Phase II: Beyond the Cooper
Overview
Berkeley County is blessed with an extraordinary number of historic churches. There are others that could also be incorporated into a Phase II program.
St. Stephen's
Listed in the National Register
Established in 1754, St. Stephen’s Parish was located on the south side of the Santee River in modern Berkeley County. Huguenots were the earliest residents of flood-prone area along the lower Santee River. In succeeding decades families were forced upriver in search of higher ground. The French planters were joined by English planters from the coast who soon dominated the area. Consequently, the upper part of St. James Santee Parish became known as the “English Santee” and the lower part as the “French Santee.” The division became official in 1754 when the English Santee was organized as St. Stephen’s Parish. The present St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church was completed in 1769. With the abolition of the parish system in 1865, St. Stephen’s Parish became part of Berkeley County.
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-Walter Edgar
St. Thomas and St. Denis
Listed in the National Register
Located on the peninsula formed by the Cooper and Wando Rivers in modern Berkeley County, St. Thomas and St. Denis were two of the ten original parishes created by the Church Act of 1706 and constituted colonial South Carolina’s only parish within a parish. Huguenots settled on the neck in the 1680s and constructed a small wooden church in what became known as the French, or Orange, Quarter. English settlers soon followed, took up the surrounding lands, and built their own house of worship. Pompion Hill Chapel on the Cooper River, the oldest Anglican edifice in the colony outside of Charleston, was erected in 1703. Despite speaking different languages and attending different churches, the two “nations” followed the same formula for success. Both parishes became home to slaveholding planters, and by the early eighteenth century both were “much improved in their fortunes.”
-Matthew Lockhart
Jehovah Jireh
Within the Cooper River Historic District are a few Black churches that will never be listed in the National Register, such as Jehovah Jireh, and others. To fully appreciate the American religious marketplace, and the oversized role that Black churches have within that history, sacred places such as Jehovah Jireh have significance. Here is a place that represents in a more modern incarnation the long religious history of a people who had no chance to live or worship as they wished.