Dorchester County, SC by Legare Walker, pages 50-53
Boo-shoo-ee
Creek also empties into the Ashley—this last creek deriving its name from one Richard Eagle, who, about 1734, possessed the tract of land where the public road crossed the creek.
"The region about the mouths of these two creeks--especially about the peninsula between Dorchester Creek and Ashley River--was known by the Indian name of Boo-shoo-ee.
"It was first granted to John Smith, who on 20th November, 1676, obtained a grant for 1,800 acres covering this peninsula and the site of the future village. He was a man of considerable estate who had arrived in Carolina in 1675 with his wife and family and especially recommended by the Earl of Shaftesbury 'as my particular friend' with directions that he be allowed to take up a manor in some suitable place. John Smith was subsequently a member of the Grand Council and was created a Cassique, and died in 1682. From the name of the locality in which his grant was situated he was styled 'John Smith, of Boo-shoo.'"
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"The appellation Boo-shoo-ee was not confined to the site of the future village on the riverside, but was applied to the low land in the vicinity as 'Boshoe Swamp, and generally to the whole tract or plantation of 1,800 acres."
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"The high land or bluff on the river where the village was afterwards located was, at the time of its location, and afterwards, an 'old field' and probably the site of the first clearing and settlement of John Smith.
"John Smith, of Boo-shoe, died prior to December, 1682, as in December, 1682, his widow, Mary, married Arthur Middleton, and on the death of the latter, about 1684, married Ralph Izard.
"John Smith seems to have left no children, and in some way his grant for 1,800 acres must have lapsed to the State or the method of a new grant must have been adopted so as to confer a good title, for in the year 1696 this same 1,800 acres is re-granted to the settlers who were to confer upon it the name of Dorchester.
"The history of the town and township (so-called) of Dorchester, in South Carolina, begins with the immigration thither of a small colony from the township of Dorchester, in the then Province of Massachusetts Bay.
*The earliest record notice is in the records of the First Church at Dorchester, in New England.
"On those records it appears that on the 20th October, 1695, Joseph Lord, Increase Sumner and William Pratt were 'dismissed', i. e. transferred, from that church for 'ye gathering of a church for ye South Carolina'."
The records of the Dorchester Church in Massachusetts, under date of February 2nd, 1696, contain the following reference with respect to the Dorchester Settlement: “Then was ye first Sacrament of ye Lords Supper that ever was Celebrated in Carolina."
This statement hers been repeated by subsequent writers and construed as the first celebration of the Communion in the province. The original entry may have referred to the first celebration of the Communion by this congregation in the Province, but if the construction given was its correct intent, Mr. Smith conclusively proves that it was entirely erroneous. (See pages 66-87 of Mr. Smith's Sketch; also text, page 104)
We again quote from the Sketch above referred to:
"There has been a tendency to depict this settlement as something unusual--a band of enthusiastic missionaries carrying the Gospel into a primeval wilderness.
"The Rev. Mr. Howe, in his History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, says they 'came into this country as a missionary church to plant an institution of the Gospel' and again they sailed 'toward the land God had given them as an inheritance, not knowing whither they went', and again that they settled 'here in the midst of an unbroken forest inhabited by beasts of prey and savage men twenty miles from the dwellings of any whites they took up their abode.'
"All this is rhetorical but not historical. Mr. Rowe cites as his authority a sermon styled 'The Hand of God Recognized', preached by Rev. Mr. George Sheldon on the 22d, February, 1848, in the Congregational Church at Dorchester, in observance of the 150th anniversary of that church. This sermon does make similar statements, but the reverend author gives no references for his statements.
"The contemporaneous records show otherwise. The 'Church' debated between two points. Booshoo and New London. They were entertained and housed at both places by persons who had already settled. The lands they finally settled on had been granted away and settled by another 20 years previously. They were surrounded by settlers who had preceded them, viz: Lord Shaftesbury's barony with its settlement lay to the south, on the opposite side of the river. West of them were the settlements of Col. Andrew Percival (granted in 1682), of William Norman (1884), of Benjamin Waring, of Lady Axtell at Newington. East, along the Ashley River, the entire land was taken up already by grants and settlements, and northeast of them, about six miles off towards the head of Goose Creek, was another and quite numerous group of settlements dating from 10 to 20 years previous.
"Elder Pratt himself says in his diary that Mr. Lord's first preaching was attended by 'all ye next neighbours', and that persons even came from 10 miles around."
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"The data as to the town of Dorchester and its early history are very scanty. The country around it began to fill up, and the town, lying at the head of navigation on the Ashley River, became a trading place and point of distribution. It stood at a point capable of easy defence and of easy communication by water With Charles Town, and thus became a point of support and refuge from Indian invasions.
"The settlers in Dorchester began to overflow. It was easy to obtain grants of land, and many grants were obtained higher up and across the Ashley River, especially in the section known afterwards as 'Beech Fill'.
"Merchants established themselves in the town. The streets are not named on the plan, and the only names that have come down thro' the deeds are the 'Bay', lying along the river, and 'George' Street, the street running to the 'Broad Path' or public road.
"Gillson Clapp was a merchant 'on the Bay' in 1724, and in 1722 Thomas Satur, of Dorchester, Jacob Saar, of London, Eleazer Allen, of Charles Town, and William Rhett, Jr., of Charles Town, formed a co-partnership to carry on trade at Dorchester.
"In 1708 Dorchester was a small town containing about 350 souls.
"In 1706 the Rev. Joseph Lord wrote to a friend in Massachusetts that the country was frequented by way of trade."
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"In 1715 the Yemassee Indian War broke out, and the entire province south of the Stono River was devastated. The Yemassee invasion itself seems never to have reached Dorchester, but an invasion of the Indians to the northward, which took place at the same time, was more threatening. This invasion was met by Capt. George Chicken at the head of the. Goose Creek militia, and a decisive defeat was inflicted upon the Indians at a place styled in the old accounts 'The Ponds', This appears to be the Percival plantation at the point now called 'Schulz's Lake'.
"The Yemassee War inflicted a terrible loss on the Province, and for many years delayed the settlement of the Province to the south of Ashley River.
"In 1719 St. Andrew's Parish was divided, and the upper portion, including Dorchester and the surrounding territory, was created a separate parish and called St. George.
"A church was directed to be built at a point to be selected by a majority of the commissioners named with the approval of a majority of the inhabitants of the parish of the profession of the Church of England who should contribute to the building. The commissioners were: Alexander Skene, Capt. Walter Izard, Thomas Diston, Samuel Wragg, John Cantey, Thomas Waring and Jacob Satur.
*The place selected for the church was the place for a place of trade or Dorchester town."
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"The parish then contained 115 English families, amounting to about 500 persons, and 1,300 slaves. The Town now began to forge ahead. Roads were extended by statute into the surrounding country, and in 1722 the bridges over the Ashley.--Steven's Bridge (now Bacon's Bridge) and Waring's bridge (now Slann's Bridge) were confirmed as public bridges.
"In 1723 an Act was passed for settling a fair and markets in the town of Dorchester, in Berkeley County, 'being frontier in that part of the Country.'
"In 1734 an Act was passed for the founding and erecting a free school at the town of Dorchester, in the parish of St. George, and in the same year an Act was passed to clear out the Ashley River up to Slann's Bridge.
"A bridge across the river, opposite the town of Dorchester, had already been built.
"A great loss of population in the surrounding country took place in 1752-56. The descendants of the original settlers who gave the name to Dorchester--the members of the 'White Meeting' or Congregationalist Church--had over-flowed into the surrounding country. So many of them had settled in the Beech Hill section that about 1737 another place of worship was constructed there for their convenience. The 'Church' had acquired 95 acres in two tracts on the 'Beech hill' road, and on one of these tracts, not far from the parish line of St. Paul's, the building for worship was constructed. The congregation being practically the same as that at Dorchester, one minister served at both places on alternate Sundays.
"In 1752-56 a general exodus of these congregations took place to Georgia. The reasons, as stated in their records, were lack of sufficient lands for their increasing numbers, and the unhealthiness of Dorchester and Beech Hill. In 1752 they procured two grants of land, aggregating 31,950 acres on the coast of Georgia, between the Medway and Newport rivers, in what subsequently became Liberty County, Nearly all of the congregations of the Dorchester and Beech Hill churches with their minister, the Rev. John Osgood, removed. The names of the settlers who took up the 31,950 acres and their subsequent history is fully detailed by the Rev. Mr. Stacey, in his History of Midway Church, to which reference has already been made.
"The effect of their removal was practically the death blow to the Congregational Church in St. George's Parish, Dorchester. No settled minister was had to perform services. The building at Beech Hill, being of wood, soon perished. From that date the history of Dorchester ceases to be the history of a Congregational settlement and becomes the history of the village of Dorchester and the parish of St. George, Dorchester.
"In addition to its growth as a town during these years Dorchester also had become the plane of resort for supplies for the country around, which had been taken up more or less for the seats and plantations of a number of wealthy families."
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"At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Dorchester, altho' still a mere village, was next to Charles Town and George Town, the largest village in South Carolina.