Appendix D

NECROLOGY OF ST . PHILIP ’S CHURCH

By Edward McCrady

Before the old church was completed Robert Daniel, who had been Deputy Governor of North Carolina, and a Landgrave and Governor of South Carolina, was buried near its rising walls, in 1718; and near him, about the same time, was interred George Logan, Speaker of the Commons. Still before the old church was opened, Colonel William Rhett, the hero of the defense against the invasion of the Spaniards and French in 1706, and of the expedition against the pirates in 1718, the donor of the Silver Communion Service to the church, was interred in the western yard, just in front of the church, in 1723. Thomas Hepworth, Chief Justice, was buried there in 1728. A slab of slate still marks the grave of the Rev. John Lambert, Master of the Free School and Afternoon Lecturer of the Parish, who died in 1729. In 1735 “the good Governor Robert Johnson,” as he was affectionately called—Governor both under the Proprietary and Royal governments—was interred near the chancel of the church. The profound jurist and learned theologian, the father of the law and of the Courts in South Carolina, though alas! the corrupt Judge, Chief Justice Trott, worshiped in the church, and was buried in the church yard in 1740. Then followed three other Chief Justices—James Graeme, in 1752; Charles Pinckney, in 1758; and Peter Leigh, in 1759; and Andrew Rutledge, Speaker of the Commons, in 1755. The Rev. Alexander Garden, Commissary of the Bishop of London, was interred on the south side of the church in a tomb which the Vestry had built as a mark of their gratitude for his long and faithful service. To Hector Berenger DeBeaufain, Collector of Her Majesty’s Customs, was erected a handsome memorial tablet in the old church by his fellow-citizens of the Province. Upon the walls of the old church stood also a slab to the memory of the Honorable Othniel Beale, a member of the King’s Council, and for twenty-seven years Colonel of the Charlestown Regiment. Roger Pinckney, the last royal Provost Marshal of the Province, is buried in the eastern cemetery. The tomb of Benjamin Smith, Speaker from 1754 to 1763, still stands next to that of Colonel Rhett, his ancestor, in the western cemetery, directly in front of the church. Of physicians there worshipped in this church the two Doctors John Moultrie, father and son—Dr. John Rutledge, father of the distinguished trio of sons—and Dr. Lionel Chalmers; the two last are buried in the church yard.

Of the statesmen, heroes and exiles of the Revolution many lie around the edifice. Among these are Christopher Gadsden, the foremost of all, and William Johnson, his uncompromising follower and “right hand man”; Rawlins Lowndes, Governor in 1778, who requested that the epitaph upon his tomb should be: “The opponent of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States”; Edward Rutledge, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Governor; Colonel Isaac Motte, second in command at the battle of Fort Moultrie, 28^th June, 1776; Thomas Pinckney, Major in the Continental Army during the Revolution, Major-General in the War of 1812, Minister to England and Spain, and Governor of the State; Major Benjamin Huger, who fell before the lines of Charlestown, on the 11^th May, 1779, during Provost’s invasion; Major Thomas Grimball, who commanded the Battalion of Artillery during the siege of Charlestown, in 1780; Daniel Huger, Charles Pinckney and John Lewis Gervais, the three members of the Council who accompanied Governor Rutledge when it was determined that he should leave the town before its surrender to the British, in order to preserve the Government of the State.

The Rev. Robert Smith, Rector of the Church, and the first Bishop of South Carolina, who was banished by the British authorities and his property confiscated, lies to the east of the church near the chancel.

Upon the walls of the old church there was a tablet to the memory of Jacob and Rebecca Motte. Jacob Motte was a distinguished citizen, long the Treasurer of the Province; his widow, Rebecca, was the heroine of Fort Motte, the lady who fired her own roof as the most decisive method of reducing the hostile British garrison which held and surrounded it with their works.

There was also a monument to the memory of Charles Dewar Simons, Professor of Natural Science and Chemistry in the South Carolina College, who was drowned near Columbia, in 1812.

Of a later period are found the graves of Thomas W. Bacot, the first Postmaster of Charleston under the present Constitution of the United States, who was appointed by Washington, and held the office for forty-three years continuously; and of his son of the same name, Assistant Postmaster for thirty-six years under his father and the Hon. Alfred Huger; and also of Judge Elihu Hall Bay; Judge Theodore Gaillard; the “gifted” and brilliant William Crafts; the venerable Daniel Huger; Dr. Henry R. Frost, and Dr. Thomas G. Prioleau, Chairmen of the Vestry; the distinguished son and grandsons of Bishop Smith, William Mason Smith, and J.J. Pringle Smith and William Mason Smith, Jr., the two former each for years Chairmen of the Vestry; Mr. J.J. Pringle Smith, a distinguished representative of the Parish in the Diocesan Convention, and of the Diocese in the General Convention of the Church, and a member of the Secession Convention; Henry D. Lesesne, Chairman of the Vestry, and a Chancellor of the State; and the late Charles Richardson Miles, Attorney-General of the State, and a Delegate to the Diocesan Convention; John Blake White, the artist, and his son, Colonel Alonzo J. White, are buried in the eastern cemetery; Edward B. White, the architect, the builder of the present steeple, another son of the artist, a member of the church, is buried elsewhere.

The congregation has also furnished a number of distinguished Naval Officers. Colonel Thomas Shubrick, of the Revolution, himself the captain of a vessel—his four sons, Rear Admiral William Barnford Shubrick, Captain John Taylor Shubrick, who was lost at sea while bearing to the United States the treaty with Algiers in 1815, Captain Edward Rutledge Shubrick, and Commodore Irwine Shubrick were all of this church.

A monumental stone, erected by the officers, seamen and marines of the United States Frigate Columbia , in memory of their beloved Commander, Edward R. Shubrick, stands over his grave in the eastern church yard.

Commodore Duncan N. Ingraham, of Kosta fame, was for years Chairman of the Vestry.

Within a hundred yards of each other, in the western cemetery of the church, it so happens that there lie, almost in a line, the remains of four of the leaders of the great nullification struggle—on the one side the two nullifiers , John C. Calhoun and Robert J. Turnbull—and on the other the two Johnsons, union men, sons of William, before mentioned, to wit: William Johnson, who was Speaker of the State House of Representatives at twenty-six years of age, a Judge on the State Bench at twenty-eight, and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States at thirty-two; and his brother, Dr. Joseph Johnson, Mayor of the City, etc.

The following deceased Members of Congress have come from the congregation: William Laughton Smith, General John Rutledge, Joel R. Poinsett, William Lowndes, Henry L. Pinckney, Isaac E. Holmes and William Aiken. William Porcher Miles was the last Member of Congress from the Charleston District before the war, and was also a Member of the Confederate Congress. It is remarkable that three Members of Congress from Charleston were chosen in succession from St. Philip’s congregation, to wit: Holmes, Aiken and Miles. The Hon. William Henry Tresco, Assistant Secretary of State under President Buchanan’s administration, Agent of the United States before the Halifax Commission, Minister to China and to Peru, is also of this church.

Besides the clergymen we have already named as buried in the yard, there lie around the church: Bishop Smith, Bishop Gadsden, Bishop Howe, the Reverends Thomas Frost, Milward Pogson, James Dewar Simons, Thomas D. Frost, Cranmore Wallace, Paul T. Gervais, Christopher P. Gadsden, William Dehon, F. Marion Hall and James W. Miles.

In the western church yard, besides Edward McCrady (one of the exiles and the first of his name in this country), there lie his son John, a brilliant young lawyer, whose premature death was mourned by the community; his son, the late venerable Edward McCrady, lawyer and theologian, for years District Attorney of the United States, and a member of the Secession Convention, and who for over fifty years represented St. Philip’s in the Diocesan Convention, and for forty years was a member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese, and for more than thirty a Deputy of the Diocese in the General Convention of the Episcopal Church; and his sons—Professor John McCrady, Major of Engineers in the Confederate Army, Professor of Mathematics in the Charleston College, of Zoology in Harvard, Cambridge, Mass., and of Biology in the University of the South—and Thomas McCrady, an officer of the Confederate Army, and beloved by the community. In this yard there is the grave of Colonel John DeBerniere, of the British Army, the ancestor of several families in North and South Carolina.

In the eastern cemetery there is a slab with the simple inscription: “Mrs. Cornelia Fremont.” This slab marks the grave of the mother of General John C. Fremont, the “Path Finder” across the Rocky Mountains, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States, and Federal General in the late war.

Of others distinguished in the annals of the Province and State who worshipped in the church, but were buried elsewhere, there were Sir Nathaniel Johnson, the Governor, under whose administration the invasion of the Province by the French and Spaniards took place in 1706, and the fierce contest was waged over the Church Acts of 1704/1706; the Rev. Gideon Johns[t]on, Commissary, who was drowned in the harbor in 1716; Chief Justices Benjamin Whitaker and James Michie; Arthur Middleton, President of the Convention which overthrew the Proprietary government; Henry Middleton, who was President of the Continental Congress in 1774; his son, Arthur Middleton, signer of the Declaration of Independence; his son, Henry Middleton, Governor of the State and Minister to Russia; Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1778; and his son, Colonel John Laurens, an Aide to Washington and Envoy to France; General William Moultrie, the hero of 28^th June, 1776, who twice saved the city from capture by the British; Gabriel Manigault, for many years a Vestryman, who supported the Congress of the United States during the Revolution with a loan of $220,000; his son, Peter Manigault, Speaker of the Commons during the first Non-Importation Movement; his grandsons, Edward Manigault, a Major in the United States Army during the Mexican War, and Colonel in the Confederate service, and Arthur M. Manigault, also an officer in the Mexican War, and Brigadier General in the Confederate service during the late war; Isaac Mazyck, the great merchant—and his son of the same name, an Assistant Judge; the wise and noble William Wragg, who, exiled from his country because of his loyalty to his King, perished at sea, to whose memory there is a tablet in Westminster Abbey; Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, General in the Continental Army, member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, and Minister to France, long a Vestryman of the church; Charles Pinckney, cousin of the last named, one of the exiles to St. Augustine, member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, United States Senator, Minister to Spain and Governor of the State; Ralph Izard, a diplomat of the Revolution, member of the Continental Congress, and Senator of the United States; and his son George, Major General in the War of 1812; Joel R. Poinsett, Secretary of War and Minister to Mexico; General James Gadsden, an officer of distinction in the War of 1812, and Minister to Mexico; William Lowndes, of whom it was said, the highest and best hopes of the country looked to him for their fulfillment, and whose character has been described by an eminent writer “as the ablest, purest and most unselfish statesman of his day,” who died at sea; Francis H. Rutledge, the first Bishop of Florida; Charles T. Lowndes, the eminent citizen and generous benefactor of the church; N. Russell Middleton, President of the Charleston College; Isaac Hayne, for many years Attorney General of the State; William Alston Pringle, Recorder of the City; and H. Henry Buist, the distinguished lawyer. ²⁸¹

Note : Edward McCrady’s necrology did not include several notable grave sites. One was that of Nicholas John Wightman, the victim of a sensational eighteenth-century murder. It seems that as late as 1788, not all Revolutionary partisans had returned to civilian life, choosing instead to continue a life of plunder, arson and worse. A gang of these ruffians and their doxies holed up in an establishment located on the bend of Meeting Street, then a rough area on the edge of the growing seaport.

On the night of March 12, 1788, Wightman was peacefully returning to his brother’s house, where he resided. He chanced to pass near the rowdy tavern just as the robbers were on the lookout for another victim. The scoundrels pounced on him and awakened a nearby resident, who raised the alarm. Shortly thereafter, Wightman’s brother found him lying in a pool of blood, with a pistol near his corpse. Only his silver shoe buckles had been stolen, indicating that the robbers had been scared away when their misdeeds were discovered.

The shoe buckles had been made by Wightman’s brother, William, a well-known Charleston silversmith. William Wightman rounded up some vigilantes and apprehended the rogues that same night. They were still in possession of the silver shoe buckles and a pistol that matched one found beside Wightman’s corpse. The robbers’ fate was sealed incontrovertibly when the young son of M. Edgar Wells found a button half-buried in the dirt that proved to be torn from the coat of one of the rogues.

In the eighteenth century, the term for a pedestrian robber was “footpad” as opposed to “highwayman” (for the more prestigious robber who owned a horse). The local “footpads” were duly tried, found guilty and hanged on the Common between the jail and the Powder Magazine. The crime and punishment of the miscreants was covered in the press at the time and has been memorialized on a fading grave marker erected by Wightman’s brother and sister. It can still be seen in the western churchyard directly behind the wall near the entrance on the right. Today, the grave is known as “The Footpad’s Memorial.” ²⁸²

Another was that of Dr. William Hall III (1789–1867), son of William Hall II and his wife, Ann Wilson. He became a physician after studying in Philadelphia under the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush and returned to practice in Charleston. He married Anne Poyas, daughter of Dr. John Poyas and his wife, Catherine Smith, granddaughter of the second landgrave Thomas Smith. They had fifteen children.

Dr. Hall was a learned man. Having an independent income, he retired from his profession and devoted his time to music and painting. He was one of the original founders of the St. Cecelia Society, which was then a gathering of musical devotees. He educated his children himself, teaching each one to play a musical instrument as well as preparing them for college or the business world by teaching French, Latin, the rudiments of Greek and mathematics.

Hall owned twenty buildings in the city but lost most due to the War Between the States. He died shortly after the conflict ended at the home of his son Edward at Bell Grove in Christ Church Parish. He was buried in the family lot of St. Philip’s immediately back of the chancel window, as are his wife and several children. ²⁸³