The 100 acres directly across from the front of the
church was purchased by the Village Museum and later deeded to the Brick Church
Restoration Committee to protect the viewscape of our church.
It will always be the same view.
If you stand at the front door of this church 100 years from now you'll still
be looking at pine trees and not developed land. That was the goal of the
purchase and in the conservation of the land that surrounds the church. Most of
the land from the Santee all the way down the Old Georgetown Road that runs in
front of the church is protected in some fashion today. It'll always be what
you see today.
The road itself, the King's
Highway as it was better known, is today called the Old Georgetown Road, but at
one time it was the King's Post Road, the mail went up and down this road. Any
man or woman high or low in station used this road, whether you walked or you
rode in the finest carriage. That's the road that took you from Charleston to
all the northern cities. That's the road that took everybody from up north to
Charleston, the great city of the south.
Everybody has used the road and
today it's on the National Register as is the building itself. Both are
protected forever. We can't do anything
to the road or to the church that would harm its present condition. That's a
good thing that we protect it. Today, the
continuing congregation of St. James-Santee Parish Episcopal Church has
stewardship of the building and is strongly supported by the Brick Church
Restoration Committee – a non-profit.
Even though St. James-Santee
Church in McClellanville has stewardship of the building and Charleston County
has stewardship of the King's Highway, we are just that. We're stewards. We are
the people that have been selected to take care of this historic church
building and the King's Highway.
If we all can work together and do
some intelligent preservation and protection of the land that surrounds the
church, the church will have a great history to come. And, it’s not all just in
the past because it still serves the community. Brick Church is the one
building in the parish and in this end of Charleston County that unites us all.
Granted there are parts of the history with
both good and bad sides, but the church building roots us all.
Families who have been here for
generations and generations still consider this their mother church. It doesn't
matter whether you go to the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist or Episcopal
church or if you are like me, you don’t go as often as you should.. You still
can feel the same about this church building when you go in there.
I have watched many people visit
the church from somewhere else. The thing they comment on the most is how it
makes them feel - How they feel when
they sit in those pews. It's still a sacred place.
* More likely, 1706- Church Act
