Saint Andrew's Parish Church is located in Charleston, South Carolina, along the west side of the Ashley River. Built in 1706, it is the oldest surviving church building south of Virginia. Its historic graveyard dates from the church's establishment. Expanded in 1723 into the shape of a cross, the church is the only remaining colonial cruciform church in South Carolina.Porwoll 2014, p. 59.William Guy to Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, January 22, 1728, in Merrens 1977, p. 83 In 1973 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Old St. Andrew's, as it is commonly called, remains an active place of worship and is affiliated with the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina and the Anglican Church in North America.
18th Century: Colonial Era through the American Revolution
Establishment The Church Act of 1706 established the Church of England as the official state supported religion in the Carolina colony, created the parish system, with both secular and ecclesiastical functions, named ten parishes within the boundaries of the three existing counties (Craven, Berkeley, and Colleton), and designated ten Anglican churches to serve the inhabitants of these parishes. St. Andrew's Parish Church was named to serve residents along the Ashley River.Porwoll 2014, pp. 10-15.
St. Andrew's Parish was approximately 280 square miles: 40 miles north-to-south and 7 miles east-to-west. It was bordered on the south by Folly Island and the Atlantic Ocean, to the east by St. James Goose Creek Parish (through the middle of today's Charleston International Airport), to the west by Rantowles Creek and St. Paul's Parish, and to the north into today's Dorchester County. The area where the English settlers first landed in 1680, today called Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site, is located in St. Andrew's Parish.Porwoll 2014, pp. 5-9.
Residents in the northern part of the parish soon found it too difficult to travel to other parts of the parish, so in 1717 the parish was cut in half. The northern half became the parish of St. George's, Dorchester, with its southern boundary about a mile south of Middleton Place.Porwoll 2014, p. 42. The new St. Andrew's Parish consisted of today's West Ashley and James Island and operated as a governmental jurisdiction until 1865 when it became part of the Charleston District.
The Early Church St. Andrew's Parish Church was built in 1706. It was forty feet long and twenty-five feet wide, built of brick, with a roof of pine, and had two doors and five small, square windows. A wider "great" door was used by the gentry and faced the river. A narrower "small" door was used by commoners and clergy and faced west. It is likely that enslaved Africans built the church. A graveyard of seven acres surrounded the church.Porwoll 2014, pp. 18-21.
The first rector was Rev. Alexander Wood. He arrived in 1708 and died two years later.Porwoll 2014, pp. 23-25. He was succeeded by Rev. Ebenezer Taylor (1712–17), whose tenure was marked by turmoil among his churchwardens, vestry, and parishioners. Taylor was a moderate Presbyterian minister who was recruited by Rev. Gideon Johnston, the Anglican commissary (the Bishop of London's personal representative), to become an ordained Anglican minister. Johnston presented Taylor to the vestry of St. Andrew's Parish Church as Wood's successor. His idea was that Taylor could siphon off Presbyterians to the Church of England in this majority Presbyterian parish. The vestry reluctantly accepted him as rector.Porwoll 2014, pp. 25-27.
Taylor did not lure Presbyterians to the Anglican fold. In fact, his stubborn personality and unfamiliarity with Anglican customs alienated the very Anglicans he was called to serve. His work among the enslaved on parish plantations, a ministry which few ministers undertook at the time, was another sore point.Porwoll 2014, pp. 27-29. During his tenure, Indian raids during the Yamasee War occurred almost as far as the Ashley River.Porwoll 2014, p. 30. In long letters to London, Taylor complained bitterly of the treatment he received from his parishioners.Ebenezer Taylor to SPG, April 18, 1716, SPG Letters, series A, vol. 11, no. 64, pp. 233–244.Taylor to SPG, February 15, 1716, SPG Letters, series B, vol. 4I, pp. 168–198.Taylor to SPG, April 23, 1719, SPG Letters, series A, vol. 13, pp. 268-277.Porwoll 2014, pp. 31-41. Toward the end of his tenure the churchwardens and vestry nailed the church windows shut and locked the door to prevent him from entering the church and conducting worship services.Porwoll 2014, p. 39. In 1717 Taylor was banished to North Carolina, where he died three years later.Porwoll 2014, pp. 40-42.
Stability and Expansion Rev. William Guy succeeded Ebenezer Taylor in 1718, serving until his death in 1750. His thirty-two-year tenure was one of the longest in the church's history and was even more remarkable in an age where frequent clergy turnover from illness, death, or transfer was the norm.Porwoll 2014, pp. 45, 72-73. If Ebenezer Taylor was disliked by his parish, William Guy was beloved.Porwoll 2014, pp. 45, 58, 69, 72.
Reverend Guy chronicled parish life in the many letters he sent to the SPG.Guy to SPG, September 28, 1719, SPG Letters, series A, vol. 13, pp. 298-299.Guy to SPG, May 19, 1720, SPG Letters, series A, vol. 13, pp. 287-288.Guy to SPG, Jul 5, 1721, SPG Letters, series A, vol. 15, pp. 50-51.Guy to the Bishop of London, March 17, 1724, SPG Letters, Fulham Papers, no. 194.Guy to SPG, January 22, 1728, in Merrens 1977, pp. 81-86.Porwoll 2014, pp. 47-50 He began the parish's first register, the official repository of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths, when churches and not government agencies maintained vital statistics.Porwoll 2014, pp. 50-56. He established a chapel on James Island to make it easier for parishioners to worship closer to home.Porwoll 2014, pp. 68-69. He was, however, unsuccessful in ministering to the enslaved on parish plantations.Porwoll 2014, p. 69.
The parish's twenty-six-acre glebe, where the minister lived and raised crops and livestock, was one of the smallest of all South Carolina parishes.Porwoll 2014, pp. 65-66. During Guy's tenure it was expanded to eighty-three acres.Porwoll 2014, p. 66 In 1750 a small, wooden parsonage badly in need of repair was replaced with a spacious, two-story brick house.
As more people settled the Ashley River area, the 1706 church became too small to accommodate even half of those who wanted to worship there.Porwoll 2014, p. 58. Beginning in 1723 and continuing for more than a decade, the small, rectangular church was expanded into the shape of a cross. The expansion tripled the floor space of the existing church. Features of the 1723 expansion that visitors see today include the chancel and transept at the east end, compass-headed windows recessed into the walls, the barrel-vaulted ceiling over the crossing of the aisles, and three equal-size doors. The pine roof was replaced by one of cypress. Cedar pews were added. The exterior brick was roughcast or stuccoed to mask the differences between the old and new brick and emulate a grander stone facade. A steeple at the west end was planned but whether it was ever realized is unknown.Porwoll 2014, pp. 58-64. Although Anglican churches were supported by public taxes, these were never enough. The expansion required several subscriptions by parishioners to pay for the project.Porwoll 2014, pp. 58-59. The finished church conveyed a simple elegance or "a quaint severity combined with great charm". The expanded St. Andrew's "reflected many of the essential design features that characterized eighteenth-century church architecture in South Carolina."
Prosperity The flourishing condition of St. Andrew's Parish Church was the result of a booming economy, primarily the cultivation of rice. None of this prosperity would have been possible without the slave labor system the British imported from Barbados and the West Indies. As early as 1705 there were about 130 white families along the Ashley River and 150 enslaved people. In 1728 Reverend Guy estimated that there were 800 free whites and 1,800 enslaved blacks in the parish.Guy to SPG, January 22, 1728, in Merrens 1977, pp. 84-85.
William Guy was succeeded by Rev. Charles Martyn in 1752.Porwoll 2014, p. 74. He also had a long tenure, resigning in 1770 to return to England due to ill health.Porwoll 2014, p. 92. The parish's prosperity continued under his tenure with the addition of a second significant cash crop. The cultivation of indigo was perfected by Eliza Lucas Pinckney at her father's plantation on Wappoo Creek in St. Andrew's Parish.Porwoll 2014, pp. 77-78. The combination of rice and indigo made the parish one of the wealthiest areas in all of colonial British North America.William George Bentley, "Wealth Distribution in Colonial South Carolina" (PhD diss., Georgia State University, 1977), pp. 61-76.Porwoll 2014, p. 77. More enslaved labor was needed to fuel this engine, and by 1777 the parish's enslaved population reached 3,460.Miscellaneous Communications to the General Assembly, series S165029, vol. 1, record 299, 1777, South Carolina Department of Archives and History.Porwoll 2014, p. 94.
Fire and Rebuilding In the midst of this prosperity, a devastating fire struck the church in the early 1760s. It was severe enough that anything made of wood would have burned, leaving the 1706 and 1723 walls standing.Porwoll 2014, p. 81. The church was thoroughly restored and reopened in 1764.Porwoll 2014, pp. 81-89. The work was funded by parishioner pew subscriptions.Porwoll 2014, pp. 89-92.
Features of the 1764 rebuilding include the magnificent reredos or altarpiece at the east end, the balcony at the west end, the stone and tile paver floor throughout the church, and the red-and-tan tile floor beneath the altar. The large east-end window behind the altar was not replaced after the fire, and the wall bricked in and reredos added. Its four tablets depict the Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, and Apostles' Creed. Such an expensive adornment in a simple country church was an expensive undertaking that only a wealthy parish could afford.Porwoll 2019, pp. 13-15. A balcony which had originally been installed in 1754Charles Martyn to SPG, January 8, 1754, in Dalcho 1820, p. 340.Porwoll 2014, p. 76. was rebuilt after the fire for people who could not afford to buy their seating.Porwoll 2019, p.10. The stone and tile paver floor would be removed in 1855, buried under a new stone floor, and not resurface until 1969.Porwoll 2019, p. 23. The red-and-tan tile floor in the altar area is possibly of Dutch origin.Porwoll 2014, p. 63.
American Revolution After Charles Martyn left for England, he was succeeded by Rev. Thomas Panting (1770–71)Porwoll 2014, pp. 92-93. and Rev. Christopher Ernst Schwab (1771–73), a Bavarian from Franconia.Porwoll 2014, pp. 93-94. It would be fourteen years until Schwab was replaced, after the American Revolution.Porwoll 2014, p. 101.