Encyclopedia

In addition to this major contribution to the Confederate war effort, Chisolm devised a more efficient inhaler for the administration of chloroform, an anesthetic that was in short supply in the Confederate army.

She was a founder of the Bethlehem Center, an educational and community center in one of Spartanburg’s black communities sponsored by Bethel Methodist Church.

With the introduction of rice as a staple crop in the early eighteenth century, Christ Church became a parish of planters and slaves.

Carte-de-visite taken by Richard Wearn of Columbia soon after Sherman's visit in Feb. 1865.

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.

Like the national organization, the South Carolina Christian Coalition has been heavily focused on political activism, stating that members “are driven by the belief that people of faith have a right and a responsibility to be involved in the world around them.”

The smallest of the three black Methodist groups, the CME has close to one million members in the United States and abroad, especially in the Caribbean and Africa.

The organization’s motto was “conversation, not conversion,” and its objectives focused on education and cooperation. It sought to correct misunderstandings between the faith communities, especially forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism that occasionally surfaced in communities across the state.

According to its provisions, the act allowed dissenters to practice their faiths and participate in politics but they were denied public support for their churches or the right to perform marriages.

The first Church of England, or Anglican, house of worship in South Carolina was built in Charleston about 1681, with the Reverend Atkin Williamson serving as its first priest.

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.”

Located in Union, the Church of the Nativity (consecrated in 1859) is a remarkably effective example of the “Ecclesiological” architectural style favored by the Episcopal Church in America and the Anglican Communion throughout the world in the 1840s and 1850s.

Its Richardsonian Romanesque style reflects Charleston’s tradition of adopting current architectural fashion for ecclesiastical buildings, despite the city’s famous conservatism in residential design.

Printed manuscript, 17 September 1840, of John England (1786-1842), Bishop of Charleston, circular letter acknowledging receipt of an invitation to meet with the Vice President of the United States at Detroit on 28 September 1840.