40 Fun Facts About South Carolina Colony

Which pirate blockaded Charles Town harbor in May 1718, holding citizens hostage until he was sent medical supplies?

Blackbeard threatened to send the hostages' heads to the governor, then freed them once the drugs arrived, though he kept their valuables and fine clothes.

Logs from which spongy tree let a half-built Charleston harbor fort absorb British cannonballs in June 1776?

Palmetto wood quivered and swallowed the shot instead of splintering, which is why the tree now stands on South Carolina's state flag.

Which crop did teenage plantation manager Eliza Lucas begin testing in 1739, making it a leading South Carolina export?

Indigo took her three years of failed attempts to master, and she then shared seed with other planters, lifting exports from 5,000 pounds to 130,000 by 1748.

Which grain, grown by enslaved Africans, made South Carolina one of the richest colonies?

Rice was the colony's main source of wealth, and the labor it demanded meant enslaved Africans were a majority of South Carolina's people from 1708 until the Revolution.

Where did the British lock up South Carolina merchant Henry Laurens after capturing him at sea during the Revolution?

Tower of London guards held Laurens for a little over a year, the only American ever imprisoned there, until he was exchanged for General Cornwallis.

Which animal appears on the yellow flag designed by Charleston patriot Christopher Gadsden during the Revolution?

A rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, fills the flag, which Gadsden gave to the Continental Navy's commodore to fly from his flagship in 1775.

Which English philosopher, secretary to a Lord Proprietor, helped draft a 1669 constitution for the Carolina colony?

John Locke worked on the Fundamental Constitutions for his patron, but the plan, which invented a local nobility for Carolina, was never fully put into effect.

Which South Carolina militia leader was nicknamed the Swamp Fox for his hit-and-run raids on British troops?

Francis Marion is said to have earned the name after Banastre Tarleton chased him 26 miles through a swamp and gave up, calling him an old fox.

Many of South Carolina's first planters arrived in the 1670s from which crowded English sugar island in the Caribbean?

Barbados was running short of land, so its planters moved to Carolina and set out to copy the island's plantation system on the mainland.

Which South Carolina lawyer was, at age 26, the youngest delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence?

Edward Rutledge had at first been told to oppose the vote for independence; he signed anyway and was later elected South Carolina's governor.

South Carolina changed from a proprietary colony to which type in 1729, when seven of its eight owners sold out?

Royal control had really begun in 1719, when colonists rebelled against the proprietors and the king answered their petition by naming a governor himself.

Which 1739 uprising led by a literate man called Jemmy was the largest slave revolt of the colonial South?

The Stono Rebellion began beside a river near Charles Town, and its marchers were heading for Spanish Florida, which promised freedom to runaways.

Which culture and creole language grew up among enslaved West Africans on South Carolina's isolated Sea Islands?

Gullah speech and customs kept many African words and traditions alive because the island communities lived so cut off from the mainland.

Santa Elena, once the capital of Spanish Florida, stood on which part of South Carolina's coast, now a Marine base?

Parris Island held the Spanish town for about twenty years, on the very spot where a French fort had been abandoned only a few years earlier.

Which colony did Britain found in 1732, partly to shield South Carolina from Spanish attack?

Georgia was planned as a garrison province guarding its older neighbor, on land that had been part of Carolina's original grant.

Which Spanish conquistador met the female ruler of Cofitachequi in 1540 while crossing what became South Carolina?

Hernando de Soto was greeted by the Lady of Cofitachequi, who was carried to the riverbank on a litter draped in fine white cloth.

Which future US president was born in 1767 in the Waxhaws and later named colonial South Carolina as his birthplace?

Andrew Jackson said he was born on an uncle's plantation on the South Carolina side, though the Waxhaws straddles the border and North Carolina claims him too.

Which future Founding Father trained printer Lewis Timothy and sent him to Charles Town in 1733 to revive its newspaper?

Benjamin Franklin's protege died in 1738, and his widow Elizabeth Timothy took over the Gazette, becoming America's first woman newspaper editor and publisher.

Which Founding Father served as a pallbearer at the 1793 funeral of South Carolina planter Eliza Lucas Pinckney?

George Washington helped carry her coffin in Philadelphia, where she had gone for medical treatment; two of her sons were later nominated for national office.

Charleston's Library Society helped found which kind of institution in 1773, now called the oldest in the United States?

A museum was founded in Charleston that January, on the eve of the Revolution, though it did not open its doors to the public until 1824.

Which of Carolina's eight proprietors, whose family name was Cooper, is honored by both rivers that meet at Charleston?

Lord Ashley, born Anthony Ashley Cooper, was the chief of the eight owners, so one river took his title and the other his surname.

Which Charleston Harbor site was the first landing place for some 40 percent of Africans enslaved in colonial America?

Sullivan's Island held the pest houses where captives were checked for disease before being sold in the city, and it has been likened to Ellis Island.

Which Native nation led a 1715 war that killed about seven percent of South Carolina's settlers?

The Yamasee and their allies drove settlers to flee into Charles Town, where food ran short, in one of the bloodiest wars of colonial America.

Which mountain nation, long a trading ally of South Carolina, fought the colony in a bitter war from 1758 to 1761?

Cherokee leaders had been British allies for decades, and their warriors had just fought the French alongside British troops, before each side came to suspect the other of betrayal.

Early Charles Town was the hub of a trade with Native hunters in which animal product, used for European leather?

Deerskins were in demand because cattle plagues in Europe had cut the supply of cowhide, and the trade boomed until the deer themselves grew scarce.

Which religious refugees came to Charles Town after France revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685?

Huguenots formed a congregation in the 1680s that survives in Charleston today as the only independent church of its kind in the United States.

Which taxed cargo did Charlestonians confiscate in protest of a 1773 act and lock inside the Exchange and Custom House?

Tea seized in 1773 sat in storage at the Exchange, and a later shipment was dumped into the river in 1774, much as Boston's had been the year before.

Which wealthy landowner known as the Gentleman Pirate was hanged in Charles Town in 1718 after begging for mercy?

Stede Bonnet had bought his own ship and paid his crew wages, and he wrote to the governor pleading for his life before he went to the gallows.

Which 1781 battle in upcountry South Carolina saw Daniel Morgan trap Banastre Tarleton's army in a double envelopment?

Cowpens was a surprising American victory after the disaster at Camden, and it is remembered as a turning point that lifted spirits across the South.

By about 1800, Charleston's religious tolerance had given it North America's largest community of which faith?

Judaism has had an organized congregation in Charleston since 1749, begun by Sephardic families and still one of the oldest in the United States.

Flora, performed in Charles Town in the 1730s, is counted as the first of which kind of show staged in America?

An opera called Flora was staged in Charles Town in February 1735, a year before the town's Dock Street Theatre opened with a comedy.

Which silver emblem from South Carolina soldiers' caps did Colonel William Moultrie place on a blue flag in 1775?

A crescent in the corner matched the badge on the troops' caps, and the blue came from their uniforms; the banner flew over the harbor fort attacked in 1776.

Which British commander-in-chief captured Charleston and its whole garrison in May 1780 after a six-week siege?

Henry Clinton's victory was the largest American surrender until the Civil War, and it came four years after he had failed to take the same city.

South Carolina's first governor, the elderly William Sayle, had earlier governed which island colony?

Bermuda was also where he launched an earlier venture, a company of settlers who became the first Europeans to colonize the Bahamas.

Which South Carolina backcountry village did Nathanael Greene besiege for 28 days in 1781 without taking its Star Fort?

Ninety Six was held by 550 Loyalists, and Greene had to give up the siege when British reinforcements marched inland from Charleston.

Which backcountry vigilantes of the 1760s fought bandit gangs and pushed Charleston to create local courts and jails?

The Regulators got what they wanted: a 1769 act set up inland courthouses and jails, where before the colony's only court sat in far-off Charleston.

Carolina's governor James Moore torched which Spanish town in 1702 after failing to breach its stone fort?

St. Augustine's fortress shrugged off the English guns, so Moore burned many of his own boats and retreated to Charles Town in disgrace.

The 1669 Fundamental Constitutions gave Carolina its own hereditary nobility, holding which pair of invented titles?

Landgrave and cassique were coined because the king's charter barred the owners from granting titles already used in England, such as earl or baron.

Which French navigator left 28 men at Charlesfort on the South Carolina coast in 1562 and sailed home for supplies?

Jean Ribault was delayed in Europe, so the stranded men built their own boat and set out across the Atlantic without a compass.

Who was the last British governor of South Carolina, fleeing Charles Town aboard a warship in 1775?

Lord William Campbell had lobbied for the post because his wife came from the colony, and he was later wounded aboard a flagship attacking its harbor.