1698

Affra Harleston’s will, divided her estate between her nephew, John Harleston, and her husband’s half-nephew, Elias Ball.

1723 – Births

Elizabeth Lucas (known as “Eliza) was born in Antigua, West Indies at Cabbage Tree Plantation. It was customary for elite colonists to send boys to England for their education. Her father, Lieut.-Colonel George Lucas, recognized Eliza’s intelligence and against the custom of the time, sent her to boarding school in London at age eight. Her favorite subject was botany.  She wrote to her father that she felt her “education, which I esteem a more valuable fortune than any you could have given me, will make me happy through my future.”

1748

The Charlestown Library Society was organized by seventeen young gentlemen of various trades and professions who wished to avail themselves of the latest publications from Great Britain. At first, the elected librarians safeguarded the Library’s materials in their homes. From 1765 until 1778, it resided in the upstairs of Gabriel Manigault’s liquor warehouse.

In 1792, the collection was transferred to the upper floor of the Statehouse, currently the County Courthouse at Broad and Meeting. From 1835 until its 1914 move to the current King Street location, the Charleston Library Society occupied the Bank of South Carolina building at the corner of Church and Broad Streets. That building was paid for with “Brick” memberships, a permanent membership for a one-time lump sum: several of these memberships are still in use, generations later, by Charleston families.

1773

Surveyor for the Southern District of North America, William Gerard de Brahm, sent a report to his Majesty which said:

The city of Charlestown is in every respect the most eminent and by far the richest city in the Southern District of North America; it contains about 1500, and most of them big houses, arrayed by straight, broad and regular streets; the principal of them is seventy-two feet wide call’d Broad Street, is decorated, besides many fine houses, with a State house near the centre of said street, constructed to contain two rooms, one of the Governor and Council, th’ other for the Representative of the people, the Secretary’s office, and a Court room; opposite the state House is the Armory-house, item St. Michael’s Church, whose steeple is 192 foot high, and seen by vessels at sea before they make any land; also with a new Exchange on the east end of said street upon the bay; all four buildings have been rais’d since the year 1752, an no expense spared to make them solide, convenient and elegant.

The city is inhabited by above 12,000 souls, more than half are Negroes and Mulattoes; the city is divided in two parishes, has two churches, St. Michaels and St. Philips, and six meeting-houses, vid, an Independent, a Presbyterian, a French, a German and two Baptists. There is also an assembly for Quakers, and another for Jews, all which are composed of several nations.

Charleston, circa 1780

1832 – Nullification Crisis. 

John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President to take Sen. Robert Hayne’s vacated seat in the U.S. Senate. It was a coordinated political move as a response to the Nullification Crisis and perceived heavy Federal hand of Pres. Andrew Jackson. 

1864 – Civil War    

Gen Henry Halleck, Army chief of staff wrote to Gen. William Sherman, who was in Savannah after burning through Georgia:

 … should you capture Charleston, I hope by some accident that the place be destroyed, and if a little salt should be sown on the site it may prevent the future growth of nullification and secession.