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Christ Episcopal Church is an Episcopal Church in Mount Pleasant, SC. The parish is over 300 years old, being placed in the center of an agrarian community in 1706, originally intended as a Chapel of Ease.
History
[edit]The March 1, 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina called for the parliament to take care for the building of churches and the public maintenance of divines, to be employed in the exercise of religion, according to the Church of England, the national religion of all the King's dominions. Under this authority, Christ Church Parish was created by the Church Act of 1706 during the reign of Anne, Queen of England. The Christ Church Parish buildings thus were public buildings, the center for local government activities and the place where records of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials were kept.
The foundation for the first church building was laid in 1707. The original church was a small timber building, forty feet in length and twenty-four feet in width. Services began in early 1708. On 12 July 1708, the first vestrymen were elected by the parishioners. The Rev. Richard Marsden was the first duly elected rector.
The first church building was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1725. Almost immediately, construction of a brick church was started and the new building was dedicated on March 28, 1727. The Church building was again destroyed by fire, burned by retreating British troops in 1782. Fortunately, the brick walls of both the church and vestry house survived the 1782 fire. The walls of the present buildings thus date to 1727.
A Confederate earthwork was built across Christ Church grounds in 1862 by field hands, part of the Palmetto Fort erected to protect the northeast approach to Charleston, SC. The earthwork originally ran from Boone Hall to the coastal marshes, and a portion on church grounds survives.
Near the end of the Civil War, the church building was again reduced to four blackened walls. A company of Union Calvary, from the 21st Massachusetts Colored Regiment bivouacked in the churchyard and used the building as a stable. The pews were burned for firewood during the bitter winter of 1865. The shell of four walls and the roof was all that remained of both the church and the vestry house. The Chapel of St. Andrew’s was used for all services until 1874 when Christ Church was once again restored.
The graveyard outside the historic church dates to the 1600s. The wording on the two memorial tablets on the walls of the church is taken from the register: “Sarah, the wife of Andrew Rutledge, was buried Tuesday, October 22, 1743 under her pew in the church, and Charlotte Durand, wife of Rev. Levi Durand was buried in the chancel, under the altar.”
Notable Parishoners
[edit]Many noted people have been members of Christ Church. Parishioners Edward Rutledge and Thomas Lynch, Jr. were signers of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Pinckney was one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and a governor of the State of South Carolina.