North Mount Pleasant Magazine 2021-22

north mount pleasant www.Nor thMountPl easant . com | www. Par kWes tNe i ghborhoods . com | www. Br i ckyardHomes . com 29 Photo by Wi l l i am Beebe . St . James Santee Epi scopa l Chape l of Ease. Photo by Wi l l i am Beebe . Old Georgetown Road. The first European settlers to settle in this area are the French Huguenots — Protestant refugees who are escaping persecution in their home country of France. They begin arriving in 1687, and within a little more than a decade, as many as 70 French families are settled into plantation sites along the Santee River, trading with the local natives and prospering. They build the first church here, the Brick Church. They also travel the 36-mile Broad Path. Meanwhile, English trading and colonization have continued along the Atlantic coast since the mid-1600s under the direction of British King Charles II. He commissions a 1,300-mile thoroughfare stretching from Charleston to Boston. The Broad Path will become part of this but will also enjoy its own identification as the road from Charles Town to the English Settlement and the King’s Highway, also called Old Georgetown Road. It will be employed as an official postal road; a means for visiting friends and families in the colonies and a transportation route for naval stores including pitch, tar, turpentine, resin and lucrative plantation products such as rice and cotton. The road will also become strategic for moving Revolutionary troops and supplies and providing an escape route for General Francis Marion, also known as the “Swamp Fox,” and his men. President George Washington will travel through here during his post-war exploratory tour of the Southern states in 1791. During the Civil War, the road will even offer Yankee General Cornwallis