Beaufort County

The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto Rivers in the South Carolina lowcountry.

Established in 1990, the ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is part of the federal system of refuges managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge represents the federal role in the larger ACE Basin Project with two units, one on the Combahee River and the other on the Edisto River.

The archministry’s mission is to remove negative stereotypes of African and African American culture by providing a living laboratory of African traditions and by disseminating historical and cultural information.

In the antebellum era, Beaufort became a summer retreat for rich Sea Island cotton planters and even richer mainland rice planters, who maintained a wealthy and cultivated society in the town.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of hardship in Beaufort, which by then had declined into one of the poorest places in America.

A morning newspaper, daily and Sunday, published in the city of Beaufort.

The Beaufort National Cemetery contains the remains of more than 7,500 Civil War soldiers, 4,019 of whom are unknown and 117 of whom are known Confederates; the latter are buried in a separate section. In addition, the cemetery contains the graves of some 7,000 veterans of American wars and one World War II German sailor. The cemetery is still open for veterans and family members.

Located on the twenty-foot-high bluffs of the May River and facing the cool, southerly winds, it was an ideal summer refuge for planter families. The town, known first simply as May River and then later as Kirk’s Bluff, was officially named Bluffton in 1844. The development of Hilton Head as a major tourist destination in the early 1970s marked a revitalization of Bluffton. Annexations and the spread of Hilton Head’s resort and tourism economy led to a seventy-five percent increase in Bluffton’s population during the 1990s.

Aggrieved by the Tariff of 1842 and the refusal of Congress to annex Texas, St. Luke’s Parish planters formed a committee and called for a meeting of individuals and their local congressman, Robert Barnwell Rhett, to speak about these issues that had plagued the South since the 1820s. Invitations were sent to nearby parishes, prominent men, and area newspapers (including those in Charleston and Savannah). At this dinner and others to follow, Rhett, a longtime nullifier and disunionist, attempted to rally support for a state convention. He hoped such a convention would nullify the Tariff of 1842 or urge South Carolina’s immediate secession from the Union.

In February 1742, when Bryan sent the assembly a journal of his predictions that God would use the slave population to punish those who profaned his laws, the Commons House ordered his arrest. Bryan fled and underwent a grave crisis of faith. Witnesses claimed that, like Moses, he attempted to part the waters of a creek and cross that way, and he was nearly drowned. Shortly thereafter, Bryan wrote the Speaker of the House apologizing for “the Dishonour I’ve done to God, as well as the Disquiet which I may have occasioned to my Country.”

Bull participated with General William Moultrie in the American victory at Port Royal Island on February 3, 1779. Two months later the lowcountry was overrun by British General Augustine Prevost’s invasion from Georgia, and defeat and desertions decimated Bull’s regiment. After the fall of Charleston in May 1780, Bull went into self-imposed exile in Virginia and Maryland and offered no more service to the patriot cause.

Bull inherited Ashley Hall, a plantation on the Ashley River. In 1704 he built a handsome brick mansion on the site and with his kinfolks, the Draytons and the Middletons, transformed the Ashley River area into a showplace of the planter elite. Bull was also among the early settlers in Prince William’s Parish on the colony’s southern frontier. His plantation, called Sheldon, was the main source of his economic wealth.

During the 1770s Bull’s political views grew increasingly out of step as South Carolina and other colonies moved toward radical opposition to the crown. Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor, arrived at Charleston on June 18, 1775, and took office, but his term lasted only three months. On September 15 he was forced to flee the city for refuge on a British warship in Charleston harbor. The revolution was under way, and Bull’s position was an impossible one. He resigned from the Royal Council and retired to his Ashley Hall plantation. In 1777 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government and was banished from the state.

Over his lifetime Byrnes held many public positions, coming closer than any other South Carolinian in the twentieth century to obtaining the national political influence wielded by John C. Calhoun in the nineteenth century. Byrnes left a series of political legacies in South Carolina, the nation, and the world. His advocacy of highway and New Deal legislation provided numerous material benefits to South Carolinians. His services to President Roosevelt had a major impact on the national economy during World War II. His role as secretary of state was instrumental in defining postwar foreign policy. In the 1950s and 1960s Byrnes’s support of Republican presidential candidates was a key factor in the party’s revitalization in the South.

Impressed by the apparent potential of this area for a colony, [mariner Jean] Ribault, before returning to France, left behind more than two dozen volunteers, who constructed a small wooden fort that they named after their king.

Abbie Christensen was a progressive force for women’s rights, black and white education, racial tolerance, and social welfare in South Carolina from the 1890s until her death.

The congregation of cotton planters who had formed at the small village of Bluffton, near Hilton Head Island, advertised in the Charleston Courier in July 1854 for someone to design a church “of wood with brick foundations, and not to exceed the estimated cost of five thousand dollars.”

Ron Daise and Natalie Daise, his wife since 1985, have tirelessly performed the program Sea Island Montage, a multimedia theater performance that combines photographs, storytelling, song, and dance.

Daufuskie Island planters raised indigo in the eighteenth century and Sea Island cotton during the antebellum period. After the Civil War, Daufuskie’s economy was based on cotton, lumber, and oysters.

Deveaux and his Loyalist partisans are believed to have been responsible for burning the Prince William Parish church at Sheldon in April 1779. Deveaux was commissioned as a major in the South Carolina Loyalist militia known as the “Royal Foresters” and served the British army occupying South Carolina for the next three years.