Willtown
| Willtown Bluff | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 View of Willton Bluff from the bank of Edisto, December 2005 |
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| location | On the Edisto River , north of Edisto Island | ||
| Coordinates | 32 ° 40 '45.7 " N , 80 ° 24' 47.4" W | ||
| NRHP number | 74001830 | ||
| The NRHP added | January 8, 1974 | ||
Willtown (initially also New London , later Willton , Wilton or similar) is a former city on the Edisto River in what is now Charleston County , South Carolina . The settlement planned around 1690 experienced its heyday in the early 18th century. It then split up into several large plantations , where mainly rice and indigo plants were grown with the use of slaves . Today is Willtown Bluff , the location of the former town center, mainly known as a historical site and archaeological site.
geography
Willtown Bluff is located on the east bank of the South Edisto River , an estuary of the Edisto, over a seven meter high steep slope . The location is about 20 km from the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the so-called South Carolina Lowcountry .
story
Willtown was laid out around 1690, making it the second colonial planned city after Charleston . The settlement, also known as New London, was named after King William III. named. They were set up to defend the colony, to build a new dissenting community there, and to expand trade with Indian groups . The first city parcels were awarded in 1697. During the Yamasee War the settlement was devastated in 1715, but Willtown could be held through improvised fortifications . Then it experienced its heyday: in the 1720s, the city had a courthouse , a school , a church and other buildings. The people mainly grew rice and thus became prosperous.
The wealth that came from growing indigo was more likely to harm the city: the land in Willtown was so fertile that it was more profitable to convert building land into plantations. In addition, the city was too close to Charleston for effective trade and was difficult to defend. The landowners began to pool their plots and slave labor to cultivate rice and indigo on the resulting plantations. In 1760 William Elliot was granted 24 parcels in the center of the settlement, his heirs dominated the further history of the place. The early 18th century Presbyterian church building was abandoned around 1750, but a new one was later built between the plantations. The new building was inaugurated in 1767 and was about three miles from Willtown Bluff on Parkers Ferry Road . It burned down in 1807 and the abandoned church at Willtown Bluff was renovated. In 1819/20 the congregation built a new church building, later known as Burnt Church , near Adams Run . The last pastor left the parish before 1866.
An Anglican parish, Christ Church , was founded in 1834 and built a new church on the ruins of the old Presbyterian church in Willtown Bluff. It was dismantled about 50 years later and rebuilt in Adams Run. After the end of slavery, commercial rice cultivation became uneconomical, and a series of hurricanes around the turn of the century also destroyed many of the rice fields.
A community center in nearby Parkers Ferry is now called the Wiltown Community Center .
Willtown Bluff
The location of Willtown Bluff has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974 . Today Willtown is a nearly flat lawn covered with old oak trees . There are still two buildings there: a manor house built around 1820 on a plantation and a rectory from 1836. There is also a pillar from the former Anglican church from the same year. The plantation is privately owned .
Willtown Bluff is at the end of Willtown Road and there is a public boat ramp at the end of the street .
literature
- Martha Zierden, Suzanne Linder, Ronald Anthony: Willtown: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective . In: Charleston Museum (ed.): Archaeological Contributions . No. 27 , 1999, ISBN 1-880067-53-6 (English, sc.gov [PDF]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Willtown Bluff, Charleston County (SC Sec. Rd. 55, Adams Run vicinity). In: National Register Properties in South Carolina. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, accessed December 14, 2020 .
- ^ New London. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 24, Leipzig 1740, sheet 134.
- ↑ Willstown Bluff in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
- ↑ a b c J. Grahame Long: Lost Charleston . Arcadia Publishing, Chicago 2019, ISBN 978-1-4396-6670-8 , pp. 18–23 (English, google.de [accessed December 15, 2020]).
- ^ A b c Martha Zierden, Suzanne Linder, Ronald Anthony: Willtown: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective . In: Charleston Museum (ed.): Archaeological Contributions . No. 27 , 1999, ISBN 1-880067-53-6 , pp. 2 (English, sc.gov [PDF]).
- ↑ Slann Legare Clement Simmons (Editor), Edward Guerrant Lilly (Preface): Records of the Willstown Presbyterian Church, 1747-1841 . In: South Carolina Historical Society (Ed.): The South Carolina Historical Magazine . tape 61 , no. 3 , 1960, ISSN 0038-3082 , pp. 151-153 , JSTOR : 27566295 (English).
- ^ Martha Zierden, Suzanne Linder, Ronald Anthony: Willtown: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective . In: Charleston Museum (ed.): Archaeological Contributions . No. 27 , 1999, ISBN 1-880067-53-6 , pp. 47 (English, sc.gov [PDF]).
- ↑ CHRIST CHURCH. In: South Carolina Picture Project. SCIWAY, accessed December 29, 2020 .
- ^ Martha Zierden, Suzanne Linder, Ronald Anthony: Willtown: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective . In: Charleston Museum (ed.): Archaeological Contributions . No. 27 , 1999, ISBN 1-880067-53-6 , pp. 57 (English, sc.gov [PDF]).
- ↑ Willstown Bluff Plantation - Adams Run, Charleston County, South Carolina. In: SouthCarolinaPlantations.com. SCIWAY, accessed on December 14, 2020 .
- ↑ Willtown Bluff. In: SCDNR Boat Ramps. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, accessed December 28, 2020 .